But is the issue alone one of resolution and visual quality?  If there had been a pristine version of Star Trek available at the same time, or even prior to its official theatrical release, would that have appreciably decreased box office revenue?  I spoke with someone affiliated with the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie that “suffered” from the leak of an almost finished work print just prior to theatrical release and he was adamant that the leak had had a profoundly negative impact on the film’s box office (although personally I would ascribe that more to negative word of mouth about a pretty crappy movie than to the specific effects of piracy).

Nonetheless, there are cases where the theatrical release of a film has to “compete with free” in the form of a high quality, even high definition copy of the film being available online.  Numerous foreign films are released into theaters, and even as DVD’s or Blu -Rays around the world prior to their official appearance in the U.S.  Are these films, admittedly not on the same scale expectations wise from blockbusters like Star Trek or Wolverine, yet still able to perform reasonably well financially?  Are they able to attract movie-goers when those same consumers could so easily obtain a copy of the film via Bittorrent, Usenet or Direct Download, even at full 1080p resolution?

This past Friday saw the U.S. release of the film Pirate Radio, also known as The Boat That Rocked when it first came out in its native Great Britain earlier in the year.  During the seven month delay in its arrival on these shores both DVD and Blu -Ray versions of the film came out in non-American markets, ensuring that even U.S. viewers would have access via the Internet to copies.  In fact, a cam version debuted on Piratebay soon after theatrical release, with DVD and Blu-Ray rips appearing in mid-August, eminently available to anybody around the world with an Internet connection.

Given all these “free” alternatives, how did Pirate Radio do in its first weekend in the U.S. market?  While its gross intake was relatively modest, at just under $3 million for an 11th place finish, more importantly, Pirate Radio did very well on a per-theater average, taking in $3,293 per theater, which actually puts it in third place among films in wide-release for the weekend.  While it is impossible to know with any real certainty what impact downloads of the DVD or Blu -Ray rips may have had on Pirate Radio’s box office, the film appears to have done pretty well, especially considering its foreign origin, subject matter and rather middling reviews (57% on the Rotten Tomato scale).

Somehow the forces behind the movie found a way to “compete with free” and position it to be profitable in the U.S., even before its inevitable DVD andBlu -Ray releases here.  Maybe the existence of free versions on the Internet did less to drive down demand for the film, but instead fostered awareness and interest in the movie above and beyond what the producers were able to do via PR and advertising.

For the most part, due to limitations in both the hardware and the service contract, you probably won’t be downloading much directly from the Internet to the phone itself.  There are a few beta Android applications that claim to allow for eitherBittorrent or Usenet downloading, but I have not been successful in getting them to work, either with 3G or Wi-Fi connections.  AndroidTorrent can open .torrent files, but does not actually get the download started, while the Groundhog Usenet reader can download the headers from binary newsgroups, but it cannot, as far as I can tell, actually download files in a binary format, much less handle the more complicatedunrar and par operations.  Rapidshare and Megaupload also proved to be unworkable from the built-in Android browser.  And it should be mentioned that large-scale downloading would almost assuredly create problems of bumping into the actual limits to the supposedly “unlimited” data plans (rumored to be around 5GB a month).

Despite those unfortunate limitations, Android-powered phones can be very useful for members of the downloading community, just in the role of portable dashboards for remote operation.  Torrent-fu for Bittorrent, and NZBdroid for Usenet allow users to control downloading from where ever they are via the Android phone, queuing up files to be enjoyed later, but also in the case of Torrent-fu giving users the ability to scan commercial goods via their barcodes, search major Bittorrent portals like BT-Junkie and IsoHunt, and then initiate downloads, all remotely.  And, of course, those files could be accessed by the Android phone if the remote computer is set up to serve files as well (although video files, for instance, would likely have to be re-encoded before they could be watched on the phone itself, but that’s a different article).

Torrent-fu is a free application available from the Android Marketplace and works on all variety of Android phones.  It acts as a client application for uTorrent (or Transmission) when the latter program is set up for control via its Web UI.  A bit of knowledge about port forwarding will be necessary, but without too much hassle you can leave uTorrent running on your home computer, and then both manage and add .torrent files to it completely from your phone.  Downloaded .torrent files, integrated search from within Torrent-fu, or most inventively, via the scanning of barcodes, can all generate downloads.  As a test, I scanned an old Big Lebowski DVD, and Torrent-fu did an excellent job of providing me with a number of different options for download.  Overall, Torrent-fu does an excellent job of giving any Android phone owner the power to amass a large media collection, while entirely away from their main computer.

NZBdroid is also available from the Android Marketplace, for either free or a $.99 donation, whatever the user decides.  It is very similar to Torrent-fu in concept, except that this app remotely controls a user’s SABnzbd+ downloading from Usenet.  As a huge fan of Usenet (and SABnzbd+) I truly love this application.  Since SABnzbd+ is essentially designed for a web-based interface anyway, NZBdroid is a bit easier to set up than Torrent-fu and really just operates in the background, only appearing when an .nzb file is downloaded from the web to the phone.  At that point the NZBdroid icon pops up allows for the information contained in the .nzb file (which is essentially just an XML file anyway) to the SABnzbd+ instance running on the home computer for eventual download.  All the options presented to control SABnzbd+ from the web are present on the phone as well.  NZBdroid is simple, powerful, and is absolutely worth the suggested $.99 donation for anybody seriously into Usenet downloading.

We are still very much in the early days of smart phones, as they continue to evolve from merely portable telephones into what are essentially small but relatively powerful computing devices.  Their processing power, storage limitations and most crucially data transmission bottlenecks (both physical and financial) prevent them from being used currently up to their potential for downloading from Bittorrent, Usenet and direct download sites, but there are some very cool applications like Torrent-fu and NZBdroid that already give them some very interesting functionality.  And in the future we are likely to see even more powerful phones with greater storage and even cheaper bandwidth capabilities that will let users fully take advantage of portable computing.

Have any of you tried out these programs?  Other Android apps for Bittorrent or Usenet?  How do the iPhone or the Pre compare in this regard?  I’d love to hear any other experiences Zeropaid users have had with mobile downloading.

Maybe it’s our imagination, but last we checked, Joel Tenenbaum is not an admin of ThePirateBay nor did he have much involvement in the creation of the mixtape outside of the court documents that listed the songs in the first place.

Still, that doesn’t stop the RIAA member from pulling out all of the stops against Tenenbaum. In court documents, plaintiffs argued, “on or about August 14, 2009, Defendant posted to the “JoelFightsBack” twitter
site—a site intended to publicize Defendant and this case—the following post: “interesting: a
“joel” torrent list of the 30 songs is now on thepirateBay/other torrent sites and is being DL
widely in protest. #JFB.”

The document continues, “The Pirate Bay’s homepage, to which Defendant directed his readers,
prominently featured a photograph of Defendant and an advertisement and link to an allegedly
RIAA approved torrent, “DJ Joel – The $675,000 Mixtape,” containing the 30 songs at issue in
this case”

The document contained a screen shot of the home page of ThePirateBay which, at the time, featured the $675,000 mixtape. The document says, “When a user clicks on the image, they are brought to a Torrent site that allows users to easily, and without authorization or cost, download the 30 sound recordings for which
Defendant was found liable.”

“Additionally, Defendant’s website regarding this case, www.joelfightsback.com, includes literally dozens of other users who have picked up the “tweet” from joelfightsback and have reposted it to their own blogs and twitter feeds, thereby encouraging countless other individuals to illegally download these 30 songs “in protest” [...] In short, despite the verdict and a clear finding of willful copyright infringement by Defendant, he continues to promote, indeed advertise, illegal online file-sharing of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings—the very sound recordings for which a jury found him liable for willful copyright infringement”

It should be noted that there were three other arguments to support the plaintiffs conclusion, but using the mixtape someone half way around the world posted on a Swedish website as reason to say that Tenenbaum is contributing to copyright infringement (we aren’t aware of any evidence in the plaintiffs court documents that Tenebaum linked to that website in the first place) is absurd at best. If someone photoshopped a picture of Bill Gates breaking in to a car, does that make Bill Gates liable for car theft if it was posted online? The only thing plaintiffs showed was that Tenebaum mentioned the mixtape. If one were to say, “Interesting that someone in America would take cocaine”, is that somehow endorsing illegal drug use?

So what is the plaintiff asking for?

This court should permanently enjoining defendant from committing, or acting in concert with others in committing, future infringement of plaintiffs’ copyrights

This court should enter the monetary judgement awarded by the jury on July 31, 2009

It’s an extremely bizarre argument to make that suggests that others actions are somehow your fault even though you took no part in the creation or actions that started to, in this case, create the actual mixtape in the first place. It’s a growing theme that the copyright industry wants to double-dip – you are sued for your action and the action of your friend. Then that friend is sued for their action as well as yours. Essentially, it’s like your being sued twice for the same action.

We wonder how such an argument could be taken seriously, but then again, there are reasons why some believe the American court system has been bought and paid for by corporate America.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Should an ISP block website because of a complaint by a corporation or an organization of corporations? This could be one question that could draw a line in the sand between the copyright industry and supporters of free speech in Europe.

Earlier this year, the European Union blocked the three strikes law by declaring internet access as a fundamental right. Since then, the copyright industry has been scrambling to find some sort of quick cheap fix to stop all forms of file-sharing on the internet by, among other things, implementing three strikes, censorship, throttling and anything else they can get other people to throw at file-sharing. Since the political way by implementing things like the three strikes law seemed to not be quick enough, the industry went after ISPs. Eircom in Ireland was one of those ISPs.

Starting September 1st, as a part of a settlement between the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) and Eircom, the ISP has agreed to start blocking The Pirate Bay.

Just days afterwards, the Irish Pirate Party issued a statement saying that they are “deeply concerned by news that eircom is to block access from its subscribers to thepiratebay.org.”

“The Party,” the statement continued, “which is opposed to censorship and stands for the protection of individual privacy, finds this action wholly disturbing and believes it should not go ahead.”

“The Pirate Party believes that this block will set a precedent not only for further monitoring of Internet users, censorship and general debilitation of Internet services in Ireland, but also for similar action against other Irish companies providing Internet services, such as BT Ireland, Smart Telecom, Perlico and UPC (two of which have already been similarly threatened), severely damaging competition in this sector and curtailing efficient broadband rollout.”

It should be noted that as of the 20th, other Irish ISPs did vow to keep fighting IRMA which wants to force ISPs to implement three strikes and blocking internet websites such as The Pirate Bay. Given that the Telecoms package had the final say on disconnections by saying that internet access is a fundamental right, it’s not hard to conclude that Irish ISPs disconnecting users is not only bad publicity, but illegal by European law as well. From an observational standpoint, a lawsuit to force an ISP to break European law seems to be some sort of legal twilight zone – one can only imagine what is going on behind the scenes of these ISPs that are still fighting.

The Irish Pirate Party also noted that backup copies of The Pirate Bay have been distributed online as well and questions whether blocking the site would be even remotely effective in the first place.

In addition, the Irish Pirate Party quoted sections of Irish copyright laws IRMA used to go after ISPs and pointed out that “Neither the Pirate Bay, nor Eircom, store any copyrighted materials on any of their servers or within their service infrastructure. Also since the law specifically refers to singular works this section of the law cannot be used against an entire site or service.”

Unfortunately, as it has been proven in past cases, what local laws say hardly matters since the copyright industry tends to interpret copyright laws their way and enforces their interpretation of the laws as they see fit. In the past, this point was particularly prevalent when the copyright industry persuaded Swedish lawmakers to break local Swedish law when the websites server farms were raided by police back in 2006. The move by anti-piracy efforts backed by the US earned lawsuits from local businesses who were taken offline thanks to the server farm raid. Accusations of illegal activity by officials in 2006 during the raid ran fast and furious.

The kind of debate over whether or not ISPs are allowed to enforce their own three strikes policy or are allowed to arbitrarily block websites at the copyright industry bidding doesn’t appear to be exclusive to Ireland given that this kind of debate is already happening in the UK when a key political figure did a “u-turn” on the governments stance on three strikes after spending a short vacation with an American billionaire from the copyright industry and, by extension, in the Netherlands where MiniNova was ordered to remove all links to trackers containing allegedly copyright infringing material.

While it seems that the copyright industry is trying to find every back door they possibly can to try and find ways of defying the will of the European Union, this effort could ultimately backfire as it further legitimizes the stance of the Pirate Party in many European countries. It gives very real relevance to the concerns of the party for potential new voters who have already voted in one to two members of the party into the European Union. If the copyright industry doesn’t see it, surely policymakers should given that it’s their jobs on the line, not the industry’s.

Whether this particular issue between Eircom and IRMA becomes a key political point remains to be seen, but at the very least, it’s shaping up to be another controversial point in the European copyright debate.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

This isn’t the first time indicators started popping up that the roaring success of P2P has died down in recent times. In February, we noted that ISP traffic use growth had dropped by 45%. So what could plausibly be the cause in the cool down of the popularity of p2p in the first place? We explore some of the possibilities.

1. Mainstream Is Boring

The first immediate thing that comes to mind as to why p2p traffic would be in decline is that the content produced today isn’t as exciting now as it was 5 – 10 years ago. In music, there were entire lists of bands that pretty much everyone got excited about. When bands like Nirvana, Bloodhound Gang, AC/DC, Metallica, Evanescence, Blink 182, Linkin Park, Guns N’ Roses they were much more than, ‘well, kinda cool’, just about everyone and their neighbours knew about them at bare minimum and many lamented some of these artists as defining icons of a certain era of music. Now, a younger generation often ends up being drawn to the underground death metal movement, being somewhat enthused about the latest top 40 artists, or just dumping todays music altogether, not finding anything they like. In part, it could be blamed on the diversity of music that is accessible today, or it could be blamed on a general lack of enthusiasm toward music save for a few relics of an era of the past. Many might hold on tight to a small collection of music in their iPod and basically be done with it. It’s either that or the sampling of people I’ve spoken to was a freak sampling.

On the movie side of things, many have complained about the decline of the quality of movies. One of the more often mentioned reasons for not watching movies is the old line how movies are too formulaic. This is certainly a far cry from the hugely experimental movie, “Pulp Fiction” which turned a plot’s time line on its head. During the movie writers strikes, some movie writers complained how if a movie fell too far off a certain formula, it would never get funding – thus stopping writers from taking risks with movies and probably making them experiment less. Another side to look at this was the sequel fever that seemed to sweep the movie scene a year or two ago. Every movie was either a sequel, a re-imagination or a spin-off of an old defunct TV series. Disney was one of the culprits releasing sequels to Lion King, Cinderella and countless others (this isn’t even touching the ‘re-mastering’ or ‘digital restoration’ that hits TV screens periodically) Then there’s the tried tested and true, “Make it have cool graphics and it’ll sell method” – the Star Wars sequel trilogy being a series that really kicked the CGI into overdrive and leaving major other parts of the movie behind. There have been numerous comments by movie theatre owners in the past where ticket sales have gone down.

Turning to television, there’s been a number of suggestions that point to how TV revenue has gone down. The genre of television that has been most popular as of late seems to frequently be news stations. Many I’ve talked to seem to back this up saying how “I just flick on the TV to watch the news”. Outside notable clips being posted on YouTube, not many really download newscasts regularly outside of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. I would argue that it all started with the original airing of Survivors first season where when ratings shot through the roof, TV execs likely salivated at the potential revenue streams, cancelling shows like Star Trek and putting in TV shows like Big Brother, Trading Spaces and all 6 million spin-offs of trading spaces. Some may remember a time when you were glued to the television set, watching countless hours of TV where one interesting show was on after the next. Now, it’s more like watching the odd show that sits on a 1 or 2 hour time span.

Then there’s the other factor – the gaming industry. Not only producing games that drive content consumers away from other industries, but producing games like World of Warcraft and other similar non-stop games that is never really over. There has even been the odd report here and there of people dying because they exhaust themselves playing certain games. If you manage to get the game once, there is usually only firmware updates to get afterwards. Maybe many users are too busy gaming to be heavy 24/7 p2p users.

All that could be one plausible explanation of why p2p has been seemingly going down hill over the years.

2. Non-p2p Sources of Getting Content Gnawing Away at p2p’s Popularity

When someone downloads hundreds of thousands of tracks, there has to be some way to store it. Sometimes, you read the odd comment here and there that it takes Terabytes of storage just to store (typically losslessly encoded) all those music files. This is not a problem if you are on YouTube. You search for a song, you get to stream it, then your done whenever you are done listening to the song. Other streaming sites as well have been noted for being popular and gaining at p2p’s expense. A number of users, as noted by Deadmau5, are becoming less concerned about quality of music and more about getting that song in any form. This is great news for streaming services, bad news for people concerned about quality control.

Then there’s the another, often under-reported phenomenon that might be chewing away at P2P’s popularity, the one-click hoster. Indeed, sites like Rapidshare have been notable in becoming an alternative source for content and it’s technically not considered p2p traffic at all, but rather a sort of server to peer system where users download directly off of mass servers. Technically speaking, it’s far more efficient than any p2p network because the process is far more simple at the end of the day. BitTorrent, for instance, you are connecting to a number of peers in a network that can contain thousands. Information is communicated to the tracker while you download directly off of other people’s hard drives that file/s in question. On a server, you connect to one thing, download that file, and your pretty much done. Great news for ISPs because there’s less bandwidth overhead involved even though networks like BitTorrent are quite efficient.

Then there’s UseNet. While technically a form of p2p to some extent, servers are still storing the files in question. Many are becoming more paranoid about their security and opting to pay the access fees to use the premium newsgroup services to get their content. Of course, all one has to do is submit guides to Digg to see the onslaught of users trying to keep the content off of the front page to see how popular UseNet actually is.

3. The Authenticity of File-Sharing Isn’t What it Use to Be

If you’ve been around the age of Napster, you might be able to appreciate just how authentic it was to download a song you’ve wanted. The whole concept of downloading music for free on the internet was, for quite a while, something of an amazing phenomenon that could usher in a new era of thinking about content in general. Indeed it has, but ten years later, can you get the same reaction you got back then now when you say, “Did you know you could download music on the internet?” Now, it’s old hat for many in certain age groups. Downloading music for free on the internet is nothing new and it has become more like drinking water in terms of authenticity. In fact, in a number of cases, one could get a similarly enthusiastic response between, “Did you know you could download music online?” and “Did you know you could drink water from the tap?” So what?

Maybe, combined with our first theory, p2p is losing it’s appeal because it’s nothing new and people might even do p2p less because of it.

4. Try Before You Buy

This is an extremely old concept that has been used to defend p2p for years. In fact, many people in the scene have used it as well for somewhat different reasons. Of course, for some trying before they are buying was a little bit difficult as it was a younger generation experiencing the effect of p2p. Of course, that was 2001 or 2002. If you were born in 2001, you’d be 8 or 9 years old by now. If you were 15 then, you’d be 23 or 24 years old now. Numerous people I happen to know in the p2p world are either getting close to graduation or are graduating and attempting to either get a higher paying job or are trying to keep it in the turmoils caused by the stock bubble bursting for the second time toward the end of 2008 which started in the housing sector. Bottom line, there’s a difference in pay between being a student and being out in the field with a degree most of the time. While heavy in debt most of the time, there’s sometimes room for a CD or two here and there. It’s different when you look at a price tag of a CD and you’re making minimum wage and going to school then when you’re making $20 an hour with student loans people constantly on your case. A report we posted a few days ago where music revenues are going up could help back up this theory. Disposable income is easier obtain after graduating. Why bother downloading it when you have the spare money to get it yourself?

Maybe you could go as far as to say that there is the odd scene notice that does have an impact on p2p users.

Miscellaneous Possibilities

Another theory one could draw up is the fact that more p2p users are using encryption. Often, this is just to thwart attempts at throttling by ISPs, but the traffic is always there even if it can’t be identified. While such methods could make tracking trends more difficult, this doesn’t necessarily explain the overall drop in traffic increases though.

It’s also entirely possible that users are much smarter about what they download. Before, fakes and bogus files have been a huge problem in the p2p community (particularly in the decline of the Kazaa days). Now, identifying fake files is easier with report systems built into the clients such as e-Mule or built in to the large amounts of p2p sites in existence today. If one downloaded a fake file, they’d have to find another source to re-download it, doubling the traffic. If one were to get the correct file the first time more frequently, in theory, the bandwidth used would go down accordingly.

One theory someone else presented to me a while back was the fact that the back catalogue has already been downloaded. All the songs that were under promoted before by the industry had been already downloaded by those who were interested by now so there are less reasons to be downloading.

A less plausible theory could be the disenchantment of private BitTorrent sites by some users. Users have to maintain a sharing ratio and some report being banned from their favourite sites in spite of a good ratio. Some may even leave private BitTorrenting and p2p altogether.

Another possibility could be that people are losing their jobs and, therefore, can’t afford an internet connection at all. It’s harder to download what you like when you are too broke to pay for that internet connection in the first place.

Conclusion

It’s really difficult to imagine the p2p phenomenon not perpetually getting more and more popular when you surround yourself with people equally enthusiastic about file-sharing. Surprisingly, one could look to a basic economic concept to generalize some of the reasons p2p would be in decline – market saturation. If a given market is saturated, it cannot continue to grow at a frantic pace as it will eventually just level off much like a fire burning through most of its fuel.

Who knows what the main culprit would be if p2p is in decline. It could be for a number of reasons we mentioned or it could be something else entirely. Obviously, the copyright industry wouldn’t be enthusiastic over the concept given the main push to restrict copyright is to say that people are downloading more and buying less (how much does the argument deflate when the opposite becomes true in the first place?) P2P enthusiasts are more than willing to talk about how popular file-sharing is. ISPs are more than willing to say how popular p2p is as it helps them argue for being able to throttle their users. Not many people left who are willing to admit that p2p could be declining in popularity.

Still, it hardly means the end of p2p. File-sharing could be nearing the end of exponential growth, but by far not the end given that a newer generation is probably willing to pick up where others have left off. Of course, all of this is just a possible thing that could be happening in the p2p world. Do you think it’s possible that p2p could be losing its growth in popularity or even declining in popularity somewhat?

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

I’ve always found Bram Cohen, author of the BitTorrent protocol, very fascinating, perhaps mainly because he’s allowed myself and countless others the ability to share content in ways still yet to be imagined.

So whenever he shares his thoughts on BitTorrent I always sit up and take notice.

In this case it’s nothing spectacular, but he does give a simple explanation of why BitTorrent performs so well why dispelling the myth that content popularity drives download speeds.

He writes:

There’s a classic fallacy because if one person stands up during a concert they get a better view, then if everybody stood up during a concert they’d all get a better view. This is of course is not true – they wind up slightly worse off by all standing, because they all compete with each other for a view. The same thing happens with downloading from a server. In general, web servers will give about the same rate to every client downloading from them, so if you open many more connections than everybody else you get a greater proportion of the bandwidth and hence a better rate. But you do so simply by taking bandwidth from other downloaders. The overall supply of upload is unchange, it’s simply being shuffled around. If everybody does the same thing it results in overall slightly worse performance and you’re basically back where you started, but with a bunch of headaches tacked on.

So why does BitTorrent perform so well? Quite simply, because it does a better job of finding more places to do uploading. Any peer which is downloading is in general willing to upload as well, and their uplink is usually unutilized, so if you can get a peer to start uploading as soon as it starts downloading, and keep uploading as long as possible, and saturate its link while it’s uploading, then overall performance will be better. It doesn’t necessarily help to transfer over more connections, or make more different things available at the same time, or use error correcting codes. In fact, all of those are a complex tradeoff between benefits and costs, with the net result being that small amounts of them can help reliability and robustness, but in general it’s good to keep things simple and be polite to the network.

On the internet, the formula is bytes downloaded = bytes uploaded. It’s that simple.

Indeed it is.

jared@zeropaid.com

One of the founders of The Pirate Bay suggested that one could buy a share in The Pirate Bay, but were people buying shares a little too early? That’s what Aktietorget is trying to find out after the stocks for the buyer, Global Gaming Factory, went up before the announcement of the acquisition.

All this is according to Swedish news site, The Swedish Wire. There were comments that if the sale didn’t go through, then the site would then revert back to the original owners. From the report:

“There are reasons to suspect that information was leaked”, said Peter Gönczi, executive vice president at Aktietorget, to business daily Dagens Industri.

Consequently, Peter Gönczi will start an investigation to see if the trading rules have been despoiled.

If the acquisition is completed, Aktietorget might start a further investigation since The Pirate Bay is suspected of committing criminal actions. In April Stockholm’s district court sentenced Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström each to a year in jail and ordered them to pay damages of 30 million kronor (€2.72 million, $3.56 million dollars) to the movie and recording industry. The verdict has been appealed to a higher court.

“Aktietorget wants to make sure that the companies that are traded on the list are managing legitimate businesses”, Peter Gönczi said to Dagens Industri.

Here’s an interesting question in all of this. What if the sale was halted and the infamous BitTorrent website was reverted back to the owners? Certainly, this would pose as an interesting problem for the founders on the PR front. Users already know that the admins intended on selling the site – something that didn’t sit well for many users. All this is on top of the legal implications of the site since the admins did say that they intended on filing charges against the Swedish legal system in the European Court of Human Rights right before the sale. This was the result of a three judge panel deciding that the admins cannot appeal the decision that the original judge wasn’t biased.

One thing is for sure, this latest tangle could dramatically complicate things for the admins of The Pirate Bay. Not really something an exhausted team would want at this point in time.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

It seemed almost unfathomable right up to the announcement of the website being sold, but it has indeed happened. While sites like the once mighty SuprNova fell in it’s wake, The Pirate Bay stood proud long after other sites succumbed to pressure from copyright entities. The length the site lasted seemed like the site became very symbol of defiance toward the copyright industry as a whole. Really how many sites can be named that lasted as long as The Pirate Bay? To drive the point home, the admins even created a page of legal threats they received and included responses which became a sensation all in its own primarily for the audacity of the responses, but also for the humour in it all. The Pirate Bay was the biggest ’stick it to the man’ kind of sites. As a result, many other sites may have been emboldened by the efforts of The Pirate Bay – perhaps because the site lead the way in resilience, or maybe because the site took most of the flack from the copyright industry to name two possibilities.

For these and many other reasons, the loss of such a site in the eyes of many would lead to a huge hole left behind. While the fact that it was such a large site where users went to was, in and of itself, is a large reason for the hole left behind, many would agree that the spirit behind the site being removed can be felt by many file-sharers – how many users out there who never used the site or rarely used the site felt at least one bit emotional about the sale?

While the admins reassured their users that the site isn’t dying, just changing hands, many users have already expressed their doubts and are opting for the attitude that the site died the moment the announcement came that the site was sold – even though nothing has even changed yet.

We here at ZeroPaid were curious. If one were to jump ship, where would the users go? Under the idea that the site has to be somewhat public at the very least, we found 5 alternative websites through our own resources that may be of interest to public BitTorrent users:

1. Mininova

MiniNova is perhaps the most well known in the BitTorrent community. It was formed after the demise of SuprNova by ex-SuprNova staff members. It’s not hard to argue that this was the best site that replaced SuprNova. It indexes .torrent files from other sites, so some of the .torrents are from private sites that only allow members of those sites to download the given files. Still, the site is moderated and well-used by members and, with the release of their distribution network, content creators alike.

2. Demonoid

There’s been some debate in the past on whether or not this is a public or private site, though many would agree that this would be classified as semi-private given how often sign-ups are open. Whether or not you agree with this kind of torrent site, Demonoid has a huge following backing them and a number of it’s users would no doubt defend it’s viability as an alternative to The Pirate Bay.

3. ISOHunt

ISOHunt, like MinoNova, has had it’s share of legal trouble in the past and agreed to filtering content. Still, a number of users still use that site for finding what they want and it has stayed being one of the most populated sites online to this day.

4. 1337x

1337x.org is a lesser known BitTorrent site. Still, that hasn’t stopped their front page from saying “we don’t plan on selling anytime soon.”

MustangX continues, “We welcome all the users of TPB to use our trackers and site. It’s a free leech community with NO ratios to maintain, we have a web based chat , A 24/7 radio station with 8 different DJ’s.”

5. BTJunkie

BTJunkie is another site that is well-populated with users, but not as well known as sites like MiniNova and ISOHunt. Still, many users still find this place to be a torrent home or even a second torrent home when another of their preferred sites goes down or inaccessible on their end.

Afterthought

It should be noted that for many, no site will fully replace The Pirate Bay. That site is easily considered a home site for many and a site that is difficult to impossible to replace in the long run. Still, The Pirate Bay isn’t the only site around these days. It might be questionable if there would be many, if any, sites that could match the longevity and reach of The Pirate Bay, but that doesn’t make the only BitTorrent site around with, at least, a semi-open nature about it.

If you are looking for an alternative to bittorrent in general, why not try downloading from newsgroups.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com

There are no shortage of Swedish citizens irate over what happened with the admins of The Pirate Bay during the “spectrial”. Even though the admins cannot appeal the judicial review that decided that the judge in the Pirate Bay spectrial was not biased, the story is far from over at this point in time. It seems that a debate has re-emerged where many key players in the Swedish justice system are debating whether organization affiliations should be questioned prior to a case. It’s interesting to know that this debate isn’t new, and the high profile case has re-energized that debate.

While the debate is going on, the admins of The Pirate Bay are currently considering pressing charges against Sweden in the European court of Human Rights.

“And it should also be noted that Anders Eka,” The Pirate Bay wrote in their blog, “the guy with the final decision that is not appealable, heads in an immaterial rights organisation as Peter Drowsky and Monique Wasted, the MPAA and Ifpi-lawyers. However, he does not feel that working together with the lawyers that enjoys this decision the most has an impact on his decision or that he might be biased himself…”

“Tomorrow,” they added, “we will probably file charges against the swedish legal system to the european court of human rights.”

One admin from The Pirate Bay said at one point that he simply Googled the judges for their affiliations and found them to be affiliated with pro-copyright organizations within minutes.

We haven’t yet found any formal documents that suggest that charges have been filed yet.

Still, while the trial of the Pirate Bay admins is a high profile case, that isn’t the only one fuelling anger. Another key case in the copyright debate in Sweden is also making some waves as well. According to The Local, publishers have recently tested the new anti-filesharing law by demanding that customer information be handed over from the ISP. Ephone resisted, so the Publishers took the issue to court and got the Swedish court to force the ISP to divulge the information.

Having the legal means to force an ISP to divulge customer information via an IP-address is a key step in the waves of lawsuits seen in the United States (which has seen over 35,000 lawsuits against alleged file-sharers) If that weren’t possible, the United States would not have seen all these lawsuits against file-sharers in the first place. It’s unclear whether or not waves as seen in the United States or Britain will be seen in Sweden, but this case suggests that it is now possible to sue alleged file-sharers en-mass in Sweden now.

Two court cases later and now the whole Swedish justice system is now under the gun by many. Imagine what would happen if more file-sharers receive legal threats.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Sources have already said that The Pirate Bay founders have lost their appeal in their court conviction. Judges suggested that the original judge was not biased in spite of his affiliations with pro-copyright organizations.

While the spectacle in Sweden is ongoing, another legal development is emerging. BREIN has issued a court summons via FaceBook and Twitter. The reason they delivered their court summons in this fashion is supposedly because they couldn’t find them. BREIN is demanding that The Pirate Bay be shut down in the Netherlands.

“The internet works both for those who respect copyrights and those who violate them. Now they know that the hearing will take place on July 21st in Amsterdam,” said BREIN CEO Tim Kuik.

The Pirate Bay has previously been the object of legal proceedings in several other countries, including Italy and Norway.

“The Swedish pirate movement is making trouble for the rest of the world and foreign copyright holders are suffering,” said Henrik Pontén, a lawyer for Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency (Antipiratbyrån).

Of course, this is opposed to the copyright movement making trouble for civil society around the world ever since it filed a lawsuit against Napster nearly 10 years ago, shutting down the service. At least in this quote, BREIN is honest when they say they are strictly for foreign interests.

Of course, The Pirate Bay operates in several countries, so this is unlikely to shut down the website even if they won this odd court case. Some have questioned whether this method is even a proper court summons in the first place.

It’s unclear exactly how a court summons would work. The admins for The Pirate Bay confirmed that they had Facebook and Twitter accounts, but denied seeing the court summons in the first place.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.