This weekend the website of the movie torrent streaming application Flixtor suddenly went offline, and the same happened to search engine TorrentLookup.com.

Both projects were run by the same team, which is based in Canada, and were slowly but steadily expanding their user bases. This suddenly changed a few days ago when a message posted on both sites announced that the streaming app and search engine were being discontinued.

“We voluntarily decided to close all services of torrentlookup.com. Thanks to everybody that used Flixtor and bought the mobile version. We have reached the finish line,” a message now displays on both sites.

The decision came as a total surprise to users of the site and app. Flixtor, a custom-built Popcorn Time alternative based on the same Peerflix engine, was just a few weeks old.

The Flixtor app had a user interface similar to Popcorn Time, but was not a fork. Instead, it used its own code and the movies/series API from TorrentLookup.com, which claimed to have the latest releases faster.

Flixtor

TorrentFreak got in touch with one of the developers, who informed us that the decision to close was the result of movie industry pressure. The developer in question had an investigator from the MPAA-funded Motion Picture Association Canada come by his house, and it didn’t stop there.

“They were annoying me with phone calls repeatedly, and I talked to them quite a few times,” the developer explained.

The movie industry group only had one goal, and that was to shut down the streaming application and the torrent site. The investigator threatened the developer with legal action if he refused to comply.

“They wanted me to close Flixtor/Torrentlookup and then they would drop the charges against me, which are $20,000 per copyrighted file,” the developer told us.

With the threat of a massive lawsuit on their shoulders, the people behind the two projects decided to pull the plug this weekend. Even if they wanted to, they lack the funds to properly defend themselves in court.

The above shows that, behind the scenes, a lot of pressure is being put on the people who operate torrent sites and related services. It may also explain why some sites simply disappear, or why some of the “Popcorn Time” developers ceased their activities.

TorrentFreak contacted the Motion Picture Association Canada for a comment yesterday, but at the time of publication we were yet to receive a response.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Unicode is used by billions of people every day, yet most are completely unaware of its existence. This character encoding standard makes it easier to exchange text files and is supported by some of the biggest tech companies around including Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Adobe.

Yesterday the Unicode Consortium released Unicode 7.0, an updated set including 250 new emoji characters.

In addition to dozens of already-familiar emoji, this time around users can look forward to many fresh characters, including brand new mice and webcams, plus various emoji suitable for communicating networking concepts such as linking. A small sample of the new additions is illustrated below.

Also included are several old-style storage mediums, from the antique compact cassette and 5.25 inch floppy disk, to the comparatively modern 3.5 inch floppy and CD. But just in case people were considering putting those mediums to an illegal use, they can now be encouraged by their peers to think again.

Labeled 1F572 in Unicode 7.0 (shown above), a new emoji depicts an eyepatch-wearing individual. While its presence could be construed in any number of ways, it’s called “No Piracy” so it’s fairly clear what the consortium had in mind for it.

Perhaps hoping to provide a little balance, another new character (#1F571) depicts the familiar skull and crossbones. It is labeled “skull and crossbones” too – no “Yes to Piracy” here.

Those interested in viewing the entire set should click here (pdf).

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Many people assume that “pirates” structurally refuse to pay for any type of entertainment. In reality, however, we often see the opposite happening.

About a week ago, EZTV owner Novaking stumbled upon an Indiegogo campaign launched by a female director from Laos aiming to raise money for her next horror film “Nong Hak.”

EZTV is known as the most visited TV-torrent site, but in this case NovaKing figured that some of its TV-fanatics may also be interested in this independent film project.

To promote the crowdfunding campaign NovaKing added a banner to the top right corner of the site. Since the site has millions of visitors per week, this didn’t go unnoticed by the filmmakers.

Chris Larsen, the writer of the “Nong Hak” screenplay and husband of director Mattie Do, tells TorrentFreak that they noticed an immediate boost in both visitors and donations.

“Since the EZTV promotion went up, users from the site now account for about 25% of the total donations, about 80% of the traffic to the campaign, and about 80% of the Vimeo views of our campaign video.”

While crowdfunding projects aren’t really new, not even among BitTorrent users, the makers of the first Lao horror flick have a special surprise in store for the EZTV community. As a token of their appreciation they are now promising to make their first film open source if they reach their $30,000 goal.

The filmmakers reached out to EZTV’s NovaKing to discuss the plans, and all agreed that it would be a great idea to enter their previous film “Chanthaly” into the public domain. This weekend Do announced this community challenge in a special video message to EZTV users.

So in addition to some other perks, EZTV users and everyone else who donates to the production of “Nong Hak” have the option to make the first Lao horror film open source.

“If we reach our goal then we’ll release the copyright on her first film and we’ll put the film into the public domain. Nobody will own the film anymore, everybody will own it,” said Larsen confirming the plan.

For the filmmakers this is an exciting proposal, and something they had not previously considered. However, since they own all the rights and because the film has been paid for entirely, it’s an offer that makes sense.

“We’re in a unique position with Chanthaly. We own the film outright, everybody that worked on the film has been paid. The film has a bit of festival prestige, and honestly some historic value, since it is the first Lao horror film, and the first film directed by a Lao female director,” Larsen explains.

“And honestly, I’m sick of it sitting on my hard drive here collecting dust,” he adds.

NovaKing is happy with the offer. Releasing all raw film material will spur creativity, as anyone can then make their own edits, or turn it into something completely different.

“The beauty of releasing the first film to be Public Domain is the fact that hobbyist film makers can get everything from the project files and raw video stream of an existing movie and see how it all works, and tinker and even possibly re-edit and make a different version of the movie,” NovaKing tells TorrentFreak.

“The possibilities are quite endless!” he adds.

If you are interested in helping to fund “Nong Hak” and the open-sourcing Chanthaly, then head over to the Indiegogo campaign.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The fourth season of Game of Thrones has been the most-viewed so far, both through official channels and among pirates.

The season finale was therefore expected to break all previous records. The official U.S. ratings that just came in show that “The Children” was the most viewed season finale thus far, with 7.1 million people tuning in.

In the black market the same episode did well too, setting a mind-boggling piracy record. The latest episode resulted in the largest BitTorrent swarm ever. That is, never before have so many people gathered to share a single file on the Internet.

A few hours after the first torrent of the show appeared on torrent sites, the Demonii tracker reported that 254,114 people were sharing one single torrent at the same time. 190,701 were sharing a complete copy of that particular torrent while 63,413 were still downloading.

The previous record was also held by Game of Thrones, with a little over 200,000 people sharing a single file.

There was also quite bit of interest in higher definition releases. The most popular 720p copy was shared by 108,539 BitTorrent users simultaneously, and the most shared 1080p release had 23,922 people connected to it.

Game of Thrones’ new “simultaneous” file-sharing record

Data gathered by TorrentFreak further shows that, in 12 hours, the season finale has been downloaded an estimated 1.5 million times. Translated into actual data, that’s close to 2,000 terabytes transferred in half a day.

The download total is expected to increase to more than 7.5 million during the weeks to come and means that unless a miracle happens, Game of Thrones will be crowned the most-pirated TV-show of the year once again.

A brief inspection of the download locations shows that Game of Thrones pirates come from all over the world, as we’ve seen previously. The show is particularly popular in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Interestingly, Game of Thrones is available through legal channels in all countries listed above, albeit not cheaply.

Despite the massive piracy numbers, we haven’t heard too many piracy complaints thus far, quite the contrary.

Jeff Bewkes, CEO of HBO’s parent company Time Warner previously that piracy resulted in more subscriptions for his company, and that receiving the title of “most-pirated” was “better than an Emmy.”

In any case, despite, or perhaps thanks to the massive piracy, Game of Thrones is doing better than ever.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

When Bram Cohen created the BitTorrent protocol, he had the legal option of filing for a patent monopoly on any computer program that used this protocol. (The mere existence of such an option is a very bad thing, but we’ll be returning to that.) Mr. Cohen chose to not monopolize the BitTorrent protocol in that way. Let’s examine what implications that would have had for the technology.

If the BitTorrent technology would have been protected by patent monopolies, it would have been effectively limited to Mr. Cohen’s original BitTorrent client. Have you used that client? Do you know anybody who has used it? Didn’t think so, and neither do I. Instead, there is an enormous plethora of clients and servers that use the protocol today, and Mr. Cohen’s BitTorrent Inc. is valued at eight-digit dollars. Not to mention the fact that BitTorrent Inc. was subsequently able to buy one of the most prolific BitTorrent clients out there, µTorrent, which would not have existed had the technology been monopolized in the first place. I think most of us have used µTorrent – I know I have.

This shows exactly why it makes so much sense for Tesla Cars to release all of their patent monopolies into the wild, and why the patent monopoly system as such is enormously harmful (the only industry to make a net profit from it is the pharma industry, and that’s because they’re heavily subsidized with taxpayer money). Tesla Cars relinquishing their monopolies means they see this mechanism, and that they realize they need an ecosystem to flourish around their technology – the electric car technology – in order to remain viable themselves. Put another way, it’s not about the size of the pie slice: monopolies are preventing the pie itself from growing exponentially, as they do with any new technology poised to disrupt the old ways.

Just like BitTorrent.

Patent monopolies are far worse than the copyright monopolies we deal with (and all break) on a daily basis. Imagine for a moment if copyright monopoly vultures didn’t care if you had made an actual copy, that you would be just as guilty of infringement even if you had never seen or heard of the original? That’s how patent monopolies work, and that’s the key difference between patent monopolies and copyright monopolies: the latter protect a specific expression against copying, the former protect an idea or a form from being utilized anywhere, even independently. It’s also why patent monopolies are much, much more harmful than copyright monopolies (and that’s saying a lot).

But as the Tesla example shows, patent monopolies don’t stop at not making sense as a whole. They also don’t make sense to a single company in isolation, as they prevent an ecosystem taking shape. It’s one of the worst cancers in the economy, as investors describe them today.

It’s easy to argue that patent monopolies don’t hit ordinary families in the same way that copyright monopolies, that patent monopolies have not sued families out of their homes merely for taking part in society’s culture. But that’s about to change with 3D printing, where rapid fabrication becomes available to the masses. It is – unfortunately – a safe prediction that people will soon be sued out of their homes merely for manufacturing their own pair of slippers, because it violated a design patent monopoly somewhere. Such a notion may seem ridiculous today. Then again, so did everything else we’ve seen with the copyright monopoly so far, and patent monopolies are guarded far more harshly.

The BitTorrent legacy doesn’t just show us how to break the copyright monopoly in a specific case. It gives us a blueprint for how to disrupt old ways in general by ditching legal monopolies, a blueprint that Tesla Cars is now choosing to follow.

The patent monopoly wars are coming, right on the heels of the copyright monopoly wars, as were they merely a logical extension. That’s why it’s so encouraging to see our tip-of-the-spear entrepreneurs denouncing and releasing their own monopolies right ahead of these battles with corporate lawyers.

As a final note, it’s noteworthy that Tesla Cars isn’t the only company that Elon Musk is running. He’s also at the helm of SpaceX. Space technology has been ridiculously proprietary up until now, nothing cooperating with anything else and everything being custom-built single-use. That’s why it makes me enormously excited to see an entrepreneur who understands the damages of monopolies at the forefront of space technology today.

It holds a promise of standardized, interoperable space technology. As in, “for all of us”. Like BitTorrent.

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

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Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.