“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.

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.

Yesterday, I was looking for some information regarding the “Shrink Volume” Windows Vista utility, and found an article in Lifehacker on dual boot Vista and Windows 7. There in the Opinions section, is a post titled “In 2009, Microsoft Still Underestimates the Web”. The post is a constructive criticism, on Microsoft failure in distributing the Windows 7 public beta Sunday mourning. The author attributes the failure, to Microsoft not taking the web more seriously and being clueless about “how to do stuff online”. That might be true, however lets look it from a different perspective, how about the cause being that Microsoft doesn’t understand its customers and thinks is still 1999.

Microsoft is a Juggernaut in the Software space, like it or not, and can do whatever they want. If they want to waste millions on trying to overtake Google in search, they can do it because they are Microsoft. Their ad campaigns are nothing compare to Apple, but they can spend the millions, get criticized and at the end it creates the buzz they are looking for. And if they want to release a beta of Windows 7 on such date, we will download it, even if we don’t like Microsoft.

This Software Juggernaut failed to understand the Windows 7 customers. I’m not talking about those that have Windows in their machines, or average the user that just wants thing to work, but the ones that want to go with the trouble of trying and testing Windows 7. We are not in those days when you can release a crappy OS like Windows Me and not get a backlash that might generate an effect on revenue. This is not 1999, when people voice wasn’t loud enough to be heard all over the planet. Now with broadband, mobile internet, Social Media and all Web 2.0, nobody is safe.

People that download Windows 7 Beta are early adopters and innovators that want to try Windows 7. They want to test it and see if they can find cool features or report a bug. While in this process, they will start a conversation by blogging, tweeting, recording videos and even distribute the copy they got on torrent sites. Microsoft failed to understand who these crowd is and why they want (and need) to download Windows 7. This are the customers of Windows 7 right now and right now, the number is bigger than it was 10 years ago.

By stating that Microsoft doesn’t understand the Internet is like saying “we” don’t understand China. The internet is not just a bunch of look a likes, in front of the computer, connected 24/7. We are people, with different feelings, ideas, ambitions and goals. We connect with each other, based on sociological patterns, using  the Internet as a tool. Western world looks at Chinese in the same way, we think they are the same because they look similar and act similar (the irony is that hey also think we all look the same). However they are a culturally rich and diverse country, with various languages and ethnic groups, with different ideas and dreams. Yes, they all live in China as most of us “live” on the Web, but that doesn’t make us all the same.

Any company that wants to reach its customers through the Internet, has to understand that the dynamics are the same if they wanted to reach a community in flesh and bones. How many times a has the power of a community, country, city or group of people has been underestimated ? How many times, have we been surprised on how people behave in unexpected ways, in regards to specific products, services and events? The social interaction that is natural to us, magnifies and accelerates on the Internet, which is still sociological in nature. That is why, by trying to “understand the Internet” as a whole companies, already have lost the battle, instead they have to look at it granularly.

Neither Microsoft or Google understand this, however they where both lucky to become dominant players in their spaces. Most people have limited choices for operating systems, as well as advertising platform on the net. That doesn’t mean one understands its customers better than the other. Google is less hierocratical than Microsoft, that is why it looks like they are more upbeat with trends and setting the tone. Also that Google’s rise to fame, was part of the “Web 2.0 era” and are seen as more “cool”.

The cause of Microsoft problems is Microsoft itself, from their leadership to their culture. In the case of Google, Google itself will be the cause of their future problems.

Failure to Launch Serve

Microsoft got some heat because weren’t prepared to handle the spike of downloads.  Yes, its Microsoft fault because they initially created the scarcity by announcing that only 2.5 million downloads will be available, however they got their act together, fixed the problem and extended the period of availability until the 24th of January.

My question is how do you prepare for such demand.. or event? How do you know how much your current setup can handle it? Its kind of difficult if you don’t have the right tools and money to find out (in the case of Microsoft is their culture). Some people might suggest, “hey why not use BitTorrent?” The issue with using BitTorrent is that Microsoft are against those networks and have shown their feelings toward trackers and index sites. So, uploading it to Mininova or The Pirate Bay is out of the question. They could use Mininova distribution service, which requires the content to be free. The other alternative is to setup up their own trackers and apparently, they don’t have the competence or interest in using Bit Torrent as a distribution tool. That will be interesting, however their culture will not permit it. So they are stuck with using the traditional way, hosting and managing themselves. Maybe, like I said before, Microsoft is jut to old and doesn’t get it.

All this problems aren’t that bad for Microsoft, they create some buzz, people get interested and they get feedback for free. Also, is not a new thing, its documented that other companies had their problems in the past i.e. Paramount with the launch of the Ironman Blueray live, Apple with their Mobile Me downtime. Even Salesforce which is a company that core business is to “serve” and offer reliable cloud CRM, had some downtime.

The bottom line is that “Serving” is not an easy task and shouldn’t be taken for granted. We will continue to see more service outages, failures, etc. because they think it just takes to put a server online and viola. Companies need to realize that they need to understand the customers they are targeting and communicated with them. You will be surprise how responsive and understating people are, if you provide constant communication to them. They know problems will rise once in a while and will forgive that. However what they will not forgive is that the company that “Serves”, doesn’t prepare for such p
ossible problems and doesn’t communicate efficiently.

Its similar to a relationship with your partner or spouse… communication, communication, communication.

We will not have history lesson or fact listing of these three big companies, Wikipedia can serve this purpose. However, I’m here to point something out: Microsoft did it to IBM and Google is doing it (or did it) to Microsoft. Therefore somebody will do it to Google, yes it might be hard to imagine, but 10 years we never thought Google will be.. Google.

You see, IBM was the leader in the computer industry for about three decades. Then there was a shift to the personal computer, mainly on the need of having computers in our desktops, helping us with our daily tasks. Microsoft took over the PC business since anybody, with the capacity to manufacture hardware, could “clone” the IBM PC and use the Intel chips. Apple on the other hand targeted designers, therefore leaving Microsoft as defacto OS in desktops computers.

When the Internet came to play and Microsoft “was doing all that talk and no walking”. At that point it didn’t matter, until Google took over search supremacy and search has become the killer Internet App. Fast forward to today and Google is the king of the Internet. Microsoft is now  trying to battle the “monopoly” of Google and being careless of Windows and Office products.

IBM has its place in the IT Industry and Apple has it place in the consumer electronic Industry as well as it “niche” in the Computer Industry. Microsoft has its place in the Software Industry and is a dominant player in the Business sector. However, for some reason they think that the only way to grow is to challenge Google. Will see what happens with Microsoft and if they will ever realize, that they are looking themselves at the mirror, when looking at Google (in a twisted and interesting way).

How does history repeat itself? Well it repeats when a dominant player wants to get into a industry that is not his core competence. This is mainly related to a main trend or a shift in a focus toward other technologies. It also repeats it self because,( well at least I am) getting tired of Google being a bully, having advertising on everything and buying wasting all that money on unproven companies. Remember the days when we started to get tired of Microsoft?

Google is now a bully, trying to be everywhere and strengthening their monopoly. Maybe now Microsoft knows how everybody felt about them. I’m kind off getting tired of Google search, there are too much adds and I don’t feel I’m getting the best results. Now they are becoming a bit “too big” that they are crowdsourcing search.

Who will do to Google, what they did to Microsoft?

Well, not a search engine, or software company, nor Apple. Apple is happy on being seen as a “niche” company, although they are pretty dominant. Also, there are rumors going around Jobs health and it might be end of an Era. The answer to the question is in the BitTorrents. To be more specify I put my money on The Pirate Bay or Mininova. This is mainly based on their increase in popularity (see here and here) and since they are a integral part of satisfy a need hunger for any kind of media (especially The Pirate Bay by being a Index and Tracker).

What makes Mininova and The Pirate Bay interesting is the trend to deliver media over the Internet and in different mediums. They are the dominant players today, even if they don’t make the millions made by iTunes Store. In addition you can see how they are diversifying and growing organically, by creating new “project” or services. Some of them are:

• Vio Mobile Video Convertor
• Baywords (uncensored blogging Plataform)
• Slopsbox (email address for sites that ask registration to deliver content)
• Bayimg (uncensored image hosting)
• Snotr (online video)
• Mininova Content Distribution

Will see what happens, however I’m excited by the possibilities by this companies. They are challenging the status quo, being a reminder that we shouldn’t be taking everything for granted. I guess they haven’t reach their potential thanks to the bad aura surrounding BitTorrent. However there is nothing Google can do right now to counter them, if Google does anything this just signs of trouble for Google?

.. software and movies.

source

I will not mention too much about software, since I will be repeating part of what I mention in this post.

Given the fact that later this afternoon I’m planning to attend the REFORM OR REVOLUTION DEBATE (with The Pirate Bay people), it seems right for me express my opinion on why you shouldn’t pay for music. Actually is not that complicated, just one word: overpriced.

The value for movies and music today is overpriced, even paying 99 cents for a song is too much. You see, all music and movies can be found in digital format, therefore the copying cost is the same as making a backup of text file.  By copying a movie or music album, it will not cost you only the electricity used and depreciation of your computer. It may be argued that the the cost of producing the first copy is high, that is why the price should be 99 cents, however who said that it should cost that much. I wonder if the music and movie industry knows the meaning of the word bootstrapping?

Before the Internet change our lives, record companies and Hollywood will tell us what is cool and what is not cool. They will tell us what to buy and how much to pay for it, and we didn’t had a choice. Fast forward to day and we have a choice, called P2P and bittorrent. If we want a album we have the choice to go to a torrent index site and look for that album, the same goes with the movies. Why do we chose to download for free, because even if we don’t make a conscious statement, we are telling that we thing the price you are asking is to expensive. Since we can’t bargain, this is our way of tell them “that if you don’t care, we don’t care.. if you don’t want to listen, we will not listen.”

source source

This thing called “piracy” will not be such a big problem if the companies will listen to their customers, instead of trying to bully us with marketing, legal threats and politics. They come trying to intimidate individuals, trying to tells us “you should do this, you should pay that and support the other guy.” However Now the customers have a voice and voice is called: choice. We choose to get movies and music for free, simply because it’s NOT worth what they are asking for.

There is one more thing that is wrong with all this, and is related again to the price. Why do artists and actors need so much money.Who said that you should pay a actor 20 million for a movie? Who told any music artist they need to buy expensive houses, designer clothing or travel all over the world. They could be out there working hard doing what their love and getting enough to live a good life, like any small business owner.

Lets suppose suddenly the movie and music industry understand that they offerings are overpriced. So what should be the price you may ask? Well, that all depends on how much we are willing (and can) pay. If I tell them I should give you 99 cents for 99 songs, that is how it should be. Therefore if the price it seems fair to you, buy it. Even if you get it for free because you can’t afford it, you could recommend it a persuade people to pay for because its good. What about the cost of the servers, etc.? Well use bittorrent protocol and distribute a link with album where people could go a “pay what the want” or donate.

For all this to work a we need a easy and convenient way to make this payments. I don’t want to sign up in 20 pages and have 20 accounts to buy the music I like. I better step down and not start with banks and similar institutions, because that is whole new post. I will live it to PayPal could help.