Μπορεί να έσπασε ρεκόρ για 10,000,000 ,000 dowloads αλλά ο tracker έπειτα από δικαστικές αποφάσεις θα διαγράψει οποιοδήποτε copyrighted και παράνομο περιεχόμενο.

Το Mininova κατεβάζει όλα τα torrents που σχετίζονται με παράνομο ή copyrighted περιεχόμενο μετά απο απόφαση Ολλανδικού δικαστηρίου

Η απόφαση του δικαστηρίου της Ουτρέχτης ελήφθη τον Αύγουστο του 2009. Σϋμφωνα με αυτή το Mininova θα πρέπει να αποσύρει τα Links για copyrighted και παράνομο περιεχόμενο. Διαφορετικά θα κληθεί να πληρώσει πρόστιμο ύψους 5 εκατομμυρίων ευρώ! Έτσι το Mininova έχει ήδη αποκλείσει πρόσβαση σε πάνω απο 1 εκατομμύριο torrents.

Σύμφωνα με ανακοίνωση της εταιρείας, η απόφαση του δικαστηρίου δεν αφήνει περιθώριο μη συμμόρφωσης με αυτή. Τους τελευταίους μήνες το Mininova προσπάθησε να εφαρμόσει διάφορα συστήματος φιλτραρίσματος του περιεχομένου που γίνεται διαθέσιμο κάτι που τελικά δεν λειτούργησε για τεχνικούς και λειτουργικούς λόγους. Έτσι αποφάσισαν να διατηρήσουν μόνο περιεχόμενο της υπηρεσίας Content Distribution αφήνοντας έξω τα torrents για τα οποία επισκέπτονταν το Mininova εκατομμύρια χρήστες, απο το 2005 που «κλήθηκε» να καλύψει το κενό που άφησε το κλείσιμο του Suprnova.

Απο τότε και μέχρι και σήμερα, το Mininova κατάφερε να γίνει ένα απο τα μεγαλύτερα bit-torrent indexers στον παγκόσμιο ιστό. Πάντως η ομάδα του Mininova σκέφτεται να υποβάλει έφεση.

Via-pcw.gr

Virgin Media is now acting as chief lapdog to the Lord Mandleson sell out of the internet to the dying music distribution industry. Virgin Media is to trial deep packet inspection technology to measure the level of so called illegal filesharing on its network. Customers being monitored will not be informed.

Virgin will use a product called CView, sold by Detica, a BAE subsidiary that specialises in large volume data collection and processing, and whose traditional customers are the intelligence agencies and law enforcement. BAE profited massively from the Neo Con Labour War in Iraq and Afghanistan, now it loks set to profit again from The War Against Piracy.

The CView product will operate at the centre of Virgin Media’s network with an aim of estimating the proportion of filesharing traffic that infringes copyright.

40 per cent of Virgin Media’s traffic will be monitored. If you are on Virgin and are not being monitored today, tomorrow you may well be. If this is truly limited to peer to peer traffic then your next game on your XBOX 360 may be monitored. It would be all but impossible to identify the difference between a game played on your XBOX 360 and an encrypted bit torrent file. This will therefore exaggerate the amount of “illegal” bit torrent traffic.

The system will look at traffic to identify peer-to-peer packets. The programme then looks at those packets to determine what is licensed and what is unlicensed, based on data provided by the record industry.

Virgin promises data will be aggregated and and made anonymous. The trial though has no scheduled end date.

It should be remembered that CView uses the the same technology that powered the Phorm advertising system, which monitored individual internet users to target advertisements. It too was trialled – by BT – without customers’ consent or knowledge. The Government faces an EU investigation for allowing this.

Detica will want to sell this to other ISPs. So there may be no escape from this. Once all ISPs have this, how anonymous will traffic be then?

Virgin Media’s implementation will they promise focus on music sharing. Of course their proposed music download service has nothing to do with this. Are you sure you will not be flagged because of a video you watch on youtube or even Vidzone on the PS3? Do you trust the list provided by the Music Industry?

Detica has is also trying to flog CView to the Government. In the sales document, Detica said that as well as aggregate data, CView could be used to categorise filesharers and apply technical measures against them, or target them to be sold legal alternatives.

Welcome to Digital Britain.

Looking for a Bit Torrent site? BT Junkie is the site for you!  They have everything you can be looking for and they are huge! I find everything at this site and there are lots of seeders so you don’t have to worry about the downloads taking forever! Awesome site!

During the state opening of parliament yesterday the government outlined it’s plans for a digital radio switchover. The plans are part of the Digital Economy bill that goes some way to addressing issues outlined in the Digital Britain report that came out earlier this year. Many people are opposed to the digital switchover for radio as devices are not as easily upgraded as TVs and there are still quality issues with DAB. DAB+ goes some way to address this, however, most of the current DAB radios in the UK are not compatible with this newer standard.

There are a few notable omissions in the Digital Economy bill. Namely, the plans for 2mb broadband to be available to all UK households by 2012. The much debated broadband tax also failed to make it into the bill as it would require a new tax to be introduced.

Copyright issues are also addressed in the bill. The idea behind this is that it will be easier for people to use images online and not have to get permission.

The bill also contains Lord Mandelson’s controversial file-sharing plans that would allow the government to cut off people suspected of file sharing.

Via: What Hi-Fi?

Click for movie review:  HW DESIGN INC. REVIEW of INK

Click for story:  INK’s run in LA

In September, HW Design Inc. attended a screening of the moving and visually stunning independent film, INK.  You can read our review of the film above.  This week, we were excited and intrigued to hear some fascinating news from director/writer Jamin Winans. 

On November 5th, INK was uploaded to a number of pirate websites.  During the following 72 hours, it was downloaded over 150,000 times!  On November 7th, INK was the most downloaded film on Pirate Bay. 

This activity boosted INK to #16 on the IMDb MovieMeter.  Ink jumped from a position of 12,991 on IMDB to #16, moving it ahead of major studio films like, SAW IV, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE and the breakout indie hit, PRECIOUS.  Currently, the film has been downloaded over a half a million times.

The surge in exposure brings up all sorts of questions about internet piracy and the ups and downs of being an independent film producer in today’s down economy.

Here is a quote by INK’s creators:
For the record, we do not condone piracy nor do we ever download any music, films or TV shows for free. Artists should be paid for their hard work. That said, it is possible that the exposure Ink has just gotten across free download sites has catapulted the film into an entirely new realm. Remember that Wolverine, a franchise film with a budget of $130 million, got leaked via bit torrent before its release and got 100,000 hits in 24 hours. Ink managed to do half that in downloads, and was number 1 on Pirate Bay yesterday with more hits than Paranormal Activity, Surrogates and Julie and Julia. Again, all of these films have had the help of the studio system’s multi-million dollar marketing campaigns. Ink has had Jamin and myself, two laptops and an Army of fierce supporters grown out of our own hard-fought theatrical screenings – nothing more.

Here is a great article, written by Kiowa, on the thoughts of these recent events and the pros and cons of internet piracy.  360 Degree View Of Internet Piracy

You can also rent INK at Blockbuster and Netflix.  It is now available on Amazon and ITunes.

The INK blog :  http://doubleedgefilms.blogspot.com/

Purchase INK on DVD or BLUERAY

Armed with Microsoft's USB stick and COFEE even these two will be able to collect evidence from a live system....The courts will love that one.

It is being reported that COFEE, Microsoft’s forensic tool used in the fight against crime [1] has been leaked and uploaded to a BT tracker.  The tracker in question (what.cd) has subsequently removed the offending torrent, probably with visions of dawn raids and court cases, however I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the tools PR and what it (allegedly) offers.  Before we go any further though, its worth noting that the actions taken by what.cd have not managed to preserve the “secrecy” of this Microsoft product.  COFEE is available from thousands of sources online already.

Firstly because its Microsoft you can expect the usual blurb.  Microsoft doesn’t disappoint here with:

If it’s vital to government, it’s mission critical to Microsoft.

Which would beg the question; what happened then when various armed forces computer systems allegedly fell victim to a Windows based exploit?  Doesn’t sound very mission critical to me.

Back to COFEE though (Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor) is in essence software and USB solution which enable a live system to be “snapshotted” in situ.  Exactly how this code operates is anyones guess since its only provided to law enforcement and not to the general populus.  Would this software/hardware work on a rig with Linux?  I would highly doubt it and I assume it is developed to “handshake” with a Windows based system in some way.

An officer with even minimal computer experience can be tutored—in less than 10 minutes—to use a pre-configured COFEE device.

…And COFEE is being provided—at no charge—to law enforcement around the world.

So Microsoft gives COFEE away free to law enforcement does it?  Lets remind ourselves of what Bill Gates had to say about “free” some time ago:

They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade

Here you go....a USB stick for every copper! Become an IT expert in 10 minutes! Question is, why should law enforcement use what you can already get (legally) for free and why should the "mighty" Microsoft be giving it away to law enforcement?

Maybe a warning there for Law Enforcement?  “Beware of a Redmond employee bearing gifts”

From reports of users that have looked at this Microsoft GUI its allegedly only a set of data collection tools that can be found on the net anyway and there is nothing “secret” or “cutting edge” to be found in Microsoft’s freebie.

There are other issues I have with this Microsoft freebie and its in respect of evidential value.  In my opinion an in situ dump of a live system will only have real evidential worth in a court if its backed up with the original system.  I would doubt very much if a court would accept a “snapshot” on a USB stick on its own without calling into question the integrity of the data collected on it. [2]

Are we really believing some IT inept officer brandishing COFEE should be allowed to tamper with a live system of possible evidential worth even if she/he has had “a 10 minute training course”..?   I would expect any Law Enforcement Agency to call in its own experts if it encountered a situation where a live exam/retrieval was essential.

Ive often said I have great reservations when the private/public sector mix (in respect of law enforcement) You have to look no further than FACT, where I believe its funded by the very companies it seeks to protect.  No problem in itself, but when (IMO) FACT has the ear of law enforcement, you could be forgiven if you were a little dubious as to the motives of the “advice” they give to the aforementioned agency.

Although it’s a little extreme, when law enforcement and corporate mix, people will always wonder “what goes on behind the scenes” and theories of calls such as “Hi, is that the LAPD?  Its Ballmer here, we have a little trouble at Redmond, can you help us out? Remember we did give you that USB stick all those years ago…..” will always crop up.  It seems strange to me that Microsoft is so keen to help fight crime when in Bill Gates own words (as partly quoted earlier on):

As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.

You can read that full article here: http://www.cybersource.com.au/press/gates_set_to_addict_next_billion.html

There is a viewpoint from Torrentfreak.com which can be read here.

Notes

[1] Allegedly since Ive never seen Microsoft credited for any successes and its not clear which or if any Law enforcement actually use it

[2] and its all accademic really since someone booting a LiveCD and USB stick combo would be immune to COFEE (IMO)

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

Settimana di grandi esperimenti. Durante questa puntata di Feeder abbiamo realizzato una ricetta fusion di David Chang, il bacon dashi. Il dashi è un brodo di pesce e alghe kombu, tipico della cucina giapponese ma Chang ha provato a mescolare i sapori, sostituendo al pesce la pancetta. E così abbiamo fatto anche noi. Il brodo ottenuto l’abbiamo utilizzato per preparare gli udon che vedete qui sopra. Durante la puntata si è parlato di:

• La società del moussakàs di Helene Paraskeva – L’impero dei segni di Rolan Bhartes
• Bit torrent vietato in antartide, Internet come diritto inalienabile
• L’ultimo libro di Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating animals [wsj, good.is, intervista @Young&hungry]
• Il bacio come strumento evolutivo

La playlist della serata:

• Undercover – Joey DeLuxe
• Come Stai – Brunori Sas
• Phanta – Le Tigre
• Il reale mi da l’asma – Carpacho!
• Song Face (Sjökexetmix) Mash up – Blur Vs Lady Gaga

Per gli amici del podcast: ora abbiamo una pagina su iTunes. L’icona qui a lato vi porterà direttamente là. L’abbonamento è gratuito e ogni settimana scaricherete automaticamente la nuova puntata. Per tutti gli altri permane il metodo tradizionale.

The UK Business secretary Lord Mandelson has outlined plans to cut-off persistent illegal file-sharers from the Internet. Many countries have mulled over similar ideas, including France, and have all met strong opposition. UK ISPs have criticised the plans calling them ‘ill-conceved’ and ‘unworkable’. The main argument against the ‘three strikes’ policy is a human rights one.

If a man uses electricity to commit a crime, you don’t cut off his power. Electricity is a utility, not a service. Many groups have called for the Internet to be treated as a utility and recently, Finland have said that 1Mb Broadband is a right, not a priviledge. So, would cutting off persistent file sharers impinge on their human rights?

One issue raised by this is that of false positives. Peer-to-peer, or P2P, technology has been given a bad name over the last decade and perhaps wrongly. The technology itself is not illegal and has many legal uses. Skype, for example uses peer-to-peer technology and in the early days of the iPlayer, the BBC used P2P as a method for reducing bandwidth costs. Checking every single piece of P2P traffic would require the use of a technology know as Deep Packet Inspection. This involves checking each ‘packet’  of data sent between computers on the network. The problem with this technique is it is costly, ineffective and slows internet speeds.

File sharing is a problem for the creative industries worldwide and a solution has to be found. The music and film industries are losing vast sums of money every year to pirates. So what are the government planning?

The current plan would:

• As a first step, illegal file-sharers would have download caps imposed or their speed limited.
• Like the French scheme, there would be a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy.
• Disconnection would be a last resort.

The current plans could be put in place by April 2010 with rules becoming stricter in the Spring of 2011. The European Union would have their say before anything goes ahead. ISPs, including TalkTalk, have said they are prepared to challenge the measures ‘in the courts’.

Via: BBC News

In the last few days since the Demos study was released showing that Pirates spend more on music per year than those who choose to source their music legally, discussion about Piracy has become popular on the Internet once more.  Now that Piracy has been well and truly thrust into the public eye it’s given people like me an opportunity to see and hear for myself what the average person thinks when it comes to Piracy.

What I have seen concerns me somewhat in that people don’t really seem to understand what Piracy actually is.  The average person who claims to be against Piracy and p2p sharing lumps it in with simple theft, something that angers me and just isn’t true.

• Piracy is not theft.
• Theft takes the original.
• Piracy makes a copy.
• Piracy is Piracy.

What this all boils down to is copyright law as it stands today.  Media is produced by an artist or a director and the rights to that content are owned by a single organisation, whether it be a record company or a film studio.  The current model is based on capitalism and the scarcity of content.  The analogy i tend to use when explaining this is of diamonds and water.  Diamonds are scarce and water is in abundance, so because the current market works on the basis of supply and demand, a vendor can sell a diamond for thousands of pounds and this is generally accepted by the people.  You wouldn’t think to sell a bottle of water for anything close to the price of diamonds because it is in abundance and so readily available.  No one in their right mind would pay £1000 for a litre of water but would happily spend that amount on a diamond.  So, in this respect the current system works.

However, when it comes to digitally produced content such as a film or a piece of music which can be reproduced ad infinitum, the current system crumbles.  Because the product is no longer scarce the justification for an album or a movie being sold for their current prices goes out of the window.  In the days of Vinyl and reel-to-reel where copying was an expensive and time-consuming practice, the system worked perfectly.  Today however, I’m almost certain that even the most novice of computer users can take a CD, store its contents in near-CD quality on their hard drive and host it on the Internet for the world to share.  At this point the copyrighting system crumbles and is obsolete.

When the RIAA and the MPCA tried to clamp down on this and make examples of people a couple of years back, fining downloaders hundreds of thousands of dollars for filesharing, the Pirate community and those in favour of free distribution of idigital content went up in arms.  Anti-piracy organisations the world over have tried to thwart filesharing and p2p activities by sharing hoax releases and monitoring known p2p and Bit Torrent ports, but time and again the Pirate community has managed to find ways around these methods.  Applications such as Peerguardian hide your computer’s personal information effectively making you invisible to anti-piracy organisations and can be freely downloaded from multiple websites in a matter of seconds.  Some websites even promote applications like these and guides to new Bit Torrent users often include links to apps like Peerguardian in efforts to protect the members of this ever-expanding community.  It certainly seems that the people will always find ways around even the most extreme methods employed by anti-piracy organisations.

Governments and copyright protectors need to understand that the current system absolutely must change.  In a time where more and more people are employing Piracy as a means to aquire content, we cannot stand idly by and let these organisations make criminals of us all.  I haven’t met a single person who hasn’t downloaded something through illegal methods, whether it be ripping a YouTube video or a program from the iPlayer, using Kazzaa or Limewire, Bit Torrent or even FTP and Newsgroup applications.  I am more than aware of the effect that digital reproduction and p2p has had on the music and film industry, but I am skeptical of the scale of its impact.  I also do not agree with the argument that “If there is no monetary gain from the production of artistic content, people will stop producing”.  As an avid musician myself, I am certainly not put off by the fact that I might not make as much money now as I would have, say 20 years ago.  For me the recognition and appreciation alone would be the greatest reward.  If anything, knowing that people were employing any method they could to listen to my music would fill me with an immense pride and a sense of great satisfaction.  I am aware that man cannot live off praise alone, but that’s not to say that my success in the music industry would not open other avenues of income.  Artists are sponsored by companies to use their equipment, paid to perform live in venues with sell out crowds and have their works used in film, television and advertising, but let’s not forget that through all of this, there will always be album sales.  Granted, the money made from album sales may not be as high as if the album had been released 20 years ago, but albums will still sell nonetheless.

Soulja Boy Tellem is an American rapper who made his fame through online portals Youtube and Myspace.  In an interview with Billboard in late December 2008 the rapper gives us an insight into his income.  Since becoming famous off the back of tracks such as Crank That (62,341,305 views as of writing) released in 2007, he’s gone on to much larger things.  Currently signed with the Interscope Records (part of the Universal group), his debut album (launched July 13, 2007) had sold in excess of 943,000 copies as of December 2008.  Crank That was the most downloaded track in 2007 according to Nielsen SoundScan.  His music may be utterly abysmal, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a complete success.  Stories such as Soulja Boy’s really go to show that even in this eara of rife downloading it is still possible to make vast sums of money from the music industry in the face of Piracy in such an incredibly short space of time.  He’s even quoted as saying;

“Really, I don’t depend on royalty checks to make money.  Those only come but every six months, how I make most money is from shows.  I get up to $75,000 for each, and I might do up to 20 shows a month.”

Not every artist will make the money that this miserable excuse for a rapper has made, but there will be people whose success will come from their use of social media and the technologies that are so readily available.  Rapidshare and Megaupload make it incredibly easy for artists to upload EPs or albums and places such as Twitter, Myspace Music and Facebook offer an incredible advertising potential.  Merging the two means that artists can send messages to their entire fanbase containing links to either of the aforementioned sites, which their fans can then navigate to and access the music they enjoy so much.  This then means they have copies to pass onto everyone they know.  Potentially an infinite number of copies can be made onto almost any kind of digital writable media and distributed in an ad-hoc fashion, essentially free advertising through the free distribution of music.  This method alone will not pay the rent, but if this music’s good enough it will almost certainly open other avenues for monetary gain.

A friend of mine calls it a double-edged sword and I agree.  I would hate to think of the artists I enjoy halting their music production purely because they’re not making as much money as they used to (frankly, i would hope that the musicians I’m into would be above that), but I don’t think that Piracy is as big an issue as the authorities would lead you to believe.  Clearly from the case study above, people still talk with their wallets even in this day and age.  Artists will continue to make money if the people want to access their work, be it recorded or live in a venue for all to see.  I do not see Piracy as the death of the music industry, merely a wake up call to those in charge.  It is truly a sign of the times when all the music industry’s efforts to stop Piracy just aren’t working, and if you want to argue that they are?  Then I urge you to go to The Pirate bay and read the letters they’ve received from the RIAA, the MPAA and other conglomerate businesses threatening legal action, then go to their top 100 list and see what’s there for the taking.

Until the model changes artists and companies will continue to suffer.  Don’t blame the Pirates.  Blame the people who regulate and control your content.

Media Democracy Coalition’s Hannah Miller rallies against blocked political speech

Supreme Court likely to allow more corporate money in politics

Administration uses ‘State Secrets’ clause to block warrantless wiretap cases

Court rules victim of extraordinary rendition can’t sue from Raw Story

Pirate Cat Radio fined $10,000: East-Bay Express and SF Weekly

Is global warming a corporate fraud? from Project Censored

Real reason climate bill is going to suck from Grist

Palestinians criticize US u-turn on settlements

Detroit Free Press takes editorial cues from advertisers

Congress should not reject the Goldstone Report from Common Dreams

Where are the anti-war demonstrators? from Common Dreams

What Obama is up against from Truthout

MPAA piracy facts unchecked on 60 Minutes

MPAA press release urges FCC to protect content

Bit Torrent’s new peer-to-peer software throttles itself

Nielsen says DTV switch was successful

Paramount says National Broadband Plan should stop Star Trek pirates

Jerry Brown’s spokesman resigns after taping calls

AP admits Cheney equivocated to the FBI

We need a Son of Sam law for coporations from True/Slant

Comcast close to gaining NBC Universal

Brazil encourages competing hackers to crack e-voting terminals

Sen. Cantwell not sure why Geithner still has a job

Service providers in UK ’should have legal obligation on rural broadband’

Three’s company by Ross Douthat

There’s been a lot of debate as of lately about file sharing and people downloading pirated material.

Peter Mandelson’s announcement on cracking down on file sharers this week has raised some groups raising opposition in the media, including things on Facebook. I thought I would write some thoughts here.

Firstly it was the Pirate Bay, a Swedish organisation who set up a search engine to find bit torrents (sections of files stored on individuals computers being shared around the world) that were in the news over their arrest.

Some years ago, there used to be a web site called Audio Galaxy, this came shortly after Napster. I got lured into getting free music on the advise off a friend. It was quite simple, it was just a plain web site and if you couldn’t find the artist or song you were looking for, ie: that artist’s record label had set it to be blocked you just deliberately spelt it wrong and you normally find what you were looking for. After a year of court cases or so, the judges decided Audio Galaxy couldn’t protect the rights of the musicians and it was shut down for good.

After this I decided not to download music any more, why? Because as a Christian I felt that it was stealing, it wasnt until a year I deleted all the music I had that I didn’t have on a CD or got from iTunes. Instead when using iTunes I could pay for songs but more often than not I would just go on their to go “window shopping” for music, ie: I could listen to 30 seconds or so of a song, but rather than buy it I preferred to stick to CDs, as sometimes a really great artist can have a album of consistently good songs and its nice to have all of them, and another coloured bit of plastic to stick on a book shelf. Yes my preferred way to get music I like is get second hand CDs of ebay. Why, as someone else probably has what I am looking for paid the full price and got tired of it, so as long as its in good condition, second hand is good for me, especially as probably most of the 50 or so CDs I have bought in the last few years were less than £3.

Also, if you created something for a living, a piece of music, starred in a movie or wrote software, its your bread and butter, you don’t want someone else taking your work for free. If you were doing pencil drawings on the sea front, you wouldn’t be very happy and someone suddenly coming up with a camera and taking pictures of your work, then finding out a copy of that drawing was in a friend’s house above their fireplace as the bought it cheaper from other part of town? I have worked for two software companies, I am not a programmer but I do provide a service of support and providing the tools (good maintained PCs, laptops, etc) to the men and women that write those software applications. If that company’s products ended up on bit torrent I could have no job and can’t pay my bills.

When the Pirate Bay got shut down earlier this year, there were massive rallies of people supporting those folks as the three men all got prison sentences. There’s even political groups called the Pirate party that specifically want to let people carry on downloading whatever they like without threat of legal action. Ok I admit record labels do not always work with good ethics, and the fact that Sony music put malware on music CDs to put stealth software on peoples computers without them knowing really should be illegal and someone ought to be fired and put in prison over that.

Let me get this straight, did the three Swedish guys set up Pirate bay for free as volunteers? Were they the Scandinavian Robin Hoods of the digital age don’t you think they made a bit of money from banner advertising and sponsors, actually quite a bit of money??? But a political party that is based against copyright? Huh? I thought the main priorities political organisations should rally around is improve our health services, schools, police and fire services, get maximum value for money for our taxes, reduce crime, unemployment and poverty, and help the environment not try to keep people fill up the computer hard disks with as much dishonestly obtained media as they can??? This doesn’t make any sense.

Hard disks are getting ridiculously cheap with 1 Terabyte of disk storage available for less than $100 or so, but internet providers are finding even with so called ‘unlimited download’ packages, they don’t have the bandwidth to sustain people 24×7 helping themselves to an inexhaustible supply of entertainment, and may have to sending threatening letters with the hint of cutting people off.

In this digital age, we all want things here and now, its exciting I find that I can hear a song on the radio of something I grew up with but never knew the name of the band, a quick google search of the lyrics and there it is, then listen to it on iTunes, then get it and pay for it there and then. This quick purchase to scheme ought to grow onto more mobile devices now. Getting more abilities to get music on the fly without some maddeningly complex DRM scheme you have to jump hoops through is a must.

I am quite a big fan of mainly 1980s-reformed for quite a few years lately-but now defunkt British band New Order, with their most recent album they offered a free MP3 download of a song which had 30 seconds of 5 different tracks of their album melded together, which was enough to convince me that that albums was worth buying. And it was! More of this kind of marketing please record labels. Also make all those nice rare stuff and B sides that impossible to find available buy or obtain as a bonus please!!!

I am big music fan and since passing 30 few year back my musical diet as grown more and more widely, collecting all the missing albums of the artists I like, songs from TV commercials, music from movies (getting quite into John Williams and Ennio Moricconi especially) stuff I group up with and new talent that might not so far have got recognition deserved.

The basic thing I am saying is here, if you live music, movies, games and applications, please pay or them, and keep the people employed in those industries in jobs. You can’t moan that music isn’t like the good old days if you just rip it off of Bit Torrent. Some organisations have sprung to provide better more direct ways for artists to get paid for their work, I have bought two CDs from Cdbaby.com who are good example of this.

Using applications like Limewire or Bit Torrent not only is illegal and hurts jobs, it also is a BIG security risk for your computer, as spyware is usually bundled with Limewire, and you could easily accidentally configure both apps to make some other the folders on your computer shareable to the outside world, possibly compromise a business’s IT security to hackers, or mean (probably not likely) you could be prosecuted. I spend a lot of time removing spyware and malicious apps which convention antivirus software cant always touch and needs specialist tools to remove, even then with modern techniques like root kits, criminals are more determined to find ways to get your computer to deliver spam or find financial information without you knowing. Software on torrents is often poisoned with nasty side effects. Mac users are non immune, the new Mac OS X 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’ has been discovered interfered with malware.

When I get back to the UK I want to be able to know that my possible future employers isn’t in danger of having their products being ripped off.

If you cant afford to pay for software, especially things like Microsoft Office or Adobe’s graphics applications, there’s always free open source alternatives which might need a bit of retraining but much of the free software these days is becoming extremely high quality. If anyone feels that Bit Torrent etc does have a legitimate uses for things feel free to comment below.

Le due interfacce di Transmission - Web e Qt

Transmission, programma per scaricare i files torrent di cui ho già parlato, sta sviluppando anche un’interfaccia grafica con le librerie Qt, mentre l’interfaccia principale, la più comune, usa le librerie GTK. La versione con le Qt è ancora un po’ sperimentale, un po’ più “vuota”, ma comunque funzionante a dovere.

Come compilare

L’ultima versione di Transmission è la 1.75, rilasciata il 13 settembre. Dubito che nel prossimo futuro ci siano grossi cambiamenti.

Per prima cosa assicuriamoci di avere i pacchetti necessari per compilare i programmi che usano le Qt. In particolare, oltre agli header di QtCore, QtGui e QtNetwork, serve il tool qmake. Ora scarichiamo transmission e scompattiamolo:

cd /tmp
wget http://mirrors.m0k.org/transmission/files/transmission-1.75.tar.bz2
tar xvjf transmission*.tar.bz2

In questo modo l’avremo scompattato in una sotto-cartella di /tmp. Entriamo in questa sotto-cartella e configuriamo:

cd /transmission-1.75
./configure --disable-gtk --disable-daemon --disable-cli
make

In questo modo verrà compilato solo lo stretto necessario (alcune librerie) senza alcuna interfaccia, né grafica, né testuale, né da browser. Non ci serve nient’altro; non dobbiamo neanche installare ciò che abbiamo appena compilato: servirà solo alla compilazione dell’interfaccia grafica con le Qt, che ora andiamo a configurare, compilare ed installare:

cd qt
qmake qtr.pro
make
sudo make install

Avremo dunque il programma installato, in una posizione strana e anche un po’ scomoda: /bin/qtr. Da linea di comando e molto semplice aprirlo: basta il comando qtr. Si può comunque più semplicemente creare un file d’avio applicazione da mettere nel menu del nostro desktop environment.

Keterangan: Artikel ini merupakan tutorial buatan sendiri, tidak ada kaitannya dengan tulisan orang lain.

Pernah mendengan istilah Bit Torrent? Bit Torrent atau torrent saja merupakan sistem downloading buatan Bram Cohen yang terkenal powerfull. Keterangan mengenai Bit Torrent bisa dilihat di artikel di Wikipedia di sini. Bagaimana proses kerjanya? Bit Torrent memiliki sistem yang berbeda dari software downloader atau peer-to-peer yang lian. Secara singkat, Bit Torrent membuat suatu client yang terhubung di internet menjadi sebuah server mini yang tidak hanya mendownload file, tapi juga menguploadnya ke client lain. Itulah rahasia mengapa sistem Bit Torrent terkenal powerfull dan jarang membuat server down, tidak lain karena Bit Torrent membagi beban yang diterima server utama ke server-server kecil pembantu.

Lalu pertanyaan yang paling mendasar, bagaimana kita bisa memanfaatkan sistem Bit Torrent? Apakah sama halnya dengan mendownload file biasa dengan menggunakan browser atau download manager seperti Internet Download Manager? Bukan, Bit Torrent memiliki prosedur pendownloadan yang bebeda. Inilah penjelasan secara singkatnya.

1. Mencari File .torrent

Hal yang pertama kita lakukan adalah mencari file .torrent. Apa itu .torrent? .torrent adalah file yang berisikan deskripsi paket yang kita download, berisikan informasi isi paket, lalu server utama yang menampung file, dan alamat-alamat server-server kecil yan ikut mendownload paket tersebut. File .torrent bisa dicari di situs pencarian khusus torrent, yang jumlahnya sangat banyak. Antara lain yang terkenal adalah The Pirate Bay dan Mininova. Namun saya punya situs pencari torrent favorit saya sendiri, yaitu Isohunt.com. Cara mendownload file . torrent di Isohunt.com adalah tinggal masukan kata kunci pencarian, lalu pilih salah satu hasil yang ditemuka, dan tinggal download. Tenang saja, file .torrent biasanya berukuran sangat kecil, sekitar 10-20 KB.

Screenshoot Isohunt.com:

2. Instal Bit Torrent Client

Seperti yang disebutkan sebelumnya, Bit Torrent berbeda dengan mendownload file normal. Bit Torrent membutuhan software khusus yang berfungsi mendownload paket Bit Torrent dari sebuat file .torrent. Lagi-lagi software jenis ini sangatlah banyak. Salah satu yang paling terkenal dan powerfull adalah uTorrent. Bit Torrent Client ini berukuran sangat kecil, sekitar 200 KB. uTorrent bisa didownload di situs resminya, dan gratis!

Screenshoot uTorrent:

3. Mulai Mendownload

Setelah selesai menginstal uTorrent, langsung saja mengklik ganda file .torrent yang telah Anda download, maka uTorrent akan langsung terbuka dan akan terlihat daftar paket yang ada di file .torrent itu. Langsung saja klik OK, maka paket-paket Bit Torrent akan langsung didownload.

Hanya itu saja, gampang kan?:)

Keuntungan Memakai Bit Torrent:

1. Jika  file itu sedang banyak didownload oleh client lain, kecepatan yang didapat justru bertambah. Berkebalikan dengan sistem download konvensional.
2. Jenis file yang tersedia sangat banyak. Dengan adanya situs pencari torrent, Anda bisa mencari hampir semua jenis file.
3. Semua paket Bit Torrent bisa dengan mudah di-pause. Sehingga cocok untuk yang internetnya putus-nyala :p.
4. Isi paket bisa dilihat dahulu, sehingga mencegah kita mendownload paket yang salah/kurang. Bahkan untuk beberapa jenis file bisa dipreview sehingga keaslian / kelengkapan paket Bit Torrent tersebut bisa diperiksa dahulu. Dalam 1 paket juga bisa dipilih file mana yang akan didownload atau tidak.

Kekurangan Menggunakan Bit Torrent:

1. Lambat jika tidak ada yang mendownload paket itu. Contohnya paket-paket yang sudah lama diupload dan “aneh”, biasanya jarang ada yang mendownload, sehingga kecepatan downloadnya menurun.
2. Beban upload juga ditanggung Anda. Selayaknya client yang lain, Anda juga terbebani untuk mengupload ke client lain. Walaupun Anda bisa menyetting agar Anda tidak perlu mengupload ke client, sistem Bit Torrent akan mendeteksi Anda dan justru akan menurunkan kecepatan download Anda.
3. Terlalu banyak paket yang ada. Kadang untuk 1 kali pencarian bisa menghasilkan hasil yang sangat banyak. Untuk itu diperlukan ketelitian untuk mendapatkan .torrent yang paling lengkap dan berkecepatan tinggi.

Tips Menggunakan Bit Torrent:

1. Cari file . torrent dengan seed paling banyak. Seed adalah client yang sedang mendownload file tersebut. Di Isohunt.com, dapat dilihat file .torrent yang memiliki seed paling banyak. Semakin banyak seed maka kecepatan akan semakin maksimal.
2. Jangan ragu untuk mengubah setting Bit Torrent Client. Bit Torrent Client semisal uTorrent memiliki settingan yang bisa diatur sehingga kecepatan download bisa maksimal. Silakan cari lewat Google atau cari video tutorialnya di YouTube.

Demikian tutorial singkat dari saya, semoga berguna dan memudahkan Anda mendapatkan yang Anda butuhkan di jagad internet ini .