TorrentFreak Email Update |
- BitTorrent Downloading Hits iPhone, iPad With Installous 5
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- Why ACTA Lives Or Dies With The Vote In The European Parliament
- Some Cheap Russian Music Sites Have Pirate Suppliers
| BitTorrent Downloading Hits iPhone, iPad With Installous 5 Posted: 04 Jun 2012 04:32 AM PDT
The first is Apptrakr, a web-based index of cracked apps. The second, Installous, is a piece of software resident on millions of jailbroken Apple devices which allows the installation of software found via Apptrakr and elsewhere. Due to the nature of Installous these tend to be cracked versions of commercial pay software usually found on the official App Store. However, free versions of software can also be found (like the Dictionary app used as a demo below), not to mention long-since abandoned software unavailable anywhere official. The downloading and installation process is simple. Utilizing the various indexes and categories within the software, users of Installous choose which app they want to download. They are then given a list of various sources for the chosen app, which usually come in the form of links to various cyberlocker file-hosting sites. With the latest version of Installous, things have changed a little. In addition to cyberlocker links, Installous 5 now supports peer-to-peer downloading. As can be seen from the screenshots below (illustration purposes only), in addition to filehost links there is now a BitTorrent download option.  “Installous uses magnet links, a decentralized way of obtaining torrent metadata. As a result, we don’t host any .torrent files. We also use peer exchange (PEX), otherwise known as trackerless torrents,” explains Hackulous admin Dissident. “Both of these features make the entire process completely decentralized and uninterruptable. Demagnetization may be slow in some cases (especially for obscure apps), but we’ll be working hard to speed up that process.” One of the big problems with the free services provided by most cyberlockers is the inability to pause and resume downloads. Indeed, longer downloads can simply fail part way through and have to be started again from the beginning. Additionally, most filehosts place a limit on download speeds for free users. The use of BitTorrent means that these limitations are overcome.  Of course, while filehost traffic is one way (download only), BitTorrent adds upload to the mix. However, the coders at Hackulous have implemented some restrictions. “Installous will seed from the device only while the download is ongoing, and only if you’re on WiFi. When the download finishes, it will stop seeding, Dissident concludes. This use of BitTorrent is not the first sharing innovation from Hackulous. In 2010 they added a a feature to Installous which allowed users to share their apps with others. Source: BitTorrent Downloading Hits iPhone, iPad With Installous 5
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| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 04 Jun 2012 01:10 AM PDT
Project X is the most downloaded movie this week. The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
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| Why ACTA Lives Or Dies With The Vote In The European Parliament Posted: 03 Jun 2012 01:36 PM PDT
To take a real-world example, the United States’ embargo against Cuba hurt Cuba immensely, but barely the United States at all (save for the sudden absence of decent cigars). Also, Cuba would have been hurt just as much, if Cuba had initiated the trade embargo. A larger economy can hurt a smaller, but not the other way around. The second reason is also the second method of enforcement, which would be military. A larger economy can ultimately impose its terms of trade on a smaller economy by the rattling of weapons, where the larger economy will have the resource advantage. ACTA has been designed as a global treaty, and yet only two of the world’s three largest economies have been involved in its creation. China, #3, has been left out of negotiations – which is odd, given that ACTA is designed as an anti-counterfeiting agreement, and all of the countries known for counterfeit goods have been left out of the agreement. That leaves economies #1 and #2. The ACTA agreement is primarily being pushed by trade representatives and industries in economy #2. (The three largest economies of the world are, in descending order, the European Union, the United States, and China.) As we have already seen, the world’s #2 economy – the United States – cannot impose its will on the world’s #1 economy – the European Union – through trade sanctions, and military action is politically and economically impossible. Therefore, if the European Union should choose to tell ACTA and its proponents to take a hike, it is effectively dead in the entire world, regardless of who else signs it in economy #4 or smaller. But if the US and EU were to agree voluntarily on this agreement, the combined economic power of the two largest economies will be plenty enough to bring everybody else in line. There is exactly zero chance of the United States voluntarily backing out of ACTA, declaring it unconstitutional, ineffective, or whatever other negative term. Every legal body that would have had the compentence to do so – including Congress – have been kept out of the loop. This show goes down in the European Union. Fortunately, nobody can keep this treaty from coming to a vote on the floor of the European Parliament, in the one elected body of the world’s largest economy. That happens some time in the parliamentary session of July 2-5. No matter what you may have heard, ACTA is not dead. This beast is very much alive and for every cent us liberty activists spend on throwing it out, the corporations who want to own our culture and knowledge spend thousands on getting it passed. If you think you can sit back and relax now, those corporations couldn’t be better off – for they are moving in for the kill, lobbying-wise, as the final vote approaches in early July. If us activists consider the battle over, we will lose something that will take decades to repair once we’ve even started repairing it. The good news is, that with the SOPA battle in the United States, we learned how to do this. We know that we can make a difference. When I spoke to the office of a Member of European Parliament (MEP) last week, they told me that one mail every other minute is practically a deafening torrent of citizens, impossible to avoid (unlike lobbyists). We know that 30 mails per minute – polite, honest, courteous, personal mails – is a pigshit number compared to what we can accomplish when we really get organized. Also, of course, we can (and should) call those MEP offices as the vote appears, in addition to mailing them. We can win this. We know that we can win this. But we will not win it without fighting. We are only winning, barely winning, because of the demonstration of strength in the February 11 rallies. Now’s when we need to keep that up. Last week ended well with three key committees recommending that the European Parliament reject ACTA as a whole. There are three votes left. The first is the vote in the Development Committee (DEVE) tomorrow (Monday), which will vote on whether ACTA adversely impacts third world health. Yeah, we know it does, but several bureaucrats are prepared to overlook that problem or whitewash it. It is our job to make them understand that we’re holding them accountable. You should let them know you care, whether you live in Europe or not. The second vote happens on June 20. It is the final vote before the European Parliament floor. On June 20, the INTA committee – the committee responsible for international trade, and therefore “owning” the question of ACTA within the European Parliament – will summarize the opinions of the previous committees, mix in its own, and recommend the European Parliament as a whole to vote yes or no to ratifying the treaty. That final, crucial vote happens some time in the July 2-5 parliament session in Strasbourg. That’s where ACTA lives or dies. As the two next crucial votes approach, I’ll take the liberty to remind you here on TorrentFreak and on my own blog. For now, make sure to send a mail to those DEVE committee members!  About The Author Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy. Book Falkvinge as speaker? Source: Why ACTA Lives Or Dies With The Vote In The European Parliament
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| Some Cheap Russian Music Sites Have Pirate Suppliers Posted: 03 Jun 2012 09:12 AM PDT Although they’ve been around for a decade or more, Russian music download sites still come as a surprise to those encountering them for the first time. Apart from having some of the most extensive music libraries on the planet, they are ridiculously cheap. As the screenshot below of the current US #1 album from John Mayer shows, each track is being offered on the Russian site called ‘LegalSounds‘ for a little above give-away prices. A whole album costs just over a dollar.  These music download sites are perhaps understandably a thorn in the side of the big record labels – when they offer a track for 9 cents they clearly aren’t playing by the same rules as iTunes for example. These sites counter by maintaining that they operate legally under Russian law as they pay the necessary fees to a local collecting society.  For the purposes of this post we won’t concern ourselves too much with the legal issues, but rather where these sites are getting their music from. Something tells us it’s not coming from the labels, and here’s why. When music is released unofficially online, audio filenames are formatted in a certain way. The first part is the name of the artist, the second the title of the album, track or performance, the third denotes the source (in this case satellite – SAT), then the date, and the last section gives the name of the piracy group who released it online. Of course, apart from the name of the artist and the album, none of these descriptors appear in music released on official sites – unless they’re Russian, that is. From searches done on some of these Russian music stores it’s absolutely clear that they’re ripping music from both torrent and Scene topsites. The group 1KING shown in the random release above are well-known online for releasing unofficial rips of radio shows, yet bizarrely a few of their releases are available on sites such as LegalSounds. So what about other terms associated with unofficial/pirate releases? When a warez group release some music onto a topsite but fail to meet some Scene criteria by breaking rules, other groups can come along with a better version – a so-called ‘PROPER’. They put this word in the description of the track to show the fact. A search for this term on our trusty music site shows dozens of ‘PROPER’ releases. You won’t find those on iTunes. The word ‘ADVANCE’, which could be used to denote an early leaked copy of an album, would only be used in an unauthorized track filename. Yet here are plenty of tracks, apparently advertising the face that they were being sold before they came out officially. Nearly as many appear if we search for the term ‘BOOTLEG‘. But when it comes to selling music, even at rock-bottom prices, some of these sites will sell anyone’s, even when its normally free. They’re currently selling Dan Bull’s album ‘Safe’ in low quality 128Kbps, even though Dan gives it away to any fan.  Other artists trying to build an audience by giving away stuff for free include Ophed on the Etched Trauma netlabel. They also found their music on Russian music sites with a price tag attached. “I understand them selling Beatles or Springsteen but I wonder what on earth they were thinking ripping off a small Greek Netlabel and a Québécois artist," the label said in a comment. The answer is probably “they didn’t actually mean to,” as this very odd final example shows. Without going into huge detail, Scene groups often ‘discuss’ things between each other via news releases on their topsite servers. These releases mostly take the form of short text (NFO) files, but every now and again they take a more unusual format. In 2010, there were presumptions that a Scene release group called DV8 had changed their name to SiRE. It wasn’t true, they were different groups, but to highlight the fact someone took a music track by some random artist, gave it an interesting title, and released it on a Scene topsite to put the incorrect rumor to rest once and for all. As can be seen from the screenshot from LegalSounds below, the message spread a little further than first expected – and it’s now worth 9 cents.  So, if LegalSounds paid the licensing fee for this release, who got the money? Not Lolfag, that’s guaranteed. Source: Some Cheap Russian Music Sites Have Pirate Suppliers
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The Hackulous community are perhaps most well known for two stand-out products targeted at users of jailbroken Apple devices.
This week there are four newcomers in our chart. 
A trade agreement such as ACTA can only be enforced by a larger economy against a smaller, for two reasons. First, the preferred means of enforcement is trade embargoes or penalizing tariffs – and when one part enforces those against a mutual trade road, both economies suffer, but the smaller suffers more. | 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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