Amazon recently published a list of its 100 best-selling albums of 2008, and guess which one is on top? It's the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV, which band front man Trent Reznor personally uploaded to the Pirate Bay and the private music tracker What.cd earlier last year. Reznor also offered a free download of the album from the band's website and licensed it under a Creative Commons license.
It was pretty clear early on that those free releases didn't harm the commercial success of Ghosts I-IV. Fans paid more than 1.6 million dollars for downloads and deluxe edition physical releases of the album in the first week after its release alone. The album also got nominated for a Grammy award just a few weeks ago, and Reznor followed up Ghosts I-IV with another album that got released via the band's own Bittorrent tracker.
NIN's use of torrent sites and Creative Commons licenses often gets compared to Radiohead's online experiments. Radiohead had offered is album "In Rainbows" as a free download, but asked its fans to donate. The band also teamed up with a traditional label to release In Rainbows in stores.
Reznor however criticized Radiohead's efforts as an "insincere" marketing ploy, because the downloads were only available for a limited time and clearly aimed at drumming up the publicity for the album's physical release. I guess Reznor might feel pretty good about the fact that at least on Amazon, Ghosts I-IV outsold In Rainbows. Radiohead's album, which has been available as a MP3 download on the online retailer's website for about a year, ended up on spot number 11 of Amazon's 2008 besteller list.
(via Creative Commons)
It was pretty clear early on that those free releases didn't harm the commercial success of Ghosts I-IV. Fans paid more than 1.6 million dollars for downloads and deluxe edition physical releases of the album in the first week after its release alone. The album also got nominated for a Grammy award just a few weeks ago, and Reznor followed up Ghosts I-IV with another album that got released via the band's own Bittorrent tracker.
NIN's use of torrent sites and Creative Commons licenses often gets compared to Radiohead's online experiments. Radiohead had offered is album "In Rainbows" as a free download, but asked its fans to donate. The band also teamed up with a traditional label to release In Rainbows in stores.
Reznor however criticized Radiohead's efforts as an "insincere" marketing ploy, because the downloads were only available for a limited time and clearly aimed at drumming up the publicity for the album's physical release. I guess Reznor might feel pretty good about the fact that at least on Amazon, Ghosts I-IV outsold In Rainbows. Radiohead's album, which has been available as a MP3 download on the online retailer's website for about a year, ended up on spot number 11 of Amazon's 2008 besteller list.
(via Creative Commons)
Anti-virus vendor Sophos is reporting that a new trojan horse is attempting to block access to Mininova, the Pirate Bay and Suprbay. The trojan, named Troj/Qhost-AC by Sophos, is changing the hosts file on infected Windows machines to redirect users to the local IP address 127.0.0.1. It also adds the comment "FuckYou" to that file.
From the Sophoslab blog:
"While inserting the comments “Fuck You” into the HOSTS file is probably not a nice thing to say, it is definitely quite unusual to see a Trojan do nothing else except to deny the infected machine access to P2P websites."
Conspiracy theorists will probably argue that this might be a virus written by or on behalf of the entertainment industry, but I think it's much more likely that a user of a competing torrent site is behind this. Why else would the virus include Suprbay, but fail to mention other much more popular sites?
Still, one shouldn't dismiss this as a silly grudge against the Pirate Bay. Qhost-AC seems to be based on a similar trojan that blocks access to security websites, and Threatexpert.com is reporting that another incarnation of the virus is not only blocking access to torrent sites, but also opening pop-up windows for rogue security software and downloading further malicious code form the Internet.
From the Sophoslab blog:
"While inserting the comments “Fuck You” into the HOSTS file is probably not a nice thing to say, it is definitely quite unusual to see a Trojan do nothing else except to deny the infected machine access to P2P websites."
Conspiracy theorists will probably argue that this might be a virus written by or on behalf of the entertainment industry, but I think it's much more likely that a user of a competing torrent site is behind this. Why else would the virus include Suprbay, but fail to mention other much more popular sites?
Still, one shouldn't dismiss this as a silly grudge against the Pirate Bay. Qhost-AC seems to be based on a similar trojan that blocks access to security websites, and Threatexpert.com is reporting that another incarnation of the virus is not only blocking access to torrent sites, but also opening pop-up windows for rogue security software and downloading further malicious code form the Internet.
MacWorld Expo is going down starting Monday in San Francisco, and Apple fans have been speculating about new products for months. Will there be a new Mac Mini? An iPhone Nano? Or maybe even an Apple Netbook ? Answers to all these question will be given in the coming days, and our friends of The Apple Blog will be there to cover it in depth. Meanwhile, there’s still some time left to imagine what kind of Newteevee gadgets we would like to see announced.
Let’s face it: We’re probably not going to see anything too unexpected from Apple a the event. Steve Jobs just won’t leave it up to his minions to announce any revolutionary new product or service, and with him most likely not showing up we have to brace ourselves for a bunch of unspectacular upgrades. So why not dream big and come up with some stuff we would really like to see in our living rooms? Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Let’s face it: We’re probably not going to see anything too unexpected from Apple a the event. Steve Jobs just won’t leave it up to his minions to announce any revolutionary new product or service, and with him most likely not showing up we have to brace ourselves for a bunch of unspectacular upgrades. So why not dream big and come up with some stuff we would really like to see in our living rooms? Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
What will happen to BitTorrent users and their favorite sites in the new year? What will happen to the music industry’s new efforts to combat piracy with the help of ISPs, and what about efforts to legalize file sharing? We asked guest columnist Janko Roettgers for his predictions for 2009. Continue reading on Torrentfreak.com.
I know, you're probably getting sick of these lists popping up everywhere by now, which is why I decided to make this one short and sweet. Here we go:
1. It's official: File sharing becomes a crime without punishment in Germany
2. Wortharchiving: Another site for legal torrents
3. Court: Rapidshare has to check all uploads for copyright infringement
4. Monster vaginas cost German tax payers millions
5. Flashback: Interview with Soulseek programmer Nir Arbel
Happy new year everyone!
1. It's official: File sharing becomes a crime without punishment in Germany
2. Wortharchiving: Another site for legal torrents
3. Court: Rapidshare has to check all uploads for copyright infringement
4. Monster vaginas cost German tax payers millions
5. Flashback: Interview with Soulseek programmer Nir Arbel
Happy new year everyone!
2008 should have been a good year for P2P startups. The FCC ruled that ISPs can’t block BitTorrent and other distributed protocols, the growing importance of HD was increasingly making P2P look like a viable solution, and the P4P folks even came up with a way to increase the speed of P2P downloads while appeasing ISPs at the same time.
And yet the industry continued to struggle, especially some of its bigger players. BitTorrent Inc. cut two-thirds of its staff, saw the departure of its co-founder as well as its CEO and had to pay back millions of dollars of funding while Vuze had two rounds of layoffs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the P2P industry has turned the corner quite yet, even though there are some opportunities ahead in 2009. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
And yet the industry continued to struggle, especially some of its bigger players. BitTorrent Inc. cut two-thirds of its staff, saw the departure of its co-founder as well as its CEO and had to pay back millions of dollars of funding while Vuze had two rounds of layoffs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the P2P industry has turned the corner quite yet, even though there are some opportunities ahead in 2009. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Just a quick note for all of my German-speaking readers: I've recently started to work with the German TV / video production company Blinkenlichten that produces a weekly show called Elektrischer Reporter. The show is a hybrid format, meaning it's available as a video podcast online and shown on TV as well.
The most recent two episodes are dealing with intellectual property, sharing and remixing and alternative compensation models, and I think they turned out great, but as I said, I'm somewhat biased. You can check them out below, or just go to the Elektrischer Reporter website for higher-res videos, podcast RSS feeds and more.
The most recent two episodes are dealing with intellectual property, sharing and remixing and alternative compensation models, and I think they turned out great, but as I said, I'm somewhat biased. You can check them out below, or just go to the Elektrischer Reporter website for higher-res videos, podcast RSS feeds and more.
Elektrischer Reporter – Urheber 2.0: Jeder Nutzer ein Pirat?
Elektrischer Reporter – Urheber 2.0: Was tun, wenn keiner kauft?
Imagine this: You’re an independent filmmaker and your first animated feature is getting rave reviews. It’s being shown at dozens of festivals around the world, and is taking home prestigious awards, such as that of Germany’s Berlinale festival. But unless you can come up with the $220,000 that music publishers are demanding, it will never see a commercial release. What do you do?
Nina Paley decided to blog about it. She started a little online grassroots campaign to get her animated movie Sita Sings The Blues out to movie lovers despite royalty rates that are higher than the film’s entire budget, and she’s been posting details about her struggle (and explaining it in video interviews) on her web site for months. Then a few days ago, the person who could turn out to be her most powerful ally emerged: Robert Ebert. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Nina Paley decided to blog about it. She started a little online grassroots campaign to get her animated movie Sita Sings The Blues out to movie lovers despite royalty rates that are higher than the film’s entire budget, and she’s been posting details about her struggle (and explaining it in video interviews) on her web site for months. Then a few days ago, the person who could turn out to be her most powerful ally emerged: Robert Ebert. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Have some good food, get some rest ... as this blog is doing right now (the taking a break part, not the eating). And I guess it's a little too late for xmas wish lists, but I'd love to hear from my regular readers about how I could improve P2P Blog in the weeks and months to come. Just drop me a note or leave a comment. Thanks!
The BBC has just rolled out a new desktop version of its popular iPlayer service based on Adobe’s AIR platform. The new client is available for UK residents as part of the BBC iPlayer Labs beta test, and it will be released to the public some time next year. BBC’s iPlayer client previously only offered downloadable content for Windows PCs. The new client will also be available for Mac and Linux users.
The launch of the new client is a big blow for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based content delivery service startup Kontiki, whose P2P technology powered previous iPlayer versions. Beep Online media exec Anthony Rose cited falling broadband prices as a reason to shift away from P2P. But the move could also be part of a new approach to appease local ISPs that are increasingly voicing concerns about the growing iPlayer bandwidth footprint. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
The launch of the new client is a big blow for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based content delivery service startup Kontiki, whose P2P technology powered previous iPlayer versions. Beep Online media exec Anthony Rose cited falling broadband prices as a reason to shift away from P2P. But the move could also be part of a new approach to appease local ISPs that are increasingly voicing concerns about the growing iPlayer bandwidth footprint. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
French P2P start-up zSlide has just opened up the beta testing phase of a new Bittorrent client called Pump that combines content-aware web-browsing with the ability to simultaneously search multiple websites for torrents, direct downloads and streaming media. The client is currently only available for Windows and utilizes Microsoft's Internet Explorer for web browsing. It also features a media player for audio and video content.
Pump automatically searches Google for direct downloads of videos and audio files, Jamendo, Youtube, Legaltorrents and Mininova. It also offers the ability to get more search results from torrent search engines like Speckly and other third-party websites. More advanced users can add additional sites to search as well.
Pump is kind of a culmination of things that the zSlide folks have been working on over the last three years. The company is probably known best for its private, Bittorrent-based file sharing service Podmailing.
It recently opened a torrent hosting service called Vipeers in November, but was forced to scale back its Vipeers beta test in recent days due to abuse and presumably exploding bandwidth costs. The company also previously developed a white-label media player, which is clearly present in Pump. users can not only play back content, but also burn DVDs and CDs.
One of the more interesting aspects of Pump is that it automatically scans websites for links to torrents and directly downloadable media content, which is similar to the way the audio player Songbird treats MP3 links.
That being said, Pump is still clearly beta and occasionally surprises you with error messages or even downloads you didn't really initiate. The interface is also a little overwhelming, and one has to wonder whether Pump might almost have too many features. It's hard to get people to replace one program than they know and use, but contrary to what one might think it's oftentimes even harder to replace a whole bunch of them at once.
Pump automatically searches Google for direct downloads of videos and audio files, Jamendo, Youtube, Legaltorrents and Mininova. It also offers the ability to get more search results from torrent search engines like Speckly and other third-party websites. More advanced users can add additional sites to search as well.
Pump is kind of a culmination of things that the zSlide folks have been working on over the last three years. The company is probably known best for its private, Bittorrent-based file sharing service Podmailing.
It recently opened a torrent hosting service called Vipeers in November, but was forced to scale back its Vipeers beta test in recent days due to abuse and presumably exploding bandwidth costs. The company also previously developed a white-label media player, which is clearly present in Pump. users can not only play back content, but also burn DVDs and CDs.
One of the more interesting aspects of Pump is that it automatically scans websites for links to torrents and directly downloadable media content, which is similar to the way the audio player Songbird treats MP3 links.
That being said, Pump is still clearly beta and occasionally surprises you with error messages or even downloads you didn't really initiate. The interface is also a little overwhelming, and one has to wonder whether Pump might almost have too many features. It's hard to get people to replace one program than they know and use, but contrary to what one might think it's oftentimes even harder to replace a whole bunch of them at once.
The Recording Industry Association of America has decided to end its five-year-long lawsuit campaign against music file sharers, the Wall Street Journal reported today, with the major record labels opting to instead work with ISPs to combat the practice. Some major ISPs have apparently already agreed to take part in a graduated response program: Share once, and you’ll get a slap on the wrist. Get caught the third time, and your contract gets canceled.
Mathew Ingram over at GigaOM thinks this is a bad idea because it privatizes copyright enforcement, meaning that alleged offenders won’t have any clear recourse when they’re wrongly accused. That’s true, and definitely something to be worried about, but it’s not exactly new. ISPs took on the role of copyright cops a long time ago; for some, the new agreement only formalizes policies that are already in place. And not much changes for the users, either. They can still get sued, despite the agreement. And yet, they will still continue to share music, and a whole lot of video as well. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Mathew Ingram over at GigaOM thinks this is a bad idea because it privatizes copyright enforcement, meaning that alleged offenders won’t have any clear recourse when they’re wrongly accused. That’s true, and definitely something to be worried about, but it’s not exactly new. ISPs took on the role of copyright cops a long time ago; for some, the new agreement only formalizes policies that are already in place. And not much changes for the users, either. They can still get sued, despite the agreement. And yet, they will still continue to share music, and a whole lot of video as well. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
