[The First Part of this series was <<A: Open Source. The second installment of the Stop Usage Based Billing alphabet series was <<B: Packets and the Internet. The third installment was <a href="<<C: Deep Packet Inspection, and the final installment will be E: Open Source Deep Packet Inspection]

What is BitTorrent Anyway??

“BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and it has been estimated that it accounts for approximately 27-55% of all Internet traffic (depending on geographical location) as of February 2009.”

– Wikipedia on BitTorrent

BitTorrent is an extremely fast and efficient means of uploading and downloading. BitTorrent is an excellent way to distribute large materials to many people via the internet.

Radical Ideas

Like so many of the radical new ways to do things that technology and the internet have made possible, BitTorrent can only work through co-operation. BitTorrent requires a peer to peer (p2p) network.

If I have a large file I want to transfer, the first step is to “seed” the file, transferring portions of the file to multiple members of the p2p network.

Diagram 1: Seeding

It only takes a small fraction of the file to be passed along before the process speeds up enormously.

Diagram 2: Seeding and Sharing

Once I have a small portion, i pass it along at the same time as I’m receiving new bits of the same file, either from the original seed source of another peer.

Diagram 3: Upload + Download = Speed

With many participants (peers) uploading and downloading at the same time, large files can be distributed very quickly indeed.

Diagram 4: Finish Fast

Bell Canada “Throttles” BitTorrent

Bell Canada

When Bell Canada was first caught “throttling” internet traffic to the Independent ISP customers, Bell Canada’s justification to the CRTC was that the internet was too crowded, and that it was necessary to “manage” the traffic. Bell claimed that they needed to employ Deep Packet Inspection to identify BitTorrent Traffic so that they can “throttle” it.

Mandate:
“The CRTC’s mandate is to ensure that both the broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public. ”

—CRTC Role, CRTC Website

Amazingly, the CRTC had nothing to say about Bell Canada’s plans to discriminate against particular Canadian internet users.

The CRTC has accepted Bell’s unsubstantiated contention that this discrimination was necessary, and in approving it they have allowed Bell Canada to think that this discrimination is acceptable. In no way does this serve the Canadian public.

You might almost think that the CRTC mandate was to suppress Canadian creativity and the creation of Canadian movies and music. The availability of the technologies that exist to make it easy to create our own movies and music should be welcomed as an opportunity to add to and help grow our Canadian Culture.

Why single out BitTorrent traffic for throttling if it is an efficient use of the available bandwidth?

One of Bell Canada’s arguments for implementation of Usage Based Billing is that Canadian internet bandwidth is in short supply, making it necessary for them to “manage” bandwidth by penalizing heavy users.

So how could anything as efficient as BitTorrent possibly be seen as a bad thing if the Internet is so crowded?

It doesn’t make sense to discriminate against BitTorrent use. There is nothing inherently bad about BitTorrent use or BitTorrent internet traffic. But Bell Canada’s contention is that BitTorrent is bad because people use it to download movies and music.

Which begs the question: how does that make BitTorrent bad?

The Copyright Red Herring

The “Copyright Lobby”, which consists of large media producers and distributors (like Disney), and corporations and organizations (like MPAA), who distribute commercial movies and music, want us to believe that this is a bad thing.

This corporate special interest group has spent a great deal of time, energy and cash trying to promote the “pravda” that any digital copying of copyright works is bad. Making no distinction between commercial bootleggers who distribute illegal copies for profit and legal purchasers who seek to make a back-up copy or digital format shift for personal use, the Copyright Lobby has been pressuring governments the world over to criminalize personal use copying.

The problem for ordinary citizens is that these corporate interests have vast quantities of money to spend and a great deal of media power. This makes it incredibly difficult for governments to stand up to their onslaught. In some parts of the world this persistent advocacy has paid off for the Copyright Lobby, as lawmakers knuckle under and legislate to the detriment of their own citizens by making it illegal even to copy or download movies or music for personal use.

Here in Canada the Copyright Lobby is seeking to influence our lawmakers to criminalize personal use copying. They are trying to make Canadians think that people who make copies for personal use are performing criminal acts, and should be penalized the same as a a bootlegger who films the latest theatrical release off a theatre screen and proceeds to sell hundreds of thousands of bootleg DVDs.

Once again, Channel Four’s hilarious I.T. Crowd puts this question in perspective with this send-up of a video piracy commercial I found on YouTube.

Strong and free?

Canadian Law says

RIGHT NOW, in Canada, personal use copying is simply not illegal.

RIGHT NOW, in Canada, use of the BitTorrent file transfer protocol is also perfectly legal.

RIGHT NOW, in Canada, peer to peer (p2p) file sharing is legal; Canadians break no laws simply by accessing p2p network websites.

The Copyright Lobby’s smear tactics have gone a long way toward making the world believe that BitTorrent is inherently bad.

Bell Canada has convinced the CRTC that it is acceptable to “throttle” BitTorrent, because of BitTorrent’s reputed connection with possible copyright infringement. So although BitTorrent is perfectly legal, Canadian internet users are paying the price for the success of this Copyright Lobby propaganda.

Myth: All BitTorrent/p2p internet traffic consists of copyright movies and music

The Corporate world doesn’t understand radical ideas like Open Source software and p2p file sharing because these concepts are so different from anything appearing in the old business models. Even more incomprehensible to the outdated business models is the fact that it may or may not generate a direct monetary profit.

The classic example of corporate myopia is:

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. ”

—attributed to Thomas J. Watson, president of International Business Machines, circa 1943

For many years IBM has taken the rap for this quote whether or not Mr. Watson really did say it. (Most likely not.) Maybe proving it wrong is part of why IBM is such a going concern in the 21st Century. Having weathered the storms of fortune today’s IBM is a world leader by continuing to innovate and adapt alongside evolving attitudes and technologies. IBM has been steadily increasing their participation and involvement with Open Source software in this new century.

The reality is that IBM not only understands the importance of open source, the corporation has actively supported and promoted adoption of Linux and Open Office in the corporate world. And naturally BitTorrent is a part of the equation because it is such an efficient means to distribute large files (like for instance, Canonical’s Ubuntu.)

“Think.”

—Thomas J. Watson, president of International Business Machines

Seems IBM actually does heed their most enduring slogan (which definitely was coined by Mr. Watson). Sadly, this type of foresight is uncommon. Because BitTorrent is such a radical idea, most entrenched corporations simply aren’t capable of understanding it.

There are other uses for BitTorrent that are not only legal, but even perfectly acceptable in polite society.

Probably my favorite use of BitTorrent is the amazing Project Gutenberg. This organization has been digitizing books in the public domain and distributing them freely… via BitTorrent, since this is such an efficient method of digital distribution. After all, BitTorent is used for transferring very large files like music and movies because it is very efficient.

BitTorrent file sharing is not all movies and music. Like IBM, many people actually use p2p to help distribute open source software like OpenOffice on p2p networks. There is a growing body of open source software available, for instance my favorite web browser is Mozilla’s Firefox.

In fact, there the awesome SourceForge website which provides a place to find all manner of open source software, or where you can release your own.

When a new distribution of Ubuntu is released, people around the world gather together and have Ubuntu Release Parties making more good use of BitTorrent

And of course the Pirate Party of Canada has established Captain: the Canadian Pirate Tracker, their own BitTorrent site where Recording Artists and Filmmakers (and I imagine novelists, and software creators as well would be welcome to utilize this) to freely distribute their work.

Every bit of music and every movie transferred is not a copyright infringement. If I get to the point where my home made movies may prove marketable, I would certainl be looking at BitTorrent Distribution. In fact it would probably be easier to distribute home movies to family via BitTorrent than it would be to try to burn DVDs. (DRM makes the two commercial movie making software packages I’ve purchased almost unusable. Of course it doesn’t slow down the bootleggers.) If YouTube is an indicator, I’m not the only person who wants to transfer music and movies freely … not as copyright infringements. I have paid levies to the music industry for home movies I have made and burrned to CD for distribution to friends and family. If I choose to transfer them via BitTorrent now I can avoid the levy but instead suffer the added expense of Bell Canada’s deliberate throttling inflation?

Another really good legal use of BitTorrents are the actual commercial websites where people can go to to purchase downloads of music. So far no one seems to have found anything wrong with this practice.

But that’s not all. Canada’s own CBC network tried their own experiment by releasing an episode of their program Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister via BitTorrent. Unfortunately the BitTorrent didn’t work so well because of Bell Canada’s CRTC approved BitTorrent “throttling”.

Geist tweets about the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation

Which is not to say it wasn’t a good idea. Not too long ago Michael Geist tweeted about the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s foray into BitTorrent use. All accounts indicate that their experiment was very successful indeed, which is having a big impact in the way they do business.

Ink Poster

The sad tale of a pirated Independent film can be found in this TorrentFreak article Indie Movie Explodes on BitTorrent, Makers Bless Piracy.

I guess it isn’t such a sad story after all.  

Thanks to piracy this Indie film called INK was has been achieving a distribution level that the filmmakers had never dreamed of.  They are of course extraordinarily pleased.

I think what is being called piracy here is BitTorrent p2p personal use sharing. Friends sharing with friends is one of the most effective ways to achieve recognition. They used to call it a “grass roots” movement. This is one of the major issues for the large movie studios. This is the place where they complain of being ripped off. What they don’t seem to realize is that this is a good thing. Exposure garners fans, makes a “name”. Fans buy stuff.

BitTorrent Traffic is not the only thing Bell Canada is Throttling

Rumour has it that there are people who actually work from home.

Time was the government encouraged the idea of people working from home. There are all sorts of advantages to society, like reduced congestion on actual highways, less wear and tear on our roads, a decrease in commuting based pollutants in our environment, a reduction of human depletion of fossil fuels.

But if you work from home, you are probably going to have to transfer files back and forth between your home and workplace. Chances are good that you are going to encrypt this type of traffic for security reasons. Although Bell Canada says they are only “throttling” BitTorrent traffic, in fact there have been instances of Bell throttling encrypted internet traffic on the assumption that if it’s encrypted, it must be BitTorrent traffic.

Bell places the onus on the customer to prove their “innocence” before they will consider stopping throttling.

Since the CRTC gave Bell Canada permission to use Deep Packet Inspection to inspect our packets, the only way to ensure that our private information remains private is through encryption. And in Canada any encrypted internet traffic will most likelyt be throttled.

Canadian Copyright Consultation

The Canadian Government is looking at updating Canadian copyright law. They held a copyright consultation process this year, travelling around Canada soliciting opinions of stakeholders. Even better, they set up a website where they accepted submissions from any Canadian who wished to contribute. This website was flooded with thousands of submissions. Some are simply a few lines, some are extensive essays covering all sorts of topics, but all I’ve read are heartfelt. Because of the overwhelming response it took a long time to get all the submissions posted. (My own submission finally made online.)

This process led a lot of Canadians, including me, to believe that the copycon process might actually mean that our elected representatives were listening to us.

Unfortunately there is currently a lot of pressure on our government to make copying movies, software and music for personal use illegal. The secret ACTA meetings have caused a feeling of dread to settle over most Canadians. There has been deprecating talk about weak Canadian copyright law.

Except it isn’t true.

If anything, Canadian copyright law is probably more robust than is good for us.

The essential problem that the copyright lobby is attempting to overcome the problem of suing their own customers for what they imagine are infringements. They have noticed that fighting personal use copying garners bad publicity. This problem can be neatly solved by passing the responsibility for finding and prosecuting copyright infringement to governments. And of course the only was to get government to take ob the responsibility is to convince them that the copyright infringement is a criminal offense.

Regardless, currently copyright law is imprecise as regards personal use copying. So we’ll just have to wait for an actual law to be passed before it becomes illegal. (This pressure is actually largely from foreign owned interests– like Disney. It will be interesting to see if our government caves to this outside pressure.)

mixed messages

The government mandated levy we pay every time we purchase a blank CD is a tacit governmental admission that it is legal to burn CDs of our own music.

In the pre-Tivo era, Canadian cable networks actively encouraged Canadians to videotape the movies that they showed so we could watch them when it was convenient. They called it “time shifting” in their massive advertising campaigns. But no media giants took our cable companies to court back then. For the same reason artists will lend or give away their work for free when they’re starting out (because they need to build and audience– exactly like the INK producers mentioned above), back then even Disney didn’t have a channel in Canada. So Disney didn’t kick up a fuss even though they had to have known this was happening. They let it go because it was in their best interests to allow time shifting (i.e personal use copying). Disney knew this was in their best interests because it would help the Canadian cable companies build their market.

Of course now Disney doesn’t want us to record their movies for personal use. Disney would be happy if our government decided personal use copying was illegal. They would be happier still if our government spent time and energy searching out and charging people who download Disney movies.

Disney would be happy they no longer had to expend time and energy chasing down copyright infringements. They would be ecstatic if our Mounties were to do it for them. Gratis.

But this precedent indicates copying movies for personal use is also legal in Canada

So even though p2p networks or copying movies and music are not actually illegal in Canada, our friends the CRTC gave Bell Canada permission to “throttle” anyone using bittorrent transfers. Because the assumption is that even if you’re not technically performing criminal acts, per se, anyone who uses BitTorrent can’t be very nice.

The CRTC, the government body that is supposed to safeguard Canadian telecommunication consumers, gave Bell Canada legal permission to mess with BitTorrent traffic. Its discriminatory for one thing. If there are copyright infringements happening, there are laws to handle them. It isn’t any of Bell Canada’s business. Or the CRTC’s.

[More on copyright in my other blog-- in the wind: Personal Use Copying vs. Bootlegging]

Dudley Do-Right?

The internet is a series of tubes

Even if it were true that Canadian consumers were downloading music or movies, and even if it had been made illegal under Canadian Law, it should not make a whit of difference.

Because Internet Service Providers or Internet Carriers are NOT branches of Canadian law enforcement. They have not been deputized to enforce the law by the RCMP. If Bell Canada was in fact a Law Enforcement entity they would not be allowed to peek in any citizen’s packets without first acquiring a search warrant. Corporations don’t exist to uphold laws, they exist to make money.

The internet has been called dumb pipes, or a series of tubes, or a highway. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, what is most important is access for all.

But the people who own the pipes should not be allowed to discriminate. Net Neutrality is so important; everyone should have access. The internet should be accessible to all.

revolutionary ideas

In the United Kingdom The Times Online Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? article looked at the benefits of personal use copying applied as peer to peer file sharing with some dramatic results.

Canada’s own ThisMagazine presented this thought provoking article Pay indie artists and break the music monopoly — Legalize Music Piracy which advocates making the law serve the artists and consumers rather than just the corporations.

Further rumblings about changing the way we look at this issue were reported recently by the The Globe and Mail blogs article NDP, Billy Bragg make case for free music

STOP Usage Based Billing

Roma – Multitouch? Interessantissimo, ma c’è di che ben distrarsi: Adobe, la scorsa settimana, ha pensato bene che il P2P non deve necessariamente essere un mezzo per piratare, piuttosto un utile strumento multicast. Proprio questo è ciò che si vedrà nelle nuove versioni di Flash e AIR. Da notare: anche, anzi, soprattutto per gli smartphone.

Cosa succede, in breve? Che, con il consenso dell’utente, la diffusione di contenuti multimediali non graverà solo e direttamente su un unico server che “trasmette”. Si avvarrà, invece, della possibilità di agganciarsi ad una trasmissione multipla, effettuata appunto in multicast, eseguita da alcuni dei client stessi.

Per raggiungere questo obbiettivo Adobe si è servita praticamente in toto della tecnica di BitTorrent: costruire, quindi, delle soluzioni groupware vere e proprie, in larga scala, basate sul P2P che funzionino dentro al browser e trasmettano video a milioni di spettatori, senza dover pagare una fortuna in banda Internet, spiega NewTeeVee.

Si tratta di una tecnica a cui Adobe lavora già da parecchio. L’ha presentata il project leader di Adobe, Matthew Kaufmann, in un video dai contenuti piuttosto tecnici ma con parecchi aspetti interessanti.

C’è stato molto lavoro per rendere questo progetto davvero scalabile e affidabile, combinando tra loro un gran numero di meccanismi. Chi pubblica, ad esempio, può distribuire un video in multicast IPv6 ed avere una sorta di backup distributivo con il supporto del multicast P2P. Oppure, può iniziare uno streaming da un server, come fatto finora, e sospingere la distribuzione  verso questa nuova tecnica. Kaufmann ha anche precisato che la latenza dell’implementazione Adobe in P2P è nettamente inferiore a quella adottata da altri sistemi (si pensi a Vuze, ndR).

Ma non è finita: gli sviluppatori potranno creare vere e proprie applicazioni all’interno dei browser, capaci di sfruttare questa novità. Un esempio è la replicazione degli oggetti, che è semplicemente una definizione più accademica di quanto accade con il file sharing.

Insomma, una piccola grande rivoluzione. Per vederla in azione, però, ci vorrà ancora qualche mese. Non sarà neppure facile convincere chi produce contenuti a servirsi di uno strumento in cui aleggi il solo acronimo, P2P, che da sempre è l’etichetta della pirateria. Ci sono, però, dall’altra parte, grosse economie di scala sotto il profilo della banda, che potrebbero spingere tanto i produttori quanto (anzi, soprattutto) gli ISP a guardare la soluzione con altri occhi.

Lo scenario effettivo, dunque, è ancora tutto da decidere, ma le promesse ci sono e, dove sono economicamente allettanti, certamente sono destinate a non passare inosservate.

Marco Valerio Principato

Fonte: http://nbtimes.it/tecnologie/informatica/4133/flash-e-air-sposano-il-p2p.html
Licenza CC http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.it

The Pirate Bay made headlines earlier this week with yet another dramatic announcement, this time that the notorious BitTorrent site’s tracker has been officially shut down. But the move won’t impact downloading, site admins explained on a blog. Trackers are no longer needed to facilitate BitTorrent transfers, the blog entry explained, because decentralized extensions of the P2P protocol are mature enough to pick up the tab. “It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date,” the blog proclaimed.

As always with announcements from the folks at The Pirate Bay, there’s a lot of self-serving smoke and mirrors, mixed with a good amount of hubris. However, the announcement does bring up an interesting question: Is BitTorrent really ready for a world without trackers? We talked to some of the major players to find out.

First, a quick primer so we all know what we’re talking about: When you download a file via BitTorrent today, you start off with a .torrent file that contains some meta data, including the address of at least one torrent tracker. These trackers facilitate your download by letting you know who else is sharing the file. The Pirate Bay’s tracker has been one of the biggest and, thus, most important of these facilitators, tracking by some estimates around 50 percent of the world’s BitTorrent traffic.

That’s a pretty impressive number, considering that the whole setup costs not much more than $3,000 per month, but it’s also an Achilles heel. After all, users solely relying on a tracker wouldn’t be able to exchange any files if the tracker became unavailable. That’s precisely why BitTorrent developers came up with a couple of decentralized approaches. Most BitTorrent clients now support a so-called Distributed Hash Table, or DHT.

A DHT is essentially a decentralized P2P network that stores all the information a tracker traditionally offers in the P2P cloud, making it possible to find users to download from even if the tracker server is offline. Most clients also support a feature called Peer Exchange (PEX) that’s meant to let peers talk to each other directly to take the load off a tracker server. The question is: Can DHT and PEX do all the heavy lifting and facilitate downloads for some 20 million simultaneous users without any tracker involved?

The first BitTorrent client that ever incorporated DHT was Vuze back in 2005 when it was still called Azureus, so I figured folks there might have an opinion on this. Vuze co-founder and CTO Olivier Chalouhi seemed bullish. “DHT works well as a technology, and is actually more scalable than tracker sites,” he told me. He cautioned, however, that very new files as well as rare files with few seeders would be served better by a tracker as opposed to a DHT-only environment.

Simon Morris from BitTorrent Inc. seemed a little more cautious. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some impact on performance,” he told me. “In theory DHT and PEX should be sufficient,” Morris explained, adding that the initial discovery of users to download from might be more reliable and robust if you can leverage a tracker server.

I also talked to an admin involved in running one of the big tracker servers that currently functions as the backbone of the BitTorrent universe. He sounded skeptical and said that he didn’t believe DHT to be scalable enough to completely take over.

To be honest, those are all just well-informed musings. We don’t really know what would happen if all of the world’s trackers were to be turned off tomorrow. What we do know is that BitTorrent wouldn’t work quite as seamlessly as it does now, if only for one reason: Bittorrent Inc. and Vuze actually use two different, incompatible DHT networks. This doesn’t matter as much when both clients are connected to the same tracker. However, in a tracker-less world, Vuze users wouldn’t be able to find users of BitTorrent’s client, and vice versa. Chalouhi told me that Vuze is currently working on integrating both DHTs to bridge those two worlds.

The good news is that trackers aren’t disappearing anytime soon. The Pirate Bay may have announced the retirement of its tracker this week, but the site’s tracker has actually been offline since early August, and other trackers have been more than capable of filling the void. In fact, tracker admins are working on new technology that would make their servers part of a federated network to prevent any interruption.

For end users, all of this means that little is changing. You’ll still use a BitTorrent site to search for content, and your client will most likely still connect to a tracker to download it. DHT has been around for years, and it may become more important over time. Some trackers may exchange data among themselves. The overall experience, however, will be pretty much the same. Maybe that’s what The Pirate Bay folks meant when they ended their sensationalistic announcement by proclaiming: “This is the future. And the present.” And the past, one might add.

The Pirate Bay, un dels indexadors de fitxers BitTorrent més usat arreu del món i que es va veure immers en un sonat procés judicial l’any passat ha anunciat que tancarà definitivament el seu tracker i anima la resta a seguir el mateix camí. Però malgrat el que pugui semblar no estem parlant d’una victòria de la indústria de continguts que criminalitza les descàrregues sinó d’un triomf de la tecnologia que, com sempre, va deu passes per endavant.

Tot i que ja era possible compartir fitxers sense tracker a través de BitTorrent, era una opció que encara no s’havia popularitzat i molts clients no la implementaven. A la pràctica, calia una màquina que coordinés la distribució entre ordinadors connectats, que centralitzés la informació sobre quins clients compartien determinar fitxer. Però amb l’avenç tecnològic que suposen especialment PEX (Peer Exchange) i DHT (Distributed Hash Table), s’aconsegueix una distribució descentralitzada sense necessitat d’un ordinador que coordini les descàrregues i asseguri el funcionament de la xarxa. En aquest cas són els mateixos ordinadors connectats els qui s’encarreguen de mantenir i distribuir la informació relativa a les descàrregues.

Per descomptat la descentralització és un avantatge tècnic important perquè fa que la xarxa no depengui d’una sola màquina i, a la vegada, dificulta molt més el control sobre què es descarrega i qui ho descarrega.

Font: Slashdot

Esto puede que suene como una mala noticia y probablemente muchos empezaran a celebrarlo de inmediato pero si leemos la noticia completa no tiene nada de malo.

En la lucha contra los intentos de cierre de trackers y paginas web de compartición de archivos la tecnología ha ido evolucionando y hace unos años empezó a introducirse en los clientes de Bittorrent una tecnología llamada DHT. Esta tecnología evita la necesidad del uso de trackers con lo que permite que la red este descentralizada ya que todos los clientes de forma conjunta son los encargados de distribuir la información que se encuentra en los trackers. Un tracker puede ser cerrado como llevan intentando hacer con “The Pirate Bay” desde hace tiempo pero aquí no hay un punto al que atacar si no que entre todos los clientes se realiza esta función.

Actualmente los chicos de “The Pirate Bay” han considerado que esta tecnología esta lo suficientemente madura como para sustituir a los trackers y por ello han decidido cerrar el suyo, como ellos dicen: “It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date.”.

Noticia original: The Pirate Bay

Well it’s official: yesterday (Wednesday) the UK government announced its intention to pass a law that will sever the internet connections of anyone suspected of illegally sharing files.

Through the medium of the “Queen’s Speech” (an archaic tradition by which the Queen announces the government’s legislative plans for the coming year) it was revealed that file-sharers’ broadband links will be disconnected without trial.

As the current government’s term is nearing its end, there’s a chance that they may run out of time before the “Digital Economy” bill is passed. But it doesn’t really matter: the opposition Conservative party supports this proposal too. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise: both the Tories and Labour have long been in love with big business. This proposed law is a sop to the music and film industries, who claim that “copyright theft” costs them hundreds of millions of pounds a year – they claim that they lost £486 million in 2007, and that an estimated 6.5 million Brits illegally downloaded music and films last year. Of course that’s nonsense: their calculations are based on the lie that every album or movie illegally downloaded represents a direct loss of revenue, completely ignoring the fact that most file-sharers would not have bought the records or videos they downloaded. But the industry can’t let the truth get in the way.

The government refuses to admit that innocent people may fall foul of the new law, despite the fact that wireless networks can be used by unauthorized downloaders and that multi-occupancy residences can contain more than one computer using the same IP address. I’m interested to see how the rights-owners or ISPs will be able to identify which downloads are illegal. Peer-to-peer protocols like bittorrent are used extensively for perfectly above-board downloads too. There’s been mention of using “phishing” techniques and “honeypot sites” to detect illegal transactions; hopefully this will all become clearer soon.

Many commentators believe that the film and music industries are just using file-sharers as scapegoats for their falling profits. Content providers need to come up with new business models that accommodate consumers’ changing habits.

Mark Schmid, from TalkTalk, said: “There’s been a real split among content owners when it comes to readjusting to the new digital landscape. Some – such as computer games companies – have been clever and come up with innovative ways to discourage piracy and maintain customer loyalty, for instance through adding extra levels to computer games that you only get if you’ve bought the product. But other content sectors – most notably the music industry – have failed to innovate and have blamed the internet for spoiling their old ways of doing business. We think this is extremely complacent. The internet is now a fact of life and we believe new business models need to be introduced if they want to survive and thrive in the digital world.”

Illegal downloading is not responsible for the film industry’s woes. Today’s widely-available fast broadband connections have made online streaming much more popular. There are legal free services, like BBC iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4OD service, and the US-based Hulu (set to come to Britain in 2010). And there are a great many ad-supported streaming sites like Youku and Megavideo. The film and TV content providers need to change their business model. But why should they, when governments are willing to make us reward their ineptitude?

Watch out, world: it’s happening in the UK now, and in France; but soon it’ll be in the USA, Australia, the rest of Europe… hell, everywhere. No one’s safe from the internet police.

If you don’t want this crazy plan to become law, you need to act!!  Visit the Open Rights Group web site to learn how you can help campaign against the internet disconnection bill!

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pungjiee:a7f94813be7ab282f84cc838315447eb:asita_pam@hotmail.com

TwilighT:f971e733e72a0ead54c1b5c87c0128df:kanchapong@hotmail.com

Haha, for en idiotkommentar:

- Folk flest er ukjent med begreper som DHT (Distributed hash table) og PEX (Peer Exchange), og selv om det er usikkert hvor mye praktisk som vil endre seg framstår teknologien enda mer teknisk enn før, sier Valvik.

Nå kan man aldri vite om det er journalisten eller «eksperten» som får en «ekspertuttalelse» til å høres ut som ett eller annet vås fra NRK, eller det som verre er. Men man kan ane. Og frykte. I verste fall er det begge to: Både Dagbladets fildelingsjournalist Joakim Thorkildsen og dennes utkårede «fildelingsekspert» Simon Valvik.

Det som er idiotisk med utsagnet over er i alle fall to ting:

• Torrentteknologien har alltid vært ekstremt teknisk. Den blir neppe «enda mer teknisk» nå.
• Det har ingenting å si om folk flest – eller Valvik – er ukjent med DHT & PEX.

Bruken av teknologi avhenger ikke av dybdekunnskap. Spør mor din! Vet hun egentlig hvordan fasttelefonen fungerer, egentlig? Enda hun bruker den, og vekselvis mobilen, i en eller to timer hver dag, er hun rimelig likeglad med hvordan stemmen hennes omformes til digitale nuller og ettall som sendes via kabler og mobilmaster og det som er, før de snor seg rundt noen gatehjørner i hovedstaden og omformes til mors stemme i mobilen min, samtidig som jeg laster ned South Park gjennom den samme mobilen, henter inn tweets via TweetDeck og småprater litt i Google Wave (brb, modern på fonen).

For henne og alle andre er det brukeropplevelsen som betyr noe. Brukerillusjonen, om du vil. Hvordan telefon og fildeling fungerer på overflaten, den synlige overflaten. Må hun taste inn hashkoder? Neppe. Må hun vite hva en hashkode er? Overhode ikke. Trenger hun vite navnet på det hun vil laste ned? Ja, absolutt, medmindre hun kan klare seg med et temasøk.

Og ikke uventet blir både journalisten, «eksperten» og artikkelen hudflettet og grundig satt på plass av leserne – de virkelige ekspertene – i kommentarfeltet under artikkelen. Hvorfor ikke først som sist begynne å lese kommentarene først når man er på Dagbladet? De overbetalte surrehuene som sitter nede på Havnelageret og knoter er det i alle fall ikke verdt å lese. Ikke engang gratis.

Den nye trackeren til Pirate Bay-kara lyder navnet Open Bittorrent (søkbar her). Og lite eller ingenting vil forandre seg for brukerne.

A short historical account of Peer-To-Peer. And where Free Press has to go.

The Pirate Bay crew just announced today that it has “decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date.”  They have put the “server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well.”

This is something we should celebrate, I think it will pave the way for more to come from us.

No Big Words, Many Small Steps Forward

Solid change, change that lasts and changes the world, builds up from the bottom first. The Peer-To-Peer (P2P) scene was and is a driver of technological change to distribute information (data) in the most reliable, robust, resource efficient and effective way possible. Modern P2P is a system with checks and balances and economic incentive system.

At the beginning, the tracker was needed as limitations in capacity, bandwidth et cetera existed. A checksum, balancing, coordination, peer discovery had to be centralised because of limitations to get it organised. Cumulative Peer capacity couldn’t handle it. After Napster, the first centralised Peer-to-Peer network, was ‘closed’ in July 2001 (and eventually re-opened as pay service in October 2003 and still running), a whole legion of encouraged individuals and groups were formed around the idea of a safer and better Peer-to-Peer protocol to distribute information.

It is safe to say that without the hard rulings and interventions of big corporations against individuals – eDonkey, Gnutella & Gnutella2, now-defunct Kazaa, and finally the great triumph of BitTorrent would have never happened. David won – in a technological sense, and looking at the horizon.

I see Peer-to-Peer, the decentralized distribution of and access to information as stepping-stone in history for Cloud Computing and Services. I work on a server, if I would compare my PC to a 1998 server (IBM AS/400 Series anyone?). Cloud Computing and Services (several server instances running on a physical server connected to another physical server network not at the same location) has the same characteristics as Peer-to-Peer networks.

It shows that a small group of individuals who feel empowered to build something that serves their interest, can serve the greater interest too.

If people just could see the greater purpose of democratizing information distribution, if people and media and professionals cloud let go of the stigma of piracy.

Aristocracy and Plutocracy

Before the Industrial Revolution, someone had power and ruled the Land of God who was of Royal Blood, and lead the armies for the Kings who was the physical strongest and had some smarts. Wars against countries were fought to diminish competing Royal Blood, following a self-interest in fame and fortune, land grabbing, resources and other riches at the time. And crime was rule against the poor, the proletariat, and the middle class.

After the Industrial Revolution, information as currency became more prevalent as form of power over the Land God Blessed then anytime before. Now, power lies to whom who controls information and what is disseminated to the public.

Large media conglomerates (.pdf – visual overview fron 2001) of today include, National Amusements, Viacom, CBS Corporation, (AOL) Time Warner, News Corp, Bertelsmann AG, Sony, General Electric, Vivendi SA, The Walt Disney Company, Hearst Corporation, Organizações Globo and Lagardère Group. Concentration of media ownership is an issue globally, regionally, and also within particular nations.

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the most influential founding fathers, knew how crucial Free Press is. To uphold the rights citizens fought for, their sovereignty and the ideas of republicanism for America.

Republicanism is the value system of governance that has been a major part of American civic thought since the American Revolution. It stresses liberty and rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, rejects inherited political power, expects citizens to be independent in their performance of civic duties, and is strongly inclined against corruption. American republicanism was founded and first practiced by the Founding Fathers in the 18th century. This system was based on early Roman and English models and ideas. It formed the basis for the American Revolution and the consequential Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787), as well as the Gettysburg Address. It is not the same as democracy, for republicanism asserts that people have inalienable rights that cannot be voted away by a majority of voters. In a government made up as a constitutional republic, the Rule of Law and clearly defined constitutional principles dictate the actual administration of government.

Thomas Jefferson TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE in 1823.

But the only security of all, is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.

We arc all, for example, in agitation even in our peaceful country. For in peace as well as in war, the mind must be kept in motion.

The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume I, 4th ed.

Excerpt of the Speech delivered at the National Republican Convention held at Worcester (Mass.), on the 12th of October, 1832, preparatory to the Annual Elections.

But there is another attempt to grasp and to wield a power over public opinion, of a still more daring character, and far more dangerous effects.

In all popular governments, a Free Press is the most important of all agents and instruments. It not only expresses public opinion, but, to a very great degree, it contributes to form that opinion. It is an engine for good or for evil, as it may be directed; but an engine of which nothing can resist the force. The conductors of the press, in popular governments, occupy a place, in the social and political system, of the very highest consequence. They wear the character of public instructors. Their daily labors bear directly on the intelligence, the morals, the taste, and the public spirit of the country. Not only are they journalists, recording political occurrences, but they discuss principles, they comment on measures, they canvass characters; they hold a power over the reputation, the feelings, the happiness, of individuals. The public ear is always open to their addresses, the public sympathy easily made responsive to their sentiments. It is indeed, Sir, a distinction of high honor, that theirs is the only profession expressly protected and guarded by constitutional enactments. Their employment soars so high, in its general consequences it is so intimately connected with the public happiness, that its security is provided for by the fundamental law. While it acts in a manner worthy of this distinction, the press is a fountain of light, and a source of gladdening warmth. It instructs the public mind, and animates the spirit of patriotism. Its loud voice suppresses every thing which would raise itself against the public liberty; and its blasting rebuke causes incipient despotism to perish in the bud.

But remember, Sir, that these are the attributes of a Free press only. And is a press that is purchased or pensioned more free than a press that is fettered? Can the people look for truths to partial sources, whether rendered partial through fear or through favor ? Why shall not a manacled press be trusted with the maintenance and defence of popular rights ? Because it is supposed to be under the influence of a power which may prove greater than the love of truth. Such a press may screen abuses in government, or be silent. It may fear to speak. And may it not fear to speak, too, when its conductors, if they speak in any but one way, may lose their means of livelihood ? Is dependence on government for bread no temptation to screen its abuses ? Will the press always speak the truth, when the truth, if spoken, may be the means of silencing it for the future ? Is the truth in no danger, is the watchman under no temptation, when he can neither proclaim the approach of national evils, nor seem to descry them, without the loss of his place ?

Closing Words

It has to be mine, yours and everyone’s task, to continue the fight for information sovereignty in every form possible. Small steps towards success are more worth than big words.  Forming our own declaration of independence. Independence from information conglomerates formed out of capitalistic self interest. Controlled by the few, influences the many. The fight against the formed plutocracy trying to get their hand around The Internets. Plutocracy is shadowing our democracy year over year a little bit more. And we just don’t notice the shades of grey getting darker every year.

Decentralised (Peer-to-Peer) distribution of information can hold the key to renew democracy, renew the republicanism of America. Overcoming our information dependency from conglomerates, and forming our everyday decisions making on our interest from information out of our hands. Not theirs. Putting them, the conglomerates with capitalistic self-interest, in a museum rather sooner than later.

Mr. President, I will quit this topic. There is much in it, in my judgment, affecting, not only the purity and independence of the press, but also the character and honor, the peace and security, of the government. I leave it, in all its bearings, to the consideration o. the people.

————

Sources:

• Thomas Jefferson TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE in 1823. (Google Books)
• The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume I, 4th ed. 1853 (Google Books). Interesting to note, he was for Free Press. But was a lobbyist too.

]]> http://11k2.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/pirate-bay-wird-trackerlos/ Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:54:50 +0000 Fritz http://11k2.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/pirate-bay-wird-trackerlos/

Der 17. November wird in die Annalen der Kulturgeschichte eingehen. Als der Tag, an dem der berüchtigte schwedische BitTorrent-Tracker Pirate Bay den Hauptangriffsvektor der copyright-imperialen Galeonen ausschaltete:

Die Pirate Bay verzichtet auf den Tracker. Was? Ja, die Bay-Piraten versichern uns, es gäbe keinen wirklichen Grund mehr, Tracker zu verwenden, weil nämlich moderne Web-Technologien wie DHT und PEX dasselbe können. Interessant.

Damit würde P2P wirklich Peer To Peer, ohne jede (angreifbare) Zentralseite, ohne jene Achillesferse, die bisher Filesharing-Sites zu Fall gebracht hat. Aber damit nicht genug: Die Pirate Bay Piraten haben Kontakt zu den anderen grossen Torrent-Seiten aufgenommen, um eine konzertierte Aktion anzuregen: Man solle sich auf einen gemeinsamen Termin verständigen, ab welchem alle Tracker abgeschaltet würden. Jetzt gibt es schliesslich den Magnetizer, und ähnliche Spielsachen, die herkömmliche Torrents prima ersetzen können.

Wir alle verfolgen diese Entwicklung mit Spannung; die einschlägigen Copyright-Barone verfolgen dieselbe dagegen mit Grausen. Schliesslich würde die Verfolgung von fälschlicherweise so genannten “Internetpiraten” dadurch erheblich erschwert. Gut so, schliesslich muss die Verfolgung unschuldiger Privatkopierer einmal ein Ende haben. Und sei es nur, weil sie zu teuer geworden ist.

( via torrentfreak)

The Pirate Bay is shutting down its tracker technology, its crew announced in a blog post that only accentuated the positive, in a move that follows a multiyear hailstorm of legal machinations, jail sentences thrown at founders, and constant public scrutiny. The positive spin in the blog post is reminiscent of the founders’ claims that their jail sentences represented “an epic win.”  But now that the site will switch to decentralized distributed hash table (DHT) technology for pointing to torrent sources, what is the likely impact on downloaders and freeloaders? They will have to turn to new alternatives, but those choices will take shape.

According to today’s blog post:

Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down!…By moving to a more decentralized system of handling tracking (DHT+PEX) and distributions of torrent files (Magnet Links), BitTorrent will become less vulnerable to downtime and outages.

Magnet links let users download torrents directly into BitTorrent clients, circumventing browsers. Through DHT technology, users seeking torrents access a dedicated DHT network, and find peers for the actual downloads. So, effectively, The Pirate Bay is seeking to avoid centralizing tracked torrents and services in such a way that it can stay free of legal problems.

Does that mean the end of widespread torrent downloading, including illegal downloads, though? Absolutely not. The Pirate Bay’s position as the leading purveyor of BitTorrent traffic is threatened, but torrenters will march on.

For one thing, TorrentFreak already spoke with Pirate Bay insiders who said that a decentralized model can work across many high-profile torrent sites:

We’re talking to the other torrent admins on doing magnet links and DHT+PEX for all sites. Moving away from torrents and trackers totally — like pick a date and all agree “from this date, we’ll not support torrents anymore.”

The idea of a federated collection of BitTorrent trackers around the web has been raised before. Now that idea could shift to a federated trackerless collection of sites, with P2P-based torrenting becoming more widely distributed.

Let’s also keep in mind that the overall world of torrenting extends to many useful, legal sites providing content. NewTeeVee collected many of them here.  Legaltorrents, for example, distributes lots of Creative Commons-licensed content. Legal and illegal torrenting will continue as The Pirate Bay sends its tracker to Davey Jones’ locker, but today does mark an official end to a torrent tracking strategy that was central to The Pirate Bay’s ongoing notoriety.

It’s with this article on their blog that the crew of the most famous tracker in the world announced that their torrent tracking service will no longer be available to the masses..

It’s probably the end of an era.. but as sad by the crew: “It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well.”

They decided to move to a more reliable standard based on a system of handling tracking (DHT+PEX) and distributions of torrent files (Magnet Links) which is less vulnerable to downtime and outages.

One of the reasons Hollywood is putting up such a fight against piracy is that Bittorrent has become the main delivery of video content in the world (excepting Youtube which Hollywood does not consider a threat, yet.).

But recently things have started happening. iTunes launched it’s video store a couple of years ago and while it is only available in the US so far it is delivering a lot of content. Hulu, Voddler and Netflicks are also showing the market another way to make a profit. The list goes on and on as new companies try to change the way the market works.

While I find this to be a great development I’m a bit sad that companies need to out compete the old system just to deliver content in a way that pirates have been doing for over ten years. But I guess change is, as ever, ver hard for Hollywood.

Until one of these services can offer a large amount of content for sensible amounts of money in Europe however, I think I’ll stick to my newest find HDMT. A great international streaming service for new movies and TV shows, all in HD.

I stumbled across this new torrent site today, “Kickass Torrents”. What they do is allow you to download torrent files without going through the whole torrent thing.

Kickass Torrents has partnered with httpTorrents to offer this fantastic service.

“The integration with httpTorrents gives users the option to download the files directly without having to use a BitTorrent client. Music tracks can also be streamed directly from the site itself. The service works in a similar way to most other files hosting services such as Rapidshare, but only works with torrents and doesn’t allow users to upload files themselves.

The owner of the site told TorrentFreak that direct http downloads may be useful to users who have restricted access to BitTorrent, such as those whose ISP or firewall blocks or slows down transfers. There are currently 4000 files available as a direct download, but this number is growing rapidly.”

Im not quite able to see how this can be done legally, but as a free market economist, and a lover of getting things cheap/free, i dont really care too much.

Below I have made a little walkthrough for how to use the site and download the files on it, via HTTP.

Downloading HTTP Files on KickassTorrent.com

Begin by navigating to : http://www.kickasstorrents.com/direct-download/ for the full list of files that currently offer direct download.

You will be greeted with this window;

Click on one of the results, to be taken to that files page:

Notice the download options, click one of these to download the corresponding file via HTTP:

After clicking download you will be taken to the httpTorrent page to download the file, httpTorrent works exactly like Rapidshare and Megashares, the simply host files on their server.

All you do is click on ‘Download’ under the free account heading and voila. The file begins to download, at a not too shabby 160kb/sec.

For more info on Kickass Torrents, check out their site, or this good blog post from TorrentFreak.

Un tempo dire “BitTorrent” equivaleva a dire “Pirate Bay”. Insomma, materiale pirata da caricare, e scaricare, da un sistema P2P. Poi, le note vicissitudini legate alla Baia dei Pirati, e relative beghe legali, hanno portato dapprima alla sua messa al bando e, successivamente, alla chiusura. Da lì in poi, un alternarsi di altre cause e relative sentenze, che ha un po’ disorientato gli utenti sul futuro del servizio e sulla sua legittimità.

È pur vero che BitTorrent è utilizzato da molte società anche per la distribuzione legale dei propri contenuti. Tanto che RedLynx, uno sviluppatore di videogiochi, qualche giorno fa ha annunciato la distribuzione di una versione quasi completa del suo gioco Trials, per invogliare all’acquisto dell’edizione a pagamento, dotata di funzioni aggiuntive come la classifica.

Continua a leggere “Scaricare da BitTorrent? È Legal…Torrents”

Les rumeurs vont bon train sur le net au sujet de Demonoid.

Le Staff de Demonoid a donc voulu clarifier certaines choses, ce qui a été fait sur la page de demonoid.com.

Voici la traduction approximative :

“Il y a des rumeurs comme quoi le site va fermer pour de bon et de notre côté, nous avons commencer a créer un nouvel outil pour l’an prochain.

Les rumeurs sont bien sûr des mensonges. Il n’est pas prévu de fermer ou de créer un autre site.

Sur Twitter et sur Facebook, les groupes ou pages ne sont pas des pages Demonoid officielles, même chose sur  n’importe quelle autre page Web communautaire. Il y a un peu partout des pages qui ont été créés par les fans et n’ont aucun lien avec le site ou le staff de Demonoid.

Les parties du code du site qui a été supprimé sont en cours de réécriture et devrait être bientôt prêt. Nous travaillons également pour tenter de minimiser la perte de données, autant que possible.

Merci de votre patience.“

Voila qui est dit !

El fin de The Pirate Bay se acerca. Para muchos de los fanáticos de BitTorrent esto significa tener que buscar alternativas. Desafortunadamente, reemplazar a The Pirate Bay es más fácil de decir que hacer. El tracker es actualmente responsable de casi la mitad de las transferencias públicas de torrents, lo que representa un porciento elevado del tráfico total de Internet.

Sin embargo, la historia ha demostrado que los usuarios de BitTorrent son una especie con gran capacidad de adaptación…simplemente migran a un nuevo sitio cuando el actual se vuelve inhabitable.

Alternativas completas a The Pirate Bay

Las alternativas completas a The Pirate Bay son sitios que indexan archivos .torrent, son abiertos a todo el mundo y además poseen su propio tracker. Desafortunadamente, solo hay unos pocos sitios en Internet que ofrecen este paquete completo.

• Torrentbox
• 1337x

Indexadores de Torrents

Los indexadores de torrent son sitios que poseen un directorio de archivos .torrent, pero no ofrecen un tracker (público). Dichos directorios ofrecen capacidades de búsqueda.

• isoHunt
• BTjunkie

Meta buscadores de Torrents

Los meta buscadores de BitTorrent son otra variedad de los sitios de torrents. Ellos no tienen un tracker y no almacenan ningún archivo .torrent en sus servidores. En cambio, ellos buscan torrents en terceros sitios y ofrecen los enlaces a los mismos.

• TorrentFly
• P2PFinder

Por último pero no menos importante

Google, el modelo para todos los buscadores tiene un comando de búsqueda que permite buscar archivos .torrent regados por Internet: filetype:torrent. Además, la búsqueda personalizada de Google le permite a cualquiera crear su propio buscador de torrents. No le digas a MPAA ni a RIAA.

• Google.

VS  

You are currently connected to the internet, this is fact considering you are reading this article. I would put money down that at some point you committed some act of piracy. You may download music, games, movies, whatever. Or just watch something on YouTube that is copyrighted. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with that and the morality of pirating is certainly not the focus of this article.

Instead it is the fact that Hollywood (and the music industry, but that’s another show) just straight up refuses to embrace the incredible marketing tool that is BitTorrent. Let me compare for you the cases of two new movies. In the Hollywood corner, weighing in at a budget of $24 million: Zombieland; and in the indie corner, weighing in at a budget of $250,000: Ink. Both movies have been pirated all over the web and have made it to TorrentFreak’s top 10 pirated movie lists for various weeks.

Zombieland was downloaded over one million times, Ink was downloaded more than 400,000 times. No matter how you slice it that is a shit-ton of people who have seen those movies. The important thing here is how the two camps responded to this incredible popularity.

First let’s tackle Ink. Who here has even heard of Ink? I hadn’t until I read about it today. It’s a movie with an interesting sounding story, and I am probably going to download it later. Now as an independent movie you would think that the creator of the film would probably be none too pleased to see all his hard work get him nothing as so many people see his movie for free. Completely on the contrary though he has chosen to embrace the piracy and at a request of the pirates put up a Donate link on his website. He has gotten unprecedented exposure and hundreds of thousands of unanticipated fans.

Now let’s look at Zombieland. A movie which I still need to see admittedly but pretty much looks like Left 4 Dead in movie format (which would be a very good thing). The movie took $24 million to make and has pulled in $84 million in box office revenue so far. Needless to say it’s a popular movie. So how does one of the co-writers respond to seeing his movie pirated one million times? Is he as happy as the Indie guys? Thrilled that so many people liked his movie? Not in the slightest.

Quoth the Twitter: “Beyond depressing. This greatly affects the likelihood of a Zombieland 2.”

Are you effing kidding me? You’ve made $60 million dollars on this film and one million frickin’ people want to see this movie. In Hollywood it seems to be pretty much guaranteed that if you sell even one ticket to a movie there will be a sequel so I don’t think incredible popularity is really going to cause too many problems.

The issue here is that his response perfectly represents Hollywood’s stance on piracy. They just can’t seem to realize that they have an insanely powerful tool for them to use for free! Now I’m no marketing guru here but I would think that someone would have looked into this and saw that box office revenues, DVD sales, merchandise sales have all gone up. Seriously Hollywood, WTF?

I seen this morning on Digg but didn’t really know how. I wanted to go about writing a post about it. Basically if your at all interested in BitTorrent you probably want  to give the article a look. I think its like eight pages long though, so get comfortable.

via:MaximumPC