It’s been only a few weeks since BitTorrent was officially aquired by Tron, a relatively new cryptocurrency.

Both companies were built around decentralization, which makes for a good match. However, it doesn’t stop there.

BitTorrent and Tron plan to integrate blockchain technology into future releases of their torrent clients. In short, they want to make it possible for users to ‘earn’ tokens by seeding. At the same time, others can ‘bid’ tokens to speed up their downloads.

The new plan is dubbed “Project Atlas” and BitTorrent currently has seven people working on it full-time. In theory, the incentives will increase total seeding capacity, improving the health of the torrent ecosystem.

“By adding tokens we’ll make it so that you can effectively earn per seeding and create incentives for users not only to seed longer but to dedicate more of their bandwidth and storage overall,” Project Atlas lead Justin Knoll says.

The idea to merge the blockchain with file-sharing technology isn’t new. Joystream, previously implemented a similar idea and Upfiring is also working on incentivized sharing. BitTorrent itself also considered it before Tron came into the picture.

“Even before the Tron acquisition, our R&D team was looking at ways to add blockchain based incentives to the protocol. Now with the addition of Tron’s expertise, we can accelerate that effort,” Knoll says.

It remains unclear when the project will be ready for the public, but this week the team announced some further details. In particular, BitTorrent and Tron stress that there won’t be any need for BitTorrent users to change their current habits.

The BitTorrent protocol will always remain open and Project Atlas will be implemented as a series of optional protocol extensions. These will be available for anyone to use, much like uTorrent’s previous uTP extension.

This means that users of third-party BitTorrent clients can still download from and seed to blockchain enhanced clients, and vice versa.

“If you want to keep using your current client, it will still work with project Atlas clients. If you don’t want to bid or earn tokens per seeding, you don’t need to,” Knoll clarifies.

Project Atlas

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While backward compatibility is a major upside, it seems likely that new clients will prioritize each other, at least in some instances. After all, that’s a requirement to speed up torrents.

BitTorrent says it will start implementing the technology in its desktop clients, such as uTorrent. The next step is mobile. In addition, the company encourages developers of other BitTorrent clients to follow suit.

“We’ll release the details of our implementation and encourage third-party clients and the whole ecosystem to implement this,” Knoll says.

The developer of the third-party torrent client Frostwire previously showed his interest in the idea late August. He asked BitTorrent and Tron whether the technology would be public but never received an answer.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, developer Angel Leon confirmed his interest.

“It’s something we were interested in and that we think is necessary to fulfill a vision of a decentralized Apple Store/Google Play/Amazon Music|Video competitor with BitTorrent as the transport mechanism,” Leon told us.

However, the developments come too late for Frostwire, as the torrent client just shut down. Whether other client developers are also interested, remains a question for now.

In any case, BitTorrent and Tron stress that any changes will be backwards compatible. The protocol and its extensions remain open, the clients will remain free of charge, and there is absolutely no mining involved.

More information about Project Atlas’ plans is expected to be unveiled in a few hours, during a live presentation.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Back in 2004, when LimeWire was the file-sharing client of choice for millions of users, a new kid appeared on the block.

FrostWire was originally an open source fork of LimeWire distributed under the GNU General Public License.

In 2006, FrostWire added BitTorrent support and in 2011, as LimeWire drew its final breath under pressure from the RIAA, its Gnutella base was dropped completely in favor of BitTorrent.

Over the years, FrostWire became available on multiple platforms including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. However, a huge problem with their Android variant has now caused the FrostWire team to make a rather sad announcement.

The issues began back on September 18 when the FrostWire Android app was taken down from Google Play following a DMCA takedown request.

“In the notice, the company claimed their content was uploaded to the FrostWire app and provided screenshots of their content being played in the FrostWire Music Player,” the FrostWire team explains.

“Asking for reinstatement, we made it clear that it is technically impossible to upload any content to FrostWire. We explained that FrostWire is a tool, a BitTorrent client, a downloader for a distributed peer-to-peer network and that as such, it does not host, index, nor has the ability to control the content it is technically capable of downloading from third party sources.”

But despite a DMCA counter-notice to Google, the Internet giant stood its ground. Google refused to reinstate the Android app, a surprise decision given FrostWire’s reputation for staying within the law.

After almost eight successful years on the Google Play store, the FrostWire team says they have been left “dumbfounded” by what they say is an “unsubstantiated claim” from a single company.

Sadly, this unfortunate situation appears to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Heavily reliant on their Android variant, the team indicate they will now move away from FrostWire.

“With over 80% of our user-base running on the Android platform, in a world where the majority of android installs occurs through a centralized app store monopoly, we don’t see a viable path forward. After 14 years the team is ready to move on to other passions and challenges,” they reveal.

Thanking users past and present for their support, the FrostWire team say that users should now take the opportunity to update their clients using FrostWire’s Github repository or its SourceForge page.

While this sounds like the beginning of the end for FrostWire, it isn’t the first time that the project has had a run-in with Google over its popular client.

In April 2015, FrostWire was temporarily removed from Google Play in a dispute over YouTube integration. Earlier that year, Amazon removed FrostWire citing copyright concerns.

This reliance on centralized and near monopoly app databases is clearly a big negative for applications like FrostWire. The team hopes that, moving into the future, Internet freedom will come to the forefront.

“We hope that in the end, a free, uncensored and decentralized internet will prevail,” the team concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Last month, Cox ended its piracy liability lawsuit with music company BMG, agreeing to a “substantial settlement.”

That doesn’t mean that the ISP is now in the clear. Cox is also caught up in another lawsuit filed by a group of major music labels, all members of the RIAA.

The labels argue that Cox categorically failed to terminate repeat copyright infringers and that it substantially profited from this ongoing ‘piracy’ activity. All at the expense of the record labels and other rightsholders.

This week Cox submitted a reply to the complaint, denying all these allegations. It requests a declaratory judgment from the court stating that it’s not liable for any copyright infringements carried out by its customers.

“Cox does not control the Internet,” the company writes, adding that it has “no ability to remove or take down infringing content from its customers’ computers” and “cannot restrict, or even detect, the specific content that its customers access or share.”

“Cox does not spy on its customers or monitor their Internet traffic. Even if it could do so — and it cannot — it wouldn’t. Engaging in surveillance in such a fashion would violate Cox’s policies, ethics, and corporate culture.”

The record labels are unlikely to refute any of the above. The real dispute, however, is about whether Cox should have terminated customers for whom it received many notices. The labels previously argued that 20,000 Cox subscribers can be categorized as blatant repeat infringers, some of whom have been ‘warned’ more than 100 times.

Writing to the court, the ISP counters that these notices could not be trusted or easily verified.

“The systems Plaintiffs used to detect infringement and send copyright infringement notices were unreliable, and were known to be unreliable,” Cox writes, adding that it “lacked the ability to verify Plaintiffs’ allegations of infringement.”

“Indeed, studies and published reports show that such notices can be wildly inaccurate,” Cox writes, pointing to an academic report as well as a TorrentFreak article which shows how HBO targeted its own website.

DMCA notice inaccuracies

This critique on the accuracy of DMCA notices is not new. It has repeatedly been highlighted in similar cases.

Perhaps more novel is Cox’s mention of the “six strikes” Copyright Alert System. This was a partnership between US ISPs and copyright holders, including many of the labels, to forward infringing notices to pirating customers.

This groundbreaking deal set a limit on the number of copyright notices ISPs had to process. Perhaps more crucially, it didn’t require the companies to terminate repeat infringers, even after 100+ warnings.

This is an interesting ‘double standard’ angle, as the labels now accuse Cox of failing to terminate repeat infringers, something that was never a requirement under the Copyright Alert System.

This deal (which Cox wasn’t part of) was still active during the time period that’s covered by the lawsuit, and apparently, the RIAA was pretty happy with it at the time.

“In May 2014, RIAA Chairman and CEO Cary Sherman described the Center for Copyright Information as ‘a model for success,’ Cox writes, adding that he lauded program and all its accomplishments.

Fast forward a few years and now ISPs are being sued for adhering to the same standard as set out in the groundbreaking Copyright Alert System.

Based on these and other arguments, Cox requests a declaratory judgment stating that it’s not liable for contributory infringement, and another declaratory judgment clarifying that it’s not vicariously liable for pirating subscribers.

—

A copy of Cox recent filing is available here (pdf).

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For those unfamiliar with the project, Stage 9 is a beautiful virtual recreation of the Enterprise ship from Star Trek: The Next Generation for Windows, Mac and Linux.

More experience than game, Stage 9 was built by fans over two years in the Unreal Engine.

“There were two things that we were always pretty careful with,” says project leader ‘Scragnog’.

“We made it as clear as we possibly could that this was NOT an officially licensed project. We had no affiliation with CBS or Paramount and the IP we were trying our hardest to treat with respect was not our own. We were fans, just creating fan art.”

In an announcement this week, Scragnog reminded fans that no one involved in the project was in it for any financial reason and everyone was well aware that throwing money into the mix could be a problem. However, the team says it has always known that they could be shut down at any time on the whim of a license holder because in this world, that’s what can happen.

Unfortunately, that day has come all too soon for the impressive project. Stage 9 was hit with an intellectual property complaint from CBS just over two weeks ago and has now been shut down.

“This letter was a cease-and-desist order,” Scragnog explains. “Over the next 13 days we did everything we possibly could to open up a dialog with CBS. The member of the CBS legal team that issued the order went on holiday for a week immediately after sending the letter through, which slowed things down considerably.”

During this interim period, the team began to consider statements made by CBS Vice President for Product Development John Van Citters, who in 2016 indicated that Star Trek owes so much to fans and that fan creations are of value to the brand.

“We want fans to be involved, very much so,” Van Citters said, as cited by Scragnog. “And it’s going to help us evolve and bring Star Trek to a bigger and brighter future.”

“They’re not going to hear from us,” Citters continued. “They’re not going to get a phone call, they’re not going to get an email. They’re not going to get anything that’s going to ruin their day one way or another and make them feel bad, like they’ve done something wrong.”

After noting Van Citter’s friendly approach, the Stage 9 team reached out to him twice to see if Stage 9 could be kept alive in some form. Sadly, the exec did not respond to the team “in any way.”

However, thirteen days after receiving the cease-and-desist, Stage 9 was able to speak with their original contact in the CBS legal department. It proved a complete waste of time.

“We were hoping, perhaps naively, that the elements of Stage 9 that CBS did not approve of would be highlighted to us, so we could be sure to remove these elements from the project and create something that met with, if not their approval, then at least their acceptance,” Scragnog explains.

To keep the project alive, the team were prepared to make any changes ordered by CBS. Sadly, CBS said that the project could not continue in any form, no matter what changes were made. They provided no further details and, as noted by Eurogamer, did not indicate how Stage 9 had violated the fan art guidelines previously published by CBS and Paramount.

“It’s a truly horrible situation to be in when something that tries to respect Star Trek can be eliminated without any opportunity for open dialog,” Scragnog concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

As one of the most popular media players of all time, Kodi has amassed tens of millions of users.

While completely legal in its own right, the open source platform is often augmented with third-party addons that regularly provide access to huge amounts of infringing content. This has attracted the negative attention of copyright holders who are keen to prevent unlicensed content being exploited by the masses.

Since last year, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has been at the forefront of anti-piracy enforcement against such addons. This huge global coalition, made up of 30 of the world’s most powerful entertainment companies, have been knocking on doors (physically in many cases) with letters that order addon developers, addon repositories, and build developers, to cease their activities or face legal consequences.

This week, ACE claimed yet another scalp.

Team Illuminati advertised itself as a great source for the “very best addons” and “stunning” Kodi builds (pre-configured Kodi installers), all available from its own repository.

All previously available from Illuminati

The group built up a decent following but with hundreds of posts on its Twitter account detailing efforts to bring infringing content including movies, TV shows, plus live and recorded sports to the masses, it probably isn’t a surprise they attracted the negative attention of ACE.

Yesterday, in a tweet to the group’s followers, Team Illuminati announced its demise after receiving a visit from the world’s most powerful anti-piracy coalition.

“Sorry guys our entire team got hit with ACE letters today so we’re leaving twitter, this group closes tomorrow AM thanks for your support all,” Illuminati wrote.

Sorry guys our entire team got hit with ACE letters today so we're leaving twitter,this group closes tomorrow am thanks for your support all

— Team Illuminati (@illuminati_xyz) September 25, 2018

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While it’s not completely unheard of, it is relatively unusual for Kodi addon developers and repositories to announce that they’ve had a visit from ACE. As recently highlighted, those entering into settlement agreements with ACE are required not to mention they’ve had any contact whatsoever.

It’s not clear whether Illuminati intend to simply cease-and-desist, as others in a similar position have done so previously, or whether its members will eventually sign the ACE settlement agreeement. TF has seen copies of previous agreement letters which indicate that cooperation will be required moving forward, including providing information on others closely connected with the addon, build, repository, or other service.

For now, however, it seems clear that Team Illuminati have thrown in the towel.

Visitors to their repository URL at repo.theunjudged.xyz are simply greeted with a pentagon-shaped ‘Illuminati’ logo, rather than the addons (including the recent ‘Underdog’ addon shown below) they’ve grown accustomed to.

Team illuminati is proud to announce, "The Underdog" is now live in the repo.
We the think its the best, largest selection of our entire team's 1 click direct link content, New Releases, True Crime, Horror, Kids, Documentaries, Comedy, 3D, 4K, MMA, WWE, Football and Motor Sports pic.twitter.com/4Llnnpjp8J

— Team Illuminati (@illuminati_xyz) September 14, 2018

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Currently, Android APK (installation files) are accessible from another URL but quite how long these will remain available is yet to be seen.

The takedown of Team Illuminati is the latest in a long line of efforts by ACE to stem the tide of allegedly-infringing Kodi addons. Earlier this month, players known as Blamo and UrbanKingz exited under similar circumstances with several other individuals and groups (1,2,3,4) meeting with a similar fate over the past year.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.