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| Tors.in: Dump Your Torrents and Get a Fancy URL to Share Posted: 29 Dec 2011 02:21 AM PST Millions of people use BitTorrent every day, and those who want to share a file of their own literally have thousands of sites to choose from. However, the problem with most public BitTorrent indexes is that they are littered with ads and sponsored download traps that can be quite cumbersome. Another downside is that public torrent sites don’t support private uploads. All the torrent files users add are available for the entire world to see. This public visibility has its benefits, but sometimes a simple “drop and share” service is a better solution. It gets really interesting when that’s combined with a URL shortener so the torrent can be shared easily on social networks and in blog comments. Tors.in does all the above. Tors.in
Although the concept is hardly rocket science and while the site makes creative use of existing code, the service is unique and quite handy. For the creator of Tors.in the idea emerged when he couldn’t find a simple site to dump and share torrents. “I was making torrent mirrors of important YouTube videos related to SOPA. I wanted to share these on Reddit but I noticed that there was no place to just dump a torrent and call it a day,” Tors.in creator Woodrow Freeman told TorrentFreak. While looking for a simple torrent hosting service Freeman eventually found Torrage.org, a storage solution that’s also used by many of the larger torrent sites. However, the problem with Torrage is that the URLs are rather long as they are based on the torrent’s hash. “To fix this problem I decided to create a simple service that allows users to upload files to Torrage, and add a URL shortener to make the links easier to share,” Freeman explains. A few hours later Tors.in was born, and without promoting it in public Freeman already noticed that people started using it. The process that goes on in the background is pretty straightforward. When someone uploads a torrent through Tors.in the site sends it to Torrage, giving the uploader a short URL in return. In addition, users can also create custom URLs such as tors.in/snowblind to make the link a bit more descriptive than a random string of letters and numbers. Dump and share, that’s all there is to it. Source: Tors.in: Dump Your Torrents and Get a Fancy URL to Share
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| Megaupload to Universal: You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do Posted: 28 Dec 2011 07:48 AM PST
The basis for the takedown has never been clear. While YouTube clearly indicated that UMG had taken the Mega Song down on copyright grounds, Universal later added that it had a deal with YouTube to take down content even if it doesn’t infringe their rights. This, the company says, allows it to sidestep any claims Megaupload makes against it under the DMCA. Notably, though, Universal has never said exactly why it had the video taken down. Soon, however, it may have to. In a new Megaupload court filing made available to TorrentFreak today, the file-hosting service makes it clear that it will go to considerable lengths to find out exactly what has been going on at Universal, YouTube, Vimeo and other entities involved in the Mega Song takedown. “In its opposition to the [Temporary Restraining Order], UMG did not even attempt to defend the legitimacy of its false claims to ownership of the Megaupload Video,” states the Megaupload filing. The cyberlocker adds that UMG made several assertions which now require clarification for the case to proceed correctly. The first UMG claim is that Megaupload sued the wrong UMG ‘entity’. They say that UMG Recordings is the correct entity since they are the ones dealing with YouTube and other video hosting services. Second, Megaupload wants to get to the bottom of UMG’s claim that the takedown request it filed with YouTube was not made under the DMCA, but as part of a private historical agreement the label has with YouTube. The third UMG claim is that they had nothing to do with takedowns of the Mega Song carried out at other video hosting sites such as Vimeo. Bemoaning the fact that none of UMG’s claims have been backed up by evidence or witnesses, Megaupload says it now needs facts to move forward. “Megaupload therefore respectfully requests that the Court grant it leave to take limited but essential written discovery…regarding the UMG Entities' private dealings with service providers regarding the takedowns of the Megaupload Video and the identity and authority of the persons or entities who requested the takedowns,” the company writes. “Without such information, Megaupload will be unable to determine which UMG entity instructed YouTube to remove the Megaupload Video; which other, non-UMG persons may have so instructed YouTube; and on whose behalf, on what grounds, and under what authority the removal was sought. “In addition, as UMG has denied sending notices itself to other service providers, subpoenas to any such providers who took down the video is the appropriate means to determine the party doing so,” the filing adds. There can be little doubt that keeping the Megaupload name in the news is something that Universal should have anticipated when they took the Mega Song down. Right now, if the aim was to shut Megaupload up and dampen their campaign, they have failed. At the time of writing the standard and HD versions of the song have close to 13.7 million combined views on YouTube. But perhaps even worse, Universal appear to have enabled an arch enemy to take the moral high-ground in their ‘rogue site’ propaganda war and that’s why this discovery process will be so interesting. Do Universal have an ace up their sleeve, or was the Mega Song takedown simply a terribly ill-conceived, knee-jerk, and solely destructive action? We’ll all find out soon enough. Source: Megaupload to Universal: You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do
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Early December, Megaupload's ‘Mega Song’ was on its way to becoming a | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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