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Tag: torrent

  • ‘Game of Thrones’ Premiere Breaks Piracy Record

    When the season four premiere of HBO’s fantasy-drama series Game of Thrones aired on Sunday night, a record 6.6 million viewers tuned in legally. Another million-plus viewers pirated the episode, setting another record. Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, which owns HBO, called the new piracy record “better than an Emmy.”

    The Sunday night episode entitled “Two Swords” garnered a number of viewers not seen since the series finale of HBO’s The Sopranos in 2007, and the level of piracy exceeded the previous record, which was held by the Game of Thrones season three premiere.

    BitTorrent protocol blog TorrentFreak reported over a million downloads within 12 hours of “Two Swords” airing, with the majority of the torrents being shared in Australia. Naturally, due to HBO’s subscription-only status, piracy is rampant. Though another contributing factor was the crashing of HBO’s streaming service, HBO Go, due to overwhelming demand.

    Here is the Game of Thrones season 4 trailer:

    Game of Thrones was created for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. The series is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, a set of fantasy novels penned by George R. R. Martin. The complex storyline is set in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos at the end of a decade-long summer, and concerns the dealings of several noble families in a civil war over the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms. Sex and violence prevail, as an army of zombie-like creatures gain strength in the northern reaches of the fantasy realm.

    Torrent downloads in the United States came in behind those in Australia at 9.3%. File sharing was also significant in the United Kingdom, Canada, The Netherlands, Philippines, India, Greece, Poland and Sweden. HBO has roughly 114 million legal subscribers worldwide, and has also made Sunday night’s GOT episode free to XBOX live users.

    Image via YouTube

  • Rutgers Named Top Torrenting University in the U.S.

    BitTorrent is popular among college students. That, of course, is as obvious as saying the sky is blue or freshman will gain at least 15 pounds of beer and pizza weight. Although many universities have made curbing torrenting a primary focus (via government mandate), it’s hard to stop such a long standing tradition like collegiate file sharing.

    If you ever wondered which U.S. Universities were the most torrent-happy, you’re in luck. TorrentFreak (with the help of ScanEye) has produced a list of the top 50 institutions for BitTorrent use.

    And New Jersey’s Rutgers University takes to top spot.

    Rounding out the top 10: NYU, University of Houston, USC, Texas A&M, George Washington, University of Minnesota, State University of New York at Buffalo, University of Maryland, and Tennessee State.

    According to the study, the most downloaded files at Rutgers were Fast Five, Cars 2 and Puss in Boots, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (game), and the album The Dreamer, The Believer (Common).

    Check out the top 25:

    Of course BitTorrent use doesn’t necessarily equate to unauthorized file sharing. But TorrentFreak confirms that it’s that kind of use that’s the most popular.

    If you don’t see your current college of alma mater on the list, that probably means one of two things – either your school is not very torrent-happy, or they’re just really good at hiding their tracks. Evidence of the latter? Another recent study said that Gainesville, Florida was the piracy capital of the United States. Absent from this list? The University of Florida, which is located in Gainesville.

  • DJ Shadow Joins Forces With uTorrent To Monetize File Sharing

    One thing you’ll hear from the RIAA and MPAA execs is how BitTorrent is cutting into their profits. They feel that free access to content is the worst thing that could ever happen to such an artistic medium. It robs the artists, and more importantly the company execs, of millions of dollars. The only way to make money from music, movies and the like is to put down money at a store. The Internet, specifically BitTorrent, would beg to disagree.

    BitTorrent Inc. announced a crazy new plan today that will monetize BitTorrent. What’s this crazy new plan? Ads will now be included in the torrent. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but the basic premise is that of any other monetization plan on the Internet. Give away content for free and support it with ads.

    I mentioned that it’s a bit more complicated than that, but not by much. The first bundle on offer today is a sample from DJ Shadow’s new album “Hidden Transmissions From The MPC Era (1992-1996).” Alongside the download is some bundled software. If the person downloading the tracks also installs the software, the artist and BitTorrent get a cut of the ad revenue.

    If you already have uTorrent installed, expect to see ads for DJ Shadow’s new album pop up in your client sooner or later. If you just downloaded uTorrent, the package will be advertised in the installer. It’s a simple, but effective, way to get the word out.

    Oh, and before you start to get mad about ads in your downloads, nothing is being forced on you. You can skip on the software entirely and don’t even have to download it. It’s offered as a complimentary add-on and only helps the artist if it’s installed.

    Of course, the argument here is that people will just download the music and skip on the software. That’s true and it will probably happen more often than not. That’s why the package only includes a selection of tracks while advertising the full album release which people will pay for. Those same people can still pirate the entire album, but music fans generally buy music from the artists who treat them right. By releasing a free sampler package, DJ Shadow has guaranteed himself at least one sale from this fan.

    You can grab DJ Shadow’s uTorrent package right now. While you’re at it, grab the free album sampler from Counting Crows as well.

    [h/t: TorrentFreak]

  • Disney Imposes 28-Day Delay On Netflix, RedBox Rentals

    Disney Imposes 28-Day Delay On Netflix, RedBox Rentals

    Sometimes it seems that Netflix just can’t catch a break. While the movie industry has long had a love-hate relationship with the video rental industry, Netflix seems to get all the hate and none of the love. Ever since the Netflix became popular a few years ago – and especially since they launched their streaming service – they’ve been the entertainment industry’s red-headed (red-enveloped?) step-child. The movie companies have been doing everything in their power to keep Netflix down, because they believe (apparently) that people who can’t rent or stream movies legally will actually go out and buy the DVD or Blu-ray instead.

    So the entertainment companies have done everything they can to try and keep rented copies of their movies out of customers’ hands. Back in January HBO stopped offering Netflix a discount on DVDs and Warner Brothers extended the delay between a movie’s in-store availability and its availability on Netflix to 56 days. RedBox, however, was having none of that and started buying their movies from retailers, prompting Universal to make a deal to keep the 28-day window in place.

    Now, according to Home Media Magazine, Disney is getting in on the act. The company has announced that they would institute their own 28-day window for select titles. That means that if you want to get John Carter, which came out out on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, you’ll have to either buy it, or wait 28 days until it comes to Netflix (though RedBox apparently intends to get it from retailers, making it available on June 12).

    Of course, the big question is whether this sort of windowing actually does anybody any good. Though the studios occasionally try to argue that it’s really better for the consumer, it’s hard to imagine that anyone actually believes that. The real goal, of course, is to pad the studios’ bottom line. Again, they believe that rental delays encourages consumers to purchase the movie, though it’s not clear whether actual sales data backs that up. One thing is certain, however: in an age where the average consumer is increasingly technologically savvy, more and more people are going to be find themselves in the kind of situation depicted in the now-famous Game of Thrones Oatmeal comic.

    Videos To Rent

    The sooner the studios figure that out, the better off the consumers will be.

  • Tribler Aims To Circumvent Anti-Piracy Efforts

    The ongoing battle over legislation like SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA has focused on blocking access to sites like The Pirate Bay and others that provide centralized access to torrent files for users who want to download content. In the midst of all this sturm und drang, however, the makers of one torrent client have been quietly working to make such torrent discovery sites obsolete.

    Tribler is a torrent client that’s been around awhile – it’s currently up to version 5.5. Unlike other clients that require you to obtain .torrent files from the internet and then use the torrent client to open them, Tribler operates on a purely peer-to-peer basis. That is, instead of searching The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt, BTJunkie, or one of the other myriad torrent sites, Tribler’s search box brings you results taken directly from peers who have the files you’re looking for available to download. That means that search for and downloading a torrent file is completely decentralized. That in turn means no domains to seize and no websites to shut down, which makes laws like SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA even less likely to have any real impact on piracy than they already were.

    Tribler is open source, and is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

    [Hat Tip: TorrentFreak]

  • The Pirate Bay Wants You To Download A Car

    The Pirate Bay Wants You To Download A Car

    Remember that old piracy ad that said, “You wouldn’t download a car.” Well, The Pirate Bay is wanting to make that a reality.

    They announced today on their blog the addition of Physibles, data objects that are able to become physical. They believe that 3D printers are leading the charge into a future where we’ll be able to download everything from cars to food.

    Today most data is born digitally. It’s not about the transition from analog to digital anymore. We don’t talk about how to rip anything without losing quality since we make perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things. Music, movies, books, all come from the digital sphere. But we’re physical people and we need objects to touch sometimes as well!

    The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We’ll be able to print food for hungry people. We’ll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal. We’ll be able to actually copy that floppy, if we needed one.

    The current list of physibles available to download are a Pirate Bay pirate ship, a whistle, a tabletop robot model and a 1970 Chevelle Hot Rod model. As a joke, there is also a 3D printable Chris Dodd.

    They firmly believe that the future of sharing is their new physible data. They joke that they should rename themselves The Product Bay, but they had no graphical artist to make it. They claim that in the future, they’ll be able to download one.

    For those who aren’t aware, 3D printing is considered the future of art and item creation. It allows users to scan in a 3D object and create the same object via a layering technique that creates the parts. The price of 3D printers is expected to come down this year making them financially accessible to regular consumers.

    For a handy primer, here’s a video explaining the power of 3D printing:

  • SOPA Blackout: TorrentFreak ******s Its ******* In Protest

    TorrentFreak is joining the, well, torrent of websites that are blacking out in protest of SOPA today. While some, like Wikipedia and Reddit, are blacking out completely, many are showing their support in other ways. TorrentFreak, a site that specializes in new from the world of filesharing, shows users a blacked out site with a dialogue box asking them to help save the internet. Users who agree to save the internet are taken to a site that helps them send a letter to their Congressional representatives. Those who click “Meh” are taken on to TorrentFreak’s uncensored site, where they are greeted by a flashing yellow and pink banner encouraging them to stop censorship. Clicking the banner takes them to the same contact page.

    TorrentFreak's Stop Censorship Banner

    While TorrentFreak could easily be accused of preaching to the choir with its protest, the inclusion of an option to contact users’ Senators and Representatives is perhaps the cleverest part. It provides a direct link for those who might not otherwise get involved in the political process to express their opposition to the legislation with nothing more than a few keystrokes and a couple clicks of their mouse.

  • The Pirate Bay Stops Hosting Torrent Files

    The Pirate Bay has announced that they will no longer offer torrent files for download on their site. Anti-piracy advocates should not get too excited, though: they are replacing the torrent files with Magnet links. This format is considerably more difficult to block than .torrent files, and the links require significantly less storage space, meaning that the entire Pirate Bay website could theoretically be hosted from a sufficiently-sized USB drive.

    The Pirate Bay has apparently been planning this change for a couple of years now, but the Magnet link technology wasn’t quite ready for prime time. As of today, Magnet links will be come the default format for downloading from the website, though users will still have access to .torrent links for some time yet.

    Most users will not see a difference, however, since the majority of torrent software supports Magnet links already. BitTorrent and uTorrent, the two biggest torrent clients, have had Magnet link support for some time. The only difference most users will see is a longer start-up time before downloads start.

    Concerns about bandwidth aside, part of The Pirate Bay’s motivation for this move has to come from the efforts that have been taken against them in the past. Repeated efforts to shut down or block the site have occurred all over the Western world. The fact that Magnet links are harder to block and require less bandwidth and hosting space will certainly make efforts to shut The Pirate Bay down more difficult.

    [Source: The Pirate Bay]