This page contains all the news items for all categories for the month of February 2012
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Posted by: Sean F, 18:47 EST, Mon February 13, 2012 |
Viewed: 227 Times |   | |
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With content holders suing file sharers, and websites that enable file sharing, a new file sharing software client has been released that could spell an end to any measures designed to stop file sharing online.
The new software, called Tribler, has been developed by researchers Delft University of Technology and it aims to remove the few centralised areas that existing client, such as BitTorrent, still rely on.
For BitTorrent based downloads, a dedicated "indexer" website to host the .torrent files, as well as centralised trackers, may needed to allow downloads. These two targets have long been easy prey for anti-piracy firms, although despite efforts around the world, the largest torrent indexer currently existing, The Pirate Bay, still remains fully operational.
In recent years, the use of centralised trackers has also diminished, with decentralised DHT (distributed hash table) replacing them as a way for file sharers to communicate with each other. Even the use of .torrent file has decreased thanks to the introduction of magnet links which gather the information needed to start downloads from other peers. These have been technical responses to law enforcement actions take against websites such as Mininova, and well known trackers.
Tribler aims to take this a step further, by removing any need for a centralised service or website, and still allow file sharers to share files even if all trackers, torrents and the websites that allows users to search for torrents, have been removed or shut down.
Even the need for torrent search engines have been replaced with a Wikipedia like system, that allows users to weed out bad downloads, and to provide real descriptions, comments and reviews for downloads, all within the Tribler client.
This, in effect, makes Tribler unstoppable by law enforcement agencies, or via any technical means. "The only way to take it down is to take The Internet down," said the head of the Tribler project, Dr. Pouwelse.
And to make Tribler itself difficult to take down, the software carries an open source license, so even if the original Tribler gets taken down, new versions based on the source code can still be developed.
But for file sharers, the danger remains that anti-piracy firms can still extract IP addresses from leechers, and use it to sue individuals or to extract pre-trial settlement fees. Only through the use of a VPN, or other encryption methods, can the user hide his or her IP address and still be able to download. A totally anonymous, and free, file sharing client remains the next, and possibly the last, hurdle to making piracy truly unstoppable.
Tribler is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, here.
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Posted by: Sean F, 16:49 EST, Sat February 11, 2012 |
Viewed: 404 Times | | |
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A new study has found that International box office losses are more to do with release windows, than BitTorrent.
The new paper, titled 'Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales', was written by researchers from the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College, and it set out to look for any links between the availability of pre-release piracy via BitTorrent networks, and the effect it has on movie box office.
This relationship has long been taken for granted, especially by the MPAA, Hollywood's anti-piracy lobbyists. And at first glance, the relationship seems to be supported by data the researchers founds.
"Our findings indicate that, as a lower bound, international box office returns in our sample were at least 7% lower than they would have been in the absence of pre-release piracy," the study found.
However, when it came to the same situation in the US, the data did not support the same conclusions. "We do not see evidence of elevated sales displacement in US box office revenue following the adoption of BitTorrent," the report said.
In other words, because pre-release piracy does not seem to cause box office losses in the US, but it does cause a 7% decrease in international markets, the researchers conclude that there must there must be some other factor in play.
And that factor, the researchers say, is international release windows - the delay between releasing films in the US and elsewhere. "We find that longer release windows are associated with decreased box office returns, even after controlling for film and country fixed effects." the study finds, before finally concluding that "we suggest that delayed legal availability of the content abroad may drive the losses to piracy".
In other words, the researchers are finding that box office losses are more to do with delayed releases overseas, than BitTorrent usage, and the longer the release window, the higher the losses.
So while the movie industry is within its rights to want to deter online piracy, perhaps it would better serve the industry to look in-house first to find ways to increase revenue.
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Posted by: Sean F, 18:36 EST, Fri February 10, 2012 |
Viewed: 386 Times | | |
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The CEO of TuneCore says that iTunes Match is creating "magic money" for rightsholders, and has already created an extra $10,000 "out of thin air" for the company.
iTunes Match, first announced in June and launched only recently, is an ambitious new service launched by Apple that aims to find a new solution to the web piracy problem. Instead of punishing those who download music illegally, iTunes Match "rewards" those users by turning their ill-gotten MP3s to legitimate iTunes tracks, all for the small fee of $25 per year. The new tracks are then made available in the cloud, ready for listening on a variety of Apple devices. The more a track is being "downloaded", the more the rightsholders will receive as a share of the $25 fee.
Surprisingly, Apple received the music industry's trick of approval for the new service, as the music industry would now be getting a share of the subscription fee, for downloads that they normally wouldn't have gotten anything for.
And that, says Jeff Price, CEO of TuneCore, is the key. "A person has a song on her computer hard drive. She clicks on the song and plays it. No one is getting paid," Price says before adding, "The same person pays iTunes $25 for iMatch. She now clicks on the same song and plays it through her iMatch service. Copyright holders get paid. Same action, same song, one makes money for the copyright holder, and one does not. This is found money that the copyright holders would never have gotten otherwise."
TuneCore is an online broker of music licensing rights, and works artists to get their tracks listed with the likes of Amazon and iTunes. And from iTunes Match, TuneCore has already received its first royalty cheque, to the tune of $10,000 for the first two month. It may not be much, but as Price explains "Well, before you were getting zero, now you are getting something."
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Posted by: Sean F, 18:18 EST, Fri February 10, 2012 |
Viewed: 381 Times | | |
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Having successfully fought off several lawsuits, both in the US and elsewhere, perhaps the biggest legal victory for file hosting company RapidShare was the removal of the firm's name from the RIAA and MPAA's "notorious markets" list.
The RIAA and MPAA compiles a list of "notorious markets" for piracy every year, and having made the list in 2010, but subsequently being removed from the list in 2011, RapidShare may now hold the answers for an industry that is increasingly feeling the heat of recent law enforcement action.
A few weeks ago, file hosting Megaupload was shuttered by federal prosecutors, with its owners and operators arrested in an international operation. Since then, many file hosting websites has either closed shop, or have begun mass deletions of files suspected of containing infringing content.
But for the most part, RapidShare has remained calm in the face of calamity for the industry, and speaking to TorrentFreak, RapidShare attorney Daniel Raimer explains how RapidShare is managing to continue providing a valuable upload service to users, but still remain on the right side of the law.
Raimer explains that two major strategies exists behind RapidShare's "legalization": education, and pro-active enforcement.
"We decided to increase our efforts to explain what RapidShare really stands for and how we are spearheading the industry’s efforts to combat copyright infringements," Raimer explained, before adding "The fact that we were not included in the 2011 list is a result of these educational efforts"
And to help explain what RapidShare "stands for", RapidShare took a leaf from the RIAA and MPAA's playbook and employed the services of top Washington lobbying firm, Dutko.
The education continues not only in words, but also in action, to tell major content holders that RapidShare wasn't solely in business just to make money off piracy, a charge that the US government has labelled at Megaupload. Raimer explains that by not having a rewards program which rewards either uploaders for uploading popular content (like the one offered by Hotfile, currently being sued by the MPAA), or to reward those that can bring in heavy downloaders willing to pay to download more (as in the case of Megaupload), RapidShare can avoid the legal scrutiny currently being faced by its rivals.
With the message out that RapidShare is not in the business to make money off piracy, the second major strategy RapidShare employs is in the pro-active removal of infringing content. Not only does RapidShare have a well-staffed anti-abuse department, that aims to process DMCA and other takedown notices in an efficient manner, Raimer also revealed that RapidShare has its own crawler that actively seeks out links to pirated content hosted on their website, and after verifying it is indeed infringing content, removes them without the content holders even getting involved.
"We have developed a crawling technology that is constantly watching Internet forums, message boards and warez blogs for information about copyright infringement taking place on our system. The information collected by our software is then being evaluated, verified and processed by our anti-abuse department," added Raimer.
And all of this, Raimer believes, is what has put RapidShare in the RIAA/MPAA's good book, at least for now. While copyrighted content still exists on RapidShare's servers, Raimer believes that content holders are "realistic" about the unreasonable tasks of ensuring the service isn't being abused at all. "... they (rightsholders) know that there are limits as to what a reputable hosting service can do without hurting its legitimate customer base," concluded Raimer.
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Posted by: Sean F, 19:39 EST, Wed February 8, 2012 |
Viewed: 424 Times | | |
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The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 28th January 2012 is in. Real Steel was the best selling new Blu-ray release, but the Blu-ray exclusive Paranormal Activity 3 also helped to push Blu-ray revenue higher for the week, at the expense of DVD sales.
Paramount's decision to release Paranormal Activity 3 as a timed Blu-ray exclusive, taking a page out of Disney's playbook, may turn out to be a major milestone for the Blu-ray format. If more studios do the same, then we could see DVD consigned as a "second class" format - although looking at revenue figures, the "Blu-ray exclusive" route might have reduced the amount of money the title might have made had it been available on DVD too - the lack of a combo version that comes in DVD packaging and hence gets displayed amongst the DVD shelves, something Disney always does with its timed exclusives, might have been a contributor.
You can read the rest of the stats and analysis here
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Posted by: Sean F, 19:34 EST, Wed February 8, 2012 |
Viewed: 383 Times | | |
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The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 21st January 2012 is in. The Ides of March was the best selling new release of the week, with two other new releases, but none were what you would call A-list, at least according to each's box office takings.
The weekly Blu-ray market share percentage fell to the lowest since September 2011, largely due to the real best seller of the week (when you combine both DVD and Blu-ray sales), Courageous, not doing all that well on Blu-ray.
You can read the rest of the stats and analysis here.
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Posted by: Sean F, 14:06 EST, Wed February 8, 2012 |
Viewed: 478 Times | | |
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Steam is currently the most popular digital gaming distribution platform, and for good reason. The Steam sales are events worth waiting for, and gamers can take advantage of all the value-added features of the Steam platform, such as the ability to easily take screenshots, in-game web browsing (handy for looking up walkthroughs), and achievements. Steam is so popular that even other digital gaming sales platforms frequently list "Steamworks" (the name for games that are activated on Steam) as a feature, even if Steam is probably their biggest competitor.
But there is also another side of Steam that gamers are less enthusiastic about, and the darker side is best exemplified by the recent story of Russian gamer gimperial.
Last week, Steam banned gimperial's Steam account for no apparent reason. gimperial's account included no less than 250 games, valued at more than $1,500, but all he could find out from Steam was that he had violated Steam's term of services, and that would be that.
But as most Steam games are tied to a your Steam account, losing access to your account means losing access to your games. Even if you have Steam enabled games downloaded to your hard-drive, you would not be able to play them without having a valid Steam account. Only the DRM-free games, and those that don't use the full features of Steam (ie. they're standalone games or use another gaming platform such as EA's Origin) would continue to work after your Steam account is banned
And as Steam's normal policy is to not divulge the reason for the ban, and with no telephone support, it's a incredibly difficult task to get any sort of answer from the company regarding bans (although to be fair, many of the bans are probably warranted).
While gimperial's story has an eventual "happy" ending, and he got his account back, but only after intervention from gaming site Rock, Paper Shotgun and from wider media attention. Other gamers may be less lucky.
So for all the great things Steam brings, at the end of the day, it is just another form of DRM. A value-added DRM that is mostly invisible for your average gamer and brings great benefits, but one that could be incredibly damaging if you end up like the unfortunately gimperial.
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Posted by: Sean F, 14:38 EST, Sat February 4, 2012 |
Viewed: 543 Times | | |
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Ubisoft's infamous DRM strikes again next week, as Ubisoft's planned transition of their online service infrastructure means that most of their games won't work online. Unfortunately, due to their draconian DRM, some of their games won't work offline either.
Ubisoft's plan to move away from a third-party provider, to their own facility, may be well intentioned - designed to improve services, but due to the way the Ubi DRM works, in that even some offline/single player games require a constant Internet connection, this means that a half dozen games will simply not work during the transition.
Ubisoft lists the games affected, and more than half a dozen games, including Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell Conviction and Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2, are listed as being totally unplayable during the transition. For the other games, "The Online features of all games that are not mentioned above will be impacted during the transition, Offline modes will not be impacted," Ubisoft noted.
Ubisoft introduced a stronger form of DRM in order to prevent piracy, although most of their heavily protected games do eventually get cracked and are readily available online at the usual piracy haunts.
But in a bitter twist of irony, gamers that use the pirated version of Ubisoft's games won't be affected during this "blackout".
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Posted by: Sean F, 18:16 EST, Thu February 2, 2012 |
Viewed: 508 Times | | |
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Music legend Neil Young has weighed in on the piracy debate, by comparing web piracy to radio.
Speaking at the D: Dive into Media conference, Young was more concerned about pirated files being of too low quality, than the actual effect it has on revenue.
"It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone. [...] Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around. [...] That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it," Young told the audience at D: Dive into Media.
The music industry has had a love and hate affair with radio since it first came to prominence in the 1920's, when the music industry blamed it for its revenue woes. It has since become one of the greatest promotional tools for the music industry, and Young believes the Internet, even via piracy, can offer the same benefits.
What concerns Young more though is that digital music isn't allowing listeners to get "100 percent" of the sound in music, and he hopes technology can catch up to allow music lovers to be able hear all of the audio from his original recordings.
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Posted by: Sean F, 17:52 EST, Thu February 2, 2012 |
Viewed: 597 Times | | |
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A new report says that far from being on the verge of disaster, due to the web piracy problem, the entertainment industry has never had it better.
The new report, titled The Sky Is Rising, takes a closer look at the business and creative side of the entertainment industry, and instead of the doom and gloom often portrayed by industry lobby groups such as the MPAA and RIAA, the last few years have been a boom time for creativity, and for revenue.
With an infographic summarising the details of the report, it found that the entertainment industry, which includes books, video games, music and movies, has grown 50% in the last decade.
For example, the video game industry has grown almost four fold since the early 2000's. For books, despite the deep recession, revenue is up compared to 2008, and the number of books being produced has skyrocketed in the last decade.
And despite constant protests from the music industry, the value of the industry has grown 27% from 2005 to 2010, with artists now getting a larger share of the revenue pie.
Similarly, the movie industry has had a couple of great years, with revenue up 24% from 2006 to 2010, and global TV/Film spending up by more than $100 billion in the last decade, the so called decade of piracy. And despite dire warnings from the MPAA about less films being produced due to web piracy, the number of films produced worldwide has actually increased by 317% from 1995 to 2009.
But with more choices and more content than ever for consumers to consume, there will inevitably be winners and losers, as consumers also change the way they consume content. The industries that cannot keep up with the consumer might still find themselves on the losing side of probably the greatest boom for the entertainment industry in history.
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February 2012 News Archive