Demonoid Users Warned by Their ISPs

September 30, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Any heavy file sharer is (or should be) aware of the fact that is safer to use private trackers than public ones. If you’re using Demonoid (and not only) you should know that most of the popular torrents are using public trackers – which is just about everything that has a massive swarm of seeders and leechers.

So, basically, whether you’re downloading from The Pirate Bay or Mininova, there’s no difference there. This was meant like a little introduction to the problem many Demonoid users are experiencing more and more these days. It seems that they have been sent e-mails from their internet service providers in which they were admonished for having downloaded copyrighted material.

This, of course, has nothing to do with an eventual mistake from Demonoid. Besides running their own tracker, the site is nothing more than one indexing torrents, gathering an immense collection of such torrents from other (public) sites.

What do to?

There are some pretty simple ways to reduce the risk factor. Of course, the first one would be to stay away from torrents tagged as “external”. Then, there is the use of a seedbox, or a VPN service (such as VPNGates.com) for users who download torrents on their home computer and the use of PeerGuardian which, some say, can block bad IPs – yet, nothing certain can be said about it. Lastly, we’ll include a not so known solution – to use a hacked BitTorrent client to make sure your IP address will be kept out of the torrent.

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An Easy Way to Get Banned from Most Torrent Sites

September 30, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology 

In case for some of you it’s not yet clear how come there’s so much spam on torrent sites (in the form of bogus files, dubious videos with long catchy titles, and loads of e-books promising the perfect solutions to your bank account and your sex life), well, that’s what this post is all about.

The passionate file sharers know too well that the entertainment industry practices the spreading of fake files to discourage them. However, the entertainment industry accounts for a relatively small percent (for now) of these files – the larger percent of them come from spammy affiliate marketers and have pecuniary reasons behind. The big problem is that they’re no longer placing their content only manually – more and more sophisticated tools are used to automatically submit the malicious content.

Such a program is exposed by p2p-blog under the name Torrent Blaster. Apparently its “credentials” are impressive. The Torrent Blaster website reads:

” After 6 months, I had been making over 70 dollars a day without having to work more than 10 minutes a week, uploading just one torrent a week.”

At least it’s comforting to know that there’s an advanced technology out there doing a great job at detecting whether a human or a dumb application submits something to your site.

However, many of the heavy spammers cope with this by constant updates of their algorithms and trying to always be one step ahead of anti-spammers. So, where do apps such as the Torrent Blaster fit in this game? Nowhere around the winners, I tell you. If the prospect of spending 29 dollars on an application that may very well get you banned on any technologically decent torrent site out there and helping some jackass making an easy buck sounds good to you then…go ahead, make his day!

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Unlimited Mobile Music Service – the Solution to P2P piracy?

September 29, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ phone to launch later this week, could mean less pirated music some say.

Unlimited mobile music downloads, like Nokia’s Comes With Music service, will eventually lead to a drop off in the amount of P2P music piracy, claims new study.

The market researcher TNS Technology reports that British consumers might well download 2.1 billion tracks per year through such services. In the research there were more than 1,000 people aged between 16 and 64 subjected to an interview about their opinions and preferences regarding unlimited mobile music services.

“If the industry got it right we could see a significant shift in the way people obtain and listen to music,” highlighted Stephen Yap, research director at TNS Technology.

The research conducted by TNS reveals some surprising numbers: allegedly 45% of users would buy fewer CDs, 47% would purchase fewer digital downloads and 38% even said they would cut down on their illegal p2p music downloads. Nokia’s own Comes With Music phone is slated for release later this week, on Thursday October 2, in time for Xmas ’08 stocking filler buyers.

However, compared to Nokia’s rather DRM-limited service, Sony Ericsson and music specialist Omnifone’s own PlayNow plus service will apparently take things one step further and even make it possible for its customers to enjoy their music on iPods and other devices.

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MTV Networks and Visible Measures to Collaborate

September 29, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Entertainment Industry, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services 

Visible Measures, a Web video metrics company, made an announcement today according to which it has reached an agreement with MTV Networks whose outcome will be the deployment of Visible Measures’ metrics technology in all of MTVN’s 340 destination video sites.

The Visible Measures technology will be used by MTVN to create end-to-end online video performance metrics whose purpose is to offer MTVN more accurate information regarding the viewers and solutions to increase profits from advertising revenue.

The same technology will be used on all the major MTVN destinations among which MTV, VH1, CMT, Spike TV, TV Land and others.

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European Parliament Says No to Anti-Piracy Proposals

September 29, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Controversy lingers over after the file-sharing communities welcomed the news that the European Parliament has voted to formally throw out a number of anti-piracy proposals part of a recent attempt to reform the EU framework on electronic communications (telecom package).

The “three strikes and you’re out” rule has been already implemented in France, with the country’s ISPs support.This is included in a strategy meant to discourage internet users from swapping pirated material such as movies and music.

Not quite expectedly, EU politicians decided not to reject such a policy. Moreover, they voted against amendments included in The Telecoms Package, according to which ISPs are required to monitor internet usage.

Amendment 139 now reads:

(g) applying the principle that end-users should be able to access and distribute any content and use any applications and/or services of their choice, subject to national provisions of criminal law imposed for reasons of public policy, public security or morality

Considering the draconian measures against file sharers implemented in France and the UK, this is a much needed break from the EU – allowing member countries to settle on their own on ways to deal with the matter rather than ordering harsh solutions such as content filtering and Internet disconnection.

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