gHacks technology news » mpaa http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:38:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 MPAA Legal Movie Sites List http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/28/mpaa-legal-movie-sites-list/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/28/mpaa-legal-movie-sites-list/#comments Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:24:02 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/28/mpaa-legal-movie-sites-list/ The MPAA – Motion Picture Association of America – compiled a list of legal movie websites and published it on their website with the title Legal options to Pirates. I’m not sure if they mean that non-Pirates may not use those services, guess it’s just aimed at Pirates. They have divided the list into Legal Downloads and Buy or Rent Movies.

They do have a huge problem with linking to the sites mentioned on their website because all links lead to not found when I tried them. That is because they have added their address in front of the address of the website that they recommend. Besides that they list Unbox and Walmart in the Legal Downloads category which provide downloads after you purchase them.

A better place for these two – and others – would probably have been the Buy or Rent Movies category. Actually, several other websites mentioned in their legal downloads section are pay before download websites who probably offer a freebie every now and then.

Enough of the criticism. The effort is worth noting. I’m not sure if this is the first time the MPAA did try to offer alternatives (some free) instead of just suing and lobbying against Pirates. If you are a regular Internet user you know those websites already but it could be nice for some who just begin to use the Internet.

If they could fix the Pay / Free distinction they could create a valuable resource.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/28/mpaa-legal-movie-sites-list/feed/ 0 Alternatives to uTorrent http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/20/alternatives-to-utorrent/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/20/alternatives-to-utorrent/#comments Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:49:32 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/20/alternatives-to-utorrent/ There has been a lot of controversy about the recent acquisition of uTorrent by Bram Cohen, the creator of the Bittorent protocol. Most users seem to be disturbed about the partnership between Bittorrent and the MPAA which started in fall 2005 with the agreement that illegal searches would be removed from its own Bittorrent search engine. The fear that the cooperation will affect the development of the popular uTorrent client seems to grow with every passing day.

“Following the acquisition, patented content delivery innovations made by BitTorrent, Inc. will be integrated in the µTorrent client in a manner that will remain seamless to the community of users. Ultimately, the integration of best-of-breed BitTorrent technology will result in an improved client and an enhanced user experience. It will also accelerate BitTorrent’s plans to provide high-performance content delivery services that power websites seeking the most efficient platform for distributing large, high-quality files. Lastly, the incorporation of µTorrent’s lightweight codebase strengthens the adoption of BitTorrent technology in embedded systems, including televisions, mobile phones and other non-PC platforms.”

Utorrent on the other hand does not seem to be the only bittorent client which seems to be affliated with the content industry. There are at least rumors that Azureus was sending stats of your sessions over the network as well. And finally a photo appeared on Flickr that shows the author of Bitcomet and Aswhin Navin of Bittorrent.

Alternatives:

Some users prefer to switch clients based on those rumors which is totally understandable. But which clients can be used except the most popular ones ? Here is a list of alternatives.

It will be hard for every client in that list and possible future clients to come close to the excellent functionality and performance of uTorrent.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/20/alternatives-to-utorrent/feed/ 15 Block IP addresses with Peer Guardian http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/30/block-ip-addresses-with-peer-guardian/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/30/block-ip-addresses-with-peer-guardian/#comments Tue, 30 Jan 2007 07:55:01 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/30/block-ip-addresses-with-peer-guardian/ Why would you need another program to block IP addresses if you already have a firewall ? A good question that can be answered easily. Peer Guardian uses a database of bad IP addresses and blocks them automatically as soon as the IP is added to the database of blocklist.org. A single user would have to know that a new IP (range) poses a thread and add it manually to his firewall.

Peer Guardian already has many IP addresses blocked that are uses by the MPAA to spread fake torrents and record IP addresses of the peers that download the torrents. Blocklist distinguishes the following categories: ads, bogon, edu,game,gov, p2p,phishing, spam and spy. The most important category for most users will be p2p of course and a installed Peer Guardian client will make sure that your client will not connect to the fake torrent clients and IPs. (if they are in the range that is blocked)

You do not need to configure your file sharing application to work with Peer Guardian, everything is done automatically. You can add sites that you definitely need to the allow list to make sure that they will never be blocked by Peer Guardian.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/30/block-ip-addresses-with-peer-guardian/feed/ 4 Fake Torrent Finder http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/29/fake-torrent-finder/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/29/fake-torrent-finder/#comments Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:24:40 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/29/fake-torrent-finder/ Fake torrents are spread into the system by organizations for two reasons. The first and in my opinion dominant one is to unsettle the torrent users by lowering the rate of successful downloads. Nothing is more discouraging than downloading the latest blockbuster for days only to see that you downloaded only garbarge in that time. In addition to this the trackers that spread the fake torrents are recording every bit of information they can get their hands on.

The IP address can be used to identify users and sue them in the process for instance, still the main reason is to destablizie the system and make users leave it. One way to find fake torrents is to use the newly introduced Fake Finder which is a script that displays and lets you search for the latest fake torrents that are known to them. There is no 100% guarantee that the site lists all fake torrents and trackers but it lists many and you should consult it before you begin to download a file.

The list of torrent trackers that spread the fake torrents is large and you should use a program like peerguardian to block them all. This prevents the connection at all and should protect your privacy.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/29/fake-torrent-finder/feed/ 1 Tired of fake torrents ? Block the sources http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/12/tired-of-fake-torrents-block-the-sources/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/12/tired-of-fake-torrents-block-the-sources/#comments Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:31:54 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/12/tired-of-fake-torrents-block-the-sources/ We all knew and heard about the common method to upload fake torrents into the torrent system to punish downloaders of copyrighted media files. The Torrentfreak blog reports that some torrent admins were able to identify some of the IP ranges that spread fake torrents and probably also the company that is behind it. The easiest way to cope with the situation would be to block the IP ranges either in your firewall or in a utility such as Peer Guardian. Below are the information for Peer Guardian 2, simply use the IP ranges if you want to block the IPs in your firewall.

MPAA Tracker:66.172.60.1-66.172.60.255
MPAA Tracker:66.177.58.1-66.177.58.255
MPAA Tracker:66.180.205.1-66.180.205.255
MPAA Tracker:209.204.61.1-209.204.61.255
MPAA Tracker:216.151.155.1-216.151.155.255

The fake torrents look like real torrents on first glance and are disguised as valid group releases such as Battlestar Galactica S03E07 REPACK DSR XviD-ORENJi. According to nforce.nl Orenji is the group that is releasing Battlestar Galactica  episodes.

Everyone should be well aware that the worst thing that can happen is not a crippled file but legal consequences. Those trackers surely log every IP and connection that is made and this might lead to legal consequences as well. I’am no lawyer but it is at least doubtful if this is indeed copyright infringement if you download a file that is not working at all.

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