TorrentFreak Email Update |
- BitTorrent Legend Surprnova.org Returns as Video Portal
- The Revolution Will Not Be Properly Licensed
- Feds Arrest Owner of Seized Sports Streaming Domain
| BitTorrent Legend Surprnova.org Returns as Video Portal Posted: 05 Mar 2011 05:13 AM PST
In the months that followed Suprnova grew out to become the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, with over a million visitors a day. But as with many other BitTorrent sites it didn't last. Along with huge popularity came the legal threats, and these eventually made Andrej decide to close the site in December 2004. In 2007, Suprnova returned to the BitTorrent stage, resurrected by the folks behind The Pirate Bay who were offered the domain by Andrej. Unfortunately, the site never even came close to its former glory, with just a few thousand visitors passing by each month. Last year Andrej decided to ask the domain back, as he wanted to use it for a new project. As he's currently in San Francisco and attending the Academy of Art University where he focuses on TV and online video production, Andrej decided to use the Suprnova brand for his very own video portal. The new Suprnova officially launched a few days ago, and we decided to catch up with Andrej – who’s also the director of TorrentFreak TV – to see what it’s all about. “SuprNova.org is creating entertaining content which is given to users free of charge,” Andrej told us. “It is licensed under Creative Commons with the idea that everyone has the chance to view the content at any time, however they wish.” “We do not believe that giving away everything for free is bad. We do not believe that re-distributing shows is bad. We believe in the free flow of information. We believe in a world where a copy does not equal lost profit,” he added. The video portal features unique short format videos produced by and for Suprnova.org. The videos can be streamed online, and true to the BitTorrent roots of the site a .torrent download is also offered for each show. “We know that you might be on your 5-minute break and want to watch something that is going to make you laugh. That is why we are dedicated to making shows, which are no longer than 3 minutes. Ideally they range from 15 to 45 seconds long.” TorrentFreak TV is one of the shows that are featured on the site, and although we haven’t seen a new episode in months, it’s good to see it listed there. In the coming weeks Andrej and his team will focus on releasing more unique content. “New content will be added daily and we want users to be able to find something new on the website every time they come. As the site grows, the production of the shows will increase new shows will be released more often,” Andrej said. What was once the largest BitTorrent index has now returned as a modest video portal, but one with great aspirations. We do of course wish Andrej, Stacia and the rest of the team the very best and we’re looking forward to seeing some new TorrentFreak TV episodes on Suprnova in the near future. |
| The Revolution Will Not Be Properly Licensed Posted: 04 Mar 2011 01:31 PM PST We have SonyBMG taking administrator-level control of several million customers’ computers to prevent copying of mere music. European authorities mandating wiretapping capabilities of all telecom equipment. Car manufacturers installing remote kill switches in cars. Microsoft embedding the same type of kill switches in their software, along with Apple and Google doing the same to our phones. Intel embedding the same kill switches in processors. Amazon deleting books off our bookshelves. There is a blind trust in authority here that is alarming. The ever-increasing desire to know what we talk about and to whom is cause for more than concern, and that desire is displayed openly by corporations and politicians alike. To make matters worse, it is not just a matter of eavesdropping: corporations and politicians openly want – and get – the right to silence us. The copyright industry is demanding the right to kill switches of our very communications. If we talk about matters disruptive enough, disruptive according to authorities or to the copyright industry, the line goes silent. Just twenty years ago, this would have been an absolutely horrifying prospect; today, it is reality. Don’t believe me? Try talking about a link to The Pirate Bay on MSN or on Facebook and watch as silence comes through. The copyright industry is fighting for this to become more pervasive. So are some politicians with agendas of their own. While the copyright industry and repressive Big Brother politicians may not share the same ultimate motives, they are still pushing for exactly the same changes to society and control over our communications. At the same time, citizens’ physical movements are tracked to street level by the minute and the history recorded. How would you revolt with all this in place, when all you said just fell silent before reaching the ears of others, and the regime could remotely monitor who met whom and where, when they could kill all your equipment with the push of a button? The West hardly has any high moral ground from where to criticize China or the regimes that are falling in the Arab world. And yet, in all this darkness, there is a counter-reaction that is growing stronger by the day. Activists are working through the night in defeating the surveillance and monitoring to ensure free speech by developing new tools in a cat-and-mouse game. These are the heroes of our generation. By ensuring free speech and free press, they are ensuring unmonitored, unblockable communications. Therefore, they are also defeating the copyright monopoly at its core, perhaps merely as a by-product. Free and open software is at the core of the counter-reaction to Big Brother. It is open to scrutiny for any and all kill switches and wiretapping, and it can spread like wildfire when necessary. Moreover, it renounces the copyright monopoly to the point where popular development methods are actively fighting the monopoly, again making the connection between copyright enforcement and repression. Free operating systems and communications software are at the heart of all our future freedom of speech, as well as for the freedom of speech for regimetopplers right this day. The software that is being built by these hero activists is a guarantee for our civil liberties. Software like Tor and FreeNet and I2P, like TextSecure and RedPhone. That criminals can evade wiretapping is a cheap price to pay for our rights: tomorrow, we might be considered the criminals for subversion. These are tools used by the people revolting against corrupt regimes today. We should learn something from that. At the same time and by necessity, this free software makes the copyright monopoly unenforceable, as it creates the untappable, anonymous communication needed to guarantee our civil liberties. Mike Masnick of Techdirt recently noted that “piracy and freedom look remarkably similar”. Perhaps Freenet’s policy expresses it the most clearly: “You cannot guarantee free speech and enforce the copyright monopoly. Therefore, any technology designed to guarantee freedom of speech must also prevent enforcement of the copyright monopoly.” The fights for basic freedoms of speech and for defeat of the copyright monopoly are one and the same. Therefore, the revolutions will happen using tools that are not just in lack of the copyright monopoly, but actively defeat it. The revolution will not be properly licensed. – — – Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other Friday. He is the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at http://falkvinge.net focuses on information policy. Follow Rick Falkvinge on Twitter as @Falkvinge and on Facebook as /rickfalkvinge. |
| Feds Arrest Owner of Seized Sports Streaming Domain Posted: 04 Mar 2011 05:25 AM PST
One of the affected domain names was Channelsurfing.net, a website where links to external sports streams were listed. In the days following the seizure, TorrentFreak got in touch with the owner of the site who appeared to be genuinely surprised by the Government’s actions. “The thing about my site is we never streamed anything, we always linked from other sites like justin.tv, veetle, vshare.tv, zonein.tv and others,” TorrentFreak was told. The ChannelSurfing owner didn’t see much harm in what he did, and viewed the domain seizure as illegitimate, as did many others. In the days that followed he reviewed his options and considered taking legal action to get his domain back. In the meantime, he registered the domain Channelsurf.eu where he continued business as usual. Until yesterday. In a follow up to the domain seizure, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arrested 32-year old Brian McCarthy from Texas yesterday. The authorities believe that McCarthy is responsible for the ChannelSurfing website and he has been charged with criminal copyright infringement for “reproduction and distribution” of copyrighted material. “Brian McCarthy allegedly sought to profit by intercepting and then streaming live sporting events, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet to make a quick buck through what is little more than high-tech thievery,” Southern District of New York Attorney Preet Bhara commented. “This arrest sends a clear message that this office, working with its partners at HSI, will vigorously protect valuable intellectual property rights through arrests and domain name seizures,” Bhara added. The picture the authorities paint stands in stark contrast with how ChannelSurfing’s owner perceived his site, but it’s now up to the court to decide who’s side the law is on. For other U.S. based operators of streaming and file-sharing sites in general, these developments are worrisome. The authorities hinted that more arrests may follow in the future. “We will continue to investigate illegal streaming of programming on the Internet in an effort to preserve legitimate and creative business interests and deter others from engaging in online piracy,” Homeland Security agent James Hayes said. According to unsealed court documents, McCarthy was tracked down through information provided by the domain registrar NameCheap, Google, Paypal, Comcast, and the site’s advertisers. The documents also revealed that he made at least $90,000 from advertisements during the last five years. If found guilty, McCarthy faces a maximum prison sentence of five years. Despite the arrest the ChannelSurfing website is still available on the new .eu domain, hosted on the same server as the original .net. ChannelSurfing website, which is still available under the new domain |
In the fall of 2002, just months after Bram Cohen released his first version of BitTorrent to the public, a new website called 
Last month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 
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