Official Ares Free Download

The largest U.S. Broadband Internet provider – AT&T – will begin to deploy anti-piracy technology that might be used to monitor its 13 million customers.

The ISP is deploying fiber optic cable to homes in the US, meaning the company can expand its offerings and provide customers with a cable service. While developing and marketing this service they’re working with the MPAA, Viacom and other content providers. They recently announced that they’ll also be monitoring users’ connections with new anti-piracy technology. Perhaps their associates matter more to them than their customer base? Who knows.

It is unclear to what extent the new anti-piracy technology will affect P2P file sharing and the like, nor to what extent it will effect existing customers (or if it will just effect those that take up the cable offering) but it’s another step from a well known company towards the side of the Big 4 Cartel and their lackeys.

No doubt AT&T have an excellent reason to install the anti-piracy measures, and perhaps it has nothing to do with pandering to the whims of the big companies that they’re now associated with, but it smells of another company being influenced by the might of the Cartel.

Naturally they’re welcome to take whatever steps they feel necessary to protect and further their business, and maybe battling against copyright violations is something that they really do need to do. At the end of the day, though, if its customers start to vote with their feet then the financial repercussions may come back to haunt them.

Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, based in France, has joined Britain’s EMI in selling music downloads that are not tightly protected by DRM. That leaves only Song BMG (based in Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (based in the US) to be using the outdated protection on their music downloads.“Universal Music Group said Thursday that it would begin selling current and back albums – from a collection of stars as diverse as 50 Cent, Maroon 5, Amy Winehouse and Johnny Cash – without anti-piracy software that restricts their use”

The Los Angeles Times chalks up Vivendi’s reversal as a way in which to “blunt Apple Inc.’s growing power by bypassing the iPod maker to sell thousands of songs in an unrestricted digital format through many other online music stores”.

Hmmm.

It’s clear that the big corporations are having very little success in the download sector – the ‘free’ competition being virtually insurmountable, with reasonably priced independent download services coming second – and it might just be that the corporations are finally becoming aware of the massive mistakes that they’ve made in the past. Overpriced over-protected formulaic downloads are evidently not the way forward; consumers realised (and acted on this) quite some time ago and it’s refreshing to finally see the corporations follow suit.

Recognizing that consumers have had a choice – and a rather favourable one, at that – in getting their music fix has taken the corporations a surprisingly long time. For organizations that boast massive marketing departments and huge consumer survey budgets, they’re obviously not utilizing their resources in the right way.

Now they may just be starting to recognized that their ‘customers’ aren’t the stupid ‘ cash cows’ that they thought they’d trained.

MediaDefender – an organisation purporting to assist copyright owners in protecting their identity and intellectual property rights online – has made an interesting new move into the industry of lies, corruption and entrapment.

Miivi.com – a website owned by MediaDefender – offered full movie downloads and the software to enable unwitting users to transfer them to their computers. This was nothing more than basic, probably illegal, attempted entrapment, with MediaDefender’s motives behind the scam are clearly to lure the sites’ visitors in and encourage them to do something illegal. Very naughty indeed.

The site has now been taken down.

MediaDefender is described as:

“… the acknowledged P2P industry expert, and has been called upon to testify in front of US Congress several times. MediaDefender has also partnered with law enforcement to crack down on internet child pornography rings.

We are not here to say that a crack down on such material is a bad thing – any attempt to stop it should be applauded – but using similar tactics on casual file sharers is arguably a step too far.

One cannot help to view this kind of action as double standards by those fighting the P2P file sharing community: they consistently tell us that their position is the morally righteous one, and that theirs is indisputably the moral high ground. This is clearly rubbish and the industry’s copyright ‘champions’ prove this time and time again by using every dirty trick in the book to attack and hurt P2P sharers.

sharers new to the scene, or those naïve enough to accept such trojan horses. The hardcore file sharers would have seen this coming a mile away and steered well clear. Arguably it should be those ’serious’ sharers that the industry’s ‘policing’ should be affecting; instead they’re going for the easy pray and with it political and media approval.

Sort out the industry, we say. Fight the right battles, do the right thing, then P2P will not be such a ‘problem’.

The legendary BitTorrent site – supernova.org – will be back online, back in business, and back in action, thanks to those kind folk over at Pirate Bay. Sloneck, the former owner of the site and current owner of the domain, decided to donate it in the interests of nostalgia and its loyal customer base. On his motives for the donation, Sloneck had this to say:

“The domain was doing nothing. I know that domain has some nostalgic value and some people would be more then happy to see it back online. I don’t use it, and TPB is the only team that I know will use it correctly.”

He went on to explain that the site would look the same as before and, further, that this was part of the agreement with The Pirate Bay: “They can upgrade it, but they cannot change the appearance completely”.

Supernova will be a torrent index and will not use its own tracker. There will also be a fresh new forum launched that will work with both Supernova and The Pirate Bay. This forum – ‘the community’ – will be moderated in some way by Supernova’s former owner. The forums will be sited at SuprBay.org and, by all accounts, are already up and running.

Pirate Bay administrator Brokep cited the reason for their decision to rekindle the Supernova fire as being a signal to the P2P community and to the those that would have it shut down:

“We talked it over and decided it was something people would have use for, it would help the torrent community and it would also signal that if you shut one down it will get back up again.”.

There can be no disagreement that this resurrection will be welcome news to the P2P file sharing community. It also presents something of a kick in the teeth to the Big Four music cartel – along with their supporting government and legal aides – who are trying to ensure such organisations are shut down, not relaunching like a Phoenix from the flames.

A new survey – conducted by Entertainment Media Research – concludes that more and more people are getting their music free from P2P file sharing sites.Despite apparent attempts by the ‘big 4′ music cartel sue everyone who utters the words ‘P2P’ or ‘file sharing’ (and even some who don’t, it turns out), more of us are turning to the Internet as our favored source of new listening material. While Apple’s iTunes is seemingly doing well from its customers downloading – and paying for – music from their site, its market share is miniscule: unsubstantiated claims of two billion downloaded tracks since 2003 are utterly dwarfed by the statistic that one billion tracks are shared online every single month.

The vast bulk of downloads, then, are coming from P2P networks and independent music and download sites.

The Entertainment Media Research questioned 1700 people across the UK; its summary of the results was quoted in the UK paper The Telegraph:

“Illegal music downloads have reached an all time high just as the growth of online social networking has shifted the epicenter of the music industry away from the major record labels …”

it continues: “the popularity of social networking websites such as MySpace and BeBo is helping to ‘democratize’ the music industry as more young people discover new music online instead of via the radio or music television”.

Any logical reasoning on the matter will conclude that young people are going to be attracted to free music – especially when the alternative is overpriced, can ignore your privacy rights, and is occasionally difficult to get hold of. It is also clear, though, that the music industry ignored the P2P and file sharing communities for too long: it has now missed the boat and continues its suing crusade not because it thinks it can win, but to punish those who capitalized on the obvious gap in the market. The music industry completely refuses to acknowledge P2P as the distribution vehicle of the twenty first digital century, and this is one of its major mistakes.

An online survey run by p2pnet was answered by 1100 respondents. “Have the RIAA sue ‘em all lawsuits persuaded you to stop sharing?” the survey asked. No, replied an impressive majority of 94.1%. This is the problem that the Big 4 Cartel faces in bring P2P file sharers to ‘justice’ – they’ll have to arrest the whole world for it to work.

New debates

Debates over the threat posed by P2P to information security in the USA were rekindled recently. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), offered its opinion on the dangerous new threat posed by P2P and file-sharing programs.

Mark Gorton, founder and chairman of The Lime Group (the company behind Limewire), offered testimony about the role he feels ISPs should play in preventing file sharing from occurring on their networks.

Gorton has publicly discussed the problems of copyright infringement and child pornography (amongst other issues) that are an unfortunate side-effect of P2P file sharing – and indeed problems which he and his company have taken heat for in the past. He goes so far as to suggest that ISPs should be part of an ‘enforcement mechanism’ to prevent such problems on P2P networks.

“The Internet is a technology which allows for many novel behaviors. Unfortunately, some of these new behaviors are detrimental to society. The regulatory framework that surrounds the Internet has not kept pace with technical advancements, and currently, no effective enforcement mechanisms exist to address illegal behavior on P2P networks.”

Passing the buck?

www.zeropaid.com notes in their take on the story:

“Now why Gorton would suggest that ISPs begin engaging in a hopeless and invasive attempt to monitor their customers traffic is beyond me but, I think it smacks of passing the buck and trying to make Limewire look like the innocent one in all of this.”

It will be interesting to see where this all leads. Will Limewire can their hands of any of the trouble they’re in? Will legislation finally catch up with the problems that P2P file sharing presents? With some kind government intervention now a possibility, what does the future hold? Watch this space: it’ll be interesting to find out.

P2P Downloads of video currently accounts for around 10% of file sharing, Eric Garland, CEO of web tracking firm Big Champagne, tells us in Investors.com. “More than 9 million people log on to a P2P network worldwide each day, and that grows each year despite intense efforts by the entertainment industry to shut down the ones that operate illegally” he continues. Garland’s interview continues, telling readers how difficult it will be to stop P2P networks and file sharing websites that are growing in size and use daily.

The Investors.com take on the situation is interesting: entertainment industries will not be able to halt the continued success of online file sharing, and in fact they shouldn’t try. Effort should instead be concentrated on trying to monetise the trend – “it’s just a new method of distribution” says Stan Rogow.

The number of sites distributing legal music and movies is but a drop in the ocean compared to those assisting and distributing unlicensed material. Sites and networks are claiming that since there is nothing to download or install at their web properties, there is nothing illegal about the sites. The sites provide the facilities whereby people can organise and share their data, but what they do with it is their business. “We provide links, nothing is wrong with that” claims Britain’s TV Links. TV Kalendar, a Canadian based operation, offers information on downloadable torrents, and allow users to quickly determine which TV episodes they need to download – again there is nothing in there to download, and users are quite on their own in obtaining the videos.

Maybe it’s a gray area, but one thing is clear: the entertainment industry is going to have its work cut out in silencing these type of sites; working with the P2P community may well be more profitable than trying to fight against them.

Steve Jobs masterstroke of making the premium corporate product open to the masses through iTunes, has created ripples even with his most bitter critics, including P2Pnet.

Apple, in a deal with EMI came to an understanding that Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Vivendi Universal (France) follow Apple wherever it goes, where possible.

This is going to prove to be a great leap ahead that is guaranteed to reflect on the status of corporate music downloads and may prove to be just what the corporate online music scene needed.

This will enable all the major labels to use Apple. With this move, eventually, all other corporate back supported services can supply songs unfettered by the DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control, and by doing this, will be able to compete with the numerous independent sites and services.

The best part is Steve Jobs has even come up with a way to monetize from DRM’s vanishing act. The plan is for all the labels to stop pressurizing people to buy their downloads and cutting down on the their wholesale prices, allowing online retailers like Apple to charge reasonable prices.

While iTunes fans may be willing to pay a dollar for each download, this fraction of people clearly steer away from the industry standard, as most other music lovers will never ever pay that much for each download. Unfortunately, quality does not come into play here. Why would they want to pay higher when a huge new supply of original, non-formulaic music is making its appearance online.

June 26th boasted the launch of a Day of Silence imposed by internet radio broadcasters as a protest against the increase in royalty rates. Strengthening their numbers, a number of fervent supporters (including entertainment lawyer, Fred Wilhelms) have been working towards exposing the fraudulent side of the corporate music industry and its supporters.

Richard Ades, yet another over-paid spokesman for SoundExchange i.e. master spinner of un-truths, has countered the opposition with a free lesson in Imaginary Arithmetic. Retorting to the Internet Radio Day of Silence,Mr. Ades was quoted by Technology Daily as saying, “The bill on the hill would not only vacate CBR decision but would cut rates by 75 percent from what the old rate was. That’s their idea of fairness to artists? That’s an insult.” What’s really an insult is that even after spending $1 billion in administrative fees, SoundExchange can’t afford to hire an accountant (or an 8th-grade Math student) who could help them get their statistics right. Or maybe they’re just going with the “all humans are sheep” theory and hoping no one notices. Bad luck! The percentage-of-revenue royalty rate called for in H.R. 2060 is 7.5%. If Mr. Ades is correct about that being a 75% cut from the old rate, the old rate would have to be 30% (a seventy-five percent reduction from a 30% rate results in a 7.5% rate). But there’s a slight problem here: the old rate was never 30%. It was 10.9%.

So, in theory, Mr. Ades was off by a mere 275%. That’s not so bad. We can give him props for defeating John Simpson at the math game, who’s proclamations about Internet Radio having $500 million in advertising revenue were only about a 1000% off. It’s an improvement that lands a SoundExchange spokesman in nearly the same time-zone as reality. But, even with this progress, we’re about 100% tired of SoundExchange’s utter disdain for both the truth and public opinion and their disregard for the artist’s whose cause they claim to be championing.

Today’s lesson: If SoundExchange had been the organization behind the SAT back when I gave it, I’m pretty sure I could’ve landed a perfect score on the math section.

Recent updates (courtesy of p2pnet) on the DRM-free music war raging between Steve Jobs and the record-company giants reveal that Mr. Jobs is turning a blind eye towards the fact that Apple seems to have been caught operating an obviously two-faced strategy. Promoting themselves as anti-DRM on one front, and collecting user data in the new $1.30 iTunes downloads on the other can’t have been a wise decision in any way.

 

While iTunes users can’t do anything about the price increase, they can counter the infringement of their privacy by turning over to a new open source application that’s been built by our talented friends in France.

Dubbed Privatunes, the application was developed by the creators of Ratiatum and the innovative Matoumba news reader. The application allows iTunes users to clean their tracks, erasing the AppleID (email address) and username.

Guillaume Champeau, runner of Ratiatum claims, “We believe anyone who buys DRM-free songs online should be free to do whatever they’re legally entitled to do, including [selling it or letting] their close family or friends copy it, with no fear and no one spying over their shoulder.”

“There’s no reason to attach the name and email address of the buyer on whatever is being sold. Selling is the act of transferring a property from the owner to the buyer, and [there] should be no limit or restriction whatsoever.”

The developer further exclaims, “It’s what differentiates the so-called selling of a DRM-ed song (which is nothing other than long term rental) and the selling of a DRM-free song. It’s a question of privacy, it’s a question of seller-customer trust, [and] it’s a question of customers’ rights.”

We agree.

If you’re interested in getting a free copy of Privatunes, click here. The source code is just around the corner, and it’ll also be available on p2pnet soon.