“In a gentle way, you can shake the world”, Mahatma Gandhi.

If you visit Mininova site, you will see some ads to the right, but other than that have a nice clean layout. The site has a Web 2.0 air, with soft colors that come easy to the eye. It will not get the same good PR as other Web 2.0 sites, because is a BitTorrent index site and the protocol is seen as bad and only useful for piracy. However BitTorrent is more than that, is a way of distribution large files without incurring in high bandwidth costs, since we download from other peers that have the file, not a server, this way distributing the load among the peers. Everybody knows that BitTorrent can be use for distributing “legal stuff”, still nobody has done anything about it, until Mininova.

Enter Mininova in 2007, with there new distribution service. The service offers, to the owner ( or the your company) of the copyrights of quality content, a tool to distribute the content for free, if it promises tol not upload DRM protected content or spam and not charge for content. And this is a WIN-WIN-WIN situation because:

• the owner of the content can distribute their content at no cost (unlike other forms of hard media or self hosting)
• the fans get quality content at high speeds without paying extra money (other than their internet connection)
• Mininova (and BitTorrent community) because shows that the protocol is good for legal distribution

At first glance, it might not be seen as a big deal since there are similar services like Jamendo, where artists can distribute their content under Creative Commons. Also, in recent news the Norwegian State TV launched a tracker to distribute their TV shows,  BBC also is experimenting with torrents, by providing downloads under creative commons of their TV shows, starting with R&DTV. All is great stuff and I wish more media companies join the BitTorrent bandwagon, still Mininova is offering a platform and now includes a way to monetization. Yes, now artists can distribute their content digitally and offer their fans the option to buy the album (see image) or donate to the artist using paypal (kind of pay what you want scheme).  They also offer fans a 20% discount if they seed the albums.

The Dutch record label Beep! Beep! is one of the firsts of first to partner with Mininova, uploading all their discography. Given that Mininova resides in the Netherlands, is natural business move for a small local record label to use the service. Permits them to deal face to face and smooth out any rough edges. When you click on the buy now button, it will take you to a shopify page where you can do finalize the transaction. The service, can also provide new fans of the band, with concert tickets and merchandise of the band. You can see all the Beep! Beep! releases here.

Beep! Beep! and other record labels can differentiate from the big labels using Mininova as a Partner. They get some free PR and can be subject of viral marketing, which is welcome when you don’t have the big resources of the “big 4″.

Contrast of Styles

Although in mainstream media The Pirate Bay (TPB) is the best known BitTorrent entity, with their trail and raids, Mininova is the king of BitTorrents. Mininova is on the top 100 most visited sites in the world, it was recently reported that it had its 8 billion download and is constantly changing and adding new features. In other words, Mininova has become the place to look for media (as Google is for information).

The Pirate Bay shakes the world aggressively, they are the biggest BitTorrent tracker, don’t care about copyright material on their site, and where the protagonists of a spectrail (which will soon dominate the news again). They don’t care how they do it, they want to change the world with a bang (and apparently they are successful). On the other hand Mininova has a more passive approach try to be under the radar. They even have a friendly copyright policy, here is a fragment of the copyright policy page:

Please note that we do not host any copyrighted content on this website. The torrent (metadata) files that we host do not contain data that might be copyrighted in any way. However, we offer a service to remove torrents from our website if the copyright holder of the content requests so.

In contrast TPB publishes the emails asking them to remove torrents, in a section they call “legal threats“. Also they promise no torrent files will be taken out, never ever.We need both them, kind of a God Cop, Bad Cop scene, so the media industry understands that they have to give in.

Change is already here and there is no way to go back to the old practices of tell us what to consume, nop now is our turn. If you had to give this two entities a character although not accurate, you can see The Pirate Bay as Richard Stallman (idealist, crazy, funny and loud) and Mininova as Linus Torvalds (quiet, is about business, has a plan and takes a step at a time).

Step at a Time

Mininova are playing it smart, trying and experimenting. Slowly but surely getting more people involved and cleaning up the act of BitTorrent. They want to change the world a torrent at a time, gently rocking the music industry (as well as movie and TV). They don’t just want to be a trend setter and then fade out into the horizon, while others take all the glory. Time will tell us what will be of Mininova and TPB, still today they are forces of change.

The Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive or IPRED was implemented on the 1st of April in Sweden (yes on the home of The Pirate Bay and no it wasn’t a April fool’s day joke). The law states that copyright holders can ask Internet Providers for downloader’s information, if and only if the copyright holders suspect that you have downloading their content “illegally”.Copyright holders can’t just go to the ISP and ask them for the information of all their customers.

Swedes got a bit scared and it was claimed by BBC that there was a decrease of 33 percent of the countries Internet Traffic. I guess fear doesn’t give you time to reason that the cost of casing downloaders is greater than the benefit. Or maybe is cultural of following the rules. This is and always will be a “cat and mouse” game and based on a article from Wired traffic will go up:

Swedish Pirate Party vice president Christian Engstrom said he expects P2P traffic to rise again, once people figure out how to use secure settings and encryption to share files without revealing their IP addresses to copyright holders.

Although many people can use BitTorrent, even if they don’t know the internals of the protocol and their [BitTorent] clients, it is simple to encrypt the traffic even if you don’t know (or want too) nothing about it. So, below you will find a small guide on how to do it in uTorrent.

By the way if you want to read the IPRED law, here is it.

Encrypting BitTorrent Traffic in uTorrent

This how to, is for uTorrent 1.8.2, but will work for most versions.

First thing, you need to do is go to Options and then Preferences (or Ctrl+P) as show in the image bellow.

Then the preferences screen will appear,  click on BitTorrent option as shown bellow.

Direct your attention to Protocol Encryption and in the ComboBox for Outgoing, select Forced. Then uncheck “Allow incoming legacy connections”.

Let me explain what we have done. First in the Outgoing part we told uTorrent to Force encryption in all outgoing connections. This means that if the other parties don’t have the Protocol Encryption enabled, they will not be able to connect to them. Enabled attempts to encrypt outgoing connections, but will fall back to an unencrypted mode (or Disabled) if the connection fails. This means that if you used Enabled, there is a chance when you can’t find peers using encryption, you will download using a unencrypted (unprotected or transparent) connection. By unchecking the legacy option, we are only permitting incoming encrypted connections.

Final Comments

There you go, now you can sleep well while your computer is downloading all your favorite media. However, it may hurt your download speeds because not everybody is encrypting traffic, therefore it will be less peers from where you can download the pieces of the files. Finally, remember that it takes a lot (of effort and resources) to go after everybody and gather evidence, to then have permission to get your information from the ISPs. In the long run, maybe every download will be done through encrypted connections and don’t is not bad at all.

The question I have been asking myself is “where are the software companies, whose cracked software can be found on the p2p networks?”. Software companies figure out long ago, that they can fight these phenomenon. Slowly, they had changed, now big companies offer basic free versions of their products, understanding that $$$ is “Business to Business”, and not with consumers. You see, if Microsoft gives out free software to students, is because they know that when this students graduate and get a job, they will ask for the software they know how to use. As a result Microsoft now offers “Express” version (in other words basic version) of many developing tools. Future developers ask for this tools when they join the workforce (or can earn enough money to buy them).

The story is different for Media companies, because they think that they depend on consumers they do anything possible to charge consumers. That dear readers is just being lazy and comfortable. They been like this for such a long time, to the point of forgetting other life than selling to consumers. For example, why don’t they focus on merchandise, spectacles, limited edition products and concerts. Let people hardcore fans by feeding the thirst for music. That is no the case, instead they turn into bulling down, any wave of change.

Wonder why the Soundcloud is not in trial? They even charge for you to upload and share music on their site. Yeah I forgot they are a new company that provides a service.

Like they used to say: lead, follow and get of the way. So I get out of the way for the recap by Torrent Freak Day Four and Five. They do a better job than most of us.

Yes, the title may sound sensationalist however that is the strategy of the defense. The strategy apparently named as the “King Kong defense” consists on arguing that The Pirate Bay doesn’t initiate the transfer, the users do. The sites [TPB] administrators are unable to identify the users because they can register with any name i.e. King Kong, also they are unable to find out where the user is, it could be in the “jungles of Cambodia”. The term already has Wikipedia entry, which tells you how fast “the community” is. This is reported by torrent freak on the day three recap of the trail.

source

Basically they are throwing the ball to the users of TPB, yeah we are the guilty ones not the administrator. They are playing it safe and is logical the defense is arguing that they just are service providers. It’s similar arguing that a screwdriver is a tool for building and a weapon that can be used for man slaughter, it all depends on the person using it. Screwdrivers are not regulated like weapons, should they?

I read a post on twitter (sorry I couldn’t find it), the “twitterer” was wondering what will be the defense strategy. He said that it will be a hypocrisy to claim TPB are just a host of torrent files, not the actual media. Well what other choice does the defense has? Any ideas from the legal experts out there? They have to exploit this “blind spot” on the system, remember when the laws where made, there was no P2P. If it takes for us to “take the blame” then be it. However we are not guilty of nothing, but of permitting old laws to continue existing. If it requires us to play that role, be it. This will let The Pirate Bay continue playing theirs and overtake any resistance to the change that is here.

Like I said it before on the my previous post “Why this trial is important” We had chosen to consume without paying. The privilege is of the artists and media companies that we choose to listen and see what they produce, not the other way around. Without us they will not exist,  and we are beginning to understand that.

Day two of the TBP is on the books and the big news of the day: 50% of the charges where dropped. Although that may a headline, there is more substance on the sidelines. For example, the comments on twitter are hilarious, smart and interesting. Unfortunately I didn’t flag them or save them, however if you been following it, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t well most of the jokes are toward the Prosecutor Håkan Roswall technological incompetence and illiteracy to fully understand BitTorrent. He could just gone to How Stuff Work and showed the “How BitTorrent Works”, instead of using slides and videos.

Blog post are abundant, however is though to follow everything. From twitter I found a post by Thomas Mennecke on Slyke news (i guess is a news blog). He recalls the how almost 10 years ago Napster made P2P mainstream, how this trial in essence is similar to what went on with Napster. I love to look for patterns and anomalies (don’t do it professionally) and I’m a fan that history (kind off) repeats itself. I agree with Thomas last statement:

BitTorrent, file-sharing, and P2P technology isn’t going anywhere.

The thing is that ”old habits are tough to break” and 10 years on the internet is a lifetime. For this habit to continue, our dependence on TPB (site and tracker), Mininova and other sites should decrease. Imagine if they all closed today. What will be of the world with so much hunger? Some may panic, other will move on and few will try to find a way out and create new ways to share. Still the P2P world will be less worried, if there were more niche torrents trackers i.e wrestling, basketball, Fox cartoons, manga. In other words “not having all our eggs in one basket”. But maybe we need this test, generally people become very resourceful in critical times, at the end of the day only time will tell.

I guess this is Håkan Roswall before the trial (source)

To finish, here are some random thoughts and lessons from this two days:

• Håkan Roswall is a great example of how when people spend a lot time in a box (his being law) we become incompetent on other boxes (common sense and technology). So, Håkan next time get a Mac and a kid to explain the “complicated” tech stuff.
• The people, the community and the customers are not always right, but they are actually in control (we just need help other people see it)
• Times have change and there will be always resistance to change
• Have you ever ask yourself what will you do if you had stock on MGM, Warner, Fox, etc?
• ideas are stronger than words and richer than richest of them all.
• We need more private trackers, then again we need places so anybody can have their private trackers
• Not anybody can do what the TPB founders are doing, in other words “not everybody is made of the same wood”.
• Thanks to Sofia for great work.
• Finally, some people just don’t get it, either because they don’t care, conflict of interests or simply they are blinded by greed.

Note: You can download the new “Steal this film: trial edition” here and remember to visit torrentfreak regularly if you just want a recap and not follow the conversation in twitter.

Some will call it “the political trial of the decade” or a “show… or an spectacle”, however at the end of the day (and many to come) is a battle of interests. In one corner the plaintiffs:  20th Century Fox, EMI, MGM, Colombia Pictures, Warner Bros, Sony BMG and Universal. On the other The Pirate Bay (TPB) and a community of people in pro of choice, freedom to share ideas, files, media, feelings, etc. It’s not a clash of generations, although is tough to argue on that when you see the people against TPB. Niether is a clash of ideologies, its about the money, money the plaintiffs think they are not making, because people choose to download either than to buy it.

The trial is important because “the people” (we, the customers of the plaintiffs) are asking for a change, and not through hallow words, but through action. You see when there was no Internet, we didn’t have a choice, we had to consume what they wanted us to consume, see what they wanted us to see. At the same time we permitted them to accumulate riches at our expenses, but times had change we have more power, freedom to choose and we just realized that. We had chosen to consume without paying and if we find it fitting we will give back by becoming fans, sharing, spreading the word, hosting the media, buying merchandise that supports the artists and through other ways of supporting the creators of media.

You may think, how is possible, why should we given “that privilege” to watch a movie or listen to a cd for free, and then decide if we should pay for it. Then I ask, what is a movie without eyes to see it or a song without ears to listen and feet to dance? Who is the privilege now, here is a hint: they are. Its like food court Chinese restaurants or shops at a fair, they are competing for you to buy their food and goods, they give you a free sample and decide or can even choose to neglect them.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (aka Anakata), Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (aka Brokep) and Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), The Pirate Bay Founders chose to take a stand for us. Their intentions may be question, however for their gutsy performance you have to cheer for them. Ask yourself the following: will you risk what they have at stake, to take a stand for your ideas? Not many people will do, however they are not alone and that is for a reason.

If The Pirate Bay wins, appeals will come and if they lose nothing will change, the community will find a way to continue fighting. The interesting thing is that the result itself is not important. However it is important because its an eye opener, it permits the community to grow stronger and continue to take a stand.

In the meantime I salute at the The Pirate Bay, the community of supporters and at Sofia for translating the trial through Twitter.

For more check the Torrent Freak converge here and here.

Reading “The Longtail Blog”, I found myself reading about copyright and free business models. Anderson (the blogs author) makes reference to a paper where the author suggests 14 business models for a world without effective copyright. I didn’t finish reading the paper, simply because copyright its just plain boring or being law related makes it unreadable. Maybe is my perception that copyrights, are old fashion, that we get a feeling that is boring. In contrast I find copying fun, even when you might be doing it every day or not seen as a big deal. There is just something fun about doing stuff that are suppose to be “illegal”.

Is being “illegal” the reason its fun? Well for the daredevils out there it might, but at the end of the day copying is fun because we share. Humans beings are social beings and share is a act of being social. Sharing creates some type of conversation where we comunicate our ideas, feelings, frustrations and dreams, and that “ladies and gentlemen” (also a song by Saliva) is being human and … fun. Ponder on the following: do think people spend hours sending emails, SMSs, messages, poking, chatting and in social media just because they don’t have nothing better to do? Neither they do it because its their job (maybe a habit), but since its part of being human and humans are social and being social is fun. You share it with a friend, in a torrent or a neighbor and a bet some sort of conversation is born, either because you comment on the media being shared or because serves as small talk for bigger things. And the beauty of it that we do it so effortless and natural,  even if they is wrong, it just feels good. So go ahead and have fun and continue being human….copy

By the way, I almost forgot to tell you, there was something interesting from the copyright paper: a graph that illustrates a relationship between the Per-capita income vs. fraction of software pirated, where lower per capita GDP countries trend to have high levels of piracy.

[source: "Copying and Copyright"]

For more on piracy stats check this report by the Business Software Alliance ( check your countries stat ).

Since I’m already in kind of a side note, I will like just to say that although piracy, based on the old standards is “stealing”, I’m not against it and I encourage it. The report from the BSA likes to show how much billions are lost every year, because people use “pirated software” instead of buying it. That is just a stupid number. I don’t have no all the facts, just my common sense and it tells me that most of the people that use pirate software does it because they can’t afford it. And if a person can’t afford a software, how is that a “sure sale” that transforms into a loss when the person uses private software. However the report doesn’t show how many lives were change because they had access to doing something productive with there computer. Also how are they sure that this people will buy that software? How is that a loss? Of coarse its easy to say this when is not your “intellectual property” that is being copy, but at the end that is a good thing. Its means that if the yare coping it you are doing something right.