The Pirate Cinema – Displaying Downloads As They Happen

May 22, 2013 by Yonah · Comments
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services

Not only The Pirate Bay goes past the tremendous pressure of being a cast out, but it does so in style, with a little help we might add. The Pirate Cinema, a project by two enlightened minds, is putting downloads on the big screen (well, there are actually three of them). The room, besides the screens, has a viewing area (just like a movie theatre) for people to see downloads as they happen. Out of a mixture of 100 torrent swarms, TPC creates a new image (literally) about torrenting.

While millions upon millions of file-sharers use The Pirate Bay , third parties are also keeping their eyes peeled for IP addresses, file hashes, and anything that could build a scientific report on file-sharing, a copyright lawsuit or a list of IP addresses for the six-strikes program.

Nicolas Maigret and Brendan Howell are the two who came up with this daring idea. The Pirate Cinema takes the process of sharing and turns it into images.

If you happen to be at the Sight and Sound Festival in Canada, then you’ll have the chance of seeing what Nicolas and Brendan did – a room with three gigantic screens and a whole lot of computers connected to them.

“An aspect of the concept was to reuse the surveillance systems used by corporations, ISP’s and governments, for other purposes,” Maigret told TF.

“On the other hand, the idea was also to monitor the usages or activity of people on a large scale, and to capture the vivid activity of the communities involved in sharing practices. Lastly, I really wanted to consider this ongoing activity as a live infinite Mashup – a snapshot of global file disseminations,” the artist continued.

TPC’s core is made of Python and Libtorrent.

“The idea was to use only the necessary functions – a few lines of code, and to build our tool around it,” Maigret explained.

“Then we developed all the monitoring parts and later the decoding process using Gstreamer.”

There are two different ways in which the project can be displayed. First, downloads of the most popular torrents (hosted on TPB) are shown as fragments on the screen(s).

“The setup can involve as many as five computers, each monitoring the site for different kinds of files for a few minutes before gathering fresh input,” TF writes.

The second modus operandi is in the form of a live performance. Movie and music files are hand-picked, sort to say, by the operator, and then played just like you do with an instrument. Besides that, the three screens also show the IP addresses and their location.

“BitTorrent was a deliberate choice for many reasons. First of all it’s really a Peer-to-Peer architecture and that’s important even symbolically – people/peers are at both sides of each action,” Maigret said.

“Also BitTorrent is not only about mainstream medias, but theoretically open to all kinds of files and content. In a way, the Pirate Cinema reveals some potentials of this peer-based technical architecture.”

And since this is a peer-to-peer based project…

“This fragmentation loosens the exchanges between different recipients. A file can then be recomposed sample by sample until it is complete, from snippets emanating from separate users and in a disorderly manner. From a cinematic perspective this preliminary fragmentation of the media is also a fragmentation of the film material and of the narration,” Maigret continued to explain.

“It creates many formal specificities: random editing, weaving together different films frame by frame, glitches and merging of different fragments. When watching the installation, we can’t help ourselves interpreting the flows, it produces lots of connections and new narrations, from those chance combinations.”

As far as security and privacy is concerned….

“We saw it as a kind of game. Ever since the beginning of the project, we anticipated the operating modes of the system so that it could be presentable regardless of different countries’ legislations. For example, an encrypted connection to Sweden (iPredator / The Pirate Bay) is used to anonymize each machine used in the project. Fragments of the files are encoded and remain on our machine only temporarily.”

Want to learn more about The Pirate Cinema? Go here.

Tags: BitTorrent, file sharing sites, file-sharing, The Pirate Bay, the pirate cinema

Teacher Detained By Police After Uploading A $4 Dollar History Book

May 21, 2013 by Yonah · Comments
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology

After receiving a complaint filed by the book’s author, Latvian authorities decided to detain a history teacher who uploaded the manual on his website to help his students learn. Now, he risks getting two years in jail, a fat fine or to be forced to work for his community.

The name of the Latvian teacher is Pāvels Jurs, a young mind whose intent was to help his class get the information they need via the internet. To that end, the history teacher had put up a website where his students could access history topics, watch presentations, and get the help they need to learn. His purpose was to provide with education not just for his pupils, but also for those who can’t afford the “luxury” of buying a book, even if it’s as low as $4. Jurs’ “pay it forward” technique was recognized by the country’s Ministry of Education, the Latvian mass-media informed.

However, all this did not matter to the Economic Crime Bureau. Four police officers detained the professor, but not before searching his home, and seizing his personal computer.

After two hours of questioning, Jurs was informed that he’s being guilty of a “serious offense” that could get him two years in jail. Two years for a $4 dollar book. Two years for someone who did not profit from uploading the book, except maybe a couple of “thank you” notes from bookworms and students.

Meanwhile, his website was shut down, leaving students without resources right during their exams.

“Is there really such a need for punitive action against these methods of teaching, such as the maintenance of a websites from which I did not receive any benefit, but, on the contrary, cost most of my salary payments for maintenance? I understand that I have violated copyright laws, but is it really necessary to act this way?” Jurs told a local media website.

A settlement was discussed, but details remain undisclosed.

Tags: books, copyright, copyright infringement, file-sharing, legal

Digital Piracy Is Not What It Seems To Be, A Large-Scale Analysis Informs

May 15, 2013 by Yonah · Comments
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services

The comprehensive report on sharing PC games via BitTorrent’s networks reveals some interesting aspects of the “digital piracy” issue. The results are to be published in the “International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication”.

The illegal sharing of digital content (using peer-to-peer technology) has been the catalyst of thousands of debates and media headlines. With one side claiming that online piracy is the death of the American jobs and responsible for billions of dollars lost by the entertainment industry, the other one’s flag reads “freedom of speech”, “internet’s freedom” and “piracy is not theft”. The most epic controversy of the past decade is born, but what we really know about each of the coin’s side proves to be limited.

The report, as mentioned before, focused on game piracy and used open methodologies to gather data that covered a three-month period – between 2010 and 2011. One hundred and seventy three games were included. The results prove to tear down all the myths surrounding online piracy. For example, “shooter” games are not pirates favorite dish, but also children’s games and family games. Moreover, it highlights that the real figure of illegal copies that are being accessed via BitTorrent is under what other reports (the gaming industry’s) claim to be.

Specifics of the report reveal that 12.6 million unique peers (covering more than 250 countries/areas) shared pirated games, including Darksiders, Fallout: New Vegas, NBA 2k11, Call of Duty: Black Ops, TRON Evolution, Starcraft 2, Star Wars the Force Unleashed 2, The Sims 3: Late Night, Two Worlds II, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Furthermore, of the 173 sampled games, the ten most popular titles drove more than 4 out of every 10 unique peers on BitTorrent, and just 20 of the monitored countries were contributing to more than three-quarters of the total file-sharing activity.

An average of 536,727 unique peers (spread across the globe) sharing the most popular games titles via BitTorrent were acknowledged during the three-month period. The most dedicated unique peers seemed to cover the following territories: Romania, Croatia, Greece, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Armenia, Serbia, and Portugal.

Another interesting aspect is that mass-media’s positive game reviews drive the most attention on BitTorrent’s networks.

“First and foremost, P2P game piracy is extraordinarily prevalent and geographically distributed [at least it was during the period analyzed]. However, the numbers in our investigation suggest that previously reported magnitudes in game piracy are too high,” Anders Drachen (working for the Department of Communication and Psychology, at Aalborg University and the PLAIT Lab, Northeastern University and Robert Veitch of the Department of IT Management at Copenhagen Business School, in Frederiksberg, Denmark) said.

“It also appears that some common myths are wrong, e.g. that it is only shooters that get pirated, as we see a lot of activity for children’s and family games on BitTorrent for the period we investigated.”

Tags: BitTorrent, digital piracy, file-sharing, game piracy, p2p

Sync Alpha By BitTorrent Claims One Petabyte Of Shared Data

May 10, 2013 by Yonah · Comments
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services

Two weeks after Sync Alpha has officially been launched, BitTorrent’s piece of software is proud to announce that people used it extensively, sharing and organizing an impressive amount of data – 1PB.

If you don’t know yet what BitTorrent Sync is, feel free to check our previous article on the subject here. In short, Sync Alpha is a highly secure file syncing/managing service that’s similar to Dropbox, except one thing: it uses peer-to-peer technology, thus having no need of a “cloud”. The advantages are countless. On one hand, there is no limit to the files you share and or sync, on the other, the downloading and uploading speeds are only limited by your bandwidth. Did we mention it’s free? It’s FREE!

BitTorrent Sync

Leaving enthusiasm aside for a moment, we find that Sync Alpha has been a great success, accounting for an astonishing amount of data – 1 Petabyte (that’s 1000 TB). To that, BitTorrent Inc. said:

“To put that into context, the Internet Archive, one of the world wide web’s largest repositories of media, houses 10 petabytes of data. Sync is massive. And it’s growing. Over 70 terabytes of anonymous data are synced daily.”

“Sync was built for secure sharing. While we have general statistics about the app, we don’t have any access to private information,” the company assured its users.

“The client reports back anonymous usage statistics in the same way our other clients do. Sync uses this call to check if there’s a new build available. This call also contains some anonymous statistics that allow us to understand how Sync performs, and how it’s being used; data transferred directly, through relay, size of folders, and number of files synced.”

“This is the only information we collect, and we left it open intentionally – so that people could see the data we’re collecting. That way, it can be easily verified that we don’t have access to any private information,” BitTorrent concluded.

Sync’s huge success was not foreseen, but somewhat expected. Signs of becoming one huge piece of software that will go head to head with other established services were obvious. For example, ever since BT Inc. announced their plans to launch a syncing service at the beginning of this year and until April the 23rd when Sync Alpha was officially released, people synced over 200TB of data.

Thirteen days later and one hell of a job from BitTorrent’s development team and from those who helped along, and users added another 800TB worth of data.

“BitTorrent Sync was designed to solve for what we see as real, fundamental challenges to data synchronization: limitations on speed, size, and space; limitations on file security and dependency on cloud infrastructure. Because BitTorrent Sync is based on distributed technology, you can sync as many big files as you want. Transfers are encrypted, and information isn’t stored on any server, or in the cloud. Your content belongs to you, and stays on devices of your choice. That’s the way syncing should work,” BitTorrent wrote.

BitTorrent Sync is compatible with Mac OS X (Snow Leopard or later), Windows, and Linux. Additional information can be found here.

“You can install our application on Network Attached Storages (NAS) running on Linux with ARM, PowerPC, i386 and x86_64 architecture,” Sync’s official webpage reads.

“In the future, we plan to also support most popular mobile platforms.”

Tags: BitTorrent, BitTorrent Sync, file sharing applications, p2p, p2p technology, syncing

“Bundle” By BitTorrent: A Place Where Peer-To-Peer And Legitimacy Work Together

May 8, 2013 by Yonah · Comments
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Digital Media, Mobile Phones, P2P technology, Downloads, Entertainment Industry, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games

BitTorrent Inc. is once again proving that its intentions to legitimize peer-to-peer are genuine. Yesterday, the company announced the workings on a brand new project called “BitTorrent Bundle”, a place for people to access a completely changed .torrent format (one that includes free content), and for content creators to promote and make money out of their creations. Interested? Keep reading…because it gets better.

It’s the season of innovation, and BitTorrent Inc. is rolling one project after the other, all for the sake of not just their community, but also for the entertainment industry. Out of their attempts to push the peer-to-peer technology towards legitimacy, Bundle Alpha was born, a web-based project that aims to unite the two sides into a buffer zone by providing with a different type of torrent, while promoting and selling for artists.

The Bundle Alpha has already been put to the test; the file-sharing company shook hands with a popular music label called “Ultra” (a platform for artists such as David Guetta, DJ Tiesto, deadmau5, and Calvin Harris). The two offered a torrent bundle that contains behind-the-scenes music, videos, and a “digital tour booklet” from Kaskade (an established electronic music band).

“The strategy here is to give content creators the tools to publish into the ecosystem on their own,” BitTorrent’s director of communications, Christian Averill, said.

“We’re creating a new kind of torrent, the gated torrent, and the idea is that this will be pervasive once it gets out there.”

Yesterday, BitTorrent’s official blog made public its goal to provide “a distributed technology solution for creators…. Our goal is to move the interaction to where it matters, making it a property of the file versus the distribution framework (and) giving artists real data about — and real access to — their fans.”

And speaking of fans, BitTorrent’s community is, the least to say, impressive (more than 170 million users from all over the world), a figure that consists not just of pirates, but also people who are willing to find and pay for content. Legal content, that is.

“Many people don’t realize that we have over 2 million pieces of licensed and legal content available in our ecosystem,” Matt Mason said.

“It is true that our technology is exploited as part of a stack of technologies used for piracy. But you’ll find that as a standalone tool we are not a very good piracy tool. We don’t rip CDs or capture movies on camcorders. We don’t host content that infringes on copyright, we don’t index it, point to it or promote it in any way. All of those things happen outside of BitTorrent.”

A look under the Bundle’s hood reveals that the platform works about the same as uTorrent or the BitTorrent client (technically speaking). However, if you look deeper, Bundle is not just a web-based file-sharing platform, but also a bridge towards legal/premium content. How you manage that content is entirely up to you and the content creator. For example, in Kaskade’s case, you will be required to provide with an e-mail address. The alternatives include pay gates, external links towards services such as Netflix or iTunes, and pay-for-what-you-need “gates”.

BitTorrent Kaskade Bundle

Simply put, the Bundle offers more power for content creators and rightsholders to promote, control, and sell their works.

It seems that BitTorrent’s past efforts to go legit, and collaborations with artists such as Vikram Gandhi, Stacy Peralta, Tim Ferriss, Death Grips, and Counting Crows (these are just few of the names that came across BT and shook hands with the “devil”) are finally taking shape .

“When we learned that the BitTorrent protocol is used by over 170 million users, all of whom are avid consumers of entertainment and music and whom purchase 30 percent more of that content than average, we knew we wanted to reach out to them and engage them in our indie film,”Jill Calcaterra – Chief Marketing Officer at BitTorrent – said.

“This was an opportunity to engage a huge fanbase from the onset by giving them something unique and exclusive early on, with the hopes that in return they will support the film [Arthur Newman] through its lifecycle. Being an indie, I think we are more nimble than most and more willing to try and pilot new programs. The entertainment business is moving at a remarkable pace and we want to keep up and stay in front of opportunities.”

She continued by saying that the promotion was a complete success, gathering “hundreds of thousands of downloads” in just 24 hours (the first seven minutes of the movie were made available on BT’s networks).

“We are also tracking the redirects to our website, monitoring social media and the overall conversation around the film, all of which is up since we launched with BitTorrent,” she added.

All good, but this is the beginning of a long road BT will have to undertake in order to enter the golden realm of legitimacy.

“We find that once we do sit down and talk, there is a better understanding of how to work together,” Matt Mason explained.

“No other medium offers as good of a way for content creators to engage directly with their fans in a way that BitTorrent can,” he concluded.

You can download Kaskade’s bundle here.