The Pirate Bay is not particularly liked by most entertainment industry companies, but there are tens of thousands of artists who are eager to get a plug from the notorious torrent site.

To help this group the site launched The Promo Bay last year and many artists have profited from a banner on the site’s frontpage since. Every weekend The Pirate Bay showed off one or more content creators to its millions of visitors, until last August when the project was suddenly halted.

The Promo Bay team informed us that due to personnel changes they could no longer continue the promo platform, but said that it may return in the future. And so it happened. After a three-month hiatus a reimagined version of The Promo Bay relaunches today.

The new promo platform is currently promoted by a banner on The Pirate Bay’s frontpage. The main difference is that the site is no longer restricted to artists – activists, startups, charities and other groups are also welcome to join.

Promo Bay coordinator Will Dayble felt that the focus on “content creators” was too narrow and he and his team used the break to expand the project’s reach.

“The main goal of the new Promo Bay is to draw attention to disruptive things happening around the world. Art, activism, charity, startups, the weird and wonderful, the game changers and indie,” Dayble tells TorrentFreak.

“We’re shifting how we work, play interact, speak, live and fall in love. Hopefully, we can reveal some of the good stuff to a wider audience,” he adds.

In addition to the broadened scope The Promo Bay also wants to open source their code. They further hope to add an option to track the impact of their promotion campaigns through in-swarm monitoring of the numbers of downloads and download locations.

“We’re in talks with another Aussie startup that does in-swarm monitoring, for more complex measurement of our impact,” Dayble says. More news on these future improvements will be announced later, first the Promo Bay needs some fresh submissions.

Do you have something to plug? Head over to the new Promo Bay and perhaps your idea will soon be in front of millions of Pirate bay visitors.

The New Promo Bay

Source: Pirate Bay Backs Disruptive Activists, Startups, Charity and More

Towards the end of the last decade LimeWire was one of the most-used pieces of software on earth, installed on nearly one in five computers.

By the end of 2010 the situation changed somewhat when LimeWire was forced to cease its operations after a U.S. federal judge granted an injunction in favor of the RIAA.

According to the ruling LimeWire “intentionally encouraged infringement,” its software was used “overwhelmingly for infringement” and the company was aware of the “substantial infringement being committed” by LimeWire users. The evidence further showed that LimeWire marketed its application to Napster users and that its business model depended on mass copyright infringements.

The record labels then went after the company for damages and settled for a record-breaking $150 million.

This big win prompted Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, Comedy Partners, Disney, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. to launch a separate lawsuit last year. The movie outfits accused LimeWire of infringing the copyrights of approximately 2,000 of their videos and demanded several hundred million dollars in damages.

In addition, the studios requested a ruling in their favor because they feared that LimeWire could launch a similarly infringing platform in the future, through which their copyrights may be infringed.

Over the past few months the two parties have been battling in court but without much progress being made. Last week the movie studios dismissed the entire case with prejudice, meaning that the case is effectively over.

LimeWire dismissal

It’s unclear why the case was dropped, but one possibility is that the case required more resources than the studios were prepared to commit. The studios hoped that a new trial on several key issues wasn’t required as the RIAA already did much of the groundwork.

However, LimeWire objected to the motion for summary judgment and wanted to treat the case as distinct from the RIAA ruling. The software maker argued that they operated differently in the 2009 / 2010 period the studios claim the infringements were committed, and said that the RIAA case only applied to musical works, not video.

While the dismissal is good news for LimeWire, vulture’s keep circling over the company.

Early last month LimeWire was sued by the independent music publisher Microhits, who also demand millions in damages. Microhits appears to have a preference for defunct file-sharing services as it also sued Megaupload last year, a case that’s still pending.

Source: Movie Studios Drop Multi-Million Dollar Lawsuit Against LimeWire

BitTorrent Sync is a relatively new tool that allows users to securely sync folders across multiple devices using the BitTorrent protocol.

In terms of functionality it’s comparable to most cloud-based sync tools, except for the fact that there’s no cloud involved. Users simply share their files across their own devices, or the devices of people they invite to their private folders.

Combine the above with no limit on file-sizes or bandwidth and a smash hit is born.

The free application was first released to the public in January and today BitTorrent inc. announced that it has already passed the one million user mark. The company further informs TorrentFreak that together these users have synced over 30 petabytes of data thus far, up from eight petabytes back in July.

The success has motivated the San Francisco company to put a dedicated team of developers on the software, which has resulted in several updates and improvements in recent months.

Today BitTorrent Sync 1.2 was released and one of the key changes is a doubling of the maximum transfer speed. Sync was already quite fast as files are not stored in the cloud, but the latest release bumps the transfer speeds to 90 MB/s.

“Sync skips the cloud to deliver files faster than server-based alternatives, like Dropbox. And with 1.2, we’ve boosted Sync’s speed performance. The app’s been clocked at 90 MB/s on the LAN. Which means your 10 GB file will be synced in less than two minutes,” the BitTorrent Sync team notes.

The new release also offers several updates and improvements for iOS users, including an iPad app to sync photos.

“We’ve updated Sync to include an updated design, improved connection speed, iOS7 compatibility, and a native iPad app. We’ve also added to the iOS feature set. You can now send and sync files in other apps using Sync, and save media from your Sync folders direct to your camera roll.”

Finally, BitTorrent has released an API. The company hopes this will encourage developers to create a wide variety of Sync based apps, such as social networking or secure chat tools.

“The new API will allow developers to create distributed social media, communications, and enterprise apps on top of the platform. It’s designed to work across major operating systems; including Windows, Mac, and Linux.”

With the latest improvements and the new tools BitTorrent hopes to reach an even wider audience, especially among those who want full control over their own data

“Our goal is to build a sharing tool that lets you move big files, and big ideas, freely. Without surveillance. Without speed limits. And without size caps. Your data belongs to you. Sync is designed to keep your stuff yours; with you and your team, wherever you are,” the Sync team notes.

The latest version of BitTorrent Sync is now available for download here, completely free of charge.

Source: BitTorrent Sync Hits 1 Million Users, 30 Petabytes Transfered

If you travel north and slightly to the west of the UK you’ll eventually arrive at the little island of Iceland. It has a small population of around 320,000 and became an international financial nightmare in 2008 when its entire banking system collapsed.

Five years on things are really improving, but the same cannot be said about its citizens’ access to international media products.

For reasons best known to Apple, Icelanders have no access to iTunes. In fact the company doesn’t directly sell iPhones to Iceland so people have to obtain them through resellers. If locals want access to content through Netflix and even Amazon, well, they can think again.

Of course, faced with this dearth of availability it comes as little surprise that there are plenty of services around that seek to solve the problem. Googling “VPN Iceland Netflix” produces dozens of results from international outfits but it is a new product from a local company that’s currently causing waves.

The product is the brainchild of Icelandic telecoms company Tal, who are now offering what they call their Lúxusnet package. Among other things it allows customers to access sites outside Iceland by exchanging a local IP address for an international one.

“We want an Internet that is open and accessible to all, no matter where in the world they are born or residing. We want things to be simple and easy to use so that you can do what you really want. Therefore, we have added a little luxury to your network,” the company explains.

While Icelanders will no doubt be pleased at the prospect of accessing content from services such as Netflix and Hulu, a local anti-piracy outfit has rather a different attitude.

Founded 20 years ago, the MPA-affiliated Association of Film Rights-Holders of Iceland (SMÁÍS) represents the interests of local and international movie companies. It says that the service being offered by Tal is illegal. Tal, on the other hand, think that they are offering a tool and how that tool is used is down to the user.

“The use of foreign content providers and websites is always the responsibility of the customer,” said Tal director Petreu Ingileifar Guðmundsdóttur in a comment.

According to the anti-piracy group, this attempt at shifting liability away from the ISP and onto the customer simply doesn’t wash.

“This argument does not hold, either morally or legally, in our opinion,” says SMÁÍS general manager Snæbjörn Steingrímsson. “In fact, we hear this exact same argument about torrent-sites.”

SMÁÍS insist that Tal’s product (and another similar one offered by Flix.is) are tools designed to circumvent technical measures (in this case geo-blocking mechanisms) put in place to protect copyright, which are illegal under local law.

“We are very surprised that a great company such as Tal is offering this sort of thing, but we will challenge them and Flix.is too,” Snæbjörn says.

According to local media SMÁÍS will try to get Tal to cooperate but in parallel preparations are being made to take the case to the police.

“This is like saying people can buy contraband goods legally as long as they come to this country legally,” Snæbjörn concludes. “There is no commercial or other economic activity in Iceland that could survive against such competition.”

It is of course interesting that SMÁÍS cites circumvention issues as the basis for its complaint but ends up talking about competition.

One of the anti piracy group’s most prominent members is a company called 365 Media, who just happen to be Iceland’s largest television, radio and publications giant. For a company that supplies movies to locals at premium prices, the prospect of competition from Netflix and Hulu at much more competitive U.S. rates will no doubt be proving less than attractive.

Source: Movie Studios Prepare Police Report Against ‘Netflix Proxy’ ISP

Nearly all VPN providers promise some form of anonymity, but if push comes to shove there are significant differences in how people’s personal information is protected.

For example, some VPN providers are required by law to keep logs and can be compelled by court to hand these over. Needless to say, whistle-blowers and activists are at risk of being identified by these services.

To increase transparency TorrentFreak previously asked several of the most prominent VPN providers about their logging policies. With this information prospective users are able to make a more informed decision before they sign up.

However, this is just a start and VPN providers should take additional steps to gain more trust. The Seychelles based VPN provider Proxy.sh has taken an important step in the right direction with the launch of its very own transparency report.

Last month Proxy.sh appeared in the news after it started monitoring one of its users based on a complaint from a third-party. The user’s alleged actions violated the “ethical policy” of the provider which all users agreed to when they signed up.

One of the critiques against Proxy.sh’s decision was that the process lacked transparency. The company did inform users about the temporary logging, but details about the alleged offense weren’t posted. Responding to this, Proxy.sh is now the first VPN provider to openly publish all data and takedown requests it receives, as well as the action it takes in response.

“This section provides absolutely all the notices we receive either from third-party or the justice of Seychelles, as well as a precise description of the actions we take in response to them,” the company announces.

The first notices were posted before the weekend, and thus far all requests deal with the alleged distribution of pirated content. For example, yesterday Proxy.sh received a DMCA notice from HBO for a Game of Thrones episode that was shared through the IP-address 173.255.143.218.

Proxy.sh doesn’t keep logs, so it can’t forward the notice to the user in question. Instead, the VPN provider closed the port (56854) that was used to transfer the file.

Proxy.sh transparency report

With its transparency report Proxy.sh hopes to inform its users how the company responds to various abuse notifications and user data requests.

“We hope that by providing such transparency report, you will be able to adjust your usage but also make sure you are not being tracked by behind-the-scene interventions. We have always been clear: we will never collaborate with third-party if this involves providing data about you unless you do activities harmful to human beings,” the company notes.

In addition to the transparency report, several VPN providers are working on founding an independent body that can regulate and audit VPN providers to increase trust. In addition, TorrentFreak has learned that other VPN providers are hoping to start similar transparency reports in the near future.

Proxy.sh is to be applauded for taking the lead on this front, and we encourage other VPN providers to follow suit.

Source: VPN Provider Details DMCA and User Data Requests in Transparency Report