Day Two of Optimum Online Ultra here at Deleon HQ, so I thought I’d share some info regarding how it works in the real world. (Yesterday we looked at a speed test, which isn’t necessarily reflective of what you’d find in everyday Internet use.) Onward! → Read More
Can we be honest for one moment and admit that, yes, there is a difference between the Pirate Bay and Google? Take this new Web site called the Pirate Google. Oh, look, you re-painted the ship’s sails to match the colors from Google’s logo. Very clever! And when you search for something, say, an episode of 24, it carries out a custom Google search with the “filetype:torrent” parameter. In other words, you’re using Google to find torrents. → Read More
It’s easy to pirate PSP games, that much we know. But what’s debatable is to the extent that it’s killing, or has already killed, the system. Fifty million PSPs have been sold thus far, yet Sony insists that the “sickening” rate of software piracy has “has taken out a big chunk of [its] software sales.” → Read More
Stop the presses! New data suggests that people who illegally download music are more likely to buy music from legitimate sources (iTunes, Amazon MP3, Beatport, etc.) than are God-fearing, non-illegally downloading folks. Such is the claim from a recent Norwegian study. Of course, the music industry has rubbished the claims, as it so often does. → Read More
Whatever. Last week’s guilty verdict (that will be appealed till we’re all bored of the topic) in the Pirate Bay trial caused all sorta of comfortable outrage online. Now people are taking to the streets. I can’t imagine what they’re chanting at these gatherings: “We demand the right to download music and movies without having to pay for them!” Have these people lost their mind? → Read More
In a golf tournament, it can be advantageous to putt after another player because you learn the contours of the path to the hole. In a similar way, you’d think Hollywood would have learned from the rough path the music industry took in transitioning to the world of digital distribution over the web. Unfortunately, it looks to be on the verge of missing the putt as well.
On the surface, it seems like Hollywood is doing a better job of getting consumers to use their approved methods for transferring content over the web — but the reality is that it’s a mess. And the only reason piracy isn’t so rampant in the US is that our broadband speeds, for the most part, suck.
Sure, there are a lot of channels to get films legally over the web. iTunes, Xbox Live, Amazon, Netflix and Hulu are all doing a fairly good job at making the content they’re given, accessible. Unfortunately, it’s the content that’s the problem. If you go to any of those services looking for a specific movie, there’s a very good chance that it won’t be available. And that can be true even if it was available on the service in the past. It’s a nightmare. → Read More
We now know the verdict of the Trial of the Digital Century: guilty. And while rational people realize that we’re now about to embark on an endless series of appeals, grandstanding and legal alchemy, there exists a certain subset of the Internet that has used the opportunity to completely freak out. Come, join CrunchGear as we traverse the stupid Internet in search of some of the most childish, irrational and over-the-top reactions to the verdict. → Read More
Hey, have you guys heard of The Pirate Bay? It’s this cool Web site that has all these things called BitTorrents. You just double click ‘em and this program opens and then you can download movies and music and stuff. It’s gonna get real popular, you wait and see! In fact, a museum in Sweden will display one of the site’s servers as part of an exhibit. → Read More
So, Myka. Remember what it does? Right, it’s a little set-top-box that plays high-def videos on your [presumably larger than your computer monitor] TV; it can download using BitTorrent right onto its built-in hard drive. That, or you can manually load previously downloaded videos onto it via a thumb drive or through a network. Oh, and now it plays “independent, foreign and cult films you can’t find in video stores” from EZTakes’ 5,000+ movie library. Neat-o, said the cow. Then he mooed, powerfully. → Read More
Another day, another twist in that proposed French anti-piracy law. While the French upper house, the Senate, approved the bill as it was presented earlier today, the lower house, the National Assembly, rejected it. Oh don’t worry, since the Government said it will present a revised edition of the bill that would remove the main clause that upset the National Assembly. → Read More
Yup, France is now one step closer to that vicious anti-piracy bill becoming law. Legislators there approved the provision that would kick pirates off the Internet for up to a year following the illegal download of copyrighted material. The PS didn’t like the provision, nor did the EP, but none of that matters now. Onward to the National Assembly for a vote! → Read More
That Swedish anti-piracy law just went into effect, and guess what happened. Overall Internet traffic dropped by a whopping 33 percent. And while authorities there don’t expect traffic to remain so long, they are confident that it’ll help change people’s habits. → Read More
This is tremendous. It’s an application for Android called BarTor that you use to automatically download movies using BitTorrent. You simply hold the G1′s camera to a movie’s barcode, presumably while at Best Buy or something, then the software sends the movie title to your computer, which you’ve already set up to run uTorrent or Vuze. And off it goes! → Read More
Looks like The Pirate Bay is branching out into paid services—for your protection, of course. The popular BitTorrent tracker is expected to launch a VPN service of sorts called IPREDATOR, only it’s supposed to be EVEN MORE secure than a traditional VPN outfit. The Pirate Bay claims that it won’t keep any logs of who’s connection through the service, so, should The Man seize the servers there’d be no record of who or what was going on. Clever! → Read More
Those of you who stopped using Azureus when it mutated into Vuze may want to reconsider your decision. The BitTorrent client now supports video playback on the PS3 and Xbox 360. That is, once the computer on which Vuze is running and your PS3 or Xbox 360 are on the same network, Vuze will play the video and send it to your TV, no matter what file format the video is in. I just tried it out using my Xbox 360, and here’s what I found. → Read More
So I guess The Pirate Bay is on trial for being evil or something, and the big news today, the news that Sean Hannity will lead with tonight, is that 50 percent of the charges against the Web site have been dropped. Apparently the prosecutors went to the same law school as Lionel Hutz, and have completely botched their presentation of certain evidence. The judge looked at them, gave them the “WTF?” face, and told them, “Yeah, all that stuff you just presented? It’s complete nonsense, let’s break for lunch.” And they did, and it was good. → Read More
Bad news, “Lost” fans. Well, those of you who download 720p caps of the show. It looks like ABC, per juicy message board rumors, is doing something screwy with the video as it airs in order to fit in more commercials—removing frames after the 2:3 pulldown, that is. So, when cappers convert the video into bite-sized x264 chunks for us, it results in jerky playback. (Dupe frames that are present in the original broadcast are removed from the cap.) You’re not going to notice the dropped frames when watching the show on TV (due to the nature of broadcast television), but it makes capping the show a pain in the neck. The resulting cap, less the dupe frames, plays back like garbage. → Read More
It’s he said, she said, folks. A study commissioned in the Netherlands says that piracy, as a matter of fact, is beneficial to the economy. Or, at the very leas, that piracy isn’t responsible for the music industry’s current problems. So take that, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry! → Read More
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, sort of an international version of the beloved RIAA, has released its 2008 annual report. As you might guess, one of the main themes of the report (you can download the 30-page PDF here; a smaller 6-page summary is here) is piracy. How to combat it, how to educate the public that it’s ruining the business, etc. Let’s look at some of the claims, shall we? → Read More
We mentioned the Addonics USB NAS adapter in mid-December, and I’ve just finished playing with a review unit. As you can see from the photo, this thing is small! There’s a lot to say about this simple little device, so read on for the whole scoop!
It’s got a USB port, an RJ-45 port, and a small socket for the power cord. Along one side are two status LEDs, and a reset button. It would be great if this thing could be driven by Power-over-Ethernet, but I don’t suppose many home switches and routers include that feature yet. The power adapter itself isn’t too big, and is thankfully not a gigantic wall-wart. → Read More
