Plates55.com » P2P and Filesharing http://plates55.com Restart, Reboot, Reinstall Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:10:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 LG Shows How To Play Pirated Movies On TV http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:31:08 +0000 swood http://plates55.com/?p=992 Some of the newer LG TVs have USB support, allowing consumers to hook up an external drive to their screen in order to view photos, listen to music, or enjoy a movie. In the manual that comes with these devices, LG doesn’t try to hide the most popular use for this feature as they show customers how to play a pirated movie.

logo lgUsing pirated films as promotional material to sell consumer electronics is nothing new. The John Lewis store has used aXXo rips to sell iMacs in the past and Saturn, Europe’s largest retailer of consumer electronics, showed pirated films to sell Macbooks.

In these previous cases the pirated films were only on display in the stores, but the multinational electronics company LG takes it a step further. The company is selling TVs that have the functionality to accept a connection from an external USB device. This allows customers to enjoy pictures, music and videos directly on their TVs, all with a piracy endorsement from the manufacturer.

In the packaged English language manual, LG does not try to obfuscate the true purpose of this nifty USB feature – playing pirated movies. In the picture below, LG included pirated versions of The Incredibles and The Aviator, while explaining how easy it is to play the films directly on a TV.

How to play pirated movies on your LG TV (full pic)

lg warez

LG seems to understand perfectly what customers want, but we doubt that the movie studios will be very excited about this piracy endorsement from the Koreans. Whether the pirated films were included intentionally is unknown, we expect that a company employee simply downloaded the movies off a file-sharing service out of habit or convenience.

Life’s Good isn’t it?

Views 2087 times by 64 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0 Oscar Pirates, Fewer Films Leak Online This Year http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:56:18 +0000 swood http://plates55.com/?p=986 Waxy’s Andy Baio has been collecting detailed piracy stats for every Oscar-nominated movie since 2003. Much to the delight of the MPAA, his most recent statistics show that, compared to previous years, fewer Oscar nominees have leaked online.

The statistics for all 2010 nominees, except documentary and foreign films, show that 27 of the 34 films were available on BitTorrent in DVD quality last night. Nearly half of the films have leaked as a screener and 10 of those are estimated to be leaked by Academy members.

Although the majority of the Oscar nominees are available online, the movie industry has certainly scored a small victory. Last year all films leaked in one format or another. On another positive note for the MPAA, the median time for films to leak after their US-release date has nearly doubled to 21 days. In 2003 it took only one day for most films to leak onto the Internet.

On the negative side, there were still 4 films that were available online before they they premiered in US movie theaters. In The Loop, The Hurt Locker, The White Ribbon and The Young Victoria all leaked in advance of their official premiere.

Leaked DVDs or Screeners of Oscar nominees

median

The graph below further shows that there are less retail DVD rips available compared to previous years, 44% versus 100% in 2008 and the years before. As Andy also mentions, this figure may go up a little before the official Oscar award ceremony broadcast.

Leak Formats

formats

Although this data suggests that the movie industry is becoming more effective in preventing screeners from leaking online, we have to emphasize that more than a third of the leaks originated from deviant Academy members who like to share the work of their colleagues.

The Oscar screener of Avatar was sent out relatively late, only a few weeks ago. It leaked onto the Internet today and is not included in the graphs above.

Related Blogs

Views 2102 times by 62 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0 Newzbin Usenet Indexing Trial: Day One http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:32:28 +0000 swood http://plates55.com/?p=940 After coming under legal threats from the MPAA in 2008, the Newzbin.com Usenet indexing site began its defence in London’s High Court yesterday. Newzbin are reporting that the judge appears remarkably switched and they are looking forward to a fair trial.

In 2008, Newzbin received complaints from the MPA (the MPAA’s big brother) who raised questions over the legality of their operations. Later that year Newzbin confirmed that the MPA had chosen to file an injunction against the site. (case background here)

Yesterday the showdown of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Others v Newzbin Ltd began before in London’s High Court before Mr Justice Kitchin.

The case began at 10:30 on Monday with the barrister for the plaintiffs making his opening statement. As reported by Newzbin, in a 3 hour speech “mostly being full of how evil we are” the barrister explained what Usenet is along with a description of Newzbin.

The file format originally created by Newzbin – the .NZB – also had its functions explained along with an explanation by the barrister of how they compare to hyperlinks. Newzbin notes that much effort was put into trying to convince the Judge how .NZBs differ from hyperlinks.

Accusations were also leveled at Newzbin’s backend code, which the plaintiffs claim is designed to go looking specifically for copyright works on Usenet.

In contrast to the long speech by the plaintiffs, Newzbin took little time to state that they disputed most of what had been said so far and would address this in the evidence to come.

Later in the day witnesses for the plaintiffs were produced, including representatives from the MPAA-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

“[They] didn’t have much to say under cross-examination apart from they did a half-assed job analysing our site,” Newzbin reports.

Other witnesses included “some junior lawyers who confirmed they had harvested data from our listings but didn’t bother to check how much of it was actually under any form of copyright.”

According to Newzbin, the “star of the show” was an expert witness who was cross examined for an hour at the end of the day. Apparently he reported that it could be dangerous to auto-open an NZB meta-file file in a browser since it could lead to the user being infected by a virus. Strange guy.

Newzbin indicate they are happy with Judge Justice Kitchin, who they believe is “remarkably on the ball and switched on”. They are confident that this will be a fair trial since Justice Kitchin has already pulled up the plaintiff’s barrister on several points.

“This Judge certainly won’t blindly eat everything he’s told by the MPA,” Newzbin adds. “On the other hand it doesn’t mean he’ll accept our arguments easily either.”

The case continues.

Related Blogs

Views 2080 times by 60 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0 Free Music is The New Standard http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:56:47 +0000 swood http://plates55.com/?p=921 Half a decade ago there were only a handful of musicians who shared their music via file-sharing networks, but this has changed radically.

BitTorrent sites have slowly started to replace record stores, with peers taking care of the music distribution.

More and more artists and indie labels have decided to give away their music without charging a penny. Instead, they hope to gather new fans that will support them through concert visits and by buying merchandising.

At FreakBits we are more than happy to support independent artists who publish their work for free on BitTorrent. One such band that recently uploaded its music onto BitTorrent and various other places is Citizen Collision.

“Citizen Collision is a band from Dallas, TX, ranging from rock to acoustic in genre. We offer all our music for free,” band member Caleb Killingsworth told FreakBits. “We feel that you should get our music from us instead of paying a company for it.”

“We all know most artists make the majority of their money from ticket and merch sales and that’s why we don’t charge for our music.”

“You can download Citizen Collision music off of most major music trackers, or download it from a new site I just launched for musicians to share their music, with no compression on your tracks like other music services,” Caleb added.

Of course the best way to get your music out to the masses is by uploading it to some of the major torrent sites, and that’s why you can also grab a copy from The Pirate Bay.

Views 2216 times by 84 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0 Record Labels Demand Cash From Pirate Bay Founders http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:20:36 +0000 admin http://plates55.com/?p=751 Universal Music, EMI Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music are demanding one million Swedish kronor from two Pirate Bay founders. A Swedish court banned them from operating the site last year, and the labels argue that they have failed to comply.

Last October, the Stockholm District Court ordered that two of the site’s founding members – Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij – should cease to operate the site.

The verdict read that if they failed to comply with the court’s decision, this would result in fines of 500,000 kronor ($71,000) each.

The two were granted an appeal little over a month later, but the record labels do not intend to wait and are going after their money. They have sent the District Court a letter where they ask the authorities to collect the fines.

The labels argue that, since the site is still operational, Neij and Svartholm must be involved in the operation one way or another. Whether they or the authorities can back this up with evidence is highly doubtful.

Fredrik and Gottfrid

fredrik and gottfrid

Both Pirate Bay founders currently live outside Sweden, and aside from their whereabouts, it will be hard to prove that either of them is still actively involved in the site’s operation without monitoring their every move.

Commenting on the announcement, Fredrik Neij said: “I am no longer involved in the operation of The Pirate Bay, so there is no opportunity for the penalty to be issued. I think the law is quite clear on this.”

Whether or not the fine will be enforced doesn’t matter that much to Neij, who already owes over 50 million kronor ($7 million) due to previous legal cases. He can’t pay the money anyway he said, adding “a few million more or less doesn’t really affect me.”

Views 1264 times by 81 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0 Digital Piracy Hits eBook Industry http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:01:46 +0000 admin http://plates55.com/?p=664 Digital piracy that has plagued the music industry for the last ten years has now hit the eBook industry.  We’re talking major numbers from a major author.   When Dan Brown’s novel “The Last Symbol” went on sale in September, it sold more eBook editions for the Kindle than it did for the hardback edition.  However, almost immediately it appeared in file sharing-sites such as Rapidshare and BitTorrent.  Within days, it had been downloaded for free more than 100,000 times.  Ouch!  I admit, I know much more about digital music protection than I do eBook protection.  Not because I am into music piracy, but I am into digital music and kind of iffy about eBooks.  I thought the Kindle was supposed to have good rights protection in place.  Some publishers think that the piracy issue is overstated since they claim “that consumers who purchase an e-reader buy more books than those who stick with traditional bound volumes. Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers.  Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers.”

That may be true, but what does that have to do with anything?  100,000 copies is a heck of a lot of lost revenue for both publishers and authors.  And you can bet your bottom dollar that this trend will multiply.  While the rise of eBook purchases may represent a paradigm shift in book sales, it also indicates that the book publishing industry has entered into the messy world of digital piracy.  My advice, learn from the music industry and get ready to sue like there’s no tomorrow!
Information was gained from CNN at http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/01/ebook.piracy/index.html

Views 2037 times by 55 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0 One Million Free and Legal Torrent Downloads, The Album http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:42:43 +0000 msutherman http://plates55.com/?p=585 The FrostWire P2P client promotes music of starting and independent artists through its FrostClick service. The service has been running for over a year and is a great success. To celebrate the first million downloads of 2009, a compilation album has been released, featuring free Creative Commons-licensed tracks from 21 artists.

frostwireFrostWire is a popular free and Open Source P2P client supporting both Gnutella and BitTorrent downloads. Last year, the client introduced its FrostClick service through which it promotes independent artists.

All featured artists get a 7 to 10 day feature on the welcome screen of the Frostwire client. The promotion includes a direct link to the album that users can download at their convenience. All albums are totally free and released under a Creative Commons license.

The service has been a great success thus far with between 35,000 and 100,000 downloads per album in just a week. It shows once again that BitTorrent can actually be a great tool for artists to promote their work, and build a larger fanbase.

To celebrate these great results, FrostWire has now released a compilation album featuring music from the 21 featured artists that achieved the first million downloads through the FrostClick project.

“In only 21 weeks we had our first 1,000,000 copies distributed, some artists reaching over 75 thousand downloads during their promotion, nowadays FrostWire artists can get over 100 thousand downloads during their runs on the FrostWire welcome screen,” the FrostClick team says.

Frostwire Promoting Sean Fournier

frostwire

Unlike most digital music albums, the compilation includes a very complete and high resolution virtual booklet. “For each artist we’ve included 2 high resolution booklet pages with information about the artist, song, license, number of downloads, facts and where available we’ve even put the lyrics of the song to sing along.”

More info on the compilation album, the torrent and the featured artists can be found on the FrostClick website.

Related Blogs

Views 3896 times by 58 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0 US Holds Ridiculously One-Sided Anti-Piracy Roundtable http://plates55.com/bittorent/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/bittorent/%datetime%/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:43:41 +0000 msutherman http://plates55.com/?p=494 US Vice President Joe Biden today hosted a roundtable looking at the so-called ‘Piracy Problem’. The summit was not as ‘open’ as promised a year ago in the presidential campaign though. Only copyright industry representatives were present, further reinforcing the belief that Biden sits firmly in the pocket of Big Copyright.

Copyright is an issue that affects everyone. Every word, image and expression of thought is copyrightable. It is a system of law that places restrictions on the fundamentals of civilization – communication and expression. So when it comes to policy talks involving that subject, it would seem only natural that representatives of the people of the United States are involved. Not so in the modern day world.

When it comes to copyright policy, there appears to be only one set of people the government is willing to listen to, and that’s the copyright lobbyists groups. Groups that don’t represent the creators as much as those that manage the creators; the middlemen. And so it is with the attendees of today’s meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden, whose political career – like many US politicians – has been partly funded by pro-copyright groups, came out to say that he is offended by the “flat unadulterated theft” some call piracy. A bold statement, but not really that surprising when you take a look at the one-sided list of attendees.

There are no consumer groups, no technology companies, and few representatives of the artistic creators themselves. There are plenty of are representatives of middlemen companies though. Companies that make their money from managing, distributing and promoting, tasks that are increasingly being made obsolete with technological progress.

We’re talking about the likes of Sony’s Michael Lynton, who on behalf of an industry that’s having one of it’s best ever years, plead poverty less than two months ago. And Edgar Bronfman, head of WMG – you remember, the company that claimed copyrights that aren’t theirs.

What will have been on the agenda? Well, probably no items on how factually inaccurate the recent CBS piece was, or how anti-piracy studies would be improved with the release of supporting data. Instead, it will be the likes of future anti-piracy laws such as ACTA, and questioning the ability to introduce similar legislation to France and the UK.

Not that we will find out though, as apparently the press has been kicked out. Perhaps, like ACTA, this is a national security issue too. After all, who says terrorists don’t download Die Hard films for training purposes?

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on US Holds Ridiculously One-Sided Anti-Piracy Roundtable

Views 136 times by 40 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/bittorent/%datetime%/feed/ 0 Swedish Police Arrest 12,000 Song File-Sharer http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:42:22 +0000 msutherman http://plates55.com/?p=491 Acting on a music industry tipoff, Swedish police conducted a raid yesterday which led to the arrest of a man on suspicion of copyright infringement. The 25 year-old is said to have made 12,000 tracks available on the Internet. After questioning the man admitted the charge and was later released.

While BitTorrent is far and away the most popular file-sharing protocol in use today, it is relatively rare that its users attract the attention of the police.

The reasons for this are fairly straightforward. When the police get involved with file-sharers they are usually interested in very large-scale cases of copyright infringement. While BitTorrent users may indeed be sharing many items at once, it’s not simply a case of browsing that user’s shared folder to see what else is on offer – BitTorrent has no ’shared-folder’-type setup.

Direct Connect, however, does have such a setup and its users are likely to share their whole music collections at once in an easily identifiable way. Although Direct Connect hubs are more difficult to access than a regular torrent site, once in, investigators find gathering evidence trivial if the sharers make no effort to mask their identities.

While details are scarce at the moment and the use of Direct Connect has not yet been confirmed, it appears that another large-scale file-sharer has fallen foul of the law.

Acting on a tipoff, Swedish police carried out a raid in the Uppvidinge Municipality yesterday.

After a search on the home of a 25 year-old man, he was arrested on suspicion of copyright infringement and his computer was seized.

According to the police, during questioning the man later admitted to sharing 12,000 songs on the Internet, although they probably mean ‘making available’ – a subtle but important difference. He was later released.

Police said the investigation was led by the prosecutors office in Stockholm, who were acting on a tip from what they describe as a “music interests organization.” Although unconfirmed at the moment, this type of tip and raid bears all the hallmarks of IFPI.

Just over a week ago, IFPI submitted a request to the Stockholm District Court to force an ISP to hand over the personal details of another alleged large-scale file-sharer, confirmed to have used Direct Connect. The action marked the first time a request had been made by the organization under the IPRED legislation introduced in April.

It is unclear why yesterday’s arrest of an alleged 12,000 track file-sharer means that his case will be dealt with in a criminal court, yet the other detailed above involving a 10,000 track sharer is destined for IFPI civil action.

At the time of writing, TorrentFreak’s requests for more information from the Stockholm police remain unanswered.

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Swedish Police Arrest 12,000 Song File-Sharer
  • Seo Tools

Views 117 times by 38 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0 BBC and P2P Next Test HD BitTorrent Streaming http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/ http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:41:37 +0000 admin http://plates55.com/?p=368  

The EU-funded P2P Next project has started to stream BBC content in true 1080p HD via BitTorrent. The project posted an episode of the BBC’s R&D TV on its technical trial web site this week, with the option to stream it either in regular 480p or full HD-quality 1080p. Users have to first install a plug-in, which is currently only available for Windows.

P2P Next has been working on BitTorrent-based streaming since early 2008, and the project has enjoyed support from a number of European heavyweights. The EU has funded P2P Next with 14 million euros ($20.8 million). The BBC has been an early content partner of the project, and Pioneer has partnered to produce a P2P set top-box prototype. Initial data from the current test is promising, but it also shows there’s still work to be done.

 P2P Next is using a technology that’s loosely based on BitTorrent, but optimized for real-time and on-demand streaming. The objective of the current trial is to see whether the project’s adaptation of BitTorrent can scale. P2P Next’s researchers are also using it to experiment with ISP-friendly congestion control, meaning that they’re trying to figure out how to route those P2P video bits without clogging up the tubes.

One the big issues of P2P streaming has always been latency. A little bit of a delay is unavoidable if bits are handed down from user to user, but of course waiting for minutes isn’t really an option for live video. The current P2P Next trial seems to work fairly well in this regard: I only had to wait a couple of seconds until the BBC clip showed up in my browser after I installed the plug-in on my Windows machine, and a quick glance at the test results published in real time on the P2P Next web site show that the average delay is around 8.5 seconds.

A delay like that is too bothersome for on-demand content like the video used in this trial. However, BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, whose company BitTorrent Inc. is currently working on its own P2P streaming solution, has argued in the past that any delay greater than 5 seconds is unacceptable for live video. It’s also unclear how the technology would behave under really high demand. At last check, only around 500 people had participated in the test. And the statistics page showed some issues with stalling, with more than 10 percent of all users reporting more than 10 stalls.

Still, the test is remarkable, if only for the fact that it shows persistent interest by broadcasters like the BBC to use P2P technology. We shouldn’t expect the BBC to incorporate this type of technology into its popular iPlayer anytime soon, especially since the iPlayer really only took off after the Beeb ditched P2P downloads for its current web-based streaming model. However, P2P Next is also experimenting with distributing 500 set-top boxes to TV viewers in Europe by the end of this year. The BBC has been trying to move the iPlayer beyond the PC for a while with implementations for the Wii and various set-top boxes. Throw some P2P into the mix to cut down the broadcaster’s bandwidth bills, and suddenly BitTorrent is starting to make a lot of sense for the Beeb.

Views 1985 times by 42 visitors

]]> http://plates55.com/p2p-and-filesharing/%datetime%/feed/ 0