Sunday, December 26, 2010

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update

Pirate Apple App Store Innovates With ‘Reverse BitTorrent’

Posted: 26 Dec 2010 04:49 AM PST

Hackulous, the community dedicated to the cracking of Apple DRM and the indexing of unprotected software for iPhone, iPod and iPad, has announced some interesting innovations. As well as having cracking software for the yet-to-be-released Mac App Store already up their sleeve, they also have an intriguing "reverse BitTorrent" system for jailbroken devices which will increase cracked app availability on the Internet.

hackulousFor the last two years, the Hackulous community has been working to circumvent the DRM on Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad products. Their agenda is fairly straightforward. They do what they do because they believe that Apple’s App Store is unfair to consumers since it has no trial service or refund policy.

Hackulous are most well known for two products. The first is Apptrakr, a web-based index of cracked apps which has between 10 and 11 million unique users per month. The second, Installous, is a piece of software resident on 8 to 9 million jailbroken Apple devices which allows the installation of software found via Apptrakr and elsewhere.

Hackulous admin Dissident has just announced a number of new developments and innovations. The first related pair are upgrades to ‘Clutch’, a piece of software which allows the cracking of iOS software, and its GUI called Crackulous. The second is ‘Overdrive’, a piece of code which stops applications becoming self aware.

Apptrakr is also receiving various upgrades but an update included in the new Installous 4 package is of particular interest.

While Apptrakr has an absolutely huge database of cracked apps, by no means does it index all apps currently available. However, as millions of Installous users are also buyers of apps from the App Store, most titles will already be installed on their collective devices. But how can they be shared with the world?

In the past, owners of App Store apps would have to crack the software using something like Clutch then patch, test, upload and submit it to Apptrakr in order to grow its database and enable others to download. Not surprisingly the learning curve dissuaded all but a tiny minority from even trying.

Described by Dissident as a kind of ‘reverse BitTorrent’, Mobile Hunt is a clever way of utilizing an existing network of millions of peers to provide a solution to the app supply bottleneck.

“Essentially what will happen is when you’re using Installous you’ll get a little pop up that says ‘Hey, you have an application that Apptrakr doesn’t. We will add the application to a queue in the background (if you say yes) and it will start uploading tiny pieces of it, kind of like a torrent, up to the cloud’,” Dissident explains.

So, unlike BitTorrent, where one starts with a single file that multiplies the more people jump on the torrent, with Mobile Hunt the start point is perhaps hundreds or thousands of copies of the same piece of software, and little tiny pieces of each upload from each person’s device to the cloud in order to make one final copy, which will then become available from Apptrakr. From there it will be available for millions to download.

The other announcement from Hackulous is also very significant. On January 6th, Apple will release the Mac App Store and before it’s even released, Hackulous have cracked its security.

By removing DRM from products available from the Mac App Store with a new product called ‘Kickback’, Hackulous will be able to offer the same kind of free download service for Mac as they do for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will do so immediately.

“We don’t want to release kickback as soon as the [Mac App] Store gets released. I have a few reasons for that,” Dissident explains.

As mentioned earlier, Hackulous and its suite of services exists to provide a try-before-you-buy trial service and this was only needed when Apple allowed “tons of crap” software on the App Store.

“Most of the applications that go on the Mac App Store [in the first instance] will be decent, they’ll be pretty good. Apple isn’t going to put crap on the App Store as soon as it gets released. It’ll probably take months for the App Store to actually have a bunch of crappy applications and when we feel that it has a lot of crap in it, we’ll probably release Kickback,” says Dissident.

“So we’re not going to release Kickback until well after the store’s been established, well after developers have gotten their applications up. We don’t want to devalue applications and frustrate developers.”

So how long will it take for the Mac App Store to become polluted enough for Kickback to be released? Maybe February…..

Article from: TorrentFreak.

First Episodes Of Californication Leak On BitTorrent

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 01:33 PM PST

A unique Christmas gift was waiting under the tree this morning for fans of the hit-show Californication. The first two episodes of the upcoming fourth season have leaked on BitTorrent, more than two weeks before they premiere on Showtime. The source of the leak is reportedly a promo-DVD that a Showtime employee got to take home before the holidays.

Californication, the popular TV-series featuring David Duchovny as the ever charming novelist Hank Moody, is officially set to debut its fourth season January 9th next year on Showtime. However, today the first two episodes of the upcoming season are already available on BitTorrent and beyond.

The leaked episodes don’t originate from a Scene group, but according to unconfirmed reports they were ripped by the husband of a Showtime employee who got to take a promo-DVD home for Christmas. Such promo DVDs are often sent out to reviewers and industry insiders beforehand, and it’s not uncommon for them to appear online before the official TV-debut, appropriately tagged with a PREAIR label.

Californication Season 4

californication

A few years ago the tag PREAIR was more common than it is nowadays. The tag is used on P2P and Scene releases to indicate that a TV-show has found its way onto the Internet before the episode appears on TV.

At one point during the summer of 2007 a massive 8 new episodes were released with a PREAIR tag in just one week. This year, however, only a few TV-leaks have appeared online. Early releases of The Walking Dead and Weeds were the only notable ones until today.

Promo and screener DVDs have always been a weak spot in the anti-piracy efforts of TV and movie studios. Millions of dollars are spent on lawsuits and takedown notices for leaks that often come from industry insiders. For this very reason some studios have opted to ban these screener DVDs entirely.

Kaye Cooper Mead, executive vice president of distribution at Summit Entertainment, recently said that getting rid of screeners entirely is the best option. Summit Entertainment is the studio behind the Oscar winner The Hurt Locker, a film that leaked online several months before it aired in movie theaters.

"It's something we have to get away from," Kaye Cooper Mead said recently. "Those screeners are a source of leaks, and when they leak, it's a very serious leak because it's a much better copy than the pirated ones.”

It is doubtful that the PREAIR leaks of Californication will do the series any harm. If anything, the show will pick up a few more fans thanks to this Christmas ‘present’.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

LeechMonster Downloads Torrents For You This Christmas

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 06:39 AM PST

LeechMonster is a new service that allows users to download torrents directly to their PC through a remote server, without having to fire up a BitTorrent client. For many people this will reduce download times significantly. TorrentFreak readers have the honor of testing the service for free this Christmas.

leechmonsterLeechMonster is one of those services that allows users to download torrent files at blazing speeds to a remote server. Once finished, users can download the files directly to their home computers, no torrent client required.

Although BitTorrent itself is all about sharing, remote download services like this can come in handy when one’s Internet connection is throttled or when regular downloads are simply going too slow. Contrary to standard BitTorrent transfers, these services are also keeping one’s personal details private.

True to the holiday spirit, LeechMonster decided to give away 1000 free accounts to curious TorrentFreak readers, and another 5000 3GB upgrades to those who sign up for a regular account. Those who are interested can try LeechMonster out with the promo code 436fa13667ba, which will add 1GB to the free account.

Although LeechMonster does what it promises, it is still in the Beta phase and users have to add torrent files through KickassTorrents. For the beta it is also limited to file from the TV, Movies and Music categories. In a later stage LeechMonster will partner with other torrent sites as well as accept more torrents, TorrentFreak was told.

Adding a torrent to LeechMonster is easy. On KickassTorrents you simply click the green “secure direct download” button and then it will be automatically added to the download queue. Once the download is finished users can download the files directly to their computer, at full speed.

Adding a torrent to LeechMonster

vodo leech

LeechMonster is not the only torrent download service out there of course, there are a few dozen. One of the main competitors is Put.io which also offers a limited number of limited free trials at the moment, up to 100GB storage and bandwidth.

Even at Christmas, not everything is positive though. The major downside to direct download services is that they are not free. LeechMonster and others charge a monthly or yearly fee to pay their bandwidth bills, which is not something every BitTorrent user may appreciate.

And what about sharing, you might ask?

Direct download services like this always raise suspicion of leeching off the BitTorrent community, but we are assured that all the torrents are shared for a while according to proper BitTorrent etiquette. Also, the way these services generally operate a particular torrent is only downloaded once. When another person requests the same torrent later it will simply be downloaded from the central servers.

Happy leeching, and Merry Christmas.

Article from: TorrentFreak.
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