Freemusicdownloadwebsites.com has teamed up with Freemoviedownloadsites.net to offer, surprisingly, free music downloads and free movie downloads. The idea is that the two websites will become a huge resource of free downloads.
The websites have become popular among students because they offer free legal music downloads. Both websites have links to other websites from which you can get free music downloads.
So, what’s the deal? Will these website set the world on fire? It’s unlikely. We checked out both of the websites and they don’t seem to add a whole lot more than what you can get by firing up Limewire or uTorrent.
We like the premise and the conviction with which these guys claim to offer a great product, but ultimately it falls flat on its feet. You may as well stick to Ares. Has anybody checked out these websites for free music downloads? Any thoughts on them?
Twitter has apparently taken over the world. You can’t use the web without seeing a reference to Twitter, and now it looks like filesharing functionality has been added to Twitter. TweetCube is the name of the filesharing service.
So how does it work? Well, it basically gives filesharing functionality to Twitter accounts. You log in to your Twitter account through the TweetCube website and then you can upload your files for filesharing. Next thing you know, the uploaded files show up in your Twitter stream. Pretty cool, right?
The service is free to use and you can use the filesharing website to share files up to 10MB in size. It is perhaps more of a gimmick than anything, but it’s the sort of functionality that Twitter almost certainly needs if it wants to evolve. Simplicity is great, but a filesharing function added to Twitter would make it even better.
Many people are still flying the flag for CDs, but if ever there were evidence that they are on the way out in favor of music downloads, this is it. Woolworths, a popular UK retailer, the equivalent of something like Wal-Mart in the US, has now dropped CDs from all of its 820 stores across the UK. The reason? Music downloads are apparently killing CD sales.
Woolworths will now only stock random special CD singles, such as singles by the winners of talent show such as the UK’s version of Pop Idol. The company will now focus on music downloads when it come to music.
Interestingly, a rep from Woolworths said that CD album sales are not quite dead yet, but CD singles are all but finished now. Coinciding with this news, Woolworths has revamped its music-download website, where it also offers games and ring tones.
The retailer will now go head to head with Tesco, which launched its store for legal music downloads recently.
In Phuket, Thailand, one issue that keeps cropping up is that of intellectual property. Pretty much every CD or movie you can buy in Phuket is pirated. This raises many concerns for copyright holders in the West, who are effectively being ripped off by the people in Phuket and the rest of Thailand.
One of the most interesting issues is that of free music downloads used by DJs in Phuket clubs. Most of the DJs get free music downloads from filesharing websites such as Limewire. They then burn their CDs and play them for hundreds, if not thousands, of people each and every week.
There have been some cases in Thailand of DJs being fined by the police for playing pirated music, though such a case is yet to happen in Phuket.
Phuket’s restaurants and bars knowingly play fake CD to the pubic day in day out, yet it’s open to debate whether they even know that such a thing is illegal. The difference in standards between the West and the East is often staggering.
Comcast has come under some serious fire recently for its part in putting a stranglehold over its users’ access to filesharing programs such as BitTorrent. In the light of intense pressure from customers and the media, Comcast is finally attempting to do some good to resolve the growing dispute over how ISPs allow clients to user filesharing services.
Comcast has vowed to change the way it manages its network to resolve all allegations of improper conduct.
Comcast will, apparently, work with customers and BitTorrent Inc to find a solution to this debacle. The company, which has something like 13 million subscribers, has said that it is adopting new practices for managing its networ that are “protocol agnostic”, which we assume means filesharing-friendly.
There have numerous complaints about Comcast blocking certain kinds of traffic. Hopefully this will be the end of it. Comcast has always denied any allegations, but it is obviously aware that something is up.
Verizon has come out with the announcement that it is to launch P4P, an advanced filesharing network that serves as a BitTorrent client. Verizon also said it wants to speed up filesharing.
This seems like the exact opposite of what Comcast has done in the past by slowing down its users’ access to filesharing services and BitTorrent clients. Verizon is proposing ways to increase speeds of up to 60%.
P4P is optimized so that users don’t just randomly network with people all around the world. The efficiency of the service therefore increases and speeds can be almost doubled.
However, don’t go getting any bright ideas about getting free music downloads in the same way as you might with Limewire, because P4P will be geared towards legal downloads, including NBC TV shows apparently.
The new protocol could be available as soon as next month, so this is an interesting time for fans of BitTorrent.
We’re always writing about the effects of filesharing on the music industry, but sometimes it’s interesting to look at how much of an impact filesharing is having on other sectors. The world of book publishing is a prime example.
Books are shared by filesharing users in the same way as music and movies are. Book publishers have likewise been forced to assess how they do business and how they should approach the world of filesharing.
While some hip authors have taken to making pirate copies of their own works available for filesharing, there are others who take the whole thing a bit more seriously. However, even some major publishers have been looking into the idea of making material, be it chapters or entire works, available through filesharing networks.
One possible solution for authors comes in the form of smashwords.com, a website where authors can upload their novels as Word documents and then decide how much they want to charge. It’s an interesting concept that has come in direct response to filesharing.
Do any of you use filesharing networks to get books?
There’s an interesting post on Zeropaid at the moment that outlines how the RIAA targets people suspected of illegal filesharing. The RIAA has said that it used the same programs that regular filesharing people use, such as Limewire and Kazaa. MediaSentry, the RIAA’s partner in tackling filesharing, runs one of the filesharing programs and then searches for copyrighted material to see if anybody is sharing it by making it available.
MediaSentry then browses the host to see what other copyrighted material is being made available. This way they can then see the person’s IP address. MediaSentry then notes down this IP address, as well as details of copyright material that is being made available for illegal music downloads.
The problem for the RIAA now is that this idea of making songs available is now not holding up in court. The RIAA may need to start proving that other people have downloaded the music, which would effectively outdate this method.
Canada is apparently still considering the idea of a “three strikes and your out” policy for filesharing offenders. Michael Geist, a professor from the University of Ottawa, said that he found a French government document containing information about Canada being a country negotiating the three-strikes filesharing policy with ISPs.
It’s funny because the Canadian government hasn’t acknowledged any such negotiations. Could it be that the French have made a filesharing mistake, or is the Canadian government working covertly to outlaw illegal filesharing. It’s anybody’s guess.
The Canadian government has yet to release a statement, so we’ll have to wait and see how this one pans out. It would be certainly be a point of concern if the Canadian government is working in secret to come up with ways to beat filesharing.
How do our Canadian readers feel about such a possibility?
Pownce has been around for a while. It’s not really that popular, but it does have something of a cult following. That following is likely to expand with the news that Pownce has now become a bit more useful with the addition of public filesharing and increased file sizes.
Pownce accounts can now be used for filesharing with anyone with an Internet connection, instead of just other Pownce users. Filesharing can now be done with files of up to 100MB for free users and 250MB for pro-account holders.
Pownce may not be the most or the most useful filesharing service out there, but it’s worth checking out if you’re into new things.
The Pownce service has become popular partly because of its features such as embedded photos, videos and music filesharing. Sharing of links is also a lot easier than with rival Twitter. Check Pownce out for filesharing and more.
