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A Lonely Place for Dying A Smash-Hit On BitTorrent

Posted: 05 Aug 2011 01:26 PM PDT

Early July the BitTorrent-powered VODO distribution network delivered one of its most important releases to date. Just one month later and A Lonely Place For Dying hasn’t disappointed. Not only has it just broken the one million download barrier but the title has been the best-seeded movie on BitTorrent worldwide for several weeks.

VODO, the BitTorrent-powered distribution network for independent films, has released a few dozen high-quality movies in the past year but last month saw the premiere of a particularly important title.

Cold War spy thriller A Lonely Place For Dying boasts James Cromwell as Executive Producer, a Hollywood veteran with movies such as LA Confidential, The Green Mile and Secretariat under his belt.

But the talent doesn’t stop there. With actor Michael Wincott on board (The Crow, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, not to mention appearances in dozens of other movies and videogame Halo2) and first-time Director Justin Eugene Evans, the seeds to a great movie had been planted.

On July 1st 2011 those creative seeds were converted to BitTorrent seeds courtesy of VODO and part one of the movie was released out into the wild. Now, just over one month later, A Lonely Place For Dying is proving a smash hit online.

At the time of writing it has climbed to 3rd position in the VODO charts after amassing more than 1 million official downloads. Only Pioneer One and Zenith have achieved more in total but both have been available for several months already and in multiple episodes.

“Achieving over one million downloads on VODO in one month has exceeded our wildest expectations,” director Justin Eugene Evans told TorrentFreak.

“We’ve had well over one million Twitter impressions as well. We’re hoping this evidence will sufficiently convince an analog industry that this film has tremendous potential.”

In addition to huge download stats, for the last couple of weeks A Lonely Place For Dying has also been the best-seeded movie available on BitTorrent worldwide, even beating the likes of Source Code and X-Men First Class.

“You just listed movies with budgets of 32 million and 150 million respectively,” says Evans. “Our budget is only 200 grand. Conventional Wisdom would dictate the opposite; that when a microbudget movie is forced to compete with all the world’s torrented movies we’d be drowned out.

“I’m hoping this proves that there is no direct link between budget and craftsmanship. However, this method only works if the film is rock solid. It doesn’t have to be perfect (nothing is) but if the work lacks compelling characters, quality dialogue and the overall product is not well crafted this marketing tactic will fall on its face.”

This level of exposure is of particular importance to the creators of the movie. Rather than sell the rights to a Hollywood studio they chose to keep control themselves and generate funding through the BitTorrent community instead.

The movie is now undergoing a serialized release on VODO (there will be 5 episodes in total) in the hope that enough donations can be secured to fund a full theatrical release next year, although Evans says current levels of donations are disappointing.

“If every viewer gave us $1.00 we’d have over 1 million right now. That would be enough to reward every cast & crew member, every investor would make a reasonable profit, I’d be paid for my time and we’d have enough left over to make another feature film.”

VODO and BitTorrent aside, July was a great month for A Lonely Place For Dying. The movie won four awards at the Van Wert Independent Film Festival including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Editing.

Of its 40 official festival selections and 45 award nominations, A Lonely Place For Dying has now won an impressive 23 awards including 15 for Best Picture.

Those who still haven’t seen the first part of the movie can download it here. Don’t forget to throw in a few bucks if you enjoyed it.

Source: A Lonely Place for Dying A Smash-Hit On BitTorrent

Domain Seizures Do Not Violate Free Speech, U.S. Court Rules

Posted: 05 Aug 2011 06:40 AM PDT

A U.S. federal court has ruled that the domain seizure of sports streaming site Rojadirecta does not violate the First Amendment, and has refused to hand the domain back to its Spanish owner. The order stands in conflict with previous Supreme Court rulings and doesn’t deliver much hope to other website owners who operate under U.S. controlled domain names.

roja At the end of January 2011 the U.S. authorities began yet another round of domain seizures, this time against sites connected with sports streaming. This third round of action in 'Operation in Our Sites' took control of domains owned by sports streaming site Rojadirecta.

While most owners of affected domains have decided not to appeal the seizures, the Spanish owner of the Rojadirecta, one of Spain's most popular sites, did.

Two months ago the company behind the site, Puerto 80, filed a petition in the Southern District of New York for the return of its domains. This call was later supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who together with Center for Democracy and Technology and Public Knowledge submitted an amicus brief in support of the Spanish company.

Yesterday, United States District Court Judge Paul Crotty decided to deny Puerto 80′s request, which means the domain will remain in the hands of the U.S. Government. The Judge argues that seizing Rojadirecta’s .com and .org domains does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“Puerto 80's First Amendment argument fails,” the Judge writes.

“Puerto 80 alleges that, in seizing the domain names, the Government has suppressed the content in the ‘forums’ on its websites, which may be accessed by clicking a link in the upper left of the home page. The main purpose of the Rojadirecta websites, however, is to catalog links to the copyrighted athletic events — any argument to the contrary is clearly disingenuous.”

The Judge further ruled that the claimed 32% decline in traffic and the subsequent harm to Puerto 80′s business is not an issue as visitors can still access the site through foreign domains. Puerto 80′s argument, that users may not be aware of these alternatives, was simply waived.

“Rojadirecta argues that, because ‘there is no way to communicate the availability of these alternative sites on the .org or .com domains . . . the vast majority of users will simply stop visiting the sites altogether.’ This argument is unfounded — Rojadirecta has a large internet presence and can simply distribute information about the seizure and its new domain names to its customers,” the Judge writes.

“In addition, Puerto 80 does not explain how it generates profit or argue that it is losing a significant amount of revenue as a result of the seizure. Specifically, Puerto 80 states that it does not generate revenue from the content to which it links, and it does not claim to generate revenue from advertising displayed while such content is playing,” Judge Crotty adds.

From the above the Judge concludes that the drop in visitor traffic due to their seizure does not establish a substantial hardship, and therefore no reason exists to return the domain.

This line of reasoning goes directly against previous rulings in First Amendment cases. As the EFF points out, in two earlier Supreme Court decisions it was concluded that having alternatives available does not mean that freedom of speech isn’t violated.

According to the EFF, the peculiarities of the ruling don’t end there.

“As if misapplying the relevant substantive First Amendment analysis wasn’t bad enough, the court failed to even address the fatal procedural First Amendment flaws inherent in the seizure process: namely, that a mere finding of ‘probable cause’ does not and cannot justify a prior restraint. How the court believes that the seizure satisfies the First Amendment in this regard is a mystery,” they write.

The decision of District Court Judge Paul Crotty to stand firmly behind the Government is worrying for all other websites who operate under U.S. controlled domains. It’s yet another step in granting the Government and copyright holders more control over the Internet, at the expense of smaller businesses and the rights of citizens.

The Order

Source: Domain Seizures Do Not Violate Free Speech, U.S. Court Rules

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