Police shuts down Portuguese Trackers

This blog post talks about the news that the Portuguese Police shut down three Portuguese BitTorrent trackers. The whole issue arised many coments in the media and in the blogosphere. All my comments in this post are based on the press releases from four entities, PJ, FEVIP, ASAE and AFP, and the statements they've been giving about this issue (that I had access to, not everything). Also, I'm afraid I'm not using the correct English legal terms in some cases - sorry. Also, I'm not saying here that I approve the actions of those behind the websites and trackers that were shut down. What I am saying is that I abhor disinformation, specially at this level.

The press releases

FEVIP tells that there were two crime claims that led the Police to start this process, one from AFP with FEVIP, and other from FEVIP only. That led PJ and ASAE to start at the 24th of July a fiscal operation on illegal share of music, movies and games via Internet, using six search warrants.

Discrepancies start. According to the Police, the operation was a "fight against Piracy", and they then define Piracy as the reproduction of content that is protected by Authorship Rights via Internet. For that, they claim, they used human and logistic resources, including "digital proof supports", whatever that is (I really wonder what they mean with that). They say that they did this operation to reply to two enquiries (and not crime claims as FEVIP tells about). ASAE's press release complies with Police's, including their definition of "digital piracy".

FEVIP tells us that the operation stopped the illegal sharing of contents using P2P programs and websites, such as www.btuga.pt, www.zetuga.com and www.zemula.org, that were being used by more or less 200.000 users to swap material protected by authorship rights without consent.

The Police talks about a program named P2P (which I don't know of, I only know P2P technology), and also talks about more or less 200.000 users swapping material protected by authorship rights without consent.

ASAE goes further, and talking about the illegal sharing of "the contents of the program P2P", and about the more or less 200.000 users swapping material protected by authorship rights without consent.

FEVIP then talks about a protocol named "Bit Torrent". Goes on saying that Btuga.pt was developing for a long time a service for illegal sharing of files (I would love to see evidence on that).

The Police press release says that they apprehended servers, computers, DVD's, CD's, hard drives and documentation, and then saying that they made a high value apprehension that will change the act of reproducing and swapping content protected by authorship rights. They end asking parents to be alert on their children's usage of the Internet, even if inciting values is something that is really out of their action scope. Investigation follows.

Facts

A lot more could be said about this press releases, but let's stop with that. Here are some facts, for a change:

1) You should ignore almost everything about the media is saying about the case. The piece in the "SIC" TV channel is one great example - don't believe in a single word of what they said.

2) All this case isn't about "sharing illegal content". If the content was illegal, there would be no Copyright laws to be applied about. There's an huge difference between "sharing illegal content" and "illegally sharing content".

3) From the statements given from the three entities involved in this case, there's nothing about "illegally sharing content".

4) There's nothing illegal in the concept of a BitTorrent tracker, as proven in similar cases in other European countries. A BitTorrent tracker provides a number of .torrent files, and those files aren't copyrighted in any way. That being, there's nothing illegal in providing .torrent files, and since a BitTorrent tracker is just something that provides .torrent files, a BitTorrent tracker is not illegal.

5) The press releases talk about the apprehension of copies of copyrighted content (in CD's, DVD's and hard disks). If they can prove that those aren't private copies (please see the concept of private copies in the Portuguese law), then they might have a case.

6) It seems that some of those websites, besides being trackers, were selling software (clients for their trackers). That activity might have been illegal (just speculation here, mind you), but that activity is not directly related with operating a BitTorrent tracker.

7) Some people speculate that BTuga's software was a fork from Azureus. If that's proven to be truth, then that software was illegal because Azureus is based on a GPL license, and BTuga was selling closed-source binaries of the client, which would be in clear violation of the GPL license. Note that I don't know if the client was or not based on Azureus, and since I don't have a copy of the client I can't get that straight. If you can help me on this one, I would be thankful.

8) Illegal or not, if I was one of the persons behind the shut down trackers, I would be preparing myself right now to sue a hell lot of entities for defamation.

9) We have to assume that the Police press release is wrong, and if it is the case it would be good to have it corrected. There they consider "piracy" as "the reproduction of content that is protected by Authorship Rights via Internet". If that's the case, than piracy is not illegal, since the reproduction of content that is protected by Authorship Rights via Internet is not illegal. It that's to be right, then I would like to know why isn't the Police doing an operation to "fight piracy", since that would be "fighting something legal", which obviously is way beyond the scope of the Police.

10) In P2P trackers you don't swap, you share.

11) In the Internet, you don't have transition of materials, you have transmission of content.

12) You don't need explicit consent to get most of the copyrighted content (see more on the Portuguese law on this).

Since the Police says that the investigation ensues, I'm just waiting for the next set of press releases, and hoping that, in there, the story is set straight. Yet, there is lot's of stuff to talk about this issue, so I might come be back on this issue sooner than that.

Links for today

Here's a couple of links...

About OpenMoko, the free cellphone framework, did you know that OpenMoko is now a company? Also, their first phone, Neo 1973, is going to be released next July 9th! YAY!

Moving to music-related links, seems that Belgium ISP's have to block their users from downloading illegal stuff, since it seems that "P2P experts" told in court that that's feasable, which obviously isn't. I wonder when a counter-process will start, with ISP's there saying in court that it's just impossible to do what they want. In the business area, seems that EMI stockholders might not being interested on selling out to Terra Firma. Last but not least, Mako wrote a piece on DRM.

Finaly, on tech, ASUS is going to split into three different companies. These guys make the best motherboards and laptops I know of.

RIAA's members still doing drugs

This is so riddiculous that I'm not even going to analyzise it though: just read for yourself: NBC says that P2P is making the Corn business suffer. WTF? Well, their "concept" is that P2P is one easy way of downloading movies, so people don't go to theatres, so theatres sell less popcorn, so corn farmers sell less corn. Erm... I'm speechless.

The image used is shared with an CC-BY 2.0 license.

Project Outback - p2p virtual world

Yoick, an Australian company, is working on Project Outback, a virtual world that, according to this article, is going to be a p2p virtual world. You can already subscribe for a beta account, which I did, and read their blog. Here is, for instance, a nice piece on their blog, where they criticize Second Life and gives some tips for those creating virtual worlds.

GrooveShark alpha

GrooveShark is a web application intended to create a new business model for music, being legal and yet using all the things that make p2p networks a success (including getting music for free). As they say in their blog,

Grooveshark is a web-based application for sharing music within a community of music lovers. We distribute DRM-free MP3s across a mostly p2p network.

Adding to that, it also has a lot of social features, that you're used to see in other services like Last.fm.

In the 26th of March they started their limited alpha release (click there to request an account), and yesterday I got an invite to be part of it. The thing with it is that GooveShark isn't 100% web, and it has a lot of stuff (including registering) that can only be done with their desktop application. At least for now that application has only a Windows and a Mac OS version, so I wasn't able to try it. I tried to run in on top of wine, but I couldn't (something to do with the instalation of the JRE). Well, that at least tells me that the application is written in Java, so I guess it will be easy to do a Linux version, and I surely hope they do it. I wrote them an email asking about it but had no reply until now. Well, I guess that I'll have to wait until they wake up ;-) As soon as I have a reply about it I'll write it here.

Until then... Mashable also got an invite, and they covered GooveShark in their blog. So, if you're interested, take a look at it here.

GNUnet 0.7.1b released

GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services. A first service implemented on top of the networking layer allows anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing. GNUnet uses a simple, excess-based economic model to allocate resources. Peers in GNUnet monitor each others behavior with respect to resource usage; peers that contribute to the network are rewarded with better service.

For now mostly used for file sharing and storage, it will soon have a revamped gnunet-chat tool so you can use the GNUnet anonymous and encripted network to chat, and an anonymizer layer so you can run any application you want above GNUnet.

Yesterday, GNUnet 0.7.1b was released. Get it here.

The Social Web of Music

For those who read this blog for a while now, you've probably noticed that I write a lot about music and technology, sometimes both. A pair of posts I did on the issue may be already somewhat outdated: one about finding music on the web, and other about the web for music artists and lovers.

While there's some discussion around the web on wether Web 2.0 is better or worse than P2P for this kind of stuff, an issue I would love to talk about in a future post, today I'm going to talk about "The Social Web of Music", impelled by the fact that Techcrunch made a Social Music Review that, IMHO, doesn't really reflect the great web apps out there in the field.

They chose eight products: FineTune, Pandora, Last.fm, Mog, Radio.Blog.Club, MyStrands, iLike and iJigg.

My first comment about the chosen applications is that FineTune, Pandora, Last.fm, Mog, and Radio.Blog.Club aim exactly for the same, so they're concurrents themselves.

FineTune lets you create playlists of music you want to hear, which is great if you want to be listening to some music instead of knowing new music.

On the other hand Pandora (here are some posts where I talked about it) has the easiest user interface of all, and has the best algorithm of finding out music that you'll probably like. On the other hand, it has two major problems: it almost only has mainstream music (almost everything comes out from the major labels) and it's only legal to use it in USA (so, no Pandora for us European guys).

My favourite of the bunch is Last.fm (my cover here): while it wasn't until some time ago, the social features it has are preety good. I'm intending to do a full cover of Last.fm and the way I use it, but for now I'll only say that it has an impressive social component that lets you (only if you want, and that's good) tag, rate, talk, know new stuff, get free tracks, and a lot lot more. It has something that beats those others: it lets bands or labels to create their pages there and promote their music. That makes it preety cool for bands and for those wanting to listen music, mainstream or not. The social component there is strong enough to make a band, by publicising themselves there (upload a music free for stream or even download, and it will surely be heard) to get fans or even sell your music in a much success rate than any other webapp I know of.

Mog also lets artists upload their music, but... well, it quite sucks. It's confusing, it has bad design, and the real use for which I can imaging Mog being the app you're looking for is only if you want to blog about music. And, for that, Last.fm would also be fine...

Radio.Blog.Club was a big surprise: I can't imagine it being relevant in a discussion about the "social web of music". I guess that the only reason why it was referred is that the author thinks that "the interface is good". Sorry, but I do not agree. Call me stupid, but while the website says that artists can upload their music, and while, by the file names, users are obviously submitting (copyrighted stuff, BTW), I walked around for 10 minutes or so and didn't find out how to do it. I don't intend to come back there.

MyStrands might be "social music", but isn't web: it's a desktop application you have to download, and there are only versions for Windows or Mac OS. Since I'm a Linux user, this isn't for me.

iLike is even worse: it's an iTunes plugin. No, I don't use iTunes.

Finaly, iJigg: the music digg. I don't really like digg, so I might be biased on this, but iJigg is just... well, if you want to discover music and you want "anything" (forget finding stuff similar of what you already know and like), or if you want copyrighted stuff that others post there (lot's of it, there), then you might find it interesting. But I doubt that it will be "the music web app you'll get used to use".

So, if these are my oppinions about the choices, what would be mine?

For me, only five stand out:

Pandora - I've talked about it up there, so go back and read it :-) If you're resident in USA and what you want is to get at your job in the morning, open a browser tab and make it play music you like until it's time to go home, this is for you. Easy, fast learning, great interface, preety cool. If you like something enough, you can buy the track or album in iTunes (please, don't - those tracks have DRM) or Amazon.

Last.fm - The music experience and interaction. Put your music player to feed Last,fm, use it to listen what other people recommend you, bands similar to the one you're listening now, other bands from the same music label, leave a comment, take a peek on what other Last.fm users that listen to it like to hear, know new bands, get some free, legal, DRM-free music.

SellABand - I promised a full review of it that I never did (shame on me). To give you an example... I have a musical project and I've used the internet to promote it - and even to get the label that released my last album. Of all those music services my music can be heard, SellABand is the one where I probably have less people listening to it - but in the other hand is the one that possibly granted me more fans. Also, Last.fm and SellABand were direct creators of revenue: I sold at least one CD thanks to each of them. What's SellABand? What makes it so different? No better than this page to explain it, but basicly bands, for free, create their profiles there, with (at their choice) free-to-listen music. "Believers" (the name for listeners) may "believe" in an artist by buying one "part" of the band ($10 per part). Then, "Together Believers have to raise $50,000 to get their Artist of choice in the studio. At any point before your Artist has reached the Goal of $50,000, you can withdraw your Parts and pick a different Artist. You can even get your money back. It's your music. It's your choice." If one band reaches $50,000 (in four months two already did), a CD is released, you get a copy, 50% of the profits go to the band, and the other 50% are distributed to their believers.

Amie.st - I talked about this before, and Mike from Techcrunch is a big fan of this, so my surprise was huge when I noticed that this wasn't on their list. Basicly they consider that every track has a value, but music lovers are the ones who should decide whats its value. So, When a band uploads one music there, it starts costing "0 credits", and if people say that the song should cost more than that, it starts costing something, and more, and more. It's the free market aplied to music - a way better way of knowing and buying digital music - you're basicly paying it's "real value".

MySpace Music - This had to be here. I don't like MySpace (nobody does, right?) but it's the biggest website on the Internet, and that means something. If you ignore all the kiddy social crap and take a look to in only taking into consideration the music aspects, you'll see that this is the most used "music webapp". You have from really big and well-known bands like Björk there, and you have that until the "I don't have or want a band, but I once did this track" stuff. You have music for every kind of tastes, some you can only stream and some you can download. You can see, specialy from the "top friends", what other somewhat simmilar bands you'll possible like, and discover lots of music.

And you? What music web applications do you use?

Downloading copyrighted material in Italy

(First an off-topic rant: after writting a lot about this issue, this "new and improved" - and buggy - version of blogger decided to send it to /dev/null, so I'm writing this again but I'm not feeling like expanding myself again on the issue...)

Several news sources, but none as extensive and factual as I would like, are reporting that "Italy's top criminal court has stated that downloading computer files containing films, music or software is not a crime if not done for profit", while "analysts noted that violating a copyright, for example by breaking a copyright protection, remained illegal even if downloading the material had been decriminalized."

First, take into consideration that, by analyzing various sources, I reached the conclusion that analysts don't really said that, but "insinuated" that what the court ruled goes against the Italian laws. SIAE, the Italian RIAA, said in a statement that

the ruling did not bring any "revolutions" in terms of author's rights because the case predates current legislation calling for a fine for anyone who shares protected material over the Internet without financial gain.

What I want you to know about this issue is that, regardless what the media are saying:

• file sharing never was and it is not illegal whatsoever in Italy nor in any other country that I know of;
• despite some attempts, no country that I know of state peer-to-peer networks as illegal;
• downloading the copyrighted material has not "been decriminalized";
• a court rule isn't law, even if this case can be referred by the defence of a similar one in the future.

So what does all this mess means?
Simply that all this issues aren't, and should be, clarified. Not only in Italy, not only the judges, record and movie industries, the media, the laws, but everything and everyone else. There should be a real effort, by states, governments and people - and never companies, to state clearly what's all this about: IP, copyright, download, file-sharing, peer-to-peer and all those buzzwords that, everytime that appear on the media, are used in an insulted way for technologists, artists and consumers.