MetaFilter posts tagged with torrents

What if copyright law is more complicated then a damn flower?

Askiba — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:00:31 -0800

Take my movie—please. Nasty Old People is a Swedish movie about just that. However, it's been released freely on the web by its creator, Hanna Sköld, under a Creative Commons License, being the first Swedish film to do so. The CC License it is under allows the movie to be redistributed, screened, remixed- anything you want, as long as Hanna and the rest of the team behind the movie is credited. Going on a "pay as much as you feel like model", the creator has so far gotten back about 2,000 euros from the internet community- a little more then 20% of the bank loan the creator took out to make the film. Not to mention popularity: the film has been downloaded 30,000 times in over 100 countries. It's a kick in the face to the MPAA, whose cries that sites like The Pirate Bay are "killing entertainment" have been largely disregarded in the success stories of these indie efforts.

Every party should be a windows 7 party

Artw — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:13:01 -0800

Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party (Previously)

Information Wants to be Free

l33tpolicywonk — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:18:59 -0800

WikiLeaks: every current Congressional Research Service report in a Torrent (2.2 GB). h/t Jessamyn's twitter. Americans spend $100 million a year on the Congressional Research Service, a private think tank for members of Congress and their staffs. While technically available to the public, their reports were never posted on the Internet by the government. In the past, we've counted on the painstaking, one-at-a-time collection efforts of folks like the Open CRS Network (previously). Now, WikiLeaks and the Pirate Bay (legally) delivers to your desktop some fine research on mountain pine beetles, China's role in the global financial crisis, NATO in Afghanistan, and anything else you can think of. The 110th Congress' HR 2545 would have required that CRS give the public the same (relatively) easy access to its reports Congressional staff has.

Illegal Download =/= Lost Sale

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:01:25 -0800

"[A]lthough it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free," said US District court Judge James P. Jones, in response to the RIAA's request for restitution against the former admin of Elite Torrents, Daniel Dove, who has already been found guilty of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement. The RIAA's request for restitution claimed that each download was equal to a lost sale. Judge Jones disagreed, and in part of his ruling stated:

"It is a basic principle of economics that as price increases, demand decreases. Customers who download music and movies for free would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product. I am skeptical that customers would pay $7.22 or $19 for something they got for free. Certainly 100% of the illegal downloads through Elite Torrents did not result in the loss of a sale, but both Lionsgate and RIAA estimate their losses based on this faulty assumption."

File sharers should nonetheless be wary of opening the champagne just yet.

Bitlet: stream torrent music

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:30:42 -0800

Bitlet allows you to stream audio directly from a torrent.

Coelho gives out pirate copies of books... reaps benefits

dobbs — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:16:01 -0800

Author Paulo Coelho talks about how creating The Pirate Coelho, a site with links to torrents of his own books, leads to a massive increase in sales.

They just want to go home.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:39:17 -0800

I know you're all lining up to buy Sealand, but The Pirate Bay wants to beat you to the punch.

A deterrent?

plenty — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 06:23:29 -0800

Hong Kong court jails man for creating and posting torrents.

radical torrents

crunchland — Mon, 16 May 2005 22:18:34 -0800

Chomskytorrents.org provides a gathering place for torrents with progressive and radical content. As for now, it preserves a special place for the work of American dissident Noam Chomsky.

Blog Torrent

rhyax — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 23:02:03 -0800

Blog Torrent is out, it's been under development for a while now by the good people at Downhill Battle. It's a really simplified way of uploading files for the bittorrent network with an integrated client/server solution. Right now the client side is windows only, but the core functionality works with any client of course. Pretty neat.