Limewire:

While this is not our ideal path, we hope to work with the music industry in moving forward. We look forward to embracing necessary changes and collaborating with the entire music industry in the future.

I doubt the people behind Limewire are “looking forward to working with the recording industry”. Because they know just as much as you and I that once Limewire flips the switch on download/upload/searches, their traffic is going to tank. The final blow to Limewire will take place after the recording industry relaunches a few months to years down the road with some copycat, no-one-is-going-to-remember music store front with crappy prices and poor selection. Aw well. It was great while it lasted. Then again, Limewire and similar services are for kids. Torrents are where the adults play, right?

On the flipside, Limewire’s parent company, “Lime Group” has stated that they have a new music service in the works, and that we can expect to see it within the next month. Optimistic? Limewire CEO official statement after the jump…

As of today, we are required to stop distribution and support of LimeWire’s P2P file-sharing service as a result of a court-ordered injunction.

Naturally, we’re disappointed with this turn of events. We are extremely proud of our pioneering history and have, for years, worked hard to bridge the gap between technology and content rights holders. However, at this time, we have no option but to cease further distribution and support of our software.

It’s a sad occasion for our team, and for you – the hundreds of millions of people who have used LimeWire to discover new things.

While we have enabled open sharing and discovery for the past decade, LimeWire is mostly the product of the people who used it. You made LimeWire. Thank you for letting us being part of that. Your support and enthusiasm has fueled everything that we do.

During this challenging time, we are excited about the future. The injunction applies only to the LimeWire product. Our company remains open for business.

We remain deeply committed to working with the music industry and making the act of loving music more fulfilling for everyone – including artists, songwriters, publishers, labels, and of course music fans.Our team of technologists and music enthusiasts are creating a completely new music service that puts you back at the center of your digital music experience.

We’ll be sharing more details about our new service and look forward to bringing it to you in the future.

Source: All Things D
Via: BGR

Now some other company is going to pick up the pieces of TPB and make some money off of their name. Pretty sad and shady if you ask me. Though from a business stand point, why not rip off someone elses logo and brand image to turn a dollar on your own time? The TPB logo has just been shat upon. Perhaps Sandryds Handel should spend a few dollars designing their own logo hmm?

What do you have to say?

Wired

I usually try to start off each morning with something happy or exciting, but this is neither of those. The Pirate Bay team has announced that starting today, torrent users will no longer be able to use TPB trackers for downloads and will have to rely on other trackers instead. Whether you were for or against PB, you have to admit that in a relatively short time span (since 2003) TPB grew explosively, evolving to a digital giant with upwards of 25 million peers in it’s prime. Sadly that prime is no more. The team says the main site will remain live for now, but it’s but a shell of what it once was. So it is from this point on we must hold our heads high and find a new friend in this vast space of digital junk.

TorrentFreak

{Image Source

Besides your typical search categories, and “latest/featured” lists, you may notice a few other subtle yet highly appreciated features. The layout of KAT is rather streamlined and void of more heinous design decisions that plague several other torrent search engines. Am I looking for Apple-esque style quality? Not at all. But not having to bandage my eyes because of god awful color choices, navigation that’s a pain, or blinking ads mean I’m a happy camper. Speaking of ads, after a few minutes on KAT you’ll notice that there aren’t any ads! You’re greeted with a clean, streamlined interface without pictures blinking all over the place as is all to common in the torrent world search engine world. Now don’t get me wrong, ads have their time and place as I make use of ads here on Gadgetsteria. But I don’t feel they’re obtrusive and annoying. I think we all know what ads I’m talking about though. When you spend more time zooming, scrolling, and clicking to get past an ad or ads then you do on the actual content you came to, you know there’s a problem. Thankfully you won’t find that here.

Looks and navigation alone are far from the bread and butter of torrent search engines. Rightfully so, KickAssTorrents has features to back up the visual pizzaz. Such features include, but aren’t limited to:

• Real-time torrent stats, seeder, and leacher numbers

• Direct http downloads for select torrents. (Currently in beta) — it’s worth noting, I tried direct http downloads on several torrents and my browser, Safari 4 on OS X 10.6 kept timing out. Your mileage will vary with this one. But as stated, said feature is in beta so bugs and glitches are expected.

• Customizable user area

• Extras such as ajax comments preview as well as Firefox plugins

• Last.fm integration

To me, the fact that KAT is less than a year old and already pushing well north of 100,000 visitors/700,000 pageviews a day signals that beyond my personal experience with the site, many others are finding their servers to be fairly valuable as well. After speaking with a KAT employee, I was informed that they’re even in talks with larger torrent sites regarding partnership offers. Again, pretty damn good for less than a year in business don’t you think?

Should you switch to KickAssTorrents as your sole torrent search engine? That’s hard to say and obviously is best answered by you. For myself, I like to have plenty of options which is why KickAssTorrents will join several other torrent search engines in my journey through this digital world. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

*This was a sponsored post courtesy of Kick Ass Torrents*

PP is a relative baby all things concerned as it was just launched in January of 2009. Again, the main purpose of the site is to donate money which PP turns around and gives to “beneficiaries”. Who are they? What label do they belong to? Which artists are actually getting accurately paid? All said details are in the dark as those involved don’t actually want people to know they’ve partnered with PP as they feel it would encourage further illegal file sharing ways. Besides paying back all of those artists you stole from, 12% of donations get held back for site upkeep. Hey, they have to make money somehow don’t they?

Personally I see this as a good idea…on paper. Translated into the real world however isn’t as promising. For one, I’m not about to give money to a company that I haven’t the slightest clue where my money is going. Not to mention such small problems as artist A getting more than artist B all while not knowing extremely important facts such as many times was artist A or B’s songs actually downloaded. You see, this is a an entirely too simple solution for an entirely too complex situation.

Finally, there’s this whole idea that big labels and content owners sipmly can’t get t hrough their think skulls, that is, simply slapping a price tag on any product or service has absolutely no correlation to value. If you’re product is deemed worthless of or little value by the public, no matter how valuable you feel it is, no one will pay. Create something actually worth consumers’ time or money and you have yourself a money tree.

More power to them. But they won’t see a dime of my money. What do you think? Good idea?

Ars Technica

Image Source

How about another chuckle on behalf of the entertainment industry and all things nerdy? The sign above is extremely clever and no doubt will turn a few heads/drum up talk about the theater. While torrents may cause some to not go to the theater since they already have the title that they would have gone to go see, I don’t see them being the main cause behind the closing of cinemas across the world. The real reason? Cinema’s aren’t giving people a reason to come there in the first place.

Would I rather torrent an HD movie rip or go to a movie theater and watch it in substandard quality on a massive screen highlighting every little imperfection? Hmmm. That’s a no brainer. More movie theaters adopting HD, 3D, and even more OMNImax…(read: not IMAX) theaters would go a long way in saving this industry. I don’t know about you, but I sure am tired of not having any good/unique theaters in my neck of the woods.

Gizmodo

The interwebs were in a tizzy late last week when The Pirate Bay was taken down and removed from Google search results. Many started speculating almost immediately (myself included) that the end was near for the once great site that defied common laws in countries around the globe. However it appears as if TPB has escaped outright death in the near term. Apparently the whole snafu was nothing more than a simple error on Google’s part. The DMCA takedown notice that was responsible for TPB’s downtime and removal centered around apparent infringement on porn copyrights. After the dust settled and the smoke cleared, it was found that thepiratebay.org address was wrongfully included in the takedown notice, or as it quickly was coming to be known — the prophesied end of the world. Cooler heads have prevailed and TPB lives on for now. Google meanwhile has since apologized for the glitch.

While it may seem like a sigh of relief is appropriate, TPB is currently on weak legs and has a grim outlook. With the potential buyout looking less and less like a finished deal and instead turning into a form of real life “vaporware”, how much longer will TPB remain relevant? Hypothesizing aside, it’s back up. Enjoy those torrents folks.

The Register

Image Source

The drama surrounding ThePirateBay and it’s take down, sale, planned purchase, and eventual return have hit another snag. While flow of information from the parent company trying to buy TPB has pretty dried up, “content protectors” are still operating at full speed. Go on over to Google and do a search for the pirate bay. Chances are you won’t find a single link pointing directly to TPB’s homepage. According to Google, a DMCA takedown request is the culprit. While the takedown request and removal from Google’s searches is hardly that big of a deal as everyone knows what it is and how to get to it, it is another notch on big media’s belt. The once great Pirate Bay is looking closer and closer to death with each passing day. The end is near.

On a lighter note, either Microsoft is ignoring the takedown (unlikely) or they simply haven’t been served yet as searching anything Pirate Bay related on Bing will net you some links pointing back to TPB’s home page. So think what you will. Happy/sad?

**Update: It’s back up folks.. crisis adverted.
The Register

Image Source

While this shouldn’t have been a surprise, somehow I am still left wondering “why”? You may remember all of the drama circulating around the Pirate Bay trial, verdict, and revealing of Judge Tomas Norström’s membership to the Swedish Copyright Association as well as the motion for a retrial by the Pirate Bay and accompanying camp. I’m sad to say that today, a Swedish court has ruled that simply supporting a particular group/laws does not make you biased. In simpler terms: retrial denied. Looks like the nefarious swashbucklers will have to try their luck at certain upcoming appeal. Again, while there business and tactics before the trial foreshadowed a ruling such as this, the way the courts, judges, and copyright labels all share the same bed is ridiculous. Have anything to say?

Source: Ars Technica, Image Source

At first glance, the Blu-ray managed copy procedure may seem like movie studies are finally wising up and giving consumers some more legal options as to how they can use products that they legally paid for. But, when actually digging down deeper into the fine print and attached strings one can realize how much of a sham and waste of time this is. In short, keep “illegally” legally copying your movies for personal use. Moving on. The first kick in the face compliments of Sony and Blu-ray comes in the form of new hardware requirements. Uh-oh, you know what that means? If you plan on copying/playing back any of your personal, already payed for once Blu-ray movies, you’ll have to pick up a brand new Blu-ray player that will almost certainly be priced at a premium price over that el-cheapo player you got at Walmart. It’s just one way of screwing over consumers. Hey, it’s what Sony does best. For the rest of the Blue-ray sadness, come on in, bring a tissue, maybe some Prozac, and if the two former solutions don’t work, you can always fall back on the tried and true nectar of the gods – beer.

So you’re already fuming at the new hardware part…just wait, it gets worse. So next week you finally become tolerant of having to shell out more money to Sony for a new Blue-ray player that will play the copied Blue-ray movies (which by the way are laced with AACS: Advanced Access Content System License) will now be searching for a gun when they find out that this new technology and players equipped to handle such technology won’t be available until sometime in 2010. Keep the safety on for now if you want to hear the rest.

The next pile of S*** concerns the fact that in order to make/watch a copy, said copy will have to be “authorized” by a central server meaning now you also have to have internet access. Super. Anymore reasons to kill ourselves Sony? Of course, you do realize that when authorizing a managed copy, Sony and all of their gang buddies involved in this scheme can and more than likely will charge you for your “copy”. So in essence, you’re copy is really just a “sale priced” purchase. *Fires up the torrents…aims the gun*

This is no doubt another stupid, mindless, customer screwing decision by Sony and friends that I for one will not be a part of. I will copy my own movies as much as I freaking please no matter the “government mandated legallity” of such a practice. Sony nor their henchmen have any right to tell me what or how to watch my legally purchased material. All I can say is F U Sony. Anyone else dealing with a case of raised blood pressure and dizziness?

Source: Gizmodo, Video Business, Image Source

With all of the hype and media attention (online anyway) surrounding The Pirate Bay’s trial, many individuals and groups had their eyes “opened” to one of the many widespread uses of the internet.  Now I’m not talking about piracy specifically, but more about file sharing in general – legal and illegal.  It seems that copyright holders and the world’s court systems are trying to increase their death grip on each respective industry they cater to by pushing politicians and local/national governments harder and harder or more laws that benefit the copyright holder.  Looking at TPB’s method of indexing, hosting, and indexing illegal content, many copyright holders, music labels, etc. are now starting to look at Google and assume that they do the same thing.  Could Google be up on the witness stand next?

Now in the case of Google, many people and groups are falsely comparing two completely different business models and companies.  One, TPB indexes, markets, and hosts many illegal files (and many legal as well), yet when confronted by individuals or companies with complaints about certain issues, laughs in their face and immaturely mocks said individual or company, not exactly keeping the peace here.  But why would anyone want to sue Google?  Many privacy advocates have already voiced displeasure with Google’s ever broadening reach into our lives with things such as Google Earth, Google Maps *with street view*, and an interest and emphasis on geo-tagging, especially on their in house Android devices just to name a few.  But in regards to piracy, it is a completely different ballpark than privacy.

During the Pirate Bay’s trial, many references to Google were made implying that Google operates along the same lines as Pirate Bay.  FIrst off, Google doesn’t actively seek out to index or “reveal” to the world through their search engine where and how to get the latest pirated files.  In fact, as soon as the whereabouts and details about certain pirated content are made known to Google, they remove the links from their search engines.  They fully cooperate and go on the offensive to fight piracy.  The Pirate Bay on the other hand actively fought for piracy.  How so?  They indexed, stored, hosted, marketed, and advertised everything that they did and offer – and most of what they offer isn’t exactly “legal”.  Sure you could get legal content on Pirate Bay, but the majority of traffic was for illegal material as that is where the real draw is.  No one likes parting with their money, but the artists of whatever content they create, do deserve some sort of compensation.  

Secondly, Google merely indexes websites on the internet.  They don’t host any files themselves.  They don’t index and then give special attention and privileges to links and/or sites with illegal material.  They simply create a catalog of the websites of the internet.  They are offering a simple service.  Pirate Bay on the other hand differed as they also hosted countless illegal files and file transfers.  The prosecutors in the Pirate Bay case have no idea how the internet works nor what they are talking about when they started comparing Google to The Pirate Bay – none whatsoever.  Indexing and hosting are two completely different things.  When Google indexes the web, it doesn’t keep any “files” on their own servers, (files that are downloadable/transferrable between public domains.)  It is more or less a snapshot.  They only thing the store, are the links that they have indexed.  Pirate Bay goes about this whole index and storing thing slightly different than Google.  While they don’t index quite like Google does, they do have an index of what uploaded files belong to which uploader along with other personal information.  However, they also host the uploaded files on their own servers as well as the file transfers that take place.  Going further, they encourage the sharing of said files and openly mock any one or group that comes to them and asks them to remove a certain file or files containing copyrighted material.  Openly mocking someone who is claiming you of theft isn’t exactly the brightest move of staying out of prison.  Nor is it the best method of laying low if you don’t want to draw attention to yourselves because you yourself know what you are doing is illegal.

Thirdly, when Google gets contacted by anyone who claim that a certain website or link they have indexed is one that aids and links to either pirated copyrighted materials or a site that encourages and hosts pirated copyrighted materials, Google responds accordingly and removes that site/link from their database.  The actually cooperate with the accuser.  Again, Pirate Bay takes a vastly different approach.  Again as mentioned above, they openly mock the accuser, and boast of how they are not breaking any laws and challenge any opponent to their business model.  As we all know now, someone did challenge, and that someone won.  With the “founding four” now looking at a year long prison term and several million dollars each in fines, the reality should have become a tad more real.  However as expected, an appeal is in the works which means sweet freedom will the founding four enjoy for at least another couple years as the appeal process is a long and laborious one.  Even still, the mockery continues as one of the founders made a now widely known joke highlighting that “not only movies are leaked now adays, but also verdicts”, referring to a member of the court leaking to him personally the guilty verdict hours before it was announced.

Sitting back and taking in what you have read, along with what you know about The Pirate Bay and Google, do you really honestly see any similarity between these two businesses?  The way they operate and conduct themselves is worlds apart.  Though, copyright holders while very often just trying to protect their work as they did in The Pirate Bay’s trial, will start to see money signs everywhere they look.  I personally believe that if/when Google gets sued and taken to court over some nonsense that tries to depict them as aiding in illegal file sharing, it will because of the vast amounts of money that Google has.  No longer will it simply be about simple copyrighted material, but about how much can we frame Google into looking like something that it is not, and how much money can we get.  Will we soon see Google facing the same type of trial accused of more or less the same accusations the Pirate Bay faced?  It is quite possible.  However, if a judge and jury find Google “guilty” of the same accusations, the world in which we live has finally reached the age of utter incompetence.  Many may say I could get along just fine without Google.  But could you really?  Look at their search database.  Sure we have others, but Google is by far and large the most popular.  Android is still a baby in the mobile marketplace, but it is beginning to make strides and is showing promise for the future.  Not to mention the numerous small organizations, companies, and other start-ups that Google is a part of means taking Google out of the equation would mean a great loss to society as well as more jobs in an economic time where job losses are already astronomically high.  Google and The Pirate Bay are not the same thing.  Will a jury see it the same way?

What is your opinion?  Am I getting somewhere, or am I wondering aimlessly in a field rolling around in a wheelchair with one wheel, endlessly going in circles?  Lawyers, intelligent people, leave your thoughts with us.

Source: Brian Puccio, *Image Source: Guam Supreme Court*

In what is a sad day for P2P, torrent, and file sharers everywhere, a tweet by CNNbrk sadly revealed early this morning that Pirate Bay has lost their case.  Will Pirate Bay disappear and become but another story we tell our grandchildren some day.  Or will it live on (albeit in another country.)  Heck, even Pirate Bay themselves said regardless of the decision they and their service would live on.  As with all things legal, the appeal that is most certainly to follow could and probably will stretch into being measured in years. So the labels and anti-piracy advocates claim a victory of “epic proportions” they will decry. Finally artists and creators of content will finally be paid what is due to them. Can you see right through their PR BS? The only thing this trial did for the Pirate Bay was disrupt operation for a few days at most, piracy as a whole – what trial?

It really is sad how many companies big and small time and time again fail to embrace or accept that the world is not as it was and technology is here to stay. You can either adapt and grow, or turn your cheek and fail, often the failures are slow and miserable for everyone involved. In the case of P2P file sharing, anti-piracy advocates will stick to their guns that file sharing is “the sole reason for physical media sales decline” and is single handedly destroying a generation of youths. The youths aren’t destroying this generation – greed by record labels, producers, and even some artists is killing this generation. While people of decades past were completely held captive to whatever big businesses wanted in regards to polices and pricing on products, in the age of the internet and entrepreneurship, the consumer isn’t stupid, they will see through the BS and call it as it is.

In regards to Pirate Bay and torrents, the copyright industry that is going to start the rave within the next few days over their victory are so utterly blind, incompetent, and downright stupid that they fail to see they are shooting themselves in the foot. So they won a small battle that will at most disrupt TPB for a few days to a week. Global piracy won’t even flinch with the verdict. Big deal, it’s one country, Switzerland. While many countries could follow, the hard core piraters who make up the bulk of pirating, (or so it’s claimed by content owners and music lables), won’t be stopped because one out of literally thousands of torrent sites on the internet is momentarily derailed. All that will happen is the genuine users who used Pirate Bay for legal means, (and yes there were many legal users on Pirate Bay), will find themselves haveing to look for a completely new service to get their content into the world. One might ask, “Why would you pirate your own material?” It’s simple realy – cheap free advertising and distribution. Build a name for yourself. If it is really worthwhile and you continue with updates and new material, people will come forth and pay.

But beyond the whole aspect of copyrights and money changing hands (or lack there of), the real problem comes from the fact that a court has again declared that as Tech Dirt puts it:

The idea that a toolmaker can be liable for the actions of its users should trouble everyone…

A toolmaker, someone who has a single idea in his mind and creates this tool. Upon releasing it to the public, hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of minds can now conjure up their own methods and ways to exploit this tool. Is it the tool creators responsibility to police what everyone creates using his tool? No. Can/should the tool maker be held liable for illegal uses of said tool? No! That is what we pay taxes for – to found police departments, courts, legal teams, etc. Let them go after the individual user, not the content provider. Especially since TBP in this case had vast ammounts of legitimate material circulating as well, not just illegal. Using this same method, the same groups suing TPB should now turn their attentions to the internet service providers. Really, they are just another type of tool maker. While their networks traffic many legitimate types of material, their is also plenty of illegal file swapping going on. Because their network aids in the distribuition, they should be liable – right? You can see where this thinking and arguement is highly flawed.

Even though the verdict was less than stellar, with appeals and all of the other strings that are attached, expect at least 6 months to several years before they actually see any jail time, or any at all for that matter. If an appeals judge who isn’t mentally retarded overturns the original guilty verdict, I promise you can expect mass pandemonium as file sharers all over the world come out of their basements, caves, dens, (whatever you want to call them) and celebrate. The defendants are so confident in their beliefs and business model that one of them even jokingly tweeted this statement:

“It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release.”

Are you a PB user? (Don’t be shy – I am.) Will this guilty verdict deter you in any way from using TPB or any service like theirs? Or will it make you even more diligent?  The pirates will never give up, nor can any “legal” battle ever make up for poor business practices and models.  They, (the plaintiffs in this case), will never win this war.

Source: CNNbrk, Tech Dirt, *Image Source: The Mountain Culture*

In what is a sad day for P2P, torrent, and file sharers everywhere, a tweet by CNNbrk as just revealed that Pirate Bay lost their case.  More details will follow as soon as they become known.  For now just sit back, weep, and torrent a few files as you think back on all the good times.  Ok a bit melodramatic I suppose as Pirate Bay themselves said regardless of the decision they and their service would live on.  We’ll see how this plays out.

Source: CNNbrk, *Image Source: G Captain*

Is $20+ too much to spend on a movie?  Do you even find yourself questioning buying that $5 golden oldie that is sitting at the bottom of a Best Buy bargin bin?  If you a movie monster, own a G1, and don’t mind doing a little pirating, things have just turned in your favor.  Introducing BarTor, (formerly ScanTorrent), a torrent app for downloading movies will make the quest for free movies insanely easy.  This revolutionary app allows you to scan a movie barcode which then sends the movie information such as title to your computer (which you’ve previously set up to run uTorrent or Vuze) and by the time you get home you’ll have that movie or movies that you scanned while out and about ready to watch.  Granted this is highly illegal…but insanely cool.  Features of BarTor include:

• Load By URL or Load By File
• KTorrent  PHP and HTML Interfaces
• Support for uTorrent and Vuse
• Sort by By Seeds and Leechers (Default) or by Publish Date
• Ability to choose maximum number of Torrent Search results (25 *Default*, 50, 100, 250)
• Failed Submissions  retried automatically upon application open and exit
• Purchase opportunities with Barcode Lookup/Long Click result to open Browser

Why can’t legitimate comapnies put something together like this?  This is why people pirate.  The record labels and movie corps continue to try and resist the digital trend and are years behind and sadly always will be.  Leave it to the consumer to truly innovate the market while the big corps take all of the credit.  If you have a G1 I suggest you spend the $2.99 on BarTor before it gets taken down.  (We all know the MPAA will be all over this in a heartbeat).
Source: Crunch Gear, Wired