P2P Blog

VODO Embraces BitTorrent to Distribute Movies, Compensate Filmmakers

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 16:41:11 -0800

UK-based P2P video platform VODO published its second feature film on dozens of file-sharing sites Thursday, hoping that worldwide exposure will bring in donations, subscriptions and traditional distribution deals. David Miller�s documentary In Guantanamo, which is the result of a press tour of the controversial detention facility, has been downloaded around 15,000 times within the first 24 hours, according toVODO founder Jamie King.

The site�s first feature, Us Now, got downloaded around 250,000 times since its release in mid-October. Part of the volume is due to VODO�s relationships with a number of well-known BitTorrrent sites, with Isohunt and The Pirate Bay currently featuring In Guantanamo on their front pages. VODO hasn�t been quite as successful in making money from these downloads, but King hopes that a combination of one-off donations and a subscription level for documentary geeks and movie buffs will help eventually make the site sustainable and provide an additional revenue stream for filmmakers. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.

Tags: vodo, jamieking, stealthisfil, newteevee

ISPs' Usenet crackdown had no effect

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 15:49:46 -0800

Last summer, a number of big ISPs discontinued their Usenet offerings as a response to an anti-child porn initiative led by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who had called Usenet a major source of child pornography. Time Warner completely gave up on offering Usenet to its customers and Sprint as well as Verizon deleted all alt.* groups from their service. Comcast and RCN quickly followed suit and shut down their own Usenet offerings.

Critics complained that this was an overly broad response to a very small problem. Giganews Vice President of Sales and Marketing David Vogelpohl told me back then that his company offered access to 3.7 billion postings in 110,000 newsgroups. In other words: A lot of content, especially if you consider that Cuomo's office found 11,390 child-porn images in 88 newsgroups. I've been saying all along that ISPs simply wanted to cut costs by shuttering their Usenet offerings, but people in the entertainment industry concerned with piracy were obviously happy as well about big ISPs abandoning Usenet.

Except, it didn't actually change much. If anything, Usenet actually got bigger after Time Warner & Co. left the party, according to Giganews' Edward Henigin, who shared a few statistics about the global Usenet feed at one of the recent North American Network Operators Group meetings. Henigin told the Nanog audience that Usenet has seen a 26 percent annual growth over the last four years, averaging around 500Mbps at the end of this summer.

giganews stats

Giganews did notice a big dip when Time Warner & Co. pulled the plug last summer, but this was actually followed by an even bigger spike. Henigin didn't elaborate on how to explain the spike, but one can safely assume that it was caused by people signing up for commercial Usenet services after their ISPs left them in the cold.

giganews stats

Henigin also shared a few interesting facts about the amount of storage needed to keep one trailing year of the full Usenet feed. Currently, you'd need around 1700 Terabyte if you'd want to offer what's also know as one year retention. At the end of next year, it will take around 2500 Terabye.

giganews stats

That's a lot of data, but actually not that much storage in an age where your local electronics store offers terabyte drives for around 100 bucks. "It may be within reach to never expire articles again," said Henigin.

Tags: usenet, giganews, andrewcuomo, edwardhenigin, newsgroups,

Chinese Online Video Companies Fight for Market Share, Licenses

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 09:41:45 -0800

Chinese P2P startup Xunlei has sued its competitor Sohu for copyright infringement, according to the Shenzen Daily. Xunlei is alleging that Sohu�s search engine, Sogou, is infringing on copyrights related to Xunlei�s P2P software as well as its own search engine, Gougou.com. Sohu had previously filed its own copyright infringement lawsuits against Xunlei and other Chinese P2P vendors.

China has long been a P2P video wunderkind of sorts. Efforts to establish P2P-based consumer video platforms like Joost and Babelgum have largely failed in the U.S. and Europe, but similar offerings attract millions of users in China. However, the Chinese market is saturated with literally dozens of video vendors, and efforts to grow their business beyond the PC have stalled due to strict government licensing requirements. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.

Tags: xunlei, sohu, china, newteevee

Survey: 50 percent want to legalize file sharing through monthly fee

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 14:46:27 -0800

50 percent of the Internet's most active users would pay a monthly flat fee to legally download content from file sharing networks, according to a new study by the German Institute for Strategy Development (IFSE). These results are based on a survey amongst almost seven million so called "power users," according to a heise.de report.

IFSE defines power users as users that contribute the majority of content to Twitter and the blogosphere and in general use the Internet more than just occasionally. Most of these users regularly download music and movies from file sharing networks, and more than 70 percent of them object to entertainment industry lawsuits against file sharers based on evidence from ISPs.

However, IFSE's researchers also noted that the amount of files traded by this group of users has been stagnant. One reason for this behavior: Much of the content is actually available on demand, so users feel less of a need to download it to their own computers.

Tags: acs, germany, study, ifse, heise.de, vcl

Film producer: Let's block access to streaming video sites

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 15:08:53 -0800

German movie producer Max Wiedemann has a plan to combat online piracy: He wants ISPs to block access to streaming video sites that offer unlicensed full-length feature films. Wiedemann proposed this type of ISP-based access control during an event organized by the German anti-piracy organization GVU, according to IT news site heise.de. Wiedemann told is audience that it would be "technically trivial" to implement such blocks and singled out German-language streaming media directory Kino.to as an example for a site that should be blocked.

Wiedemann's idea isn't exactly new. Germany has recently begun to force ISPs to block access to web sites suspected of hosting child porn. Book publishers have already argued that Rapidshare should be on that list as well, and representatives of the music industry also want to have a say on future versions of these block lists.

ISPs on the other hand are pushing back against these attempts to have them block access to a wide range of file hosting and video streaming sites. A representative of the German ISP association eco told the audience of the GVU event that there are already take down procedures in place to deal with illicit content. He suggested it would be better to empower the police to investigate online crime more effectively.

Tags: germany, german, blocklists, zensursula, heise.de, eco

UK on the Forefront of Online TV, DVR Use

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 14:43:54 -0800

One in three Internet users in the UK is watching TV online, according to a new study by the British media regulation authority Ofcom. This trend seems to be largely driven by the BBC�s iPlayer, which is used by 27 percent of the country�s online population. However, traditional TV viewing still plays a huge role, and time-shifting through DVRs is growing quickly.

Compare those data points to other countries in Europe, and you�ll get a significantly different picture. Online TV platforms are far less developed in Germany, for example, a country that just like the UK has a strong online population. DVRs are also much more popular in the UK than elsewhere. Still, there�s one thing we all seem to agree on, no matter where we are: We do love our TV. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.

Tags: gb, uk, germany, dvr, dvrs, iplayer, stats, newteevee

Shareaza comes back with a 2.5 update

Mon, 2 Nov 2009 12:04:51 -0800

The makers of the multi-network open source P2P client Shareaza just released a new version with working chat functionality as well as a bunch of other bug fixes. Shareaza users can simultaneously use Edonkey, Gnutella, G2 and Bittorrent to download and share files with the world.

Shareaza has a somewhat tumultuous history. The client caused quite a stir when initially released because Shareaza's original developer branded its P2P network as Gnutella2 - something that didn't really go over well with the Gnutella developer community. Efforts to replace Gnutella with Gnutella2 however quickly lost steam, and Shareaza's development stalled while various Bittorrent advanced rapidly.

Shareaza got back into the spotlight two years ago when its website was taken over by the company behind the music industry-sanctioned P2P client iMesh. It's still unclear how exacly iMesh got hold of the Shareaza domain, but it has been using it to distribute its own software under the Shareaza name ever since. The company also trademarked Shareaza, to which the Shareaza community responded by reorganizing under the new name "Panthera Project."

But guess what? It wasn't supposed to be. Shareaza's Wikipedia page alleges that a former member of the team sabotaged the Panthera Project page, erasing the client's Wiki and forum and even trying to take down content from Sourceforge. As a result, Shareaza isn't associated to the Panthera Projet anymore.

That's a whole lot of bad luck for a P2P client with a small but dedicated audience. Shareaza actually used to be one of my favorite P2P clients under Windows, so it's good to see them back on their feet, doing what developers are supposed to do: Release software updates, instead of fighting with shadowy companies and disgruntled former team members.

Tags: shareaza, projectpanthera, imesh, opensource, p2pclient

An Open Letter to Peter Mandelson

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:43:12 -0700

Dear Peter Mandelson,

I am writing to you regarding the #3strikes internet piracy legislation that you have recently confirmed.

I am involved in both the sectors of which you are taking such a damaging interest in, and although I don�t have the money to lobby on the same level as the music industry, I speak to you now as an investor. As an investor in the online world.

The analogue world is fleshy, simultaneously both tactile and ineffable. This is why we can invent concepts like money � you can hold on to it, and it can also be represented on pieces of paper, can change in value without changing in essence. The online world, on the other hand, is built on definite points, and logic. Oh it can contain the ineffable, just as infinity can be expressed as a value, but it�s built on single points, on values. If there is an online economy, its currency is information. And if we participate in online worlds, we are investing our information, our content in that world.

So I speak to you now, as an investor. I am a member of both the arts industry, and the online world. I work with arts companies on their online involvement, I blog opinion pieces and engage with politics and ethics, I write plays, and I am also researching art and digital technology. I may not be a big player, but I have a vested interest in online spaces that I participate in. I have a right to talk about how my share in these worlds is treated.

Despite the fact that your very own in depth Digital Britain report released in June 09 ruled out cutting off P2P sharers (�The most draconian penalty considered at the time was to slow down a persistent filesharer�s broadband connection�. Source) You continue to attempt to enforce a strategy that is at best foolish, and at worst illegal.

If, as you maintain, there are 7 million illegal files sharers in the UK, you must consider that you cannot cut off 7 million people�s internet connections without due process of law. It�s perfectly easy to piggy back on unsecured wireless connections, just as it is possible that a connection is shared by a building, a family, a business. Furthermore, are you proposing to process each illegal filesharer through the justice system? (And at the cost of the taxpayer � �Her Majesty�s Court System currently holds 200,000 criminal cases per year� source � how is it going to deal with millions)? Or are advocating a form of marshal law, where ISPs are sheriffs, and users are guilty until proven innocent?

Disconnecting people from the internet does not fully comply with EU legislation. In fact it directly contravenes EU legislation. I am referring to amendment 138/46 which [...] declared that access to the internet was a fundamental human right. source

You seem to be so eager for the Royal Mail to modernise, I wonder why you don�t see it equally as important for the music industry to do so?

I�d like to believe that the U-turn after the digital Britain report had nothing to do with your meeting meeting with one of the most powerful figures in the British music business, Lucian Grainge, the chairman of Universal Music � Source, soon after which you announced your resurrection of the draconian #3strikes, but it�s hard to understand why else you have decided to make this fallacious decision. And fallacious it is, the figures bandied about are bolstered by false accounting for losses to the creative industries, and even aside from the exaggerated and erroneous figures involved in the headlines (see Ben Goldacre�s excellent blog post for more) their maths is flawed at the point they assume every download is a lost sale.

Copyright was originally brought about in 1709 to �encourage the creation of artistic works by granting a right to copy for 14 years.� It now stands between 50 and 95 years Source. Its aim was to encourage a profession. I am not arguing for an artistic community that consists solely of amateurs, I understand, boy do I understand that artists need to be paid. But being paid is not the ends for which art is made, it is the encouragement. The leveller. Not the stick with which to beat the consumer.

I, and many of my peers are not calling for an end to the creative industries, we�re calling for changes to a very specific aspect of them � distribution. I�m not talking about some �choatic utopia� (Source), what I am saying is the way that we consume is changing. Myspace, and Spotify have already changed the way that that we access music, and that artist distribute their wares. Youtube allows anyone with a camera and a computer to have their say. The Age of Stupid crowd-sourced the complete �450K production budget and are pioneering a system that allows anyone to buy a licence to screen it whenever and wherever they like � keeping the profits for themselves or their climate campaign.

Here�s a real industry perspective:

�The majority of my audiences watch my films over the BitTorrent system, a system so revolutionarily brilliant that it means I, an independent film-maker, can distribute a film in full High Definition to hundreds of millions of viewers with absolutely no cost incurred to me� � Monaghan Media source

And that of a consumer:

�Now, I muster all the spare cash I have to pay for an internet connection, and go to gigs as often as possible. I tell my mates (and a bunch of strangers on the interweb) about all the new bands I�ve heard of, and encourage them to see them live. So, I�m paying for the music I like, I�m paying the costs of distributing it, and I�m promoting it� source

P2P filesharing is revolutionary, it�s zero cost, close to zero in carbon emissions (servers), it runs on recommendations. It is another shift to the �pull� ethic of the digital world. In a hyper-connected, information heavy existence, you cannot deliver neatly packaged tales of what we should buy and how we should be, because there are a million other voices that will simultaneously disagree. People taped music from CDs and radio before now, that�s been going on for years, what I believe really scares industry is the peer � peer review, peer sharing. Theirs is no longer dominant voice, we�re building our own worlds. Yes we need to deal with people who make a profit out of illegal filesharing, but criminalising a large proportion of your electorate is not the way to go about this.

A Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what you should be doing is using the Digital Britain report to offer big business a manual to the digital world. If they want to survive, they have to evolve, you are doing this country a disservice when you pander to their childish cries to stem the tide of change.

However, I have to say that so far these simple facts seem to have evaded you, you seem determined to press on. So let me tell you now that #3strikes will not work. Because we will not allow it to. No one will.

Aside from the impossibility of monitoring and prosecuting all (let�s call non-profiteering sharers �domestic�) p2p filesharers, we will stop you from penalising any of them. If you begin to cut off people�s internet access, then everyone who can afford to do so will set up alternative unsecured wireless networks across the country. If you aim to track torrent usage, we will proliferate details on how to obscure or re-route your IP address. If you shut down those sites, we will use private chat to discuss what we want, and private cloud storage systems, drop boxes, to share content. We will rename files, disguise track identites with a couple of bytes worth data, break meta-data, and come up with new ways of encrypting our actions. The industry will not only lose out on �sales� but valuable usage figures too.

You are attempting to solve a digital problem using analogue solutions. We are open source, we are anonymous, and we are everywhere. Don�t fight us, don�t push, help dying industries reform, and remarket themselves in a sustainable way.

Here�s some further reading from prominent musicians/Bloggers:

http://www.stevelawson.net/wordpress/2009/10/featured-artist-coalition-backs-lily-wtf-says-everyone-else/

http://agit8.org.uk/?p=336

http://www.challengerappears.com/blog/2009/09/connection-failure-mandelson-takes-on-the-internet/

http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/07/27/series-2-episode-4-itunes-live-festival/

Please don�t make this mistake. Because you will regret it.

Kind regards,

Hannah Nicklin.

Hannah Nicklin is a brightly coloured playwright, tech-enthusiast, blogger and academic. Check out her work and blog at http://www.hannahnicklin.com, where this open letter appeared first. Republished with permission.

Tags: uk, threestrikes, petermandelson

Rapidshare and Megaupload cause more traffic than Facebook

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:39:49 -0700

The two one-click hosting sites Rapidshare.com and Megaupload.com together cause more global IP traffic that Facebook with its 300 million users, according to a new study by network management device maker Sandvine.

The company's 2009 Global Broadband Phenomena report explains that Facebook is causing a little less than 1.5% of all global IP traffic. Both Rapidshare and Megauopload follow closely, each causing around 1% of global IP traffic. One-click hosting and similar storage sites saw 56% more traffic this year than 2008, according to Sandvine.

sandvine report

Sandivne's report also offers some insights about the share of traffic consumed by file sharing applications. On average, 31.4% of all upstream bandwidth and 15.6% of all downstream bandwidth are caused by P2P. Just a year ago, P2P caused 61.08% of all upstream bandwidth and 22.31% of all downstream bandwidth.

As I pointed out a couple of days ago with regards to a similar report, that doesn't necessarily mean that people aren't using P2P anymore. It just means that other segments are growing faster, the most obvious one being streaming video. Sandvine is reporting that Youtube is now causing 5% of all global IP traffic.

Perhaps more interesting are various regional differences. P2P only accounts for 8.6% of all traffic in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Sandvine, but for almost 35% in Africa. The company measured 29.2% in Europe, and 18.5% in North America. P2P is also causing around 35% of all traffic in Latin America, where Ares seems to play a huge role, causing around 34% of all upstream traffic on its own.

Tags: statistics, research, study, sandvine, globalbroadbandphenomena

Windows 7 Torrenting Party

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:38:14 -0700

This is hilarious: Will Ferrel's online comedy outlet Funny or Die has produced a spoof of those Windows 7 launch party ads ...

Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party - watch more funny videos

(via Newteevee Station)

Tags: windows7, funnyordie, fun