TECHLOID. All your torrent are belong to us.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Life after The Pirate Bay
By now, news of The Pirate Bay having being sold (out?) has travelled far and wide. So, what's a torrent junkie to do to get his/her fix? The folks over at T3ch H3lp blog have compiled a list of "5 best torrent sites, besides pirate bay." See? Now you're no longer cast adrift in the wide ocean of the internets. See? The sky isn't falling. Yet.
Labels: T3ch H3lp, The Pirate Bay, torrents
8:24 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Pirate Bay is dead. Long live live P2P
A reply by one 'jollyreaper' from Slashdot to a comment (the bit with the asterisks), has brought us back to our senses and has put things into perspective:
***As soon as Global Gaming Factory X buys it, you can say bye-bye to all the torrents, and worst of all, all the trackers. Which means pretty much the end of BitTorrent as we know it, since most of the pirated content in the world is tracked TPB***.
Yeah, and when Napster died, that was the end of mp3 distribution as we knew it. Then came the era of mp3 distribution as we had not known it. After Audio Galaxy died something else came along. Supernova died, Mininova came. Pirate Bay dies, something else comes along.
P2P is like the Borg, endlessly adapting to whatever attack you come up with. Blast it with a phaser? The next one has a phaser shield. Modulate the phaser beam, the next one has modulated shields. Rip its its arm off and use it to club the thing to death, the next one will have sturdier arms that can't be ripped off.
This is actually quite funny because p2p services operate off the same popularity dynamics as normal products and services. Something like McDonalds comes along, it monopolizes the fast food burger market and also serves to suppress the wide-scale popularity of potentially better burger chains. If McDonalds folded tomorrow, we'd see an explosion of innovation and potentially better burgers.
The same inertia works in the p2p world. If Napster was never destroyed, we'd likely still be listening to crappy, half-broken mp3's to this day. People tend to stick with what works, even if it doesn't work well. Kill Napster, now suddenly there's a wide-open market for better clients and protocols to compete in. Kill off one of them, now the next generation can compete. The RIAA is like an incomplete course of antibiotics and the p2p networks are like MRSA. You don't kill 'em off completely and they'll just come back to eat your face.
So, the Pirate Bay is dead. Long live p2p. You know something else is coming.
***As soon as Global Gaming Factory X buys it, you can say bye-bye to all the torrents, and worst of all, all the trackers. Which means pretty much the end of BitTorrent as we know it, since most of the pirated content in the world is tracked TPB***.
Yeah, and when Napster died, that was the end of mp3 distribution as we knew it. Then came the era of mp3 distribution as we had not known it. After Audio Galaxy died something else came along. Supernova died, Mininova came. Pirate Bay dies, something else comes along.
P2P is like the Borg, endlessly adapting to whatever attack you come up with. Blast it with a phaser? The next one has a phaser shield. Modulate the phaser beam, the next one has modulated shields. Rip its its arm off and use it to club the thing to death, the next one will have sturdier arms that can't be ripped off.
This is actually quite funny because p2p services operate off the same popularity dynamics as normal products and services. Something like McDonalds comes along, it monopolizes the fast food burger market and also serves to suppress the wide-scale popularity of potentially better burger chains. If McDonalds folded tomorrow, we'd see an explosion of innovation and potentially better burgers.
The same inertia works in the p2p world. If Napster was never destroyed, we'd likely still be listening to crappy, half-broken mp3's to this day. People tend to stick with what works, even if it doesn't work well. Kill Napster, now suddenly there's a wide-open market for better clients and protocols to compete in. Kill off one of them, now the next generation can compete. The RIAA is like an incomplete course of antibiotics and the p2p networks are like MRSA. You don't kill 'em off completely and they'll just come back to eat your face.
So, the Pirate Bay is dead. Long live p2p. You know something else is coming.
Labels: MP3, news, opinion, Slashdot, The Pirate Bay, torrents
10:39 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
The Pirate Bay Sold WTF
What. The. F*ck. Our beloved Pirate Bay has been SOLD!
Full Press Release from Global Gaming Factory X AB (in pdf)
According to Reuters (via Wired News), The Pirate Bay has been sold to Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB. From the article:
The buyer said the website, for which it would pay 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.7 million), was viable based on plans for a new business model that would satisfy both content providers and copyright owners.
"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya in a statement.
A snippet from the front page of the Global Gaming Factory website:
"The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers' need faster downloads and better quality" continues Hans Pandeya.
The Local, a Swedish publication, quotes Peter Sunde, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay as saying:
"We feel that we can't take The Pirate Bay any further. We're in a bit of a frozen situation where there's not much happening and there are neither people nor money to develop things," Sunde told TT.
The sale "means things will go into a new gear for The Pirate Bay," he added.
R.I.P, TPB. We will miss you.
Full Press Release from Global Gaming Factory X AB (in pdf)
According to Reuters (via Wired News), The Pirate Bay has been sold to Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB. From the article:
The buyer said the website, for which it would pay 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.7 million), was viable based on plans for a new business model that would satisfy both content providers and copyright owners.
"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya in a statement.
A snippet from the front page of the Global Gaming Factory website:
"The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers' need faster downloads and better quality" continues Hans Pandeya.
The Local, a Swedish publication, quotes Peter Sunde, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay as saying:
"We feel that we can't take The Pirate Bay any further. We're in a bit of a frozen situation where there's not much happening and there are neither people nor money to develop things," Sunde told TT.
The sale "means things will go into a new gear for The Pirate Bay," he added.
R.I.P, TPB. We will miss you.
Labels: business, peer-2-peer, The Pirate Bay, torrents, WTF
10:03 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, June 29, 2009
Hej fran Sverige
Hello from Sweden. That's what the title of this blog post is supposed to say when translated into English (we hope and apologise in advance if we inadvertently created an international incident).
According to FileShareFreak, despite the fact that several Swedish trackers closed shop after The Pirate Bay's guilty verdict, the torrent community is about to be invaded by a surge of returning Nordic trackers.
According to FileShareFreak, despite the fact that several Swedish trackers closed shop after The Pirate Bay's guilty verdict, the torrent community is about to be invaded by a surge of returning Nordic trackers.
Labels: news, Nordic, Swedish, The Pirate Bay, torrents, trackers
11:15 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
The State of Music Online by Pew Internet
The State of Music Online: Ten Years After Napster. A report published in June of 2009 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The following includes the overview and a few select excerpts from the report:
In the decade since Napster’s launch, selling recorded music has become as much of an art as making the music itself. The music industry has been on the front lines of the battle to convert freeloaders into paying customers, and their efforts have been watched closely by other digitized industries—newspapers, book publishing and Hollywood among them—who are hoping to staunch their own bleeding before it’s too late.
And this:
In the decade since Napster’s launch, digital music consumers have demonstrated their interest in five kinds of “free” selling points:
1. Cost (zero or approaching zero),
2. Portability (to any device),
3. Mobility (wireless access to music),
4. Choice (access to any song ever recorded) and
5. Remixability (freedom to remix and mashup music)
And this:
Internet scholar Lawrence Lessig has even gone so far as to argue that music was the most important catalyst to early adoption of the internet. As he notes in Free Culture, “The appeal of file-sharing music was the crack cocaine of the Internet’s growth. It drove demand for access to the Internet more powerfully than any other single application."
And a quote from a New York Times article proclaiming:
In the none-too-distant future, techno-visionaries declare, musicians will not need record labels. Instead, they will market and sell recordings directly to fans over the Internet. Even the labels that manage to hang on to their artists will find their sales eviscerated by piracy. With free music available on the Web via Napster and other song-trading services, only fools will pay for songs.
And how about some stats to go with that:
At the same time, unauthorized file-sharing venues are still firmly rooted in the online music world. In a recent Pew Internet Project survey, 15% of online adults admitted to downloading or sharing files using peer-to-peer or BitTorrent.9 Globally, estimates from file-sharing research firm Big Champagne place the P2P universe at more than 200 million computers with at least one peer-to-peer application installed, and operators of the popular Pirate Bay torrent tracker have identified more than 25 million "peers" who have used their site alone to exchange files
Even old school folk like David Bowie know that the times they are a changin':
A few days ago a kid downloaded one of my songs from my Web site. He re-recorded it at home, changing the bits that he didn't like and then put up his version on his own site. The new version is written his way, with changes to the melodies and some of the lyrics and it is available as an MP3. It is unbelievable. If he can do that, imagine what can happen in the future.
The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades (or maybe it won't be?):
In the Pew Internet Project’s third Future of the Internet survey, experts were asked to ruminate about the future of copyright protection. Many responses referenced the limitations of the technology and the ways consumer resistance to DRM would influence the market. Sociologist and author Howard Rheingold noted that “both iTunes and Amazon are stripping DRM from downloadable music because that is what music customers demand.” Likewise, Geoff Arnold, senior principal and software development engineer for Amazon.com offered that consumers armed with increasingly powerful technology would likely retain the upper hand in the DRM arms race: “Every individual will have access to sufficient computing power to simulate every relevant content consumption use-case, and DRM won’t be able to keep up.”
The following includes the overview and a few select excerpts from the report:
In the decade since Napster’s launch, selling recorded music has become as much of an art as making the music itself. The music industry has been on the front lines of the battle to convert freeloaders into paying customers, and their efforts have been watched closely by other digitized industries—newspapers, book publishing and Hollywood among them—who are hoping to staunch their own bleeding before it’s too late.
And this:
In the decade since Napster’s launch, digital music consumers have demonstrated their interest in five kinds of “free” selling points:
1. Cost (zero or approaching zero),
2. Portability (to any device),
3. Mobility (wireless access to music),
4. Choice (access to any song ever recorded) and
5. Remixability (freedom to remix and mashup music)
And this:
Internet scholar Lawrence Lessig has even gone so far as to argue that music was the most important catalyst to early adoption of the internet. As he notes in Free Culture, “The appeal of file-sharing music was the crack cocaine of the Internet’s growth. It drove demand for access to the Internet more powerfully than any other single application."
And a quote from a New York Times article proclaiming:
In the none-too-distant future, techno-visionaries declare, musicians will not need record labels. Instead, they will market and sell recordings directly to fans over the Internet. Even the labels that manage to hang on to their artists will find their sales eviscerated by piracy. With free music available on the Web via Napster and other song-trading services, only fools will pay for songs.
And how about some stats to go with that:
At the same time, unauthorized file-sharing venues are still firmly rooted in the online music world. In a recent Pew Internet Project survey, 15% of online adults admitted to downloading or sharing files using peer-to-peer or BitTorrent.9 Globally, estimates from file-sharing research firm Big Champagne place the P2P universe at more than 200 million computers with at least one peer-to-peer application installed, and operators of the popular Pirate Bay torrent tracker have identified more than 25 million "peers" who have used their site alone to exchange files
Even old school folk like David Bowie know that the times they are a changin':
A few days ago a kid downloaded one of my songs from my Web site. He re-recorded it at home, changing the bits that he didn't like and then put up his version on his own site. The new version is written his way, with changes to the melodies and some of the lyrics and it is available as an MP3. It is unbelievable. If he can do that, imagine what can happen in the future.
The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades (or maybe it won't be?):
In the Pew Internet Project’s third Future of the Internet survey, experts were asked to ruminate about the future of copyright protection. Many responses referenced the limitations of the technology and the ways consumer resistance to DRM would influence the market. Sociologist and author Howard Rheingold noted that “both iTunes and Amazon are stripping DRM from downloadable music because that is what music customers demand.” Likewise, Geoff Arnold, senior principal and software development engineer for Amazon.com offered that consumers armed with increasingly powerful technology would likely retain the upper hand in the DRM arms race: “Every individual will have access to sufficient computing power to simulate every relevant content consumption use-case, and DRM won’t be able to keep up.”
Labels: downloads, file sharing, file-sharing, Internet, music, Pew
10:42 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson torrent traffic increases
It appears that our earlier post was accurate. TorrentFreak is reporting that there is an increase in Michael Jackson related bittorrent activity. Also, TF states that:
"At the time of writing the three most active torrents in the music section on the largest torrent indexer, Mininova, are all compilations or discographies from the “King of Pop”. On top is a torrent listing 30 Michael Jackson albums, The Jackson 5 and The Jacksons, totaling 1.94 GB of music.
In common with social media sites, ‘Michael Jackson’ is one of the most sought after phrases on torrent sites too. The search cloud on Mininova is filled with Jackson-related searches from fans who want to complete their collection."
"At the time of writing the three most active torrents in the music section on the largest torrent indexer, Mininova, are all compilations or discographies from the “King of Pop”. On top is a torrent listing 30 Michael Jackson albums, The Jackson 5 and The Jacksons, totaling 1.94 GB of music.
In common with social media sites, ‘Michael Jackson’ is one of the most sought after phrases on torrent sites too. The search cloud on Mininova is filled with Jackson-related searches from fans who want to complete their collection."
Labels: bittorrent, downloads, Michael Jackson, music, p2p, peer-2-peer, torrents
12:16 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Michael Jackson downloads
We at TECHLOID were in a state of shock and utter disbelief when we first heard the news yesterday evening: The King of Pop is dead.
Shortly afterwards, we wondered, would downloads of his music and related material increase as a result of his sudden and unexpected death?
According to Times Online, sales of Michael Jackson memorabilia are up, in the U.S., the number one album on iTunes is Thriller and on Amazon.co.uk, Jackson's albums have secured 14 of the top 20 places.
R.I.P, M.J.
Shortly afterwards, we wondered, would downloads of his music and related material increase as a result of his sudden and unexpected death?
According to Times Online, sales of Michael Jackson memorabilia are up, in the U.S., the number one album on iTunes is Thriller and on Amazon.co.uk, Jackson's albums have secured 14 of the top 20 places.
R.I.P, M.J.
Labels: Michael Jackson, music, news, torrents
10:03 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
