Technology as a way of life

The controversial Digital Economy Bill has passed its third reading and will pass into law, after just two hours of debate in the Common.
The bill passed with a majority of 189 votes to 47. Under the legislation, ISPs will be forced to send letters to alleged file-sharers threatening to suspend their internet connections. It also grants the secretary of state for business the power to block "a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright".

The power replaces Clause 18 which granted the Government wide-ranging powers to deal with future methods of copyright infringement without the need for further legislation.
However, Labour MP John Hemming protested that the power could still prove a danger to sites such as Wikileaks - the whistle blowing website that hosts copyrighted material.

"A recent example is the US air force video, which it published," argued Hemming. "Copyright exists with the US Government, who under the Bill could, and would want to, apply to ban WikiLeaks from the UK. That provision is clearly in the Bill."

The objection was waved aside by Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms who claimed it was important the bill did not impede freedom of speech, but offered no guarantees on the future of sites such as Wikileaks.
While a number of MPs complained that the bill was too big to be dealt with in "wash up", the most damning sentiment came from former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson who wrote on Twitter "First time I've ever broken the whip in the chamber. I feel physically sick."

Just days after a judge reduced the $1.92m damages bill handed down to Jammie Thomas to a slightly more sensible $54,000, her legal team have turned down an offer to settle for $25,000.
Outrage at the huge damages eventually resulted in Judge Davis lowering the damages last week to $54,000.
To try and bring the whole sorry episode to an end, yesterday the RIAA made an offer to Thomas to settle the case for $25,000, if she agreed to ask the judge to “vacate” last week’s decision, which means removing it from the record.
Her lawyers immediately rejected the offer, indicating they would only accept a settlement which means Thomas has to pay nothing.
The RIAA said that this rejection means that they will now challenge the judge’s decision last week to lower the $1.92m damages.
Will this ever come to an end? What a complete waste of money.
(Source:FreakBits.com)

Earlier this year several publications claimed that P2P and BitTorrent were dying because of the increased popularity of streaming sites. In reality, BitTorrent is about to close a record year in terms of traffic and usage.
The misleading reports all based their conclusions on data supplied by a network-management firm, which showed that of all Internet traffic, the percentage consumed by P2P has slowly declined. However, those who take a closer look at the data will find that in absolute traffic, P2P continued to grow, with bandwidth used by streaming just growing a little bit faster.
BitTorrent is by no means dying, nor is there a decline. Quite the opposite. All the major BitTorrent sites saw a significant increase in visitor numbers over the past months. TorrentFreak asked Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management, if this growth is also reflected in the usage stats of uTorrent.
“Probably the emergence of things like Hulu and continued growth of Youtube make it seem like Bittorrent is not the only thing driving demand for consumer bandwidth. But we see no evidence whatever that BitTorrent clients are any less popular,” Morris told TorrentFreak.
Around this time last year uTorrent had 28 million unique users a month, and by November 2009 this figure had almost doubled to 52 million monthly users. And things have been going equally well for uTorrent’s little brother, BitTorrent Mainline.
“In addition to this, at the start of this year we saw almost 5 million monthly users of BitTorrent Mainline,” Morris said. “In November 2009 we saw over 10 million.”
These statistics show that despite the legal setbacks The Pirate Bay, Mininova and isoHunt have faced in court, the number of people who are using BitTorrent has continued to grow significantly. There is no indication that this growth will slow, let alone stop, in 2010.
The uTorrent development team also has some major improvements in the pipeline. Last week streaming support was added to the client, and in the coming year it will add file security features and the option for torrent site owners to promote their content within the client.
(Source: TorrentFreak.com)

 I knew they would be back as this article from "TorrentFreak" explains it in detail:

The Pirate Bay is going on a road trip through Europe, one they hope to end today in a former NATO bunker. After a move from Sweden to the Ukraine, The Pirate Bay has now arrived at CyberBunker, an ISP that can provide them with a facility that can resist a nuclear attack as well as electromagnetic pulse bombs.

After being chased by various anti-piracy groups, The Pirate Bay returned a few hours ago. “Nobody puts The Pirate Bay in a corner,” they say on their frontpage, referencing Patrick Swayze’s famous line in Dirty Dancing. Not in a corner, no, but what about a bunker?
Last Friday we reported that The Pirate Bay was forced to move outside of Sweden, and that the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker had found a new home in the Ukraine. Unfortunately this was a short-lived solution, with TPB now moving to Cyberbunker.
CyberBunker is located in a former military nuclear warfare bunker in The Netherlands. The facility was built by NATO in the 50s to survive a nuclear war, but after the nuclear threats were over it was sold to its current owners. The bunker is now used as a webhosting data center.
The bunker is equipped with Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) shielding and Nuclear/Biological/Chemical (NBC) air filtration to guarantee that the servers they host stay up no matter what happens. As of this week it is also the new home of The Pirate Bay.

CyberBunker: The Pirate Bay’s new home

According to Sven Kamphuis, one of the owners of CB3ROB/Cyberbunker, there were some initial troubles with setting up The Pirate Bay in its new location as several carriers refused to pass on the relay information after they received threats from the entertainment industry led by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN.
Despite these troubles the site is now accessible again in most locations, and Cyberbunker will continue to host the site and does not intend to cave in to the threats of the entertainment industry.
“I don’t expect BREIN to do pretty much anything at this point. The last conversation we had with them was about some mp3 site they wanted to have shut down somewhere in 2001/2002. It took around 3 hours at 2am at night and the end result was that both parties agreed not to agree,” Kamphuis told TorrentFreak.
Whether The Pirate Bay is actually located in one of the server racks at the bunker or another hideout was not confirmed.

With both the Pirate Bay and OpenBitTorrent trackers down at the moment, many people are unable to download torrents unless they enable DHT. Luckily there are a few backup trackers that people can use, and thanks to Google’s free App Engine, everyone can setup a tracker of their own in a few minutes.

In their defense, operators of BitTorrent sites often argue that they do nothing more than Google does. They offer a search platform for people to find content on the web, specifically torrent files. To a certain extent they are right, Google can be used to find torrent files in several ways.

For example, the mother of all search engines has a special search command that allows you to find torrent files scattered across the Internet.

Google’s custom search also allows everyone to create their own torrent search engine, and Google’s App Engine enables users to start a free torrent search engine for free by using Google’s servers.

It is quite clear that there are several ways to find torrents through Google. However, just finding torrents is not enough. In order to download content through BitTorrent successfully, one also needs a working tracker in order to locate those all-important peers. Luckily Google can help here too.

By using Google’s App Engine, everyone can run a tracker without having to invest a single dime in hardware or bandwidth. The only problem is making the tracker compatible with the App Engine, but thanks to the newly released Atrack software it is a piece of cake to set one up.

The Atrack Bittorrent tracker is designed to run on Google App Engine and its main goals are a minimal memory use, speed, low bandwidth usage and efficient CPU use. On top of this the tracker wont store any data at all, making it as secure as possible for its users.

“Atrack also aims to respect your privacy: other than what is needed for the most basic tracking, Atrack gathers no information whatsoever. Beyond that no aggregate statistics are kept of anything, and nothing is stored permanently anywhere, not even hashes and ip/ports,” the Atrack team writes.

So now everyone can set up a standalone BitTorrent tracker at no cost aside from the the time it takes to set things up. The Atrack software is released into the public domain, and a test tracker is up and running on Google’s App Engine.

Source: TorrentFreak

Following the earlier court defeat for Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter and the pending civil action taken by several Hollywood studios, the Swedish authorities have now ordered The Pirate Bay to be disconnected from the Internet. The site’s bandwidth suppliers have been threatened with a large fine. The site is completely offline. - www.torrentfreak.com

I was a bit shocked (WTF!!!) at first when i heard this. They seemed the only ones who could "legalize" torrents and between the few who dared to stand up proud in RIAA's face but now they are down. TPB said they have a backup temporary host but in the moment this article was written the site is still down.

The thing is, TPB tracker was responsable for almost 50% of the torrent traffic worldwide and thats a big hit for seeders and leechers eveywhere. We already see traffic spikes for other sites and trackers which means RIAA/MPAA didn't "solve" anything really, they just diverted "the issue" to other sites. TPB has put its whole database available for download to anyone who wants to build a clone of the original site, so another TPB may appear out of nowhere when we least expect.

RIAA has "invested" (bribed) alot of money (we're speaking millions of dollars) in its purpose to bring down TPB and it seems it worked for now. Thats what usually happens when you give monkeys (to not say idiots..opsss) enormous funds and power. But what happens to all the other torrent sites? Under the pressure the administrators will most likely obey to RIAA and close themselves to avoid any legal actions and fines.

Music downloading may or may not be illegal but when you search all the music stores for older albums (80-90') and all you find is "trendy" hip-hop/house synthetic crap that automatically makes you use torrents where people also share REAL music and have different tastes besides what we see/hear daily on tv/radio.

Untill prices for albums don't go down, or at least to the point where the artist is getting 70-80% of the selling price instead of the record labels, people will continue using torrents or other means.

A digital revolution anyone???

...just my 2cents RaduB.

The RIAA has won another case against a P2P file sharer, this time with a sum of a massive $1.92 million.

A federal jury found Jammie Thomas-Rasset guilty for willful infringement of 24 copyrights held by four major record labels. Ars Technica reported that Thomas-Rasset gasped and eyes widened as the dollar amount was read to the court.

The $1.92 million award to the RIAA over the 24 songs works out to be $80,000 per song. This was the outcome of the retrial of the original decision to award the RIAA with $9,250 per song. Apparently, the jury felt that Thomas-Rasset was a liar and thus handed down the harsh penalty.

Evidence against Thomas Rasset included the MAC addresses of both her cable modem and her Ethernet card, her username on Kazaa and her hard drive replacement.

Thomas-Rasset doesn’t appear to have any intentions on paying the RIAA. "They did their job… I'm not going to hold it against them," she said. "Good luck trying to get it from me... it's like squeezing blood from a turnip."

In recent months we’ve reported several times how Spanish courts have ruled that not only is personal use file-sharing legal in Spain, but file-sharing sites that do not directly profit from infringement are also protected under the law. This allowed the admins of sites like Sharemula to walk away from legal action without a scratch.

Of course, as far as the United States and its piracy watch-lists go, this is an unacceptable situation and one which needs to be changed as quickly as possible.

According to the United States, Spain has one of the worst file-sharing “problems” in the world. The US claims it is consistently among the top five worst countries in terms of overall downloads and that it regularly takes the top position for movie downloads per capita. The MPA(A), who can hardly be trusted to report unbiased stats, says movie downloads by Spanish citizens reached 350 million in 2008.

While video game publishers claim that 50 million games were downloaded illegally last year, it is the music industry that says it suffers most from file-sharing in Spain, claiming that users downloaded around 2 billion tracks in 2008, up 80% compared to 2007. This is blamed mainly on BitTorrent and eDonkey sharing, but there was also a reported increase in sharing via Rapidshare-like file-hosting sites. According to figures cited by the report, 67% of all Spanish Internet users download unauthorized content, raising to 81% in the under 24 years old group.

Of course, the Spanish authorities have taken action against various torrent and sharing sites in the past, but because of Spain’s laws, the prosecution has failed to gain any significant convictions - the admins, as in the case of Sharemula, simply walk. Under Spanish law there is no infringement and this situation, says the US, means that rights holders don’t have the weaponry to go after ‘infringers’. Obama wants to change all that.

The US charges that the Spanish government has done little “to change the widespread misperception in Spain that peer-to-peer file sharing is legal,” referring to the 2006 “decriminalization” notification from the Office of the Prosecutor-General as “problematic”.

Of course, no article on bringing in tougher restrictions on file-sharing would be complete without the obligatory calls for pirates to be disconnected, and the Special 301 Report doesn’t disappoint. The United States says that part of Spain’s “priority action” should include an agreement between ISPs and copyright holders to prevent infringing content being available on the Internet and should include “the immediate and effective implementation of graduated response [3 strikes] procedures.”

If the law doesn’t currently allow such action, the US advises Spain it should takes steps to change it, including rescinding the Chief Prosecutor’s May 2006 official instruction that effectively decriminalized file-sharing.

Source: TorrentFreak

For the fifth time in a year the European Parliament has spoken out against tougher anti-piracy legislation that would allow alleged file-sharers to be disconnected from the Internet, based on evidence provided by anti-piracy lobby groups. Instead, they chose to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of Internet users.

Until recently, the recording industry were committing publicity suicide by routinely issuing legal threats to file sharers. Now, they seem to have changed the routine, going for fewer, but bigger targets. The goal is clear: if you own the Internet, you don’t have to worry about pirates — or anyone else.

Earlier this month, four Pirate Bay visionaries were given harsh fines and jail sentences. Their only crime: creating the largest, free, uncensored, versatile file sharing platform on the Internet. Soon after, Taiwan passed 3-strikes legislation for copyright violations. The recording industry is no longer targeting pirates - they are actually trying to hijack the very fabric of the Internet.

The apparent strategy:

1. Outlaw file sharing
2. Outlaw personal encryption and anonymization services
3. Set up a global, privately-run Internet surveillance program to spy on everybody all the time without a warrant — run by ISPs and paid for by the taxpayers
4. And finally, get the authority to block anyone from the Internet entirely, without the involvement of police, courts or any verifiable trail of evidence

We can not let this happen.

“It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” - Bruce Schneier

One of the main reasons why the recording industry are currently succeeding in this hostile takeover of the Internet, is that most people simply don’t understand what file sharing is, or why it matters to them in the first place. Whenever civil liberties are sacrificed, it is always on the bonfire of ignorance. We need to educate the world - neighbors, parents, judges and lawmakers - as to why the Internet must remain free, neutral, and uncensored.

It sometimes helps to explain that a file sharing technology like Bittorrent is the digital society’s equivalent of the wheel. It allows fast and easy transportation of data between users and businesses alike. But like the wheel, file sharing needs a stable, flat surface to perform at its best. In this analogy, The Pirate Bay is nothing short of the largest, best maintained, and most stable network of such ‘digital roads’ in the world. And it’s free to use for anyone, at any time, for any purpose.

Naturally, as is always the case where people congregate in a free society, some of the people who drive their wheeled carts on this network of roads will be carrying things in their carts of questionable quality, purpose or origin. In any system or society that is based on freedom rather than censorship or distrust, there is no question that individual transgressions can take place. This is the most basic cost of liberty.

As a digital society in its teens, we have yet to realize the enormous potential of file sharing in culture, education, knowledge sharing, and business. But already, we are seeing massive opposition against it from the likes of IFPI, the RIAA and the MPAA. This opposition, of course, stems from some of the aforementioned wheeled carts transporting ‘questionable goods’, in the form of copyrighted material.

The ensuing battle has been disguised as a legal matter concerning rights holders and ‘pirates’, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. It is true that the recording industry wants to stop criminals, but they are attempting to prohibit the wheel and all building of roads to pull it off. These lawyers are prepared to sacrifice our liberties, our privacy and our digital freedom in order to reach their goal. It is a grossly disproportionate and misdirected attack, and it has already begun: Once the verdict of the Spectrial was in, the Swedish anti-piracy office immediately began issuing legal threats against other file sharing networks. They are bulldozing every street and burning every car to prevent any possible (mis)use of the wheel. And worse yet - we are letting it happen.

The case of The Pirate Bay was not a case of artists vs. freeloaders, or even the recording industry vs. pirates. There were no artists on the accusing side, nor were there any pirates on the defending side. It was, and is, a case of misguided frustration by industry executives and lawyers, directed not against the actual violators of copyright law, but against the most outspoken proponents and enablers of a fundmental digital technology. A technology that allows fast and easy transportation af data - all data - between users and businesses alike.

We must never blame the network for the actions of individuals. Both rights holders and lawmakers must respect the fundamental principle of personal, individual responsibility. Let each peer be responsible for his own actions, just as every driver is liable for his own car.

The Pirate Bay is not illegal. File sharing is not illegal. Using file sharing for illegal purposes is illegal. The difference may be subtle to a layman, but in legal terms, the distinction is clear as day. The fact that the judges in the Pirate Bay case failed to recognize this, is a judicial travesty bordering on flat out corruption.

It cannot be stressed enough: this is not a question of copyright, of music, or of piracy. This is a question of a private organization now aiming to subvert several of the most important digital inventions since the World Wide Web, and our judges and politicians turning a blind eye in a staggering display of ignorance and corruption. This fight is about much more than The Pirate Bay. When our liberties are taken from us, we must rise, united in one voice, and fight for them.

It is a fight for basic digital liberties. It is a fight for our right to privacy. It is a fight for net neutrality. There is no getting around it. This is the fight of our generation, and it is too important to lose.

Source: ToorentFreak

This time they gone too far, it's time that every user stands up for his rights. We can't accept being controlled by the money sharks and turning into robots without any privacy or rights!

Taiwan approved a law which bans the P2P protocol use and makes it a crime in effort that the copyrighted work will not be distributed online anymore. The new law tells IPSs to use a "3 strikes" method for file-sharers.

In the future the ISPs will be exonerated from taking responsibility for the illegal actions of their customers by using a "takedown" system for the infringing content.

They will have to introduce the "3 strikes" method to the file-sharers and after the third "stike" the ISP can take a few measures against the user including throttling or disconnecting.

This method does not protect the file-sharers from any legal action against them, so frankly they can be disconnected and fined for the "damages". The law's primary targets are the heavy uploaders and not the casual users.

Taiwan sides with France and believes that the new legislation will be effective in reducing copyright infringement on file-sharing networks. In addition, Taiwan’s Intellectual Property Office will also launch an anti-piracy publicity drive to help the public understand the new legislation and the ‘problem’ of piracy.

Swedish Performing Rights Society plays up the results, but admits was compiled using data obtained from ad respondents and not per a statistical group model.

The Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM) has released a study titled “Pirates, File-Sharers and Music Users”(.pdf) that claims 86.2% of online music fans would pay a monthly subscription fee in exchange for legalized file-sharing.

Only 5.2% said they wouldn’t be interested.

When asked how much they would be willing to pay, 51.8% said between SEK 50 ($5.84 USD) and SEK 150 ($17.53) per month. Some 18.8% would consider paying between SEK 150 and SEK 300 ($35.08), and 21.7% would pay less than SEK 50 ($5.84) per month.

This sounds cool but the plan has its drawbacks. What’s to say other copyright holder groups like the movie or gaming industry don’t come along and demand their own monthly subscription fee?

(Source: Zeropaid)

The problem is that trying to dos a site from your home ip is "how to get arrested for being an idiot", so don't try it unless you have some advanced knowledge in proxy's and spoofers.

“Downloading copyrighted material is stealing - whether you want to admit it or not.”

It isn’t, it’s copyright infringement. Stealing is the “physical separation of an object/objects away from the rightful owner” or something like that.

Anyway the "authorities" may harvest data from TPB servers as we speak. I got an info stating that the site is not down because it was shutdown, the ISP seems to have a bit of a problem which will be fixed soon i hope. I wonder if the media mafia had anything to do with it... they are capable of anything.

I have read that the SuperFundo torrent site was shutdown aswell by the government, together with the LeechersLair tracker.

I agree with an user stating:

It looks like we are entering a new phase in technological history. Ipv6 is still up, but for how long? How long before the next tracker lawsuit hits? Other threats and suits have already been announced and IP’s blocked.

So, what happens now? Do we throw up our hands and concede? It was fun while it lasted but they win? No.

This is about freedom. What we can or can’t do. This is freedom of speech, this is freedom that says if I bought it, it’s mine and i can give it to whoever i want. Lets fight this thing. Let’s hit back, hard! Dont let them win without a fight.