TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Studios: Movie Piracy Halved After Sending Zero Infringement Notices
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- Young Pirates Evicted From Festival For Giving Out Free Waffles
- Download Portals Reject YouTube Converter Over Piracy Concerns
| Studios: Movie Piracy Halved After Sending Zero Infringement Notices Posted: 23 Jul 2012 02:11 AM PDT
New Zealand’s Economic Development Ministry is currently reviewing the fees the recording industry and movie studios pay ISPs to send out infringement notices. Submissions sent in by the entertainment industry as part of that process and later obtained by Fairfox under the Official Information Act have turned up some interesting claims, not least that the movie industry has sent out a grand total of zero warnings. But despite ignoring the system they lobbied to have introduced, the Hollywood-backed Federation Against Copyright Theft told the government that the illegal viewing of the top 200 movies by New Zealanders dropped from 110,000 instances in August to just 50,000 in September 2011, a better than 50% reduction. However, NZFACT complain that progress has since has ground to a halt so in order to reduce piracy further they’re going to have to do what they have failed to do so far – actually send out some warnings. What is stopping them doing so, they say, is the high cost. Currently the price they have to pay ISPs is $25 NZD (roughly $20 USD) per notice, but the studios want this cut back “to pennies” each. And the studios aren’t the only ones complaining about the costs either. RIANZ, the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand, said that in order to do something about the 41% of locals who access copyright infringing services, they would like to send out 5,000 notices per month, up from the total of 2,766 they sent between October 2011 and April 2012. But to make that cost effective the price would have to be cut from $25 NZD to just $2 NZD per notice. But the indications are that in their submissions the ISPs are pulling in the opposite direction. Telecom said that the fee per infringement notice should increase four times over to $104 NZD each. The ISP said that it had spent more than half a million dollars putting the three strikes mechanism in place but had sent out just 1,238 notices since it began. In addition to the movie studios effectively boycotting use of the entire system, it seems that the recording labels have no appetite to go through with the punishments they demanded for the most persistent offenders. Three ISPs report having customers on their “third strike” and due to go to the Copyright Tribunal to be fined up to $15,000 NZD. But the labels let all of their cases lapse meaning that they now have a completely fresh start. InternetNZ chief executive Vikram Kumar told Stuff he was glad that no one had been fined, and that the answer to the piracy problem lies elsewhere. “Make material available in time, in the way people want it, and most of the problem will disappear,” he said. Source: Studios: Movie Piracy Halved After Sending Zero Infringement Notices | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 22 Jul 2012 11:50 PM PDT
Wild Bill is the most downloaded movie. 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 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Young Pirates Evicted From Festival For Giving Out Free Waffles Posted: 22 Jul 2012 01:00 PM PDT
As described by Gustav Nipe, chairman of Young Pirate and one of the people giving out waffles at the festival. “Today a lady walked by and complained that we give our waffles away. Apparently, that is horrible behavior, as people are trying to sell waffles at the festival, and how could they get paid if there are free waffles?” Instead of selling the waffles for 25 Swedish kroner [about 2.75 euros], the Young Pirates were sharing them for free. In the minutes that followed the situation escalated quickly. Nipe tweeted, in sequence: “… Status update on waffles: the giveaway continues. The responsible manager at the festival is busy and doesn’t have time to speak to us.” “… Young Pirate is now being evicted from the festival. Security guards are on location, as well as the manager who has ordered the eviction.” “… We called the police. The security guards are pulling back. No waffles being made right now. Our tent remains.” “… Young Pirate is now making waffles again!” Local media (in Swedish, linked above) picked up on the event rather quickly. But I think this serves as an excellent example of what’s happening in the world at large right now, even if this was a conflict over waffles in the remote parts of a frozen country the size of a shoebox on the Arctic Circle. Guards and police are called in by businesses when there is a social or legal disturbance, on the assumption that maintaining the momentum of the economy is more important than people’s freedom to cause disruptions. But something interesting has happened lately. The social norms have changed so much with the Internet, that business rules have changed unrecognizably for those who have run their businesses the same way for decades. People are being pushed – no, shoved – out of their comfort zones. The waffle makers at this festival obviously viewed these youth (not of their social group) who were giving out free waffles as a social problem, for which security guards could be involved, and not a business problem, which would be their own failure: The social norms have changed so quickly, that the forces upholding order in society have lost their ability to tell a social disturbance from a business disturbance. The parallels to file-sharing are strong and present. If you can’t compete with the “free” that file-sharing offers, you can’t compete, period… but distribution executives around the world in monopolized copyright industries are trying to portray file sharing as a social disturbance to be dealt with forcefully, rather than a business failure. In this, copyright industry lawyers and executives are no different from the sorry waffle sellers at this local festival who tried to get a political youth organization evicted for giving waffles to the festival visitors.  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: Young Pirates Evicted From Festival For Giving Out Free Waffles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Download Portals Reject YouTube Converter Over Piracy Concerns Posted: 22 Jul 2012 05:47 AM PDT
Soon it became apparent that many YouTube tools had also received similar threats. It is assumed that, after ignoring these services for years, Google has now started to crack down on them because the music industry is worried that these might be used to “pirate” music. And indeed, two days after the news broke the RIAA asked CNET to remove YouTube ripping software from Download.com for this very reason. While CNET reportedly refused to remove any software, something appears to have changed behind the scenes at the major download portals. This week TorrentFreak was contacted by Stuart who spent months developing RipTunes, a brand new and multi-functional YouTube ripper. RipTunes allows people to search for music videos on YouTube, convert these into MP3s, and import these tracks into iTunes if they wish. To promote his free software, Stuart decided to submit RipTunes to some of the largest download portals on the Internet including Download.com, Brothersoft and Softpedia. However, this was easier said than done, as it turns out that YouTube rippers are no longer welcome at these sites. Softpedia was perhaps the most honest in their rejection. A response from the support team informed Stuart that his application had been rejected because of its ability to download YouTube videos. While there are still plenty of YouTube downloaders available on Softpedia, new applications are no longer welcome. According to the email seen by TorrentFreak, these applications “infringe on Google’s copyright.” The fact that RipTunes is specifically targeted at music downloads doesn’t seem to play a role in the rejection. “Unfortunately, your application encourages users to download YouTube videos to their computers, which is an infringement of Google’s copyright over those clips. This type of behavior is not allowed for applications listed on Softpedia, therefore we cannot list RipTunes – YouTube to MP3 Converter on our website.” Stuart’s next attempt was to submit his application to CNET’s Download.com. Here, the RipTunes developer hit a brick wall. Download.com rejected the YouTube ripper, but instead of giving an explanation they simply deleted the developer’s profile. Not once, not twice, but several times. At Softonic, Tucows, Snapfiles and Fileforum, Stuart got a similar treatment. No explanation was given as to why the application had been rejected by any of these sites. The most interesting response came from Brothersoft. Initially it appeared that YouTube ripping software is a no go there as well. “For now, we can’t approve the software which is YouTube related. I am sorry for that.” However, a day later Brothersoft’s Lisa came back to Stuart with some good news. Apparently, Brothersoft does allow YouTube ripping software but only if the developers commit cash and sign up for a Pay Per Download (PPD) campaign. “After the discussion with my management, I would like to tell you what I can do for you. I can only ask the editors here to approve your software once we confirm your charge for your PPD campaign :) Otherwise, we can’t persuade the editors here and manager to give an exclusive approval to your product. Thanks for your understanding.” Stuart was baffled by this offer but appreciated the honesty. “I’ve found their email to be quite refreshing in their honesty, it’s not every day that you receive a point-blank bribe request in your inbox. But personal amusement aside; their action is still infuriating since I published my application free of charge and not only will I not make a single dime off it. I actually ended up paying a lot of money to develop it,” he told TorrentFreak. The end result is, however, that Stuart has no option to promote his application on any of the major download portals. It wouldn’t be a surprise that the rejections are the result of either pressure from the music labels or Google, to stop the distribution of these tools. According to Stuart, Google’s stance makes little sense. If Google really wanted to prevent people from downloading and ripping videos, they shouldn’t make it so easy in the first place. “It is common knowledge on how to download videos directly from YouTube. For HTML5 videos the video source is directly linked on the video page, all the videos themselves are being cached on the browser and they are directly accessible through the end-user file system. There are countless free tools available for downloading YouTube videos,” he says. “More importantly, if Google really wanted to stop users from downloading their videos they could simply move to a secure streaming server such as RTMP, which is commonly used by many online video sites such as Hulu, that prevent the direct access / download of their streams,” Stuart adds. For the music labels on the other hand, it is no surprise that they are wary of YouTube rippers. The major labels make millions of dollars each month from advertisements on YouTube videos. When people download and convert the videos, this revenue goes away. Whether the RIAA and Google will be succesful in their quest against YouTube converters remains to be seen. For now all the major download portals are still littered with them. And RipTunes? Until the RIAA or Google knocks on its doors it can still be downloaded through its own website. Source: Download Portals Reject YouTube Converter Over Piracy Concerns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This week there are four newcomers in our chart. 
It sounds like a joke, 
Last month one of the web's largest YouTube conversion sites was | 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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