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.

Shortly after it became known that Rapidshare divulged personal information to rights holder, Rapidshare has since gone to the public to assure users that their IP addresses are safe and that they only track the volume of traffic going through their servers. It’s been argued, though, that Rapidshare hasn’t been entirely clear on the details of why they divulged the IP address outside of the fact that they are following German laws. So, Gulli decided to speak to a German lawyer on what all this means for users who use sites like Rapidshare.

It turns out, according to an expert opinion on IT law, that such a use of the German law in question, Paragraph 101 of the German Copyright Act could put some legal risk to downloaders as well. All of this hinges on if a file hoster resides in Germany. If the transfer starts somewhere in Germany, the German law applies. While Rapidshare does operate outside of German, many of their servers still resides inside the borders of Germany.

As many who have observed the copyright debates would likely note, what the letter of the law and what is actually enforced almost always tends to be two completely different things. Looking back on actual cases against alleged copyright infringers, one can easily note that, 1) An overwhelming majority of users who are actually legally pursued are uploaders, not downloaders and 2) Unless its a huge server bust, those who get prosecuted are almost always uploading newly released or even pre-released mainstream material (when was the last time you heard someone getting sued for uploading a movie made before 1995?) Of course, original leakers aren’t typically charged, usually just those who are the first to upload the work onto a more public internet medium (sometimes private BitTorrent sites like EliteTorrents, but more often public blogs, public BitTorrent sites and, in this case, filehosters for instance)

It’s also worth pointing out that Rapidshare isn’t one of a rare kind of service. As we’ve already once noted, there’s plenty of other file hosters to go around.

(Special thanks to Firebird77 of Gulli.com for the translation. Thanks!)

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.

An editor from Gulli.de has written in to offer a personal translation from German to English an exclusive report into how Rapidshare gave personal information to rights holders details about an uploader. First, a quick overview of what has been happening in this particular case.

Back in March, Gulli highlighted (Google translation) a new development that could set a new precedent for file-hosting services like Rapidshare. At the time, not much was known, but a person who uploaded a pre-release album – Metallica’s ‘Death Magnetic’ album to be precise was subject to a home search by prosecutors. There was high suspicion that it was because he uploaded the album, but it wasn’t entirely clear how the upload was connected to him. Still, there was reason to believe that Rapidshare divulged the information to rights holders given that they have already been under pressure from rights holders.

Later on that month, more details were discussed and more theories were presented. The question was, has Rapidshare, for the first time, handed over the IP address to a third party through a copyright infringement complaint? There were discussions surrounding local copyright laws and whether this case involved a civil complaint or a criminal complaint. There appears to be discussion on the time frame between when the upload was discovered and when the persons house was raided. Unfortunately, one could only discuss theories on what happened because Rapidshare and rights holders remained tight-lipped on the situation. However, there was an interesting conclusion that the attractiveness of a file-hosting could greatly diminish if the website was found to be handing over personal information (namely IP addresses) to third parties via a copyright infringement complaint – bad news for a prominent file-hoster.

Now, Gulli has received confirmation on a number of things regarding this case. Here’s a rough translation provided by FireBird77, though he says that the translation might not be error free:

The order of the judge, to raid the house, was soon after that posted in a forum, where it got into the hands of my colleague MSX. At a first view, it seemed like an ordinary judge decision, only with the detail, that it was ordered against an Uploader of Rapidshare. There could have been thousand options, how they got the IP-Address of the person. The scanned decision was transmitted to me by my colleague, so that I had the chance to take a closer look at it. There the difference then pointed out, how the public prosecutor got the IP-Address of the uploader. An e-mail, which was forwarded to us soon after that and that was sent from the Support of Rapidshare, confirmed our suspicion. The civil law based information claim had to be used to get the IP-Address. This information claim went real on 01.09.2008 an gives rights holders the ability, to bypass the public prosecutors, an get to the address of suspected copyright infringers. A list of IP-Addresses can be brought to a judge, if he signs the civil law based information claim, the providers have to tell the names an addresses to the given IP-addresses. But since the introduction of the law, it was only used for P2P-Users and Providers. Now it obviously seems, that it can also be used for something else.

As you can see in the second break, the lawyer contacted the German providers 1&1, the Deutsche Telekom AG aswell as Rapidshare AG through the § 101 UrhG. This paragraph represents the civil law based information claim. As it follows, the district court Bielefeld signed the order. The Uploader was accused of uploading music-tracks which the Major labels are the rightsholders. The uploader is concretely accused of uploading the TOP 100 Music-Charts. The value of claim for an MP3 is about 10.000 Euro in Germany at the moment. 100 Tracks, 10.000 Euros. Finishes at 1.000.000 Euro value of claim. If the uploader would get sued and loses in the first instance, he has costs of about 40.000 to bury.

It seems like the German content-industry found the ultimate weapon against copyright infringers, with the civil law based information claim. The only factor that is still not absolutely clear is, when this claim can be used. The most probable assumption is the location of the servers.

At the moment there are a lot of discussions, if the place of the servers is the reason why § 101 UrhG was applicable. A RS-Support mail says, that this is not the main reason. The problem is, that the explanation is pretty strange. If German law is applicable, then they have to hand out the information, the support mail tells. A user in the gulli:board posted this mail and wrote the thought, that only links from German sites are the reason. The problem is: The cease & desist letter contains the forums, from which the rightsholders got the link. And those forums are not in Germany. We also thought, that the German language could be the reason. But this would be crazy. Changing the sites language from German to English would solute the problem. We´re still waiting for an answer from the lawyer. Until that, the place were the servers are (and Rapidshare has a lot of their servers in Germany) seems the most practicable point. We will work on.

So essentially, rights holders in Germany have found a way to exploit the local copyright laws to get Rapidshare to divulge an IP address – sufficient information for rights holders to get other personal information to get prosecutors to investigate. It appears as though that a link was posted to the content on a non-German based website, but since the servers of Rapidshare are located in Germany, that hardly matters and the prime suspicion on why German laws were used against this individual.

Shortly afterwards, a representative from Rapidshare issued a press release to confirm that the law applied in this case because the servers were located but the server location had nothing to do with it. It appears, though, that not all the information in this case is perfectly clear, so this story seems to be ongoing.

You can read a Google translation of the original report here. All information in this case has been provided by Gulli – a German file-sharing site. Thanks for the translation!

Update: The editor corrected me, saying that the server location had nothing to do with the case and that the German laws applied to all filehosters. Exactly when does the law apply is not clear and Gullli is working with lawyers to figure this fact out.

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.

A report from German news site Heise.de (German) says that book publishers in Germany are demanding that the famous one-click hosting site Rapidshare be put on the national blacklist. An essential part of the report was translated by p2p-blog which features this:

“I don’t see any other way than access controls to get to platforms like these that are based in foreign countries,” said Boersenverein chief counsel Christian Sprang according to heise.de. ISPs should charge their customers for the costs of instituting these block lists. Sprang also called one-click-hosters like Rapidshare part of the “Internet mafia”, and complained that ISPs would finance these services with ad buys on their sites.

The report also reminds us that the copyright industry attempted to add file-sharing websites to a blacklist already. We have noted a similar case over a year ago where the copyright industry in Germany was turned down by the government to retain the information of all those who access copyrighted materials for the 6 month period for investigation purposes.

Clearly, this is a case where the fears are realized over the potential abuse of the new internet filters in Germany. In this case, it was barely a day before the copyright industry wanted to utilize the new found power for their bottom line. It leads one to wonder how many other incumbent industries are currently lobbying the government to be able to use the blacklists for their own financial interests.

As many are aware, there are places one can use to search for a file hosted on sites like Rapidshare and MegaUpload. There are also ways of using Google to search for loose media files hosted on web spaces. Still, there hasn’t been a unifying way of finding these files – that is, until now.

FilesTube is a website that crawls the Internet for content hosted on generic file hosts and various file hosting services like RapidShare. It’s certainly no small website and it seems to be growing. For some who are familiar with p2p clients like LimeWire, eMule or BitTorrent, it may be just another file-sharing tool that might be useful for finding the odd file that doesn’t seem to be found anywhere else. For those who are looking for an easier way to find files though, it may become the easiest way of obtaining files.

In short, it may very well be the MiniNova of direct downloading (since the files are not hosted on the site itself, but they do link to files in an automated way) We were certainly interested in this new development. So we tested the site ourselves to see if it was too good to be true. A few searches later, aside from a few garbage files, it was quite easy to find what you are looking for. For now, you have to be rather specific on what you are looking for to filter out unnecessary files, but otherwise, it seems to be a legitimate way of obtaining what you are looking for.

So, impressed by the initial test run, we interviewed Arkadiusz Senko, the CEO of FilesTube to learn more. Initially, we thought FilesTube hosted the files, but obviously, they don’t.

ZeroPaid: Who are you? What is FilesTube and how is it different from other methods of p2p today like LimeWire, BitTorrent and RapidShare?

Arkadiusz Senko: We are “Red Sky LLC” company with a residence in Poland. FilesTube is one of many websites currently developed by us. FilesTube is not [a] hosting platform but [rather] [a] search engine, similar to [...] Google. Like other search engines[,] it has its own web crawler system which is searching for public media on the Internet. Biggest difference from [the] other search engines like [...] Google is that FilesTube concentrates only on searching for [...] media.

For the person that would like to use our website[, the way] FilesTube works could be described as [the] follow[ing]: user specifies what he wants to find and then we present him search results found on the net in a clear and friendly way.

ZP: When I’m looking at the site, I’m reminded of a sort of derivative idea of RapidShare and MegaUpload. There was a recent court ruling against RapidShare (link). Is this a concern for you? Going on the same line of thinking, the site seems quite similar to that of YouTube. I am aware that broadcasters in different countries have sued YouTube in the past in spite of a DMCA policy in place. Are you concerned that there’ll be issues with rights holders?

Senko: We cannot say for sure that we won’t have any problems with law and we consider that they could occur in the future. But as [we said] earlier, we do not host any media on our servers, we only point to the media on the Internet. Still we are doing our best to provide only legal search results. In situation[s] that the media is illegal[,] most of
the time DMCA applies to [the] owner of [a] website that physically stores that file. For that reason[,] everyday we check for the files if they still exist. If [they are] not [legal], they are automatically and immediately deleted from our resources, so we don’t have many [copyright complaints].

ZP: Some people would say things like, “I already have BitTorrent for large files” or “I already have LimeWire for single songs” or even maybe, “I have been using RapidShare/MegaUpload for downloading” or “I use eMule for rare and old files”, what sort of benefits does a site like yours bring to users that current p2p methods don’t? Also, why would a p2p user switch to your service?

SenkoFilesTube grants [a] very fast way to gain access to [search] resources [on] the Internet, no [matter] if they are accessible through FTP, websites such as RapidShare, Megaupload or other public places. [A] very important benefit when using our site in comparison to [...] p2p network[s] is that the downloaded file is not being shared at the same moment, which saves user’s bandwidth. Our database of indexed multimedia is growing very fast and even if [a] user can’t find a file that he was searching for, our system of crawlers will be informed about this fact automatically and it will start looking for items matching criteria. Another thing is that the user can specify his email address where a notification will be [sent] right away after any matching search results [become] available.

Currently we are intensively working on improving our search engine to index more resources. At this moment we have more than 40 millions [...] items in our database. In [the] near future[,] we are planning to add [a] feature of searching in p2p network[s]. Our goal is to allow [users] to find in FilesTube any multimedia which could be accessed through the Internet. Google has dominated [the] area which covers search[ing] websites containing information but we think that [a lot can be done in multimedia searching].

ZP: I remember when MiniNova having problems as they grew in size mainly because of the influx in traffic. If you’re site continues to grow, will it possibly run into problems like MiniNova or have you found ways to prevent things like downtime as a result of site upgrades?

Senko: We’ve also had [...] problems[, at first] with [...] very fast growing traffic. It was resolved by [the] rewriting and optimization of source code of FilesTube ([today,] FilesTube [contains] more than 100 000 lines of code and this amount is still increasing!) and by adding new hardware resources. FilesTube was developed with a keynote of full scalability. At this moment our servers are able to maintain at least 3 times [the current] traffic than the one we [have] now, which exceeds 5 million unique users per month and is growing fast. All performance problems are maintained if any risk of decrease in quality of provided services is possible. We know that there are big chances that we will cross paths with many more performance problems, but we will do everything in our [power] to give FilesTube users [a] fast and easy to use search engine.

ZeroPaid would like to thank Senko for taking the time to answer some questions.

It is certainly an interesting development. Will it be this kind of site that’ll be the next revolution in p2p? It’s hard to say, but this site clearly has a shot at doing so.

FilesTube Homepage

It was only yesterday that the subject of file-hosting came up in a discussion about link sharing. A report from P2P-Blog pointed to a German court ruling (German) that said that not only does the file-hosting service has to comply with copyright complaints, but also check every file for copyright infringement. Rapidshare’s argument that it is already fighting copyright infringement appears to have not worked. From P2P-Blog:

The company also has to “proactively check content before publishing it” if there have been similar infringements in the past. Rapidshare has to log and check IP numbers of potential infringers as well, according to the court decision.

Rapidshare has been using a MD5 Hash filter to prevent the upload of previously removed material, and it told the court that it it has six employees working full time to remove infringing content. The Hamburg court however ruled that this was not sufficient because infringers would only have to change a few bytes of a file in order to circumvent the filter.

Th court also ruled that Rapidshare cannot argue that it is impossible to stay in business if it would have to check every single file. “A business model that doesn’t use common methods of prevention cannot claim the protection of the law”, the decision reads.

The news may come as a major blow for some who use the service to share files since the site has been one of the most popular services of choice for hosting content and posting links in blogs and forums.

Critics say that the ruling makes no sense because password protected archives would be extremely hard to check in the first place.

Still, the market for file-hosting services is a wide open one with many other sites hoping to take over the top spot as the number one file-hosting service. So even if this move well and truly means the end of Rapidshare, it may be a click away from being replaced from other contenders like MegaUpload.

Others might point out that the ruling may have a chilling effect on web-based services hoping to start up in Germany given that if a service has to check everything for unauthorized content, how can there be any hope for privacy with that service? What about, going along the lines of RapidShare’s argument, additional cost overhead with the need to suddenly have a work-force to go through a service with a fine-toothed comb, looking for any possible misuse of its service by its users?

The lawsuit against RapidShare was filed by GEMA, a German copyright collective whose responsibilities include collecting sampling forms for re-use in derivative works.

Then there is the question of how much things will change in the first place. Many users post non-major record label content on the file-hosting websites. Independent content has built a reputation over the years for being less lawsuit-happy over copyrighted works online. Many of the producers behind the content generally have a more open approach mainly because piracy has been known to bring listeners to their content – something that would otherwise be difficult to impossible with the state of traditional radio and MTV these days.

At this point, it’s too early to tell what the fallout will be exactly, but the idea of logging IP addresses might ultimately be a deterrent for users whether or not they intend to use the service for sharing copyrighted works or not.

For those who think that copyright holders won a major victory here in the so-called war on piracy, there is the one tiny little note that suggests that knocking out one hosting company isn’t exactly the end of file-hosting altogether (link to Wikipedia’s list of file-hosting companies deemed “notable”)

In any event, it’s extremely easy to conclude that this latest legal blow serves no real purpose in the grand scheme of things.

While Rapidshare AG says they are moving to Rapidshare.com because the disk space on RapidShare.de drives is exhaused, I think it’s more related to Google Adsense.

Rapidshare.de allowed users to upload a single file upto 300 MB in size which stayed on their servers for indefinite period and could be downloaded any number of times. Since Rapidshare is not charging non-premium customers, the bandwidth costs were recovered by showing Google Ads on pages that had links to download content off the Rapidshare servers.

However, very recently, Rapidshare.de domain was banned by Adsense since it was primarily used for sharing bulk of illegal content including warez, pirated movies, MP3 songs, etc. The advertising revenue of rapidshare would have take a hit and their next advertising partner, etology.com, may not have been as effective as Google since their ad inventory were just an Adult dating website.

Now that Rapidshare.de has moved to Rapidshare.com, this new domain is already qualified to show Ads by Google. Plus Rapidshare has introduced a new Collector Accounts, like a file manager for all the file that you upload on Rapidshare.com, which could give them tighter control over users and not just the files uploaded on Rapidshare. So if a user is frequently uploading copyright content, they could simply ban the user and all his files are automatically off the rapidshare disks.