As far as file-sharing protocols go, BitTorrent has emerged as one of the leading P2P technologies being used. μTorrent is one of the most popular BitTorrent apps around, largely because of its small size and ease of use. While μTorrent used to be an independent client, it has since been taken over by BitTorrent Inc. which has partnerships with almost all the major movie networks.

μTorrent has recently been found to contain a very serious security vulnerability. Apparently, there is a boundary error in the processing of ‘.torrent’ files, which can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow.

What this means is that someone can create a malicious torrent file and place his or her own code in the ‘created by’ section of the torrent. This code may be harmless or something serious like allowing the hacker access to the machine that runs the .torrent file.

Older versions of μTorrent do not limit the amount of data that can be present in the ‘created by’ section of a torrent file so this problem exists in all μTorrent version prior to 1.8. All users are requested to download μTorrent 1.8 Release Candidate 7, which has been patched to fix this problem.

While the security vulnerability sounds serious enough, I’m a little skeptical of how dangerous it actually is. A user would have to intentionally download a corrupt torrent file and run it. Plus, indexing sites list torrent contents including the creator of the torrent so you can easily avoid files that look suspicious.

Personally, I think this is another way for BitTorrent Inc. to convince users of old versions of μTorrent to upgrade to the newer one. Considering their links with the movie industry, it doesn’t sound so far-fetched.

Would you upgrade to the newest version of μTorrent? I’m using version 1.6 myself, which is the last version released before BitTorrent Inc. took over. Should I upgrade or stay with my old version? Let me know in the comments.

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This is another classic case where the industry is punishing their legit customers and not the ones who copy and download the media. It’s the same case with copy protections and DRM. The only ones who have to cope with those things are the customers who purchase the products, never heard of any copy protections or DRM in movies, games or music that were available in P2P networks.

The commenters at Boing-Boing write about 3-6 random sound drops for a few seconds. Now that would really make me angry and I would definitely ask for a refund on my way out. What’s their next ingenious move, blank out a few scenes ? The cinemas themselves do not seem to have a say in the matter.

I would bet that the movie that is available on P2P networks does not have those sound gaps. Wanna bet ?

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Guess how many times I had to see this announcement ? Seven Times ! Yes that’s right. They put it on all DVDs. I was not able to skip it and that is why I’m writing this article about it. Let me ask you another question. Tell me how many times users who download 24 season 4 from the Internet are seeing this message ? Zero Times ! Yes that is right. If you pirate the tv series you get a clean copy without that nice Piracy reminder that people who BUY the DVD get.

Am I the only one who thinks something is seriously out of line here ? It’s like those game copy protections that do more harm than good. Buyers have to live with the copy protection even though it could mean that the game won’t play on their computer but guys who download it ? They get a crack and can run it without DVD at all.

Let’s talk about DRM in music. Do you think that the majority of songs in Peer to Peer networks has DRM ? The stance of the Music Industry is thankfully changing on this matter and I really hope that the Movie and Gaming Industry will make the changes as well.

If I purchase a DVD I do not want to see ads against Piracy. This is insane. The same is happening in cinemas all over the country. You see anti-piracy ads in cinema. Are they going to try to convince the one guy that might sit in one of the cinemas with his cam to stop making a recording the movie ?

One could say that they try to sensitize the public but do they have to do that in front of people who actually purchased a product ? Why don’t they do tv commercials instead ? That would probably be more effective and buyers would not feel so irritated with all the anti-piracy ads in their purchased products.

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The middle version with a resolution of either 580 or 610 pixels costs $2.99 each and the high quality versions with a resolution of 720 pixels cost $4.99. This is really low ff you compare that to the usual $9 – $10 at Amazon Unbox or other websites. The main question is of course that of legality.

I can only say that this is a completely legal service in Russia paying the usual 15% of the earnings to the Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems. The MPAA will most likely not accept the royalties from ZML with the same lame excuse that the RIAA used.

So, what can you expect besides the low prices ? The site uses a very straightforward user friendly layout with several ways to browse and search the movie library. The currently 1500 movies are sorted by genre, letter and can also be found by using tags or ratings.

All movies come with 20 screenshots from the movie and soon a two minute sample of what you can expect. Each movie website lists information about actors, the plot, the format and related movies that are worth exploring.

Movies are provided in DivX v5 or Ipod format and can be paid by Credit Card or SMS. The SMS option sounds interesting because it can be used to download a movie without signing up to the website at all.

The movies seem to be about two weeks behind the official DVD release date. What’s your opinion regarding this new website ? Do you think it is legit and would you download movies from it ?

I personally think that this site is offering way more than all those other movie download sites are offering combined in terms of quality, usability and of course pricing.

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I’m always astonished about those early releases and wonder how it is possible that those movies are available on P2P networks before they make it into the cinemas. I’m generalizing a little bit here and it’s not only movies that get leaked early, it’s true for games and music as well and they are made available on ftp first, then P2P and other means of distribution.

Once this ball gets rolling there is no turning back however. There does not seem to be a direct relation between leaks and movie success though. If you look at American Gangster for instance, it generated more than $40 million on its first weekend.

Still, how is it possible that media leaks so early ? I can only think of the distribution chain, press and testers. Copies of the movies are send out to magazines for instance and they have to be distributed throughout the country.

I’m not an insider though and can’t really give any details on the whole process. It just makes me think that virtually any media product leeks early or around the same time on the Internet. There have been rumors that some companies tend to leek the media by themselves as a marketing method.

What is your opinion on the matter ?

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Several bittorrent sites have already removed all fake releases that have been spread by Media Defender and are currently banning fake trackers and all other traces of Media Defender influence which is huge if you allow me this opinion. More than 5000 fake torrents have been removed from sites such as Mininova by now.

It is really interesting to see how the Music and Movie Industry are spreading fake releases and undermine servers with the help of Mediadefender. It should take some time until they are able to recover from this serious blow. They will of course get new IPs, new servers and begin their foul play anew.

If you are interested in the emails files you can take a look at any of the big torrent sites such as the pirate bay to download it. It has a size of around 120 Megabytes and can be imported into any email client. Just move the file into your profile Mail \ Local Folders if you use Thunderbird for instance.

There are many information and it surely takes some time until all has been analyzed, there is probably more that will be discovered.

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