Let’s assume you want to download ‘Steal This Film’ without being spied on by third parties that monitor the download. Impossible? Not really…

Pretty much all BitTorrent clients allow users to remove the trackers from a torrent before downloading. In uTorrent you can do so by clicking the advanced button in the torrent opening dialog box. You’ll then see the trackers included in the torrent plus some other info.

If you want to go trackerless you’ll have to delete the trackers and make sure that the DHT, Peer Exchange and Local Peer Discovery boxes (see screenshot) are checked otherwise you you won’t be able to download at all.

That’s it…

We have to note that it’s by no means impossible to track people who download without a tracker. It’s just harder to do so and thus far we haven’t seen evidence that DHT tracking is being used.

Article from: FreakBits

The message of the anti-piracy ad was pretty straightforward and the full text goes as follows.

“You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a mobile phone. You wouldn’t steal a DVD. Downloading pirated films is stealing…Stealing…Is Against…The Law…Piracy: It’s a crime.”

The purpose of the campaign was to change the public’s attitude towards piracy, but it failed miserably. In the years that followed movie piracy doubled, tripled and quadrupled, especially on BitTorrent.

The only good thing that came of it are the many parodies of the campaign which are quite entertaining. I’ve listed a couple of them below (including the original) but there are probably several I’ve missed.

If you know any other parodies please leave a comment and I’ll add it.

The Original

Bender’s Take on Piracy

The IT-Crowd’s Parody

Adult Parody

Europe’s Greens Promoting Sharing (not really a parody)

Update: The tune was actually “pirated”

Another Parody (Zachary)

Historical Piracy Warning Parody (Foo)

Yet Another Parody (noone)

Article from: FreakBits

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) is a coalition of many pro-copyright groups including the MPAA, RIAA and the Business Software Association. Its aim is to protect their businesses from threats to their copyright exploitation models, and to convince lawmakers to clamp down on piracy.

Every year the outfit produces a set of recommendations for the US Government. It produces a list of countries that are a threat, recommending the US Trade Representative to put these on a watchlist. Usually, this has something to do with weak copyright laws but this year they see a news threat in addition to that.

Open Source software.

In other words, Firefox, WordPress, Ubuntu and Open Office are the software equivalent of the axis of evil.

Countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and India should be placed on the watchlist for their Open Source support according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance. With similar initiatives countries such as the UK, The Netherlands and others may soon follow.

Open Source software “simply weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness” while “it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights,” the IIPA recommendation says. “It encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations.”

Oh really?

What they really mean to say of course is that Open Software is saving the tax payers a lot of money, money that usually goes into the pockets of the some of the major software companies.

You can read more details on this absurd move at the excellent Guardian blog.

Article from: FreakBits

Below is one of these classics. The image has been popping up on various blogs for years and once again gained attention as it was posted on Gizmodo today.

In 1981 the Dead Kennedys printed “Home taping is killing record industry profits! We left this side blank so you can help” on one side of In God We Trust, Inc. cassette.

In the 30 years that passed not much has changed obviously.

The spin-offs of the slogan are just as funny though, or even more so. “Home Cooking Is Killing The Restaurant Industry,” is one of my personal favorites. What’s yours?

Article from: FreakBits

Kaye decided to contact the owners of various torrent sites and for some reason she also contacted (our parent blog) TorrentFreak with the following message.

You are illegally offering my COPYRIGHTED EDUCATIONAL ITEMS as downloads on your website: (linking to fenopy.com)

CEASE AND DESIST! This is totally UNAUTHORIZED AND ILLEGAL! Remove this download of MY Internationally Copyrighted items on your website. You are in Violation of the Copyright Law – I am the ONLY ONE to sell my own items!

We don’t host any torrent files or TorrentFreak of course, and I kindly replied to her explaining that we are a weblog covering BitTorrent news. For some reason she wasn’t quite convinced, as we received the following reply after having exchanged a few more emails.

You’re a liar and a thief, CEASE AND DESIST!

Again, trying to be polite I explained that she was targeting the wrong person. Because I sympathized with her I even offered to help her out and get her in contact with the people who could remove the torrents. This wasn’t helping much though.

You’re a liar, a pirate, and a thief and a no-body – you’re coming down buddy, don’t give me that run-around BS! Whoever you are, you’re THIEF AND A DELIBERATE PIRATE!

I’m known to 100s of 1,000s of musician world-wide and they’re going to know about you too, posting you on my website which gets 100s of 1,000s of hits all the time! CEASE AND DESIST!

After one more attempt to explain that TorrentFreak has nothing to do with the site where she found her content I eventually gave up. But Carol didn’t.

A few hours later my inbox was starting to fill up with friends/fans or colleagues of Carol who were spitting out more false accusations. Below is one I received from Deb Hastings.

Ernesto – you are offering free downloads of intellectual property? I am referrng to Carol Kaye’s jazz improv books and accompanying cd’s. This is STEALING my man. What is wrong with you? You don’t steal from other people. This is illegal and in violation of the copyright law. What the hell kind of a preson are you? That you steal from other people? I am going to do everything I can – with as many other people as I can – to bust up your ugly little business. I am tenacious and you have now become my focus. You are a thief. Take her stuff off your site.

Sigh.. I give up.

Article from: FreakBits

Having to watch numerous warnings, ads and digital restrictions is not helping to compete with the movies that are available on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks.

The image linked below says it all.

Check it out: Pirated vs. Legal DVD. (via)

Article from: FreakBits

Over the last years we’ve seen many companies that try to stop piracy by polluting file-sharing networks with fake data. These outfits are usually hired by major movie and music studios to ‘protect’ popular albums or movies by sending fake data or uploading fake files.

Trident Media Guard (TMG) is such an outfit. TMG has submitted a patent application for their revolutionary P2P-spamming technology and were recently chosen to participate in tracking down French pirates for the three-strikes law.

With all this experience you would expect that the company would pick their spots carefully, avoiding to waste resources. However, the opposite is true as a Canadian uploader of an album from the band Furnaceface recently discovered.

“I have had a FLAC upload for almost the last 2 years of an indie Canadian band named Furnaceface. Never had a lot of downloads with the torrent and I had to ‘babysit’ it as a seed for many months – but thats cool it’s indie and I knew it wouldn’t be popular. Until now,” Kitlope explains.

The screenshot below shows that TMG is ‘DDoSing’ the single uploader with many requests originating from IP-addresses in the same range.

Why TMG is wasting their resources on protecting a torrent of an indie band with only one seeder and no peers is not clear. The money it takes to ‘attack’ this torrent costs more than any potential sales piracy could ever cost.

Article from: FreakBits

The interestingly named Free Speech Coalition (FSC) has just announced it will launch a new service to help porn content creators protect their product from copyright infringement.

The adult trade group says that the Anti-Piracy Action Program (APAP) employs spidering and fingerprinting techniques to track pirate material, can send DMCA takedown notices to infringers and offers legal consultation and litigation services.

So-called adult ‘tube’ sites will be negotiated with to replace pirate content with trailers that promote legitimate content. But will it all be worth it? A poll currently running on the FSC site asks this question:

What do you think should be done about content piracy and copyright infringement?

11.2% believe that “educating consumers that it’s wrong to steal content” is the way to go, while just 13% seem to back this and other schemes by voting to develop technologies that combat content theft.

21.9% want to take legal action against online pirates and 23.8% want to work with a combination of all the previous options. 30.1% believe that the problem is so big there’s nothing that can be done about it.

We’ll see if this new program can prove the last group of voters wrong. Somehow it seems unlikely.

Article from: FreakBits

As reported on TorrentFreak, in 2008 a city in the north of England took drastic action to stop people selling pirate DVDs and CDs at a street market.

Market officials threw out the baby along with the bath water by introduced a blanket ban on all CDs and DVDs – not just the counterfeit ones but ALL media and audio-visual products, including computer games.

Now, a council in Leeds, England, has dealt with its piracy problem by throwing out the baby, the bath water, the bath and the bath room, by shutting down an entire market following complaints and lobbying by FACT, the MPAA-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft.

Leeds City Council said it had closed down the near 20 year old Cross Green market – a venue which attracts up to 1,000 stallholders every week – because of the high levels of illegal and counterfeit goods on sale. Arrests and convictions had apparently not solved the issue.

“FACT has been working with Safer Leeds to find a solution to the problems that have plagued Cross Green Market for years. Over the past year alone we, along with other organisations, have made frequent visits to the market and found a high proportion of stalls selling counterfeit and stolen goods,” said Kieron Sharp, FACT Director General.

“It is vital that the trade in counterfeit goods which has blighted so many markets is stamped out and those markets are returned to being safe environments for families to enjoy. It is regrettable that criminal activity in Cross Green Market had reached such levels that the only solution was to shut it down,” he added.

The hundreds of legitimate traders affected by the closure said they were happy that their businesses had been ruined by the decision, since those selling the pirate DVDs have now all given up their trade and piracy has completely stopped in Leeds.

Yeah, right….

Thanks to Andrew

Article from: FreakBits

As Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, Glickman helped lead the organization into a crusade against millions of people around the world, pushing strategies which can, and often were described as draconian.

Unlike his predecessor Jack Valenti, who held the office for 38 years, Glickman was not seen as the ideal movie industry leader by all insiders.

“The unhappiness focuses on the fact he’s a bad and boring speaker who has not repped the movie business well in Washington,” a Hollywood insider said last year, hinting at an early exit for the MPAA boss.

Glickman will be temporarily replaced by Bob Pisano until a replacement is found. Pisano has been Chief Operating Officer at the movie industry lobby group since 2005. Glickman continue his career as President of Refugees International.

Article from: FreakBits