As the file-sharing phenomenon continues unabated, more and more outfits are taking the opportunity to milk this cash-cow. Unfortunately, there are a growing number that operate in a legal gray area and/or prey on the likelihood that they will receive few complaints.

One business model in operation for some time now is the selling of otherwise free software to unsuspecting entrants to file-sharing and P2P. Unaware that everything they need can be legitimately acquired for free, they hand over payments for access to public sites such as Mininova or The Pirate Bay. Equally, they end up paying for uTorrent or other P2P clients via credit card or other methods.

Recently there has been an increase in sites offering these type of services, but utilizing premium rate SMS to collect revenue. One such site being complained about right now is Bittorrent-net.info. The site offers downloads of most of the popular P2P clients including uTorrent, Vuze/Azureus, LimeWire, eMule and Ares.

However, the downloads have a sting in the tail. Once downloaded and the installer is run, the software package requires the user to SMS a provided number via cellphone to get codes to ‘activate’ the software. The site has sections for users around the world, but for UK users this sequence of events ends up costing individuals around £9 in call charges. Spot the deliberately obscure gray-on-gray prices in the screenshot below, written in letters instead of numbers so they don’t attract the eye.

On closer inspection of the rarely viewed ‘Legal Terms‘ section of the site which is buried away in the usual legalese, it does indeed say that that the ’service’ will cost £9. Unfortunately for the site this just isn’t enough to give it legality under regulations just introduced in the UK.

Under new rules from premium-rate phone regulator PhonepayPlus, hiding away charges as BitTorrent-net.info has done is strictly disallowed. In effect now is this rule:

Clearer pricing – No matter where you see a mobile phone-paid service advertised (whether it’s in a magazine or newspaper, on TV, on the internet or somewhere else), the pricing of the service must be given just as much space and attention as the rest of the advert – the cost shouldn’t be hidden in small print. Also, providers must not say a service or download is ‘free’ unless there really are no other costs involved.

The number that people have to SMS to obtain ‘activation codes’ is 78881, which is currently operated by mBlox Ltd. Touting itself as “The world’s largest mobile transaction network” and the company behind delivering the ‘Crazy Frog’ ringtone, mBlox does not provide the content or schemes behind such SMS’s, merely the infrastructure.

In a response to rising complaints as outlined in this article, mBlox provides an online tool to find the companies behind these numbers. Unfortunately our searches using this method drew a blank, but two company names kept cropping up linked to these operations – Netlink Network Corp. and Panama-based Soletto Group SA.

TorrentFreak’s calls for comment from mBlox have so far gone unanswered but we did managed to discuss the situation with SMS regulator PhonepayPlus, who gave us this statement:

Following intervention from PhonepayPlus, as a result of public complaints and its own internal monitoring, this service has been suspended from operation. Readers [in the UK] affected by this service should contact PhonepayPlus on 0800 500 212 (Mon-Fri, 8am-6pm), or at www.phonepayplus.org.uk

We are unable to confirm at this stage if people affected will be able to get a refund, but it certainly looks like the chances of people getting scammed by this method in the future are diminishing.

On other sites using the same business model the software BitComet, BitSpirit, Frostwire and Kceasy feature, but unfortunately this scheme doesn’t stop at P2P clients. Messenger Plus! Live, WinAce, WinZip, 7Zip, DirectX, CDex, and Adobe Acrobat have all appeared with similar installers.

Post from: TorrentFreak

Every week we take a look at the most downloaded TV-Shows on BitTorrent. Lost is traditionally one of the most downloaded TV shows. Last year, it got the honor of being the most pirated show of 2008, and we expect the show to end up high in the 2009 list as well.

The fifth season of Lost just started with two new episodes. Both episodes were downloaded close to two million time in the first week. As always, the vast majority of the people who download the show are located outside the U.S, where it may take up to a year before season 5 will actually air on TV.

The rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. It’s more about availability than the fact that it’s free and should be viewed as an opportunity, not a threat. The more restrictions, the more piracy – it’s as simple as that.

The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Post from: TorrentFreak

Almost three years have passed since The Pirate Bay’s servers were seized by the Swedish police.

In the years since the raid a lot has changed. For one, The Pirate Bay grew to become the largest BitTorrent tracker on the Internet and one of the most prominent sites in the world. Some estimate that approximately 50% of all Internet traffic is coordinated by The Pirate Bay tracker.

The Pirate Bay raid eventually led to an investigation that took two years to complete. The police reported its findings in 4,000 pages of legal paperwork and in three weeks from now, starting February 16th, it will be tested in court. Four individuals are charged with ‘assisting copyright infringement’, while several copyright holders together are claiming over $100 million in damages.

The fate of the four will partly depend on the expert witnesses presented by both sides. The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde revealed some of the witnesses the prosecution will call, while casting doubt on their competence. Among them, IFPI CEO John Kennedy and policeman employee Jim Keyzer, who later took a job at Warner Bros.

It is interesting to see the name of Jim Keyzer there, since his objectivity was put in serious doubt after he accepted a job at Warner Bros. while he was still working on the Pirate Bay investigation. Keyzer returned to his job at the police’s IT crime unit after being employed by Warner Bros. for several months.

Warner Bros. later admitted that Keyzer started working for the movie studio before the Pirate Bay investigation was closed, but the prosecution didn’t see this as a problem. Peter Sunde does, as he writes in a recent post on his blog. “Our side has not finalized the list of expert witnesses. But our witnesses will actually add competence, based on facts and research, and will correctly interpret the law surrounding this case.”

“We will not have a bunch of uninteresting CEOs that have nothing to add beside their own anger at having to adopt their business to the current media climate – a climate where the people decide, not the high earning CEOs,” Peter adds. “It’s a shame the prosecution do not take this case seriously enough to actually put facts instead of feelings on the table. But it doesn’t matter. Both our facts and our feelings are honest and in our favor.”

It is likely that the defendant’s lawyers will use Keyzer’s employment at Warner Bros. to raise questions about the objectivity of the whole police investigation. Peter couldn’t reveal the witnesses they will call, but he told TorrentFreak that we’ll hear more about that in the near future. Stay tuned.

Post from: TorrentFreak