This week will see the release of Prince’s new album. The ten-song offering which kicks off with a track called ‘Compassion’ will not be available in bricks and mortar record stores.

In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mirror tabloid – which will be giving the album away for free in a covermount promotion this week – Prince explains why the likes of iTunes and other digital music stores won’t be getting the track either.

“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it,” he explained.

“The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you,” he added.

While the album is also set to be given away with other newspapers, such as Het Nieuwsblad and De Gentenaar in Belgium and Rolling Stone magazine in Germany, contrary to claims by Prince, 20Ten will also be available for free via thousands of Internet outlets.

Sometime soon, probably before the planned release date of July 10th, 20Ten will be all over BitTorrent, Gnutella, dozens of one-click hosters, Usenet and file-sharing blogs worldwide and not one of them will have paid Prince the kind of advance he expects but didn’t receive from iTunes and other digital stores. With nowhere else but from a newspaper in limited numbers to get the album, Prince fans will turn to the web in their millions.

At this point in the final paragraphs one would normally sum up the news. “Prince is crazy for slamming the Internet and digital devices” or maybe “Prince is a hero for giving his music away” but in this case it’s quite difficult.

“I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music,” he told The Mirror and strangely, by completely shunning the Internet with the release of 20Ten, what Prince has done is given this “outdated” network a golden opportunity to distribute his music on a scale worthy of an artist of his stature.

So where can people download this album right now? Well, it seems, absolutely nowhere. Despite the fact that almost 100% of albums leak weeks before their planned release date, 20Ten remains stubbornly offline with just 4 days to go.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

When the Swedish Pirate Party announced, back in mid-May, that they were the new ISP of The Pirate Bay, it surprised a lot of people. With their latest announcement, that they will run The Pirate Bay from inside the Swedish Parliament, they hope they will surprise people again.

The Pirate Parties around the world are best known for copyright activism and are often seen as a ‘one-issue party’. While they also focus on privacy, government transparency, free speech, and patent reform, it is copyright that people’s minds spring to. So, with an election coming up, the Swedish Pirate Party has decided to play to their strength.

The party has announced totay that they intend to use part of the Swedish Constitution to further these goals, specifically Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate. They intend to push the non-commercial sharing part of their manifesto, by running The Pirate Bay from ‘inside’ the Parliament, by Members of Parliament.

This move will certainly push the site to center-stage in Sweden. It will ensure a huge amount of scrutiny in any and all decisions made regarding the site, which is undoubtedly the intent.

“Sweden has long been a nation at the forefront of IT. But we have fallen in the rankings, largely because today’s politicians do not see the connection between file-sharing culture and future industry skills. We have now moved from place form place three to eight in available household bandwidth,” the Pirate Party informed TorrentFreak in a statement.

“There is no reason for us to accept this development – there are no technical reasons for this, only political.”

“Therefore, we can never accept the copyright industry’s way of systematically and legally harassing anyone who tries to build next-generation industries. The approach is criminal in the world and should be criminal in Sweden also, professional saboteurs are professional criminals, whoever they get their money from,” the Party added.

Aside from hosting The Pirate Bay in Parliament, the Pirate Party also plans to criminalize copyright lawsuits against noncommercial file-sharers and websites, as well as lawsuits against ISPs for linking to copyrighted material.

“The Lobby is used to using dirty tricks. Let’s see them take on legislators under constitutional protection who aim to criminalize their entire bag of dirty tricks,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told us.

Of course, the plan can only take place if the Party wins some seats in the September 19^th Elections, where there is a 4% barrier to overcome. However, last June they did manage 7% in the European Parliament elections, so it’s not an impossible goal by any means. We will have to wait and see what September brings.

If The Pirate Party succeeds it will add some more controversy to the upcoming appeal of the ‘Pirate Bay Four’, which is currently scheduled to take place a month after the general elections.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Following last year’s out-of-court settlement with Ireland’s largest ISP Eircom, in May IRMA – representing EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – confirmed the pair would start tracking, warning and disconnecting alleged file-sharers.

Using data gathered by Danish company DtecNet, IRMA said it would begin supplying Eircom with suspected infringing IP addresses for a 3 month pilot period. Thus far, Eircom has sent around 800 warnings to its customers.

Part of that out-of-court settlement was a promise from IRMA that it would not leave Eircom at a competitive disadvantage. Clearly, once word spread that Eircom is a ‘bad’ ISP for file-sharers, potential customers would see huge benefit in choosing another ISP. To avoid this eventuality, last month IRMA filed papers against mobile operators O2 and 3 for their apparent non-cooperation.

Not everyone is digging their heels in though. Two other mobile ISPs, Vodafone and Eircom subsidiary Meteor, said they were in “advanced negotiations” with the IRMA to bring the graduated response to their networks.

Today there is further news that IRMA is well on its way to soaking up the majority of the Irish market with its “3 strikes” (technically a 4 strikes) scheme, this time by targeting Eircom arch-rival, Vodafone. Market leader Eircom has been in a price war with No 2 player Vodafone for quite a while now, so any action IRMA takes against the ISP will be warmly welcomed by Eircom. It’s even more convenient for them that Vodafone is playing along nicely.

According to a report in the Irish Times quoting IRMA Chairman and EMI Ireland chief executive Willie Kavanagh, “significant progress” had been made with Vodafone in negotiations to bring file-sharing disconnections to the ISP.

In a statement, Vodafone said that file-sharing represents a “serious issue for the Irish music industry” and that it is looking at introducing “appropriate steps” consistent with “applicable legislation and recent judicial decisions”.

The “judicial decision” refers to April’s ruling from Dublin’s High Court which effectively gave the music industry the go ahead to start warning and disconnecting file-sharers.

Getting Vodafone on board would be a significant success for IRMA. Eircom and Vodafone control almost two-thirds of all Ireland’s fixed broadband connections.

Another ISP, UPC, continues its refusal to introduce disconnections for its customers. Tomorrow it will face the start of action in the Commercial Court brought on by the music industry.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

As described by director Sam Bozzo, the movie ‘Hackers Wanted’ explores the differences between true hackers and today’s “computer criminals” and follows the lives of hackers who found themselves arrested after pointing out security holes in computer systems.

Although the movie was completed, internal conflict with its producer meant that it was unlikely to see a release, officially at least. Last month we were able to report that the Internet had pushed those conflicts aside and the movie had leaked and become available worldwide through BitTorrent. It seems that the version was only a rough cut though.

“I am sad that my cut was never officially released,” explains Bozzo. “It would be hypocritical of me to complain of this internet leak, since I openly spoke on TorrentFreak in favor of such leaks for my new film Blue Gold, but on the other hand, I am sad that the leaked cut is not my Director’s Cut, but a very old cut!”

Yesterday, Sam’s disappointments were overcome. Pirate Bay releaser ‘room101bellboy‘ told us the he was about to release the Director’s Cut after being offered it by an unnamed source. TorrentFreak contacted Sam and informed him of the new leak and followed up an earlier request for a first hand opinion on how BitTorrent is affecting the movie industry. Here is his response in full.

Hackers Wanted Director Sam Bozzo On BitTorrent and the Movie Industry

I have never uploaded or downloaded any torrent, so it is strange for me to be in a position where both of my independent feature documentaries have been so positively effected by torrents, both in very different ways. One was an already released film, the other an unreleased film.

TorrentFreak asked I that I consider my fifteen years navigating the film industry as a struggling filmmaker and these torrent experiences to write up an opinion of how file-sharing will affect the film industry, in hopes that my opinions may benefit both the torrent and film communities.

In a nutshell, I believe the only films that are hurt by torrent sharing are mediocre and bad films. In contrast, the good films of any genre only benefit from file-sharing. Due to this, I feel the current file-sharing trend is a catalyst for a true evolution in filmmaking and attempt to explain my theory in this article.

Readers of TorrentFreak may remember when my already released documentary “Blue Gold: World Water Wars” was leaked. Initially I reacted as most independent film producers do, enraged and terrified I would never make my money back from my film due to this ‘breach’. Thankfully, I have some very good hacker friends who talked me into viewing the situation in a positive light, which I did.

I contacted the uploader of my film and asked she spread a message of support with the torrent, asking for donations if a viewer likes the film and explaining that was a self-financed endeavor. The result? I received many donations and emails of support from those who downloaded the film, but I furthermore believe that viewers spread the word of the film to their non-torrent-downloading friends and that DVD sales increased due to the leak. For me, the torrent leak was ultimately “free advertising”, and I am the only truly independent documentary filmmaker I know making his money back this year.

With “Blue Gold” already available on DVD in North America, UK, Japan, and Australia, the initial fear of a filmmaker is that each person who downloads a torrent would have instead paid to buy or rent a DVD if the torrent were not available. I feel this is false for many reasons. For an independent film like mine, most torrent users would have never heard of my film if not for the torrent. Unlike a large blockbuster film, I had no advertising money to spread the word of the film, so the torrent leak provided another outlet to hopefully create a viral campaign of word-of-mouth. The main point, though, is that this only worked because the film is a solid good film (for the target market at least), so word of mouth could only help the film.

But what about major films which have millions of dollars of advertising costs to recoup? Blockbusters which have already been released and are public-knowledge due to their market exposure?

In this case, I feel it is important to compare file sharing not with DVD-purchases or rental, but with streaming a film via Netflix’s Watch Instantly and also with inviting friends over to watch a film in a group. In neither of these situations does a film make any money. Most are surprised to learn that Netflix pays only a fixed fee to the distributor for the number of years they may offer a film, regardless of whether that film is streamed once or a million times in that time period.

Yet anyone I know on Netflix’s Watch Instantly platform, including me, is thrilled to be there. Why? The exposure. The more people who see the film, the more will likely love it and want to buy it for their collection. When you invite a group of friends to your house to watch a DVD, do you charge them? One person bought one DVD, and ten watch it free, but if the film is good, hopefully a few of them will buy a DVD for themselves, or at least spread positive word.

Torrents should be viewed the same. But why aren’t they? The difference is the quality of the film being produced. Because I believe in the product I create, I want as many people exposed to it as possible, for free if needed, as I believe my films will create fans and grow a wider audience. I’ve had college students change their majors to environmental studies because of seeing “Blue Gold”, and an activist with terminal cancer using his last months of life organizing hundreds of free worldwide screenings. Why would I want to hide a film that creates such a reaction in an audience? How would that benefit me?

Good filmmakers are not afraid to have their films seen, they fight to have them seen. They pay thousands of dollars for the ‘honor’ of screening them for free at film festivals, so why not embrace screening them for free online with no ’submission fee’ required?

How, then, do ‘bad’ films become hurt by torrents? I believe it is because of the timing.

Whereas Netflix Watch Instantly will only be available ‘after’ the theatrical release and DVD sales, torrent leaks make the film available for mass online blogging reviews and word-of-mouth ‘before’ the film is for sale to a paying audience.

Why is that a problem? If it is a good film, I don’t think it is. It only spreads a pre-marketing buzz for the upcoming official release.

But distributors of bad and mediocre films depend solely on a paying audience’s misconception that they are paying to watch a good film, when they are not. Via mass marketing, trailers, posters, and paying high fees to star actors, distributors of bad films are betting all their money on one thing; getting as many people to pay to see the film the opening weekend in a theater before that disgruntled, unsatisfied audience tells all of their friends to avoid their bad film.

If you think logically just a second, it’s ridiculous to judge a film’s quality at all from the opening weekend, because nobody has seen the film yet to judge it! The opening weekend only demonstrates how much money was spent on advertising and the stars. That’s it. Yet you will notice all of the industry reviews and charts of the ’success’ of a film looks primarily at the opening weekend versus the long-term results. Why is the system set up like this?

I and many other film fans feel the quality of storytelling in films has deteriorated at an alarming rate since the 1970-mid 1980s. Of course there are rare gems each year we all look forward to re-watching, but in general the quality of film product being produced is mediocre at best. Why? I remember Kathleen Kennedy, a great producer, visiting my film school Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and explaining that a film’s ’success’ was judged during the 1970-mid 1980s by the long term box-office, not the opening weekend. About week five, after the audience has had a chance to discuss the film, positively or negatively with their friends, did a film audience attendance peak.

Why did the shift occur? One reason is certainly that as distributors were willing to put more money into pre-advertising, usually to at least match the budget of the film itself, then theater owners were somewhat safer booking those films, even if they were bad, so they could make a lot of money on opening weekend, drop the film after people realized they were robbed, and replace it with a new bad film that has had an insane amount of money put behind it. This could conceivably make the theater owner more money than waiting four weeks to see which films were going to live and which were not. This became especially true as less and less great films were being made. So it is a chicken and egg problem. Regardless, why are bad films made?

Again it’s completely subjective what has happened since the 1970-1980s period of filmmaking in America. Personally I believe film used to be considered a director’s medium and now it is considered a Producer’s medium. How?

A great Producer is priceless and I only hope to work with more, having worked with Si Litvinoff and Mark Achbar already. But increasingly the credit “Producer” has become a bargaining chip that any executive who recommends a script to another demands they receive, so you end up with fifteen “Producers” on a film who did no real Producing (To Produce is a verb, remember). So we end up with real Producers as angry with this problem as Directors.

There was a great Producer’s Guild of America campaign where George Lucas made a PR poster saying “Even in Science Fiction, the Fiction ends when the credits role” or something like that. Any person can claim to be a producer. An ex-military Wall Street broker can wake up and claim to be a “Producer”. No questions asked. So these type of people do not want to hire good filmmakers. I know of so many such “Producers” who will not hire a Writer/ Director because they want to control the film even though they don’t have the creativity or talent to. They would rather hire six Writers and two Directors to maintain the drivers seat. The result? Bad to mediocre films. Sound familiar?

Regardless of ‘why’ films have deteriorated, I believe nobody goes into a film wanting to make a bad or medicore film. These self-declared “Producers” feel they have enough talent to juggle mutliple filmmakers and make it work, but then don’t. I also believe that subconsciously they and their distributors know their film is not great. This is why they are willing to spend $20 million on a star actor and hundreds of millions on advertising. It’s a panic move. They want to try to appear to make money even if ultimately the film loses money. How? By throwing insane amounts of money towards the opening weekend.

Enter a torrent leak. You can see how a bad Producer would panic. They fear that the torrent community will reveal their scam by letting consumers know they will be wasting their money on trash.

I have never self-produced a short film or documentary that has not won international awards and had a strong audience. Huge audience? No, but always devoted. And being a true filmmaker who produces, writes, directs, and edits his film, let me say for the record that no film should ever cost more than $2 million, and that only if people are well paid. With such a budget, a film can and should make its money back and torrents can only help spread the word to make that happen.

It’s when people spend hundreds of millions on one film that it becomes an impossible model, similar to the real estate bubble that recently burst. With everything focused on the opening weekend, it is difficult to really calculate how many of these ‘blockbusters’ actually ever net a real profit after advertising, film prints, and star salaries are factored in.

Torrents threaten to pop that bubble. I, for one, am glad. Why? Because I am bitter towards people who make large budget films? Yes and no. I feel a studio would make more money and safer money by taking $300 million they spend on one film and making 150 independent films and betting that half of those pay for the rest and make profits above the $300 million invested. If that were the model, we’d have more filmmakers, more films, and torrents and Netflix Watch Instantly would be no threat to anyone. It would be, as I said, free marketing.

My second and most recent film that leaked was another issue. It was an unreleased film called “Hacker’s Wanted”, which I did not produce but wrote, directed, and edited. The potential here is almost more rewarding for a filmmaker, to simply have his work seen at all.

I had the honor of meeting my film hero Terry Gilliam on set of “Brothers Grimm” (Matt Damon introduced me as I was a Top 10 Project Greenlight Director). “Brazil” is one of my favorite films, and any who are fans know of the infamous “Battle for Brazil” where the studio simply did not understand the film and wanted to recut it and make a dark surreal comedy-tragedy into a light romantic-comedy. The fight was epic and basically “Brazil” sat on a shelf for years. Gilliam eventually had to take out a full page Variety ad saying “When will you release my film Brazil, Mr. (Producer)”, enter his cut into Los Angeles Film Critics Association where it won Best Picture, and even arrange a private USC screening where the studio sent police to try and get the film print from him.

What if this all happened with the internet out there? With torrent users? I think what just happened with “Hackers Wanted” is a very small humble example of how much easier it would have been for Gilliam to have his film seen. And if he were lucky like me, he wouldn’t even have to leak it! I have no clue who leaked my documentary, a frustrated hacker fan or disgruntled ex-employee of the producer. Who cares. It lives somewhere now. And people can talk. They can blog. They can discuss. They can give life to what was lifeless. If the producers release another cut, great! There is already word-of-mouth leading up to it. Free advertising. How can that be ‘wrong’ in any way?

Ultimately, I believe there is no choice. I believe that given the ease of Netflix and others being streamed to TVs and the impossibility of stopping torrents, the evolution from billion dollar all-or-nothing gambles to greater quantity, lower budget films will happen. Torrents are, if I had to pitch it, “Darwin meets Hollwood” and frankly Hollywood needs an Evolution!

Article from: TorrentFreak.

The file-sharing and anti-piracy world is full of interesting characters, most of whom remain hidden in the shadows. Some individuals are just too large to be contained though, and are either involuntarily thrust into the media spotlight by force or become deliberately high-profile by design.

While many people will be familiar with Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid and Fredrik due to them being featured in countless articles, the pair tend to shy away from too much direct publicity. The same cannot be said of Peter Sunde who rarely misses an opportunity to be in the spotlight, and to great effect it must be said.

The believed owner of MegaUpload, however, makes Peter Sunde look like a shrinking violet.

Kim ‘Kimble’ Schmitz is a quite unbelievable character. Born in 1974 in Germany, he grew to become a computer hacker, successful businessman and convicted criminal. In 1998 Schmitz received two years’ probation for hacking into corporate networks and abusing telephone services but the draw of big money was just around the corner.

In 2001 Schmitz pulled off a huge stock market bluff which netted him a small fortune. After buying shares worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the almost bankrupt LetsBuyIt.com, he announced that he would invest 50 million euros in the company, but in reality he didn’t have the money. His declaration led to the biggest single-day rise on the German stock market which allowed Schmitz to sell his shares and pocket $1.5 million profit. He was arrested for insider-trading in 2002, sentenced to a term of 20 months and given a 100,000 euro fine.

Also in 2001, one of Schmitz’s companies loaned another one 280,000 euros and conveniently both went bust shortly after. Schmitz later pleaded guilty to embezzlement and received another two years probation.

A master of the PR stunt, Schmitz has previously faked his own suicide and also offered a $10 million reward for the capture of Osama Bin Laden. He also claimed to own a fleet of jets but apparently the planes he was photographed with belonged to other people.

A self-confessed car-nut, Schmitz entered the Gumball 3000 rally many times and actually came first in 2001, but his appearances in this event brought even more controversy. According to YouTube videos here and here, Schmitz drove at 240 km/h on a public road in Belgium, ignored stop signs and drove in cycle lanes where one of his friends hit a pedestrian. In another clip he’s seen admitting to bribing the police and deliberately nudging a rival’s Porsche with his Mercedes.

But claims that he also did the private jet ‘trick’ mentioned above when photographed with, allegedly, other peoples’ cars, may have been a little off the mark.

According to a recent report from New Zealand, Schmitz is currently under investigation for using multiple names to register three luxury cars including a Rolls-Royce Phantom convertible. The cars are adorned with personal plates – GOD, WANTED and GUILTY.

The vehicles are registered to an address in Coatesville, New Zealand, which turns out to be a very special venue indeed – Schmitz’s newly-acquired mansion and the country’s most expensive house, a snip at just over $20 million USD.

The mega-money has clearly continued to roll in, with the addition of porn site Megarotic and the site most readers will be familiar with, MegaUpload. Although Schmitz’s connection to these projects has been denied in the past, he was the person who registered the site’s domain name in 2005 and there are many other links which are difficult to simply brush off.

MegaUpload has become more and more successful in recent times and its growing popularity make it a popular choice with those looking for an alternative to RapidShare. Much of MegaUpload’s system appears to be running from host LeaseWeb in The Netherlands and Carpathia Hosting in the US. In both locations they have many hundreds of IP addresses and servers.

While RapidShare’s huge growth has seen the company become the target for recent legal action, according to information received by TorrentFreak it appears that an apparent expansion of MegaUpload hasn’t gone unnoticed either. French anti-piracy group ALPA has been cranking up the pressure on LeaseWeb in what is being described as a “pre-litigation period”.

If the future of MegaUpload and Kim Schmitz is anywhere as colorful as the past, there will be yet more amazing stories to come.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

After seemingly endless delays, the pervy PC title Cross Days from developer 0verflow was finally released.

Compatible with some delightful USB ‘hands-free’ devices for experiencing ‘climax scenes’ (NSFW: male and female versions) many preferred to obtain the title via unofficial channels. Those that did were in for quite a shock.

A fake version of the game was widely available on file-sharing networks, but when installed it punished the would-be pirates. After gathering highly personal information from the victim’s computer, accompanied by a screenshot of his or her desktop and what they were doing at the time, the malware uploaded the whole lot to a public website.

It was possible to have the stuff taken down, but at a price. Not only would the victim have to apologize for downloading the ‘game’ for free, but they would also have to pay money to their tormentors.

But, as they say, what goes around, comes around.

According to a Japanese media report, this week two men were arrested on suspicion of creating the Cross Days malware and using it to extort money from victims.

Kenzo Oka, 27, of Tokyo, and an unnamed second man, 20, were arrested earlier this month on suspicion of defrauding several people out payments of around $64 each to have their personal details removed from the website.

While writing computer viruses isn’t a crime in Japan, extorting cash with them is. The pair become the first to be arrested in the country while using a virus as a tool to commit fraud.

In March 2007, we reported on another bizarre piece of Japanese code which taunted file-sharers, threatened to report them to the police and even threatened to kill them.

The author of that code was eventually arrested for breaching copyright – because he used cartoon graphics in the virus without permission.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Following its 2009 out-of-court settlement with Ireland’s largest ISP Eircom, last week IRMA – representing EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – confirmed the pair would start tracking, warning and disconnecting alleged file-sharers.

Armed with tracking data from Danish company DtecNet, IRMA would begin supplying the ISP with suspected infringing IP addresses during a 3 month pilot period.

Now, in line with their promise to Eircom that they would not leave the ISP at a competitive disadvantage, IRMA are now going after yet more ISPs in an attempt to force them into the same ‘3 strikes’ style agreement.

According to a report this morning, IRMA now has the mobile broadband sector in their spotlight. Yesterday the music industry group – which controls 90% of Ireland’s recorded music – filed papers against mobile operators O2 and 3.

“O2 can confirm that it has been served with a plenary summons by solicitors acting on behalf of record labels EMI, Warner, Universal and Sony,” the company told Irish Times. “O2 is currently reviewing the issue, but does not believe it is legally liable in relation to illegal filesharing activities that any of its customers might seek to engage in.”

A spokeswoman for 3 Ireland confirmed that they too had received legal papers.

Two other mobile ISPs, Vodafone and Eircom subsidiary Meteor, seem to be cooperating with IRMA and are said to be in “advanced negotiations” with the group.

To go after Ireland’s mobile ISPs is an interesting move by IRMA. When disconnections were threatened under the UK’s then Digital Economy Bill, many individuals stated they would use 3G wireless dongles to evade any such ban. Apart from their higher costs of operation, they do have a significant benefits for would-be file-sharers. Operators have stated that due to the way the system is set up, it could be almost impossible to match tracked IP addresses with specific customers.

In the meantime, cable operator UPC continues to dig in its heels by refusing to cooperate with IRMA. Its case will be heard in the High Court in June.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

In common with BitTorrent and other file-sharing services, RapidShare has steadily increased its user base in recent years. The site has hundreds of millions of visitors each month and is listed among the 50 most-used sites on the Internet.

For years the company behind the popular file-hoster has been led by CEO/COO Bobby Chang, who worked in the telecommunication business before joining RapidShare. In his work Chang had the difficult task of pleasing the site’s users as well as copyright holders, who were increasingly threatening the company with legal action.

Today, RapidShare has announced that Chang will leave the company with immediate effect, but in mutual agreement. The reason cited is that Chang would no longer be the right person to successfully lead the company.

“We will continue RapidShare’s success story, faster and more consistently. We believe we can better achieve this goal with different leadership – for the benefit of our customers, partners and users,” Christian Schmid, RapidShare’s inventor and founder said in a comment.

RapidShare does not give any details on what the future course of the company will be, but the sudden breakup seems to indicate that there have been significant differences in opinion between Chang and other people on the company’s board.

Recently we revealed that Chang had sent out a letter to entertainment industry representatives, looking for partnerships and licensing deals. In this letter he labeled some of RapidShare’s users as ‘criminals’ who would see their accounts terminated more rapidly.

According to Chang, RapidShare would be working on a changed course where they would focus increasingly at converting illegal downloaders into paid customers. Whether or not the plans described in this letter have anything to do with Chang’s sudden departure is open for speculation.

RapidShare’s founder Christian Schmid will take over business management for the time being. He is expected to announce several changes for the benefit of users in the coming weeks.

Article from: TorrentFreak, in the morning.

Following the passing of the UK’s Digital Economy Act in early April, BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor has been speaking with Billboard about how he sees the next steps for tacking file-sharing in the UK.

Although so-called “educational letters” will be sent out to those suspected of illicit file-sharing towards the end of this year and “technical measures” (throttling/account suspension) imposed if illicit sharing isn’t reduced by around 70% in the next 18 to 24 months, Taylor says that the music industry will probably have to start suing people again in the meantime.

Due to the fact that ISPs will have to keep lists of those subscribers who have received the greatest number of educational letters, ultimately the music industry will be able to identify, they say, those who being most stubborn to change.

Armed with this information they will be able to proceed to court to obtain their real-life names and addresses. Taylor says that there is a possibility that even at the early stages of the letter sending campaign, the music industry will use this information to start suing the “most egregious infringers”.

Taylor insists that the BPI will take this action reluctantly, and would have preferred that the problem be solved through the early introduction of technical measures, but that wasn’t to be.

“Government disagreed with us, regrettably, and decided not to bring the technical measures into effect immediately and has said to us that it expects us to bring legal cases and that it will take that into account when it looks at whether or not to introduce technical measures,” he explained.

To this end, Taylor said that the BPI may well have to sue people “at some level”, a course of action that he claims the Government expects of them in advance of its decision to implement technical measures.

Of course, suing file-sharers is something that the BPI did before back in 2004. Taylor admitted that they were unable to carry out that campaign on a level which would become a deterrent to the masses but said at least this time round they will be able to target those who have offended the most and failed to change their ways.

This approach raises another interesting situation. Rather than just about anyone being a target for litigation – potentially for downloading a single album for example – the BPI is now saying that only the worst offenders will be targeted for action. Since their legal resources are limited, this could only conceivable aimed at the top 1 or 2% of aggressive file-sharers.

So, since many file-sharers download a hell of a lot more music than they’d ever really need, it could be argued that by only downloading the stuff that they really want, their chances of ending up at the top of the heap are very slim indeed.

This would of course result in a sizable reduction in file-sharing transfers, but would it drive people into music stores? It seems unlikely.

Article from: TorrentFreak, in the morning.

“Introducing heavy penalties such as those in France to disconnect people from the Internet is wrong and does not work,” Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said recently as he openly criticized the French 3-strikes ’solution’ to illicit file-sharing. He says the answer lies with a more creative approach.

“A proposal I have made for some time without being heard is the creation of a great national site where people can legally download music for free,” says Maroni. He believes the cost of such a service could be met by advertisers and sponsors.

A keen musician himself with his band 51 District, Maroni says that he listens to music on his iPod wherever he goes. “I do not spend a day without music,” he noted. But where Maroni gets his music from has been raising a few eyebrows.

Speaking with Italian media, the Minister admitted that he’s a pirate himself, as he downloads illicit music from the Internet. Although there are probably many, many more “in the closet”, to our knowledge, this is the first ‘pirate’ confession by a European minister.

Maroni, who already admitted to illicit file-sharing back in 2006, is unrepentant and says he sees his actions as a provocation. He’s making a stand because he believes that people should be able to download for free, a method of obtaining music he insists is not a crime.

The Minister said that acquiring music in this way is not the same as stealing from a supermarket, noting that all people are doing is taking a copy from someone else over a network.

“It is as if the owner of this computer where I’m going to take the music from did a copy of a CD he bought and gave it to me, something that normally happens when we buy a CD and make copies for our friends,” he added.

FIMI, the Italian branch of the IFPI, were cleared disappointed by Maroni’s comments.

“A few million music tracks legally downloaded for free, over a billion click-free videos on Youtube by officers of Italian artists, more than 90% of individual files sold at less than one euro from dozens of platforms. The Minister should consider the risk to jobs and loss of revenues to the state because of digital piracy,” the music group said in a statement.

Maroni’s comments follow in the wake of a recent Communications Regulatory Authority report which concluded that not only does piracy fail to create the economic damages claimed by the entertainment industries, but repressive policies and monitoring are unconstitutional, unnecessary and harmful.

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