TorrentFreak Email Update |
- The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record
- Pirate Bay Slaps Pathetic Proxies and Scammy Copies
- File-Sharing Church Weds First Couple
| The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record Posted: 08 May 2012 03:37 AM PDT
Immediately thousands of fans jumped on the release and according to figures collated by TorrentFreak, in the days that followed it was downloaded half a million times. While this may very well be a record for a “CAM” movie, it failed to exceed the download numbers of several other movies that were available in higher quality. Record or not, the movie’s distributer Disney must have been terrified by this early release. However, this weekend the suits at the studio were able to breathe a sign of relief, or rather, start popping open the Champagne. With more than $200 million in box office revenue, The Avengers had the most successful first weekend in movie history. It broke the record set by Harry Potter last year by more than $30 million, despite the “massive” piracy. But is this really such a big surprise? Not when you look at the numbers. Of all the people who downloaded a pirate copy of the film about 20% came from the US. This means that roughly 100,000 Americans have downloaded a copy online through BitTorrent. Now, IF all these people bought a movie ticket instead then box office revenue would be just 0.5% higher. Not much of an impact, and even less when you consider that these “pirates” do not all count as a lost sale. We don’t think that there are many movie fans who see a low quality camcorded version of a movie as a true alternative to watching a film in a movie theater. The two are totally different experiences, and not direct competition at all. If anything, downloading a camcorded movie could be compared to downloading a low quality bootleg of a concert. People who download these are collectors, passionate fans, or just curious. But in no way do these bootlegs seriously hurt concert attendances. The same might be said for advance leaks of games. These pre-release copies are often downloaded by tens of thousands of people, but not necessarily those who refuse to pay. The people who download these buggy and sometimes hardly playable games are often curious game fanatics who tend to buy the official game when it comes out. The claim that camcorded films are killing the movie industry is nonsense and spending millions of dollars on anti-camcording technologies is simply not worth it. But does this mean that piracy is not an issue for the movie industry at all? Well not so fast. A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available abroad while a movie is still showing in theaters. These high quality copies are more likely to “compete” with movie theater attendance and if a movie is not showing in local theaters at all, it definitely has the potential to impact future attendance. This is even more true for the DVD-aftermarket and VOD sales. High quality pirated copies are direct competition and can impact revenues. The challenge for the movie industry is to make legal offerings more appealing than pirated counterparts. Of course it may not always be able to compete with “free,” but there is still a lot of ground to make up when it comes to availability and quality of legal offerings. But in no way are camcorded copies killing the US movie industry. Source: The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record
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| Pirate Bay Slaps Pathetic Proxies and Scammy Copies Posted: 07 May 2012 11:20 AM PDT
These evils take many forms, from rich African dignitaries looking to share their wealth with strangers, to a worried ‘PayPal’ advising users to enter their username and password to ensure their accounts are still secure. In the file-sharing world, however, things are often a little more subtle. People’s bank accounts aren’t usually emptied, but novices to the pastime are often taken for a ride for relatively small sums of money by people out to make a quick buck. Often these people take advantage of changes in the market, upsets in the status quo, and times of uncertainty to deliver their payload. When the blockage of The Pirate Bay in the Netherlands became the hot topic in recent weeks, thousands of people were looking for ways to access the site. Inevitably lists of proxies appeared, most of which worked particularly well. But thanks to opportunists, some were problematic. Although perhaps not technically a straightforward proxy, one site – ThePirateBay.ee (note the .ee extension) – became particularly popular. The site first appeared during the last quarter of 2011 and was an almost perfect clone of TPB with identical functionality. Intermittently, however, it pulled a sly little trick. Sometimes the magnet / torrent links would disappear and up would come a box that wouldn’t clear until people made a ‘donation’. Seasoned Pirate Bay users aren’t so easily fooled of course, but countless others have been sucked in. TorrentFreak asked The Pirate Bay about this site and they weren’t impressed. “Charging money for free downloads is against the whole philosophy of the internets. We do not condone anything like that. This site is a bad copy of other sites, like TPB, and it’s totally meaningless. Go for another site,” they told us. The .EE is not the only fly in the ointment either. The Pirate Bay now say that they’ve found at least three sites charging for access. It also seems that in return the team are having a little fun at those sites’ expense. The TPB crew say they have “re-hijacked” visitors to one and are now directing them back to their official blog. Furthermore, ThePirateBay.ee appears to have been visited by a pirate David Blaine who has made all ‘their’ content disappear. However, just in case the .EE data reappears in a second puff of smoke, Greasemonkey users can use a couple of scripts to remove cash demands and replace them with torrent and magnet links instead. Really, though, it’s better not to use the site at all. As the proxy wars heat up, The Pirate Bay renamed itself The Hydra Bay today, linking off its main page to PirateReverse.info, an information site dedicated to helping people to access not just TPB, but several other leading torrent sites too. Source: Pirate Bay Slaps Pathetic Proxies and Scammy Copies
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| File-Sharing Church Weds First Couple Posted: 07 May 2012 05:22 AM PDT
To emphasize the holiness of copying, philosophy student Isaac Gerson started the Church of Kopimism in Sweden. After a rough start with two failed applications, the new religion was finally recognized by the authorities in January. For a church that holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols it is no surprise that the word of this new religion spread quickly. In recent months it expanded globally, from the United States to Estonia. All followers believe that copying and sharing is the most beautiful thing in the world. This belief in sharing is not restricted to files, code and information, but also applies to love. It was only a matter of time before the first Kopimist couple would become married, and last weekend this joyful union took place at the Share conference in Belgrade. On stage, a Romanian woman and an Italian man were joined in a holy Kopimist act. Both promised to share the rest of their lives together and to uphold the highest sharing standards. The Church was delighted to bring the news and commented: “We are very happy today. Love is all about sharing. A married couple share everything with each other.” Like any other matrimony, a Kopimism marriage is bound by rules. The Church of Kopimism allows the couple to share their love with others, as long as those others don’t steal it. Most importantly, however, they have to copy and remix themselves. “Hopefully, they will copy and remix some DNA-cells and create a new human being. That is the spirit of Kopimism. Feel the love and share that information. Copy all of its holiness.” Or to put it in the words of another famous religion. “Be fruitful and multiply, teem on the earth and multiply in it." Amen. Source: File-Sharing Church Weds First Couple
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A week before its premiere in US movie theaters, a camcorded version of The Avengers appeared online. 
All around the world file-sharers are being chased by anti-piracy outfits and the authorities. But while copyright holders are often quick to label file-sharers as pirates, there is a large group of people who actually consider copying to be a sacred act.| 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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