Founder of the world's largest bittorrent music site calls it a day

In a post entitled "Three years, four months, and twenty days", at 2:30am (BST), WhatMan, the founder of What.CD stepped down.  What.CD was one of the sites which grew from the ashes of the OiNK closure, and even went on to surpass its predecessor.

I've included the full post from the man who designed the Ocelot code which helps power many Tracker sites today:

Three years, four months, and twenty days

...Is a long time on the Internet. In that time, I've watched this site grow from a tiny tbsource site, buckling under the load of a few dozen users. to its current form - a record-breaking Internet juggernaut with over a million torrents. I've been with this site as it's moved country due to copyright threats, thwarted database crashes and hacking attempts, developed two cutting-edge codebases from scratch, hosted thousands of independent releases from artists worldwide, and passsed milestone after milestone, carving its way into BitTorrent fame. It's been one of the greatest experiences of my life, to not just watch this development as a passive observer, but to play a central role in it. 

Unfortunately, times change. I've always been willing to give all of my free time to this site, but as of several months ago, free time has become a luxury of the past. The less time I spend here, the less qualified I am to decide the future of the site and lead it in that direction. In these past few months, these duties have been impeccably overtaken by the current management, and I feel entirely comfortable leaving the site in their more than capable hands. It is thus, with great regret, that I have chosen to resign from my long-standing post as sysop of this site. 

To all the current and ex-staff: Even though we've occasionally differed in opinion, you guys are some of the nicest and most intelligent people I've ever had the good fortune to meet and work with. I'll miss all of you. 

To the users: From the casual downloaders to the hardcore rippers and uploaders, this place is an ecosystem that needs all of you to survive. We couldn't have gotten anywhere without you. 

To anyone I've ever insulted, hurt, or ignored (I hope there aren't too many of you): I extend my deepest apologies. I've always tried to maintain a level head, but I'd be lying if I said that the stress, responsibility, conflicting requests from different camps, and huge volume of PMs didn't get to me at times. 

I'd love to write more, but this has been hard enough already. If nothing else, I guess, I'd like to be remembered as the badass who coded ocelot. 

It's been a hell of a ride, What. I know you'll do fine without me. 

--WhatMan

We wish him well for the future.

Copyright/wrong 2

It's been interesting to watch the media fallout and the Internet spillover following the recent Pirate Bay trial. I recently signed up the Open Rights Group's listserve and have been watching my email inbox fill up with lots of informative titbits which seem related to my earlier post on the way in which copyright law is inappropriately proposed.

The major story that has had the blogosphere and twitterverse talking today seems to be about the supposed bias of the Pirate Bay judge, Tomas Norström. Torrentfreak has suggested that there are a number of links between the 'guilty' verdict and the affiliation of Norström with a number of pro-copyright groups. This has raised a few eyebrows and rumours of demands for a retrial.

In other news, there were numerous reports pointing to a Nordic study which suggests that pirates are about 10 times more likely to purchase copyright material than non-pirates. The study looked at over 1900 people over the age of 15 and found that those who use music download services were more likely to buy music than those that didn't. This comes on the back of an earlier Canadian study from 2006 which suggested that P2P users buy more music than is typically conceded.

Author, activist and co-editor of Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow, has recently posted an article on the nefarious activities of the pro-copyright groups over at Interent Evolution which is well worth a read. In it he discusses the public and private meetings which go on between pro-copyright lobbyists (IFPI, RIAA, etc) at the United Nations level, in relation to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

For those of you wondering as to the outcome of my letter to the MEPs regarding copyright-term extension act, I have received an acknowledgement from one of them. More on that story as it breaks.

EDIT - it seems that the proposed copyright term extension has been passed and now moves forward to the Council of Ministers. The full details can be found over at the ORG site.

Just for fun, why don't you pay a visit to www.thepirategoogle.com to look for music, film and other files. The site isn't affiliated with Google but it has been mocked up to save you the hassle of using Google to find torrent. Remember, part of the The Pirate Bay defence was that they were a search engine like Google, pointing to links for related material. Google can be used for much the same so ... when are media industries going after the biggest fish?

File-sharers eat too much cake?

An article in today's Guardian by Jack Schofield highlights the problems posed by too many committed peer-to-peer networkers squeezing the precious bandwidth of ISPs. He appears to take umbrage at the fact that these peer-to-peer networkers "think it's perfectly OK to grab three quarters of the communal internet bandwidth" and are "defiant" in their rights to do so as they are frequently paying for services offering them exactly that - unlimited connections, free from usage caps. This also has to be set against the reality that many ISPs do not offer equivalent upload speeds when compared to download speeds. My Virgin Media 20Mbit connection certainly doesn't:

There is a valid point in this argument, namely that bandwidth is limited, despite the advertised claims of numerous ISPs, and that network load brought about by constant peer-to-peer filesharing impinges on those users who do not participate in this type of activity. What kinds of solutions are there to this problem?

• prevent people from being able to share files by disconnection them?
• introduce a bandwidth 'capping' scheme?
• improve the network capacity by laying more cables?
• replace the exisiting cable network with fiber optic?

In the interests of net neutrality I am oppossed to the first option on the grounds that it would involve a fitlering scheme that involves close monitering of what sites customers are visiting and what traffic passes through the network (already in place on some networks I suspect: Virgin Media, I'm looking at you). Whether or not this is done to provide targeted advertising (eg Phorm) or for monitoring the distribution of digital music (BPI & Virgin Media), the implications are far reaching, especially when MEPs voted against the disconnection of file-sharers recently. This raises the thorny question of 'should ISPs be responsible for policing the internet use of their customers?'

The second option has already been introduced by a number of ISPs (once again, Virgin Media, I'm looking at you). Traffic shaping seeks to cap the amount of data a user can upload and download within a given time of day. Once a threshold has been reached, the ISP essentially throttles the connection making larger downloads very slow. This is a distinctly unpleasant practice for families who own multiple computers in their homes and have large connections in order to cope with the demands of, say, a family in which one person may be downloading a game via the legitimate Steam service or others like Xbox Live and WiiWare. Combine this with the legitimate purchase of music, TV and film content from the iTunes store, as well as visiting video streaming sites like BBC iPlayer or the HD channels of YouTube and Vimeo, and you can easily push at the limits of the usage cap. I haven't even mentioned upgrades to operating systems like Vista and OS X (the latter is not known for small download sizes) yet. The idea of unlimited broadband is looking like a far off dream now...

It seems like networks are reluctant to spend more money on digging up roads and upgrading/replacing the existing infrastructure, especially when the business case for providing these expenses seem weak when compared to replacing dial-up with broadband. Will customers really want to pay high premiums for faster data transfer? It seems like the UK broadband infrastructure has been a victim of its own success in recent years. Penetration is high which is good for ISPs in a competitive market but broadband is less exclusive and taken from granted now. Customers expect a certain level of service, especially those customers who have paid for premium packages for many years.

Clearly, there are problems with all of these scenarios. In relation to the improving the network infrastructure Schofield make the analogy that "it's like building more roads to 'solve' the car problem". I'm not sure this is quite so simple especially given that the eco-impact of building more roads for CO2-producing cars doesn't play out so dramatically when alternate solutions for fiber laying exist (such as H2O's decision to use the sewer system to house 100Mbit/s cables). The problem seems to be that the growth of broadband penetration has not been matched by structural reform. 100Mbit/s connection are already de rigour in some nations (eg Sweden, France, South Korea, etc), and the UK may be lagging behind.

There is an argument which suggests that faster technology breeds innovation, which Schofield attributes to Google's Vint Cerf. When usage is restricted, businesses who offer excellent services like Vimeo's HD content or the BBC's iPlayer may find themselves unpopular, especially when customers may have to watch their data use.

It seems like the BitTorrent protocol is being targetted in particular. BitTorrent is a fantastic protocol which allows for the rapid dissemination of files across ring-fenced networks and the wider web more generally. It works so well because of its decentralized nature which males it more efficient than if every person wanting access to a file was to try and get it via FTP. Just look at the problems Mozilla had when attempting to break the official download record for Firefox 3 on June 17th. Demand was 'overwhelming', servers ground to a halt and crashed temporarily. BitTorrent distribution would have circumvented this problem.

There is an assumption that all peer-to-peer traffic is driven by illegal activity when this isn't always the case. Schofield goes so far as to label the protocol as 'poisonous'. There are grounds for criticism when "10% selfishly grab around 75% of the internet's bandwidth", but is it fair to blame the protocol for its ease of use and speed of distribution or those users who want to get the advertised connection speeds they are paying for?

I suspect that there is no easy answer to this question. I'm not even convinced that it (or Schofield) asks the right question. It may be that ISPs need to included a caveat or two in future proclamations, similar to stock market share prices - something along the lines of 'your broadband speed may go up or down in line with the user base of the network'. Can you imagine ISPs offering a sliding scale feature on their front pages showing the impact of having more customers on their network? Then they really would be victims of their own success...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

UK file-sharers beware?

It has been quite some time since the demise of the BitTorrent music tracker, OiNK, following the joint bust by Cleveland police and the combined industry bodies, the IFPI and the BPI back in 2007. At that point, only the site owner, Alan Ellis, was arrested but things have changed. There have been 6 further arrests in the last week.

Three of the arrests were made on Friday 23rd May and three more on Wednesday 28th May. The arrested individuals are five men aged between 19 and 33, and a 28-year-old woman.

As usual, TorrentFreak was first with the news:

Suspects were taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints. According to our sources, they were arrested on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry” although this hasn’t yet been confirmed by the police.

Initial reports were viewed with skepticism by many torrent site users. SOme even went so far as to doubt the credibility of early reports. Knifeboy over at Waffles.fm said:

I'll need a more trustworthy newssource before I could even comment on this (2008-05-30 18:55:58 BST)

However, it didn't take too long for the reality of the events to take hold. The Register maanged to get the following statement from the BPI:

The BPI and IFPI worked with the police in order to close down the OiNK tracker site last October. The illegal online distribution of music, particularly pre-release, is hugely damaging, and as OiNK was the biggest source for pre-releases at the time we moved to shut it down. We provided the information to assist this investigation, but this is now a police matter and we are unable to comment further at this stage.

It is presumed that the police have been wanting the former users to provide them with the account passwords so that details can be matched up with the ISP/IP details. Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act can be used by police to force suspects to disclose encryption keys and passwords. Failure to comply with with a section 49 order carries a prison sentence of up to five years. One wonders how long the excuse of password fatigue will last?

In the US last year, single mother Jammie Thomas became the first individual to be successfully prosecuted by the RIAA for copyright infringement. She was ordered to pay $222,000 (£113,085) in damages after being found guilty of illegal file-sharing. The fine amounted to $9,250 (£4,711) for each of the 24 tracks she was prosecuted over.

However, the recent UK arrests are the first time British police have taken direct action against individual users of a file-sharing site (source).

The forums of popular private torrent tracking communities have been buzzing with rumours as to who can next expect a call from the police. Some have gone so far as to claim that this is evidence that the police have very little evidence to go on. It must be noted that what follows is based on little more than web-gossip and second guessing of the police's motivations.

One theory which seems popular suggests think the only reason people are being arrested now is because Allan Ellis' court date is July 1st (after being extended twice) and the authorities, knowing they don't have anything more than perhaps civil charges to bring against him, are trying to intimidate other users of the site into giving them additional info. It has been claimed that the police are asking the recently arrested former users for their passwords and whether they personally knew Ellis.

Filmaddict08 (2008-06-02 02:41:26 GMT) over on Goem has identified a problem for the authorities:

The problem, as far as I see it: if Ellis' trial doesn't go well for the authorities and record companies in Britain, and heavy charges are dropped, they're going to start going after more users. They won't admit defeat and will want to take this as far as possible. Right now it's just in the UK but if the trial doesn't work out the way they want it to - and it probably won't - they may very well hand over all their info to America, i.e. the RIAA.

Whether or not this is true, what is evident is that the paranoia switch has been flicked to "on" mode for a lot of torrent sites and their users as a result of these arrests. This raises the question as to whether or not closed, private torrent communities are actually any safer for users than the open public trackers of sites like Mininova or The Pirate Bay. Are users safer hiding away from huge public scrutiny or are they safer being a a tiny fish in a massive ocean?

One of the dangers of private trackers is that the RIAA/MPAA/IFPI/BPI (delete were appropriate) are regularly attempting to infiltrate the user bases of these communities so as to gather evidence and monitor traffic and releases. Staff are employed whose day job consists of doing exactly what pirates are doing - downloading files. The catch is they are collecting evidence. A reason to be paranoid?

BitTorrent + books = new distribution model?

Not really a new post, but more of an update. TorrentFreak are carrying a story on how authors are increasingly turning to the BitTorrent distribution platform as a way of generating interest which may equate to sales. There's a nice little mention of the difference between the book publishing industry's business model post web-piracy boom in comparison to the music industry's response which is relevant to my MAC281 students doing the first essay on piracy.


I found it a little funny (and not at all ironic) to see Matt Mason's book, The Pirate's Dilemma, appear over on Mininova the day after I ordered a copy of the paperback from Amazon UK (released on May 1st, or May Day, the day often used by protest movements following its association with International Workers' Day and pagan celebrations). Be warned: using the torrent to access copyright material may not be legal in your country.

I'll grab the torrent as well I think. It's the reverse of the new mantra where torrents are meant to stimulate hard copy purchases - I've bought the book and now I'm going to download the torrent. By the way, you can read Chapter 1 of Mason's book legitimately over on his site. If you like what you read, it's always worth a purchase especially at about £8/$16.

NB: MAC281 students attempting the aforementioned question may want to check out this article by Mason too. It deals with the crisis in the entertainment industry post-piracy. It's also where Mason suggests his book may appear as a torrent a full 3 months before it actually happened.

3 strikes and your out ISP policy continues across Europe

TorrentFreak is hosting a couple of noteworthy stories regarding the attempts to police the sharing of copyright material across European internet connections. Following closely on the often misreported story in the UK that the Government is planning a "three strikes and your out" disconnection policy against repeat offenders, it would seem that Norway and Iceland have upset the interests of copyright holders

Japan has already agreed in principle to honour this type of system, on the back of a huge up swell in the use of file-sharing services. Pressure is mounting on ISPs in other countries: on March 10th 2008 the IFPI launched proceedings against Ireland's largest ISP, Eircom, in an attemtp to make the ISP accept responsibility for what its customers do on the network.

The decision in Iceland hinged on the claim that Torrent.is, the largest torrent tracker in the country, was accused of providing easy access to copyright material. However, the ability to search for files which contain meta-data that point to copyright material rather than the actual copyright material itself is not illegal. The case was dismissed (the link to the verdict is here in it's native Icelandic).

The Norwegian case has some similarities. MPAA lawyer Espen Tøndel is demanding that Norwegian ISPs disconnect file-sharers from the internet. However, ISPs are refusing to act as the investigators and judges in cases against their own customers - something which can be costly and labour intensive to pursue. Instead, IKT Norway ( a group acting on behalf of Norwegian service providers) is looking into the legality of private detection firms attempting to connect personal data to the said firms.

The Norwegian and Iceland examples may seem like good news for pirates but it would seem that pressure is still being applied to ISPs and their users, with a number of interested parties intent on lobbying for change. TorrentFreak points to a report by Nick Heath on Silicon which suggests that BPUI and the IFPI are looking to create robotic networks which will detect illegal file-sharing activity. Supposedly, file-sharing using BitTorrent clients has become too easy.

The details of how the detection between illegal and legal file-sharing will be made is still unclear. Even the BBC uses a variant of the BitTorrent protocol for distributing content as part of its dual pronged iPlayer service. Attempts in the US by ISP Comcast to interrupt the BitTorrent protocol with the Sandvine software has been deeply unpopular with customers, with an FCC hearing even claiming that the process was tantamount to the use of 'hacker techniques'. This has been a PR disaster for both Comcast and the company behind Sandvine (who saw their share value plummet by 42% in a single day).

Elsewhere, The Pirate Bay's intentions are loud and clear, especially in their taunting of Hollywood. Matt Mason's blog suggests that major labels and there related interest groups can learn from the pirates and need to adjust their own business practices to best compete. A video of a recent lecture he gave on the issue can be found below


The Register is carrying a story which seeks to impose a 'covenant not to sue' on US college students and alumni caught sharing copyright material. It would seem that the game of cat and mouse is not over yet, but national laws are looking harder to co-opt for the major labels.