Torrentfreak: “BitTorrent Inc. Happy to Take on Kim Jong Un” plus 1 more

BitTorrent Inc. Happy to Take on Kim Jong Un

Posted: 20 Dec 2014 02:42 AM PST

For Sony Pictures and the creative talent behind The Interview, the past several weeks have been extraordinary. With Sony falling to a crippling hack attack reportedly at the hands of North Korea, never before has a movie resulted in so much corporate destruction.

As the dust settles, at least temporarily, Sony finds itself between a rock and a hard place. After pulling the movie this week following threats of terror attacks on theaters, Sony was criticized by President Obama yesterday who described the decision as “a mistake“.

Sony responded with a statement from CEO Michael Lynton: “We have not caved. We have not given in. We have persevered, and we have not backed down. We have always had every desire to have the American public see this movie."

But with theaters dropping like flies and “not been one major VOD or one major ecommerce site” stepping forward to show the film, the studio’s options are limited. Last night, however, a hero stepped forward to take on the tyranny of state-sponsored terrorism.

“Like everyone else around the world, we've been following this egregious hacking of Sony's servers over the past few weeks,” BitTorrent Inc. said in a statement to VB.

“A trend has emerged among commentary in the days since Sony announced they would not release the motion picture, ‘The Interview.’ There have been calls for Sony to release the film online. And many have contacted us asking: Would they be able to release the movie using BitTorrent?

“Though we normally would not offer commentary during such a trying time for another company, the answer is yes,” the company said.

BitTorrent Inc. believes that Sony’s best option to “take back control of their film” and not cave in to “terrorist threats” is to utilize the company’s BitTorrent Bundles.

Not only would Bundles allow everyone to view The Interview at home safe in the knowledge they aren’t going to get blown up, but this would strike “a strong note for free speech” while allowing Sony to set whatever price they like for the film, BitTorrent Inc. says.

While there is certainly a promotional aspect to BitTorrent Inc.’s offer, releasing the movie using the BitTorrent protocol would solve Sony’s initial distribution problems. The company could probably flick the switch and have this movie out by Monday, if they’re really wanted to.

Of course, any release via BitTorrent Bundles would mean that The Interview would also become available on public and private torrent sites within hours. At this point anyone could download the movie for free. There had been suggestions earlier this week that Sony should go straight to torrent sites with the movie anyway, but BitTorrent Inc. thinks this is a bad idea.

“We disagree, however, with some that have suggested that Sony should make the film available through piracy sites. That would only serve to encourage bad actors. It's also important to make the distinction that these piracy sites are not ‘torrent sites.’ They are piracy sites that are wrongfully exploiting torrent technology,” the company said.

It seems unlikely that BitTorrent Inc. will seal the deal with Sony, but if they were successful this would not only be a major coup for the company but one steeped in irony.

As BitTorrent Inc. promises to strike a blow for freedom using BitTorrent, for the past several weeks the Sony hackers have also been using the BitTorrent protocol to distribute the very files they obtained from Sony.

Just goes to show, BitTorrent technology really can be used for anything.

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

Hollywood Tries to Crush Popcorn Time, Again

Posted: 19 Dec 2014 11:21 AM PST

This year Popcorn Time became an instant hit by offering BitTorrent-powered streaming inside an easy-to-use Netflix-style interface.

The breakthrough app had Hollywood concerned but luckily for them the developers shut it down after a few weeks, saying that they wanted to move on with their lives.

It was never revealed whether Hollywood forces had threatened the developers, but an MPAA update that surfaced as part of the Sony leaks now reveals that this was indeed the case.

In the MPAA’s “first quarter update,” sent to the movie studio heads in March, the group stated that it had “scored a major victory in shutting down the key developers of Popcorn Time.”

The MPAA added that the investigative and enforcement actions required collaboration on three continents, which they hoped would prevent Popcorn Time from becoming a “major piracy threat.”

Unfortunately for Hollywood the threat didn’t go away. The Open Source project was quickly picked up by others and in recent months several popular forks gained steady user-bases.

Popcorn-Time.se, one of the most-used forks, has since turned into a bigger threat than the original application. As a result, Hollywood is trying its best to dismantle it.

Previously the fork had its domain name suspended and over the past few weeks found itself being kicked out by various hosting providers. Complaints from the Hollywood backed anti-piracy group BREIN were to blame.

The hosting troubles resulted in long periods of downtime, which isn’t good for morale among the developers.

“We had a tough two weeks with a few shut downs that came unexpectedly. We moved our service through three different hosting companies in these weeks,” the Popcorn-Time.se team tells TF.

“All caved after a few hours to a day or two, after ‘some’ copyright organization contacted them, saying suddenly that they don’t want to host our ‘illegal’ domain. We were shocked actually to see how quickly these organizations work.”

While Popcorn-Time.se might have been down, they’re not out yet. The team is determined to keep its software available and will be releasing new updates to the app today.

“BREIN is on our backs? Well, we found a new hosting company which we hope will be more cooperative, and we’re releasing updates for both Windows and Mac today to show everyone that business is as usual.”

“No one said it was gonna be easy, but what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, and we’re not into dying… ;-),” the Popcorn-Time.se team concludes.

Whether other Popcorn Time forks have had similar problems recently is unknown, but the above makes it clear that Hollywood is still determined to crush these popular apps.

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