TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Witcher 2 Devs Abandon Games Piracy Shakedown
- The Pirate Bay Will Stop Serving Torrents
- Musicians Praise BitTorrent and Creative Commons
| Witcher 2 Devs Abandon Games Piracy Shakedown Posted: 13 Jan 2012 12:58 AM PST
TorrentFreak wasn’t really surprised by the statement. CD Projekt had done exactly the same before with the first installment of The Witcher. “Mark our words, CD Projekt aren't going to get an easy ride with this,” we predicted back then. But would they carry it through? While trawling through endless Germany-based lawsuits in connection with another issue, the answer was right there – documents which showed that CD Projekt were sending so-called pay-up-or-else letters to alleged pirates demanding more than 900 euros per time. So, early December 2011, we reported what we’d found. Response to the news was mixed. Some thought it was OK to chase down pirates but soon it became clear that this company, who had built up so much goodwill with impressive games and a refreshing attitude to DRM, risked damaging their hard-earned reputation with people they needed onside – the gaming press and their readers. One of CD Projekt’s most vocal opponents (TF aside) were RockPaperShotgun, who proceeded to give the company a pretty hard time over their actions. Their arguments are well-worn, centering on the potential of accusing the innocent with disproportionate actions. But now, just a couple of months later, it is all over. “In early December, [a TorrentFreak] article was published about a law firm acting on behalf of CD Projekt RED, contacting individuals who had downloaded The Witcher 2 illegally and seeking financial compensation for copyright infringement,” says CD Projekt’s Marcin Iwinski in a statement sent to RPS. “The news about our decision to combat piracy directly, instead of with DRM, spread quickly and with it came a number of concerns from the community.” “Repeatedly, gamers just like you have said that our methods might wrongly accuse people who have never violated our copyright and expressed serious concern about our actions,” Iwinski adds. “Being part of a community is a give-and-take process. We only succeed because you have faith in us, and we have worked hard over the years to build up that trust. We were sorry to see that many gamers felt that our actions didn't respect the faith that they have put into CD Projekt RED. “Our fans always have been and remain our greatest concern, and we pride ourselves on the fact that you all know that we listen to you and take your opinions to heart. While we are confident that no one who legally owns one of our games has been required to compensate us for copyright infringement, we value our fans, our supporters, and our community too highly to take the chance that we might ever falsely accuse even one individual. “So we've decided that we will immediately cease identifying and contacting pirates,” Iwinski writes. The full statement can be found here and is important on a number of fronts, all previously outlined in great detail. But perhaps the most refreshing thing is the tone of the announcement. Look, let’s be under no illusions, the decision to abandon this ill-fated scheme is a commercial one, but CD Projekt did not tow the typically corporate line with a carefully sanitized release saying that their scheme had simply run its course, they actually listened to and then addressed the concerns of their fans. For those already targeted by the scheme it’s too late, but the company can now move forward doing what they do best – making great games without needless distractions. Oh, and for the other games companies doing the same in Germany but currently flying under the radar – we know who you are and we’re coming for you next, so you might want to get your retaliation in first, it’s easier in the long run. Source: Witcher 2 Devs Abandon Games Piracy Shakedown
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| The Pirate Bay Will Stop Serving Torrents Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:14 PM PST
The Pirate Bay argued that BitTorrent trackers have been made redundant by technologies such as DHT and PEX. In addition, The Pirate Bay team said that they might move away from torrents entirely and switch to offering magnet links instead. "We're talking to the other torrent admins on doing magnet links and DHT and PEX for all sites. Moving away from torrents and trackers totally – like pick a date and all agree 'from this date, we'll not support torrents anymore'," a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak at the time. Now, two years later, that date is coming soon. Today, The Pirate Bay made the first step towards this new future by making magnets the default download links instead of torrents. TorrentFreak was further informed that in “a month or so” the largest torrent site on the Internet will stop serving torrent files indefinitely. Magnets are default
The announcement is bound to lead to confusion and uncertainty among many torrent users, but in reality very little will change for the average Pirate Bay visitor. Users will still be able to download files, but these will now be started through a magnet link instead of a .torrent file. The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that one of the advantages of the transition to a “magnet site” is that it requires relatively little bandwidth to host a proxy. This is topical, since this week courts in both Finland and the Netherlands ordered local Internet providers to block the torrent site. Perhaps even better, without the torrent files everyone can soon host a full copy of The Pirate Bay on a USB thumb drive, which may come in handy in the future. Unlike the site’s users, existing torrent sites that scrape .torrent files from The Pirate Bay will have to make some drastic changes. If they want to continue serving .torrent files they will have to fetch them from DHT. Also, hotlinks to .torrent files will stop working and will soon redirect to The Pirate Bay’s detail page for the files in question. One of the potential downsides of using magnets is that it could take a bit longer for downloads to start, especially if there are relatively few people sharing a file. This is because the .torrent file has to be fetched from other users instead of being downloaded directly from the site. More background on these and other technicalities can be found here. The good news is that all mainstream BitTorrent clients support magnet links. This wasn’t the case back in 2009, but when The Pirate Bay hinted that in the future they could become a magnet-only site, all developers quickly made their clients fully compatible. There’s no doubt that a torrent-less Pirate Bay will certainly mark the end of an era. At the moment it’s hard to predict what the impact of The Pirate Bay’s decision will be on the BitTorrent community. But torrents, however, will never disappear completely. Source: The Pirate Bay Will Stop Serving Torrents
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| Musicians Praise BitTorrent and Creative Commons Posted: 12 Jan 2012 10:25 AM PST
Tens of thousands of musicians, from those just starting out to those already established, use BitTorrent to give away their music for free. One of the BitTorrent clients that helps these artists to get noticed is FrostWire. In 2008, the client introduced its FrostClick service through which it promotes independent artists, and not without success. With help from FrostWire, independent musicians reach a bigger audience than many of the artists signed by major labels. In the last year alone, 2.4 million people downloaded the albums promoted by FrostWire, and according to the artists who were featured, it pays off. “FrostWire jumpstarted my music career by giving away my album for free to over 130,000 people,” says female rapper Kellee Maize in a comment. “Paying for that type of exposure would have cost me over $50,000 on other outlets such as taking out Facebook ads or Google Adsense.” “Because of FrostWire I’ve accumulated over 100,000 Facebook and Twitter followers. During my FrostWire campaign, my website has received over 100,000 page views,” she adds. Some of the critics of ‘free’ music say that it doesn’t convert to any sales at all, but Maize disagrees. The rapper says that thanks to releasing her music under a Creative Commons license through FrostWire, she’s now earning some decent money. “I’ve been able to sell more albums on iTunes with this exposure and earn a sustainable income off of MP3 sales even though my music is part of Creative Commons,” says Maize. She’s not alone either. Other artists that were promoted by FrostWire also praise the promotional success it gave them. “We were truly delighted by the number of downloads we received after our EP was featured on FrostWire. It’s the most effective way we’ve found so far of getting the music out there,” says John from Azoora Feat. Graciellita. This view is shared by Ryan Egan from The Ugly Club. "I never anticipated the kind of feedback we’ve received from music fans all over the world and it was a great decision to leave our record in the hands of the great people at FrostClick," Egan says. To celebrate 2.4 million downloads in 2011, FrostWire has released a compilation album as they also did in 2009. The A Side of the new album features 18 artists who’ve been promoted in the FrostWire client, and Side B is a hand-picked selection of 12 of the best artists who were featured on the FrostClick website. All all the tracks are completely free to download and share. We’ve embedded Side A of FrostWire Creative Commons Mixtape below, and Side B is available here. For those who want more, here’s another 2.5 gigabyte compilation of some of the best Creative Commons music of 2011. Enjoy. Source: Musicians Praise BitTorrent and Creative Commons
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"Of course we're not happy when people are pirating our games, so we are signing with legal firms and torrent sneaking companies," said CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski back in November 2010.
After half a decade of loyal service, The Pirate Bay 
With all the negative talk about BitTorrent, fueled by the billion dollar entertainment industries, it’s refreshing to see that many of the people who actually create the music are using it to further their careers. | 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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