Last month it was confirmed that BitTorrent Inc., the company behind the uTorrent and Mainline clients, had been acquired by TRON.

This week TRON founder Justin Sun revealed that he’s considering building some kind of system, presumably into his uTorrent and Mainline clients, that will reward people if they’re sharing particularly well.

The theory is that if people are incentivized to seed for longer, they will share more and content will stay available for much longer. The big question is whether things will turn out that way once currency starts flying around.

Right now, the vast amount of sharing carried out on public BitTorrent networks is motivated by very little other than obtaining content. This is because large volumes of users jump onto torrents with the intention of getting whatever content they need and deleting the torrent soon after it reaches 100%.

Of course, they can’t do this alone, so other people just like them assist by default, with everyone’s BitTorrent clients busily uploading at the same time as they’re downloading. Others in the swarm, the rarer ‘hardcore’ seeders, stick around much longer than everyone else, making sure that the content is shared among all and then staying after everyone else has gone home.

So what happens one day, when these generous guys turn on their torrent clients and find a button saying: “Get your sharing benefits here”? Once they realize that there’s money (virtual or otherwise) to be made, it’s likely that many – if they can benefit anonymously – will take the opportunity. Why wouldn’t they? It’s absolutely free.

But there are issues. The happy volunteer – who up until now didn’t ask for a penny – is now signed up to a business relationship with this torrent client. He seeds a lot and he gets paid, but suddenly he has a robot boss counting the beans. It’s a significant shift in culture for what is currently a casual, altruistic, and effective system.

But let’s forget all that for a moment. Anyone can get paid for seeding you say? Right, let’s crunch numbers because this might be a decent business proposition. I’m awful with figures but shall we just get a couple of dozen fat-piped seedboxes on the case for the first month and see how this goes?

The point is that if there is money to be made, every man and his dog will want a piece of the action. Sadly, however, it’s likely that many will leave disappointed after being bullied out by the serious players with the heavy bandwidth artillery.

A similar phenomenon can be witnessed on some smaller private trackers when a few big guns step in with their fast seedboxes and no one with a regular connection is able to build a decent sharing ratio due to a shortage of leechers. Of course, public swarms are bigger but that just means more bandwidth for the professionals to supply.

This problem could be countered by not paying seeders too much but if the rewards aren’t useful, people might not bother to sign up in the first place. It will be a delicate balancing act for sure.

A more important question, perhaps, is how the introduction of financial incentives will affect the mindset of the regular user. Of course, some will try to jump aboard the paid seeding scheme too, but of those who don’t, what will their perception of the rewards system be?

Will they simply ignore it while grabbing content and seeding as usual, or will they suddenly perceive seeding as a business arrangement and therefore justification for ending all of their ‘unpaid’ torrents at 100%? After all, people are professionally seeding now while getting rewarded, so why bother to contribute?

Beyond the few details announced this week, we have no idea what plans TRON has for BitTorrent but considering its focus on currency, you can be sure that any plan involves generating wealth at some point. Until now, BitTorrent Inc. has done that too but they have never put the act of sharing at the heart of the action.

That the torrent sharing mechanism itself is being touted as part of TRON’s plans has the potential to stir up a hornets’ nest, particularly among ‘free’ file-sharing advocates. Not to mention that the protocol wasn’t designed with financial benefits complicating the formula in mind.

Then there’s the monitoring. If people are to get paid, their contribution to the TRON/BitTorrent ecosystem will need to be tracked and reported back to the TRON system. Only when all this data gathering has been carried out will anyone get paid, even if it is in an experimental currency. Is this the kind of intrusion most BitTorrent users expect?

The final big question relates to where this business model goes after paid sharing. If enough users can be incentivized to earn TRX tokens by seeding, isn’t it logical to presume they’ll want to start spending them too?

Sun has already hinted at the possibility of some kind of content marketplace where currency could presumably get spent. However, is anyone confident that these tokens won’t, at some point, be handed over in exchange for faster download speeds or other file-sharing features?

There seems to be a real risk that the introduction of financial reward into a previously free sharing equation will only encourage selfish behavior among others. That’s the last thing that the BitTorrent ecosystem needs so TRON will need to be careful where they take this and how quickly.

Of course, if things get too restrictive people will be free to jump ship onto other clients such as qBittorrent or Deluge, which will still work no matter what TRON decides to do. But could there be issues there too?

If one chooses to be alarmist and take a worst case scenario, there’s always the prospect of future changes that might see uTorrent favoring other uTorrent clients over those offered by outsiders. Hopefully, that will never happen, but few people believed that getting paid for seeding would ever be a thing either, so all options are open.

Finally, (and being rather more positive for a moment) there’s always the possibility that TRON is the shot in the arm BitTorrent needed. Perhaps it’ll be a roaring capitalist success with none of the downsides of other financially-motivated markets. We’ll have to wait to find out.

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For as long as computer software has existed in commerical form, pirates have been keen to reap the benefits without handing over cash.

This is particularly true for video games which have been enthusiastically copied for several decades no matter whether they’ve been made available on tape, floppy discs, CDs, DVDs or digital downloads.

Stopping pirates is no easy task although that doesn’t stop companies from trying. Denuvo is perhaps the most recognizable system and one of the most fiendish. However, there are other ways of stopping pirates in their tracks without completely alienating your customer base.

Earlier this week TF received a tip about a torrent on The Pirate Bay. It links to the city builder game ‘Depraved‘ which is ordinarily available on Steam. Interestingly, the top comment on the torrent indicates that the release may not work as intended.

“This copy contains the developers DRM whereby after building a warehouse, it will start to slowly fill up with pirate hats which are irremovable thereby making the warehouse slowly useless,” the comment reads.

Depraved is created by Germany-based development team Evil Bite, which was founded in 2015 and consists of just two individuals, Danilo and David Tondl.

Speaking with TF, Evil Bite confirms that the claimed ‘pirate hat’ DRM does indeed exist.

“The pirate hats protection is real. It is a really cheap protection, but what can I say, it works,” Danilo says.

“We wanted to give the player a kind of demo. So the game works a bit until the pirate hats appear with a nice tooltip ‘Please support our 2 man development team’.”

Despite describing the protection as “cheap”, Danilo doesn’t want to reveal too much about how it works. However, the idea wasn’t to completely stop pirates but to let them get to a point where they’ve at least had a chance to test the game, hopefully in advance of a genuine purchase. This also involved fooling those who remove the protection from games.

“The protection waits in the background and ‘blocks’ or informs the player later in the game. That way the cracker thinks: ‘oh, ok it is working’ and moves on to the next title. I guess no cracker has time to play the game a couple of hours to test if there is some other protection,” he reveals.

The practice of using copy protection to convert potential pirates is probably the only type of DRM that isn’t universally pilloried by legitimate and pirate players alike. Evil Bite is pragmatic about the situation and hopes that its light-hearted approach is able to win over those considering a purchase.

“We really believe that there are people in the world who don’t have the money for such a game but on the other side there are people have the money but never bought a game because it is so easy to ‘steal’ it and in the end of the day it is our money we are losing,” Danilo notes.

“For us this DRM is more a joke than a real DRM and ‘money saver’. And like I said earlier, it is more like a demo. A lot of pirates want to test a game first before they buy it even with the Steam refund system.

“Is it worth it? I don’t know. We had at least one player who thought it was funny and bought the game because of it,” he concludes.

Danilo is the first to admit that the concept of dropping some pranks into a copy-protection method isn’t new. Several other developers have done similar things in the past, with varying levels of success (1,2).

What’s absolutely certain, however, is that this kind of approach towards copy-protection is generally better tolerated than that taken by the infamous Denuvo.

With the system criticized for reportedly being resource-hungry, the company behind Denuvo recently resorted to filing a criminal complaint against Bulgaria-based cracker Voksi.

Until last week, Voksi had been dismantling Denuvo’s efforts with relative ease so if nothing else, the company’s actions suggest that there is actually no technological solution to the piracy problem. It also means that its piracy problems are likely to return, sooner rather than later.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eZmYBmmWEY&w=560&h=315]

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As one of the most popular consumer items in the whole world, music is important to billions of citizens globally. It’s also surrounded by a giant industry that for years has complained bitterly about online piracy.

More recently, however, there have been signs that illegally grabbing music from the Internet is not as prevalent as it once was. A new report from market research and data analytics firm YouGov only adds weight to that apparent shift.

The headline stat from the company’s Music Report is that just one in ten Brits are currently downloading music illegally. That’s down from almost double (18%) that figure five short years ago.

While this is already a decent reduction, YouGov says that the 10% figure is set to further decrease in the years to come.

More than six out of ten (63%) illegal music downloaders predict they’ll still be pirating in five years’ time but a significant 22% believe they won’t. Just over a third (36%) acknowledge that using unofficial sources for music is becoming more difficult but the summary doesn’t offer reasons why.

YouGov reports that the decrease in piracy can in part be attributed to the rise of legal streaming services such as Spotify. Indeed, its survey reveals that more than six out of ten (63%) former Brit music pirates now rely on a legal streaming service for their fix.

“It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it. And the cost is not prohibitive,” one respondent said. “Spotify has everything from new releases to old songs, it filled the vacuum, there was no longer a need for using [an] unverified source,” added another.

While the shift to legal services is certainly encouraging for the labels, millions of music consumers still obtain their content illegally.

According to YouGov, just over half of this group (51%) say that “exclusives” restricted to a single platform are an irritating factor with 44% claiming that they only download illegally when they can’t find the content elsewhere.

“While illegal downloads still present a significant challenge to the music industry, there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel,” says Justin Marshall, Associate Director, YouGov.

“Our research reveals a change in behavior, with those that previously attained music by unlawful means now being enticed by the low costs and ease of use associated with streaming.”

Marshall says that since consumers are increasingly satisfied with legal services, trawling the Internet for illegal copies is no longer high on their agenda.

“Whether or not streaming is what finally banishes illegal downloads remains to be seen, but there are encouraging signs,” he concludes.

In an effort to appreciate the nuances behind the figures, TorrentFreak asked YouGov for a copy of the report. Sadly we were told that it won’t appear publicly since it’s part of a wider study being made available to clients.

That leaves the question of how “stream-ripping” (downloading music from sites like YouTube onto a user’s machine) fits into this overall decrease in music piracy. While the record labels once considered file-sharing sites and services as the work of the devil, today they’re much more likely to be heard complaining about stream-ripping and how this affects revenues.

It’s not clear whether stream-ripping is considered an illegal download as far as the report goes. However, there are plenty of signs that downloading music in this manner is gaining traction among younger people for whom YouTube is often the default music source. The labels are extremely keen to bring this kind of activity to an end.

All that said and despite the persistent piracy problem, the popularity of legal services, especially among pirates, cannot be ignored.

A report released by MUSO found that 91% of all pirates already have a streaming subscription, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify or Apple Music. That’s a higher rate than their non-pirating counterparts, of which less than 80% subscribe to legal services.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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We hereby present you the third and last alpha build of Kodi v18 as we are going forward entering beta stage. This release is a continuation of the previous two with our continous focus on solving bugs and usability problems. So far it has proved to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it’s not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.

Currently included

A full changelog is nearly impossible to create and in this release article we will only cover the basics. For a more extensive list you can visit our wiki page v18 (Leia) changelog which will be update along the way. This third alpha release contain no big new features as we are focus on bugfixing only.

Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.

Stability and usability is key

In general the whole stability has been improved quite a lot. The times you still get glitches or occasional crashes haven been reduced due to just ripping out not so well coded parts and replaced with a more structured design and standard. Not that the old code was bad however over time new insights were gained and having newer code standards just make it better. Untangling all parts or components and make them behave better next to each other has been one of the biggest efforts done so far.

Current available skins

Due to changes in how Kodi works skins need to be updated for each release. As of this moment we have the following ones have been update by their developers and are readily available from our repository.

Adnoic, Aeon Nox 5, Andromeda, Black Glass Nova, Chroma, Confluence, fTV, Grid, Mimic, Nebula, Omni, Rapier, Sio2, Xperience1080

More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.

The story continues

Although we don’t really have a clear future plan or clear cut goals (except making a great media center) we would welcome any developer who wants to spend time on getting Kodi better in every way. Either improving the core code to newer standards, fixing bugs or implementing a new feature we haven’t thought of. Compared to years ago the code has become better to understand and follow for newcomers to get started. Once we get something written down of certain to reach goals we will certainly share them.

A great improvement has been made on the documentation that explains how to compile and work on the core code for Kodi. We highly recommend to read the article Kodi’s GitHub codebase new face and better documentation.

Release time

You might also wonder when we will actually release this as a final version? Currently we don’t really have a set time however it should at least be somewhere this year so. There’s still enough room left for improvements however we could change our minds at any point in time and just call it ready enough to start the release cycle. In short we can’t say or promise anything. For now we will start doing the Alpa release on a regular bases to bring further balance to the force.

That’s about it for now and we’ll go back at improving this upcoming v18 release. Should you wish to give it a try a new version is readily available each day as well as nightly version. We can certainly recommend trying it out however take in mind that it’s not fully production and living room ready yet (take a backup). So far a guestimate of several tens of thousands users already use it so it can’t be that bad can it. You can get it from the download page clicking on the platform of choice and hitting the “pre release” tab. For Android and Windows we have an easy to use download add-on which you can find in our repository.

Go to the Official download page and choose the platform of choice and you will find these builds under the pre release tab.

If you do appreciate our work feel free to give a small donation so we can continue our effort. Just find the big “Donate” button at the top of the website.

May the force be with you…..

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Over the past decade there have been dozens of detailed reports researching the prevalence and effects of piracy.

With a wide array of results, it’s hard to draw uniform conclusions but as the research adds up, stable patterns start to emerge.

The Global Online Piracy Study, published by the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law (IViR) today, is an important contribution to this field.

The research is the result of extensive consumer surveys among 35,000 respondents, including over 7,000 minors, in 13 countries. Combined with similar data collected in 2014, it shows how online piracy habits are changing.

One of the main conclusions is that the number of online pirates is decreasing in most of Europe. This decline is visible in France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. Of all surveyed countries, only Germany saw a slight increase in the number of pirates.

In the surveyed countries across Europe, the piracy rate among Internet users is the highest in Spain, but this is topped by Brazil, Thailand, and Indonesia in the full sample.

Number of Internet users accessing content illegally

TorrentFreak spoke to Dr. Joost Poort, one of the authors of the report, who notes that pirates and legal users are largely the same people. In fact, roughly 95% of all pirates also consume content legally, and they typically spend twice as much as their non-pirating counterparts.

This doesn’t mean that pirates are rich, of course. In fact, the research shows that a higher per capita income is linked to a lower number of pirates per legal users. In other words, ‘poorer’ countries have relatively more pirates.

Lower income = more pirates

When people are asked about the reason why they pirate, the cost factor is also frequently mentioned. Pirating is free which is convenient for those who have little to spend. But does that mean that it also leads to a decrease in sales? Is piracy hurting revenues?

According to the research, there’s an overall negative effect of piracy on media sales. However, this doesn’t apply to minors. The latter makes sense, as that group has relatively little to spend anyway.

“This study confirms earlier studies in finding statistical evidence that illegal consumption of music, books, and games displaces legal consumption,” the report reads.

“However, the displacement coefficients are surrounded with substantial uncertainty. Separating these results between minors and adults suggests that displacement occurs for adults and not for minors.”

What’s also worth highlighting is that piracy doesn’t affect all media and entertainment types the same. It even benefits some revenue streams.

For example, the data suggest that every ten music albums pirated leads to three extra concert or festival visits. However, at the same time, it leads to a significant drop in physical album sales and digital downloads, while music streaming remains unaffected.

For video content, including movies, online piracy doesn’t appear to affect sales of physical copies or digital downloads. Here, however, cinema visits and online streams are severely impacted.

“For live concerts and music festivals, a positive sampling effect is found. For audio-visual content, no such sampling seems to occur for the cinema, which suffers from statistically significant displacement, as do digital streams.”

To give an illustration, the data suggest that ten downloaded movies would in general lead to four missed cinema visits.

While the research provides evidence for the negative effects of piracy, the authors don’t see any evidence that stricter copyright laws or enforcement against individuals are a good solution.

Instead, legal content providers should focus on making their work readily available for a good price.

“In terms of policy, obviously hunting down the industry’s largest customers is not the best of ideas. Rather, push for better availability, affordability, and findability of legal content. Affordability of large platforms in lower-income countries is certainly an issue,” Poort tells us.

“If you must do something in terms of enforcement, website blocking seems to be a much better strategy than going after consumers. There is some solid looking evidence for effectiveness in the UK.”

Finally, it is worth noting that this is a follow-up to a controversial EU-funded study. That report made headlines last year because the European Commission held it back. The latest version is funded by Google which had no such restrictions.

“This builds on the EU study that caught some traction because the commission was very reluctant to publish it. This time, Google financed it and respected our academic interests and independence so much better than the Commission did…,” Poort says.

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A copy of Global Online Piracy Study is available here (pdf).

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