Last month CNET’s Download.com and parent company CBS were sued for several copyright infringement related offenses for their role in distributing LimeWire and other P2P software. Alki David and various artists allege that the defendants profited from copyright infringement, and now want to be compensated.

“The CBS Defendants have been the main distributor of LimeWire software and have promoted this and other P2P systems in order to directly profit from wide-scale copyright infringement. Internet users have downloaded more then [sic] 220 million copies from Defendants’ website, found at Download.com, since 2008,” the complaint reads.

As the case moves on some interesting arguments are appearing on the table. One of the most controversial items overlooked thus far concerns current Warner Music director and CNET co-founder Shelby Bonnie. Believe it or not, Bonnie served on the board of directors at Warner Music and was also the CEO of CNET, all at the time LimeWire was being sued.

As The Music Void points out, Bonnie was invited to join the Warner Music board in November 2005, just 4 months after the landmark Grokster ruling. At that time Bonnie was still CNET’s CEO, a position he gave up during the fall of 2006. After that, he continued to serve on CNET’s board of directors until March 2007.

Since it’s no secret that CNET made a healthy profit from the millions of LimeWire clients that were downloaded from its site every month, this could lead to the awkward conclusion that a prominent Warner Music director profited from piracy.

While it should be noted that LimeWire hadn’t been convicted of doing anything illegal at the time, it is quite unusual that the CEO of LimeWire’s main distribution platform was simultaneously a director of one of the record labels going after LimeWire in court.

It would definitely be interesting to hear the thoughts of the former CNET CEO on the issue, should he be called as a witness. Perhaps Bonnie opted to keep the healthy revenue stream alive until the court banned it, despite the massive losses Warner Music was claiming?

Whatever the case, the above must have been the topic of some heated discussions at the Warner Music board of directors. After all, it wouldn’t really be far-fetched to compare it to a Universal Pictures director who also serves on the board of The Pirate Bay’s hosting company.

Indeed, that would be quite unbelievable.

Source: Warner Music Director Profited From Piracy

Popularity: 1% [?]

Pioneer One, a TV-show created for and made possible by BitTorrent users, made the headlines earlier this year when the pilot was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. The innovative distribution and funding model didn’t go unnoticed by TV-insiders either, and it won an award for ‘Best Drama Pilot’ at the New York Television Festival. Today, the second episode is released, with two more to follow in the weeks to come.

This Spring, filmmakers Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith set themselves up with quite a challenge. They finished a script for the TV-series ‘Pioneer One‘, but instead of plugging it to traditional TV-companies the duo decided to fund and distribute it via the Internet.

And so it happened. For the distribution and promotion the pair teamed up with the VODO BitTorrent distribution platform, and the first $6,000 that was needed to shoot the pilot was collected from supporters through the Kickstarter website.

Mid-June the first episode of Pioneer One was eventually released to the public through VODO. With support from all the big players in the P2P-scene, the BitTorrent-only TV-series quickly gained a huge audience.

Hundreds of thousands of people had downloaded the show, and many decided to donate money to fund future episodes. An additional $20,000 was raised in just the first two weeks and the counter topped the $30,000 mark early September – enough money to shoot more episodes of the first season.

“Once our heads stopped spinning after the pilot, we sat down in July to figure out our game plan. If we were going to produce more episodes, we knew we had to do more than one at a time to make it cost effective and timely,” Pioneer One writer Josh Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

“So a lot of preparations had to be made. Initially we didn’t think we’d be able to move forward with the money we had, but the cast and crew were all eager to do more based on the success of the pilot. So based on their generosity, we called in the rest of the favors we had and were able to start shooting in October,” he added.

Three new episodes were eventually shot in October, and the first one was released on VODO just a few minutes ago. Like the pilot, this second episode can be downloaded for free. In the coming weeks the Pioneer One team plans to release episodes 3 and 4, and gather enough funds to complete the remaining episodes.

Although the delay between the first and second episode is not something the general TV-audience is used to, it is one of the inevitable downsides of a peer-funded production. According to the current schedule it looks like the first season will be completed within a year, something the production team and all those who supported the endeavor can be proud of.

The first season has 7 episodes in total, but after that the show is far from done.

“From the beginning we knew this was a multi-season story with an arc that would play out over time. The first season is limited enough in scope that we felt we’d be able to pull it off with the resources that we had, but moving forward, it gets bigger,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

“How exactly those future seasons will happen, and what form they will take, is not set in stone. Ideally, we’d love to keep producing the show the way we have been: on our own, releasing through BitTorrent. But right now we’re focusing on getting the first season done, because I think that’ll prove what we set out to do, and all together it will stand on its own as a unit,” he commented.

The series was ‘invented’ for BitTorrent, and the team wants to keep it that way for now. However, there has been plenty of recognition from other filmmakers and traditional TV people. The peer-funded episode won an award for ‘Best Drama Pilot’ at the New York Television Festival, which was quite a morale booster for the makers and an indication that they are on the right track.

“We had some great meetings, but we felt very strongly that we had an obligation to our audience that supported the pilot to continue releasing episodes on BitTorrent. That was the stated goal, and that’s what we want to deliver,” Bernhard said.

Eventually, the Pioneer One team would of course be happy to see their work on traditional TV as well, which serves a wider audience than the traditional BitTorrent public. In the end, a collision between traditional TV and content funded and distributed on the Internet might benefit both sides.

For now, however, Pioneer One still relies on the BitTorrent community. Today, the release of the second episode will again be promoted by many P2P partners. Among other initiatives it will be bundled with all the new installs of BitTorrent Inc.’s uTorrent client. Through these promotions the Pioneer one team hopes to gather enough donations to finish the first season.

“We have no funding beyond user donations, but we’re hoping if we can repeat the success of the pilot and beyond, we may attract more support through some kind of sponsorship model. But for now user donations are absolutely crucial. At the moment, we’re depending entirely on the support of our audience to fund episodes 5 and 6.”

It will be interesting to see how the second episode will be picked up by the public. Josh Bernhard has high hopes, but realizes that the success of the pilot won’t be easily matched.

“I hope people will get a better sense of the kind of show we’re trying to make. Personally, I think this next episode is a step above the pilot. We’re all really proud of it. And, hopefully, people will get excited enough to support us and spread the word. I’d love if we outdid the success of the pilot, but we’re taking nothing for granted.”

Pioneer One, episode 1 and 2 can be downloaded through VODO, fully powered by BitTorrent.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Following in the footsteps of The Pirate Bay and the successful BitTorrent distribution platform Vodo, uTorrent has now embraced an artist of their own. Starting today, all new uTorrent downloads will be bundled with the latest album from PAZ, an up and coming musician who hopes to achieve stardom through BitTorrent.

In the last year alone, thousands of artists have given away their music for free, distributing their work via various BitTorrent sites and specialized music portals such as Jamendo.

Although some musicians opt for BitTorrent because they sincerely want to get their music out there, the majority make the choice because its their only option to get recognized. Roughly ten years ago label-less bands were stuck in their garages, but today they can reach out to a global audience by submitting their music to torrent sites and music portals.

Despite this new freedom, 99% of these artists only see their album being downloaded by a handful of people. Although quality is probably one of the reasons for this, lack of promotion is probably the number one reason. It’s often said that labels have lost their place in the digital age, but thus far there are few alternatives to the powerful marketing machine they provide.

In the past we’ve seen The Pirate Bay adopting the role of marketeer, as they have promoted several artists on their homepage, resulting in thousands of downloads. Other P2P initiatives such as Frostwire’s Frostclick service and Vodo’s BitTorrent distribution platform have been equally successful in marketing independent productions.

Inspired by the trends-setters, the people at BitTorrent Inc. have now decided to launch a marketing campaign of their own, promoting the mixtape debut of PAZ, titled Young Broke & Fameless. For uTorrent and its parent company BitTorrent Inc. this is the first step in a new direction, that of actively supporting artists who want to distribute their content using BitTorrent.

“We want to continue to build on the successes that we have already seen with Pioneer One and the Yes Men. In both cases, their creations were wildly downloaded and consumers showed their enthusiasm by opening their wallets and donating to these creators so that they can continue to make future content,” BitTorrent Inc. spokesperson Jenna Broughton told TorrentFreak.

In the cases of The Yes Men and Pioneer One, uTorrent participated in a campaign that was set up by Vodo, but now they have branched out to music, running their own campaign. For artists, getting promoted by uTorrent is as good as it gets. It guarantees massive exposure, as the client is downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people each month. BitTorrent Inc. on the other hand, is happy to help, and show how musicians can benefit from BitTorrent.

“There is a group of creators out there who are interested in using new distribution methods to reach a very large and engaged audience online. So, we are excited to continue working with creators who want to develop business models that work in today’s digital age and leverage the power of the BitTorrent platform,” Broughton said.

PAZ will be the first artist to pluck the fruits of uTorrent’s promotion service. His unique sound – a cocktail of rock, hip-hop and dance – has not gone unnoticed by music insiders, including LA super-promoter Tommy Alastra who labeled him the “Hottest new act right now, bar none.”

Is he really? You can find out for free by downloading a copy of uTorrent, via PAZ’s website, or just grab one of the many torrents out there.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo who expose the lies and social problems caused by governments and corporations. In their much awarded films they impersonate people in power to bring out the truth. Because the US Chamber of Commerce is suing their asses, they have now turned to BitTorrent to get their message out.

With millions of daily users BitTorrent is a great outlet for filmmakers to promote their work, but there are more advantages to this 21st century distribution platform. After their first film turned into a huge success, The Yes Men don’t have to worry too much about promotion. However, it is still much-needed to avoid censorship from governments and corporations and to raise funds for future endeavors.

In 2009 The Yes Men hijacked a United States Chamber of Commerce press conference, declaring a U-turn on their climate change policy. In a response to this “identity correction” the Chamber filed a lawsuit against the duo, claiming that they misled the public. Due to this legal battle no TV-station wants to take the risk to run some of the most controversial material, so The Yes Men took matters into their own hands by releasing an updated P2P-edition of their latest film today.

In addition to avoiding censorship, The Yes Men are looking for donations to fund their upcoming projects. This is where the BitTorrent-powered distribution platform VODO comes in. With free promotion from uTorrent, Limewire and a variety of prominent torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and EZTV, this release will instantly have an audience of millions of downloaders.

To find out more about their motivation to get the film out on BitTorrent and to find out whether they were also this excited about BitTorrent when their first film was pirated by more than a million people, we caught up with Mike Bonanno, one half of The Yes Men.

“There are a few reasons why we chose BitTorrent. First off, it’s a way to avoid censorship,” Mike Bonanno told TorrentFreak. “This version includes video of an action against the US Chamber of Commerce that we are being sued for. No commercial outlets will touch it. We had a TV show scheduled on Planet Green and their lawyers nearly wet themselves when they heard we wanted to use footage of us making political mince-meant out of the largest lobbying organization in the world.”

“It’s unlikely that anyone would distribute this material before we get out of court,” Bonanno continued. “But we don’t want them to win a de-facto censorship case, so P2P is a great workaround. Another reason we are doing this is because this is the way people see movies these days, and we made this movie for people to see it. We would love it if people bought our DVD, but we also want people who don’t do that to see it. And last of all: we do hope to generate some donations: we are broke and there are not so many funders for our new project, especially given that they are all spooked by lawsuits, no matter how stupid!”

Although the benefits of BitTorrent are clear in this case, The Yes Men’s previous film was also pirated by more than a million people. When we asked Mike Bonanno how he felt about this we found out that he’s more upset about the stranglehold that the ‘copyright mafia’ puts on indie productions than the people who grab a copy of their movie on BitTorrent.

“It’s great that people are watching our films! We are very happy that they are getting seen. But that having been said, we do wish that a few more people were paying for it. We borrowed a shit-load of money from friends to make our latest movie and we still can’t pay them back. Also, the way the industry is set up, if you want your stuff on TV or delivered through any official channels you have to spend a massive amount of money clearing rights and paying for legal stuff and that is just silly.”

“For us to get our ‘errors and omissions insurance’ required for any distributor to take it, we had to clear the rights on all sorts of stuff we should not really have had to… including music written in the 17th century, which apparently because of some kind of law in Austria was not public domain according to the interpretation of insurance industry lawyers! Anyway, that’s just one example… so what happens as a film maker – especially a documentary maker – is that in today’s market we are fucked.”

“Because to get it on TV we still need to act like we have deep pockets and can pay for rights for all sorts of shit, but then with the collapse of the indy film market distributors won’t pay for it. And of course most people file-share it rather than pay for it. So yeah, we are happy that people are watching it but not so happy that we are financially screwed! But we also see that it’s the system that is screwing us: we are not blaming the pirates, we are blaming casino capitalism!”

This comment from Bonanno led us to ask the question whether The Yes Men would ever consider exposing the ‘copyright mafia’ and anti-piracy groups. These outfits have turned copyright into a cash cow while pretending to protect the rights of artists, something we address here on TorrentFreak every week. As it turns out, The Yes Men are siding with us in this regard.

“I think in some ways most of our work is about targeting ideas about the rule of private property… so this is related,” Bonanno said. “Our first four years as The Yes Men was dedicated to attacking the World Trade Organization, which has historically supported the idea of proprietary media. Overall, I think that in some ways everything today, every major issue facing us can be seen through the lens of what role it plays in the commons… or lack thereof, as many a government and corporation would have it.”

“If copyright was actually working the way it was supposed to, and protecting the authors that would be great. But that’s not how it works anymore – it just protects money; whoever has the most of it. And usually that means that the authors are fucked anyway!”

The Peer-to-Peer edition of The Yes Men Fix The World is now available for free on VODO. To spread their knowledge The Yes Men have started The Yes Lab, which is also worth checking out. Lastly, don’t forget to donate a few bucks if you like what you see.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Two weeks ago the first episode of Pioneer One was released to the public via the VODO distribution platform. With support from all the big players in the P2P-scene, this BitTorrent only TV-series quickly gained a huge audience.

At the time of writing, Pioneer One is still the best seeded TV-show on BitTorrent with more than 20,000 people sharing the file simultaneously. Even more impressively, the number of downloads exceed those of traditional TV-shows such as True Blood, Family Guy and Doctor Who that were released in the same time period.

Thus far, the regular quality release of the episode has been downloaded well over a million times, with another 300,000 downloads for the high definition release. To find out how the makers view events of the past weeks TorrentFreak decided to catch up with Josh Bernhard, who started the project together with Bracey Smith and is currently working on future episodes.

“The response to the pilot was unbelievable,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak. “It took a week for it to really sink in that so many people had seen it and liked it. It was also particularly gratifying to see so many people responding to the story the way we intended. I’ve never been able to get that kind of feedback from an audience on this scale. It’s kind of validating, and gives me even more confidence moving forward.”

“It was also really amazing to see people starting to pick apart the science and the details. People were actually debating the authenticity of the spacesuit! How cool is that? That tells me that they’re taking us seriously enough to pick apart. People are really thinking about it, which is fantastic. And aside from a couple of gaffes that slipped by us during our breakneck production schedule, it held up to scrutiny.”

Aside from the many positive responses, we asked Bernhard about the donations that came in after the release. The funds to shoot the first episode were crowdfunded though a Kickstarter project, but to finish the full series the crew has been looking for donations from new people who want to support the project.

“The donations were even better than we expected,” Bernhard said. “I didn’t know if we’d be able to raise $20,000, but we did it in 10 days. That money is going to carry us through pre-production on the first production block of 3 episodes which we plan to start shooting in September. I’ve taken up residence in a cave to concentrate on writing the scripts, and we’re starting to cast new characters, figure out what our workflow is going to be, what kind of cameras we’re going to shoot with, etc.”

“We’re still looking for more solid backing toward our ultimate financing goal, but the donation money was absolutely crucial for us to move forward. We have some promising prospects, and we’ll know more on that within a couple of weeks.”

That brings us to the question of when the next episode will come out. Although the makers have no fixed date yet, they do intend to carry on the project and release the remaining episodes of the first season in a fixed schedule similar to regular TV-shows.

“Producing a series is a different beast than producing a one-off feature, or a single pilot episode,” Bernhard said. “We’re shooting them together so we don’t keep people waiting an uncertain amount of time between episodes. We want to have a release schedule and stick to it, so we can build an audience like a ‘real’ TV series. I already saw a comment on YouTube wondering why 1×02 wasn’t out yet, since it had been more than a week since the first already!”

“Everyone is working really hard to make sure this thing comes together in the best way possible. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever been a part of,” he concluded.

For those who haven’t seen the first episode yet, it’s available for download on every major BitTorrent site, or you can grab a copy on the official release page. If you like what you see please consider donating to the project. Although this type of production may not be the future of TV, it is a triumph for BitTorrent and a paradigm shift that might inspire traditional TV-production houses to think outside of ‘the box’.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

uTorrent has come a long way since it saw its first public release in September 2005. Over the years it grew out to be the most widely used BitTorrent application around with more than 50 million monthly users worldwide.

On the development side the uTorrent team at BitTorrent Inc. hasn’t been sitting still either. Today they launch “uTorrent Apps”, an exciting new project that could be considered another milestone. With apps, users can easily install extensions and add custom features to uTorrent.

“Apps for µTorrent is a brand new web-based extensions framework that makes it easy for users to get more and do more with µTorrent without compromising the client’s renowned lightness and speed,” Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management says.

Similar to other apps, addons and extensions in today’s web browsers and phones, uTorrent apps will allow 3rd party developers to develop applications that will integrate seamlessly with the client. At launch there are already four free apps available, developed in cooperation with uTorrent.

Among the apps that are currently available are a free virus scanner for BitTorrent downloads and the µGadget which allows users to monitor and control torrent downloads more easily from a browser. VODO, the BitTorrent powered distribution platform for filmmakers that is supported by all the major torrent sites, also has an app already.

For developers who want to code uTorrent apps there will soon be an SDK available. “Apps are a new type of file with a .btapp suffix that consists entirely of HTML and Javascript and can be added to the client and displayed using an embedded browser window, so very little extra code is needed,” Morris explains.

The apps can be added to uTorrent from within the client and take just a click to install. We expect that most torrent sites will soon release their own apps to complement uTorrent. That’s just the start though, the possibilities are endless.

The uTorrent Griffin release is part of the new uTorrent labs section where the development team is giving users early access to their latest projects. Besides Griffin, the remote access project Falcon and the live streaming project Pheon are also listed.

We have already covered Falcon in the past. Besides secure remote access, this client also enables users to stream torrent video files files. Pheon is BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen’s pet project and is expected to be released later this year.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

TorrentFreak (blog)

The Lionshare, Tracking Torrents and A Girl TorrentFreak (blog) Promoted by The Pirate Bay, isoHunt and many other file-sharing sites, the novel film distribution platform VODO presents its latest release, The Lionshare. …

Popularity: 2% [?]

After nearly five years of loyal service, Mininova deleted over a million torrent files when it partly shut down its website a week ago. What remains are a few thousand torrents that were uploaded though its content distribution platform, which only lists uploads by approved users.

Mininova was forced to take such a drastic measure following a negative verdict in their court battle with the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN this summer. The torrent indexer was told by the court to remove all infringing torrent files from its index. This was technically unfeasible according to the Mininova team, who were left with no other choice than to remove all torrent files uploaded by regular users.

This move resulted in the deletion of more than a million torrents, many of which were not infringing any copyrights at all. As expected, the consequences of this decision for Mininova’s traffic, as well as the number of searches and downloads on the site, are disastrous.

In just a few days Mininova’s traffic plummeted by 66%, from well over 5 million visits the day before the torrents were removed, to just 1.8 million yesterday. If the downward trend continues at this rate, the site will have less than a million visits a day a week from now, throwing it out of the top 10 most visited torrent sites that it led for two years in a row.

Even more striking perhaps is the drop in downloads and searches. As can be seen from the graph below, the number of downloads dropped from over 10 million a day to just 371,424. The number of searches went down from 10 to 3 million, a less steep drop than the downloads, probably indicating that not everyone is aware of the reduced number of torrents on the site.

So what’s next?

There is no doubt that Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN will be proud of their accomplishment, but aside from ruining Mininova’s business it will not have a significant impact on the overall volume of BitTorrent traffic. As always, new sites emerge by the dozens as old ones are shut down and users quickly adapt to the new situation.

A network engineer at a major Aussie ISP has confirmed that Mininova’s partial shutdown has had no noticeable effect on traffic volumes. “I didn’t notice any reduction in [torrent] traffic when The Pirate Bay went down. It’s hard to see how there’d be any significant change from Mininova’s withdrawal.”

That said, the ‘end’ of Mininova does leave a scar behind. For years most torrent indexers heavily relied on torrents that were uploaded to Mininova. With over a million user-uploaded torrents, the site was without a doubt the main torrent provider on the Internet. Although most of the torrents are still mirrored on other sites, Mininova’s role as content provider has to be taken over by others.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Popularity: 1% [?]