We decided that today was the day – it was time to kill him. Being a first time homesteader, I firmly believe in stretching myself and developing my skill sets. One of these important skills to learn is caring for and butchering livestock. … Read More
CW to launch Apple TV’s first network television app
More and more network channels are embracing the power of streaming content. According to a report from Deadline, the CW is jumping further into the game by bringing its shows to Apple TV users. This move makes it the first network to have its programming available directly on the device… … Read More
Presidential post: Putin’s response to Obama letter to be ‘mailed’ soon
The exact content of the personal message from Obama to Putin remains secret, but Russia’s Kommersant daily has learnt the main topics of the letter.The central idea of the letter delivered to Moscow by the National Security Advisor in the Obama Administration, Thomas Donilon, on April 15 is that the two great states should not waste time on insignificant quarrels and concentrate on global issues. That is why the letter does not even mention such troubling matters as the Magnitsky List, Russia’s so-called Foreign Agents law and the matters of Russian citizens jailed in the US on controversial accusations.Instead, Washington proposes that Moscow focuses on managing strategic issues and the Obama administration is full of determination to reach a number of breakthrough agreements this year.Reportedly, Obama proposes to sign a mutual legally binding agreement that would make American and Russian missile defenses transparent to each other to ensure that the countries are not planning aggressive moves against each other.According to Interfax, Obama can sign such agreement without approval from Congress, but that would make the document highly time-sensitive: it would be valid as long as Barack Obama remains in office – and not a minute longer. The American president also proposed further denuclearization of the US and Russia, following the Measures to Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms treaty signed on 8 April, 2010, by Obama and then-President Dmitry Medvedev.Obama’s letter also contains some sort of proposals aimed at strengthening economic ties between Washington and Moscow. The Obama administration proposed to establish a new consultation body on a ‘US vice-president – Russian PM’ level to achieve this economic objective, Kommersant reported.The daily’s sources in the Kremlin shared that the answer is halfway through and there are no obstacles that might interfere with completing the reply by May 20, when Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev is expected to hand over Putin’s answer to the US president.Whether or not the exchange of personal letters between the two presidents becomes lost in the labyrinth of mutual distrust between the two countries remains to be seen.The first round of negotiations is set to take place in June at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland.Moscow suggested that President Obama might visit Russia on a special visit, but Washington initially turned the proposal down, scheduling another round to take place on the sidelines of the G20 summit in St. Petersburg in September.Still, there is a possibility that the most principal issues will be finalized at the bilateral meeting of two presidents in Moscow – if President Obama agrees to come to the Russian capital two days ahead of the G20 summit.In the meantime, on May 15, President Vladimir Putin chaired a council of country’s military top brass. The meeting has been specifically dedicated to development of home-grown missile defense systems and penetration of missile defenses of potential adversaries. … Read More
Google rolls out paid subscription channels on YouTube (update)
YouTube has officially launched a paid channel pilot program for a select number of content partners that includes the likes of Sesame Street and UFC. Subscription fees start at $0.99 per month, with the option of yearly discounts and a 14-day free trial. … Read More
BitTorrent Lets Artists “Share” Behind a Paywall
Following in the footsteps of FrostWire and Vodo, BitTorrent Inc. launched an artist promotion program a few years ago.
The idea is to let artists share their work for free, exposing it to millions of BitTorrent users all around the world.
Thanks to the massive user base of over 170 million users the program has been very successful. But, aside from promotion some artists would also like to see some hard cash in return. This is now an option thanks to the new and improved “BitTorrent Bundles.”
In addition to giving away free stuff, BitTorrent Inc. now also promotes premium content. For the launch the company has teamed up with the record label Ultra, home of David Guetta, Tiesto, deadmau5, and Calvin Harris.
In their first premium bundle BitTorrent Inc. is promoting the American DJ Kaskade. BitTorrent users can download a torrent with a few freebies, and if they hand over their email addresses they get access to more. Artists also have the option to replace the email requirement with a paywall.
“Premium content does not exist within the file until a fan interacts with it – by entering a valid email, or payment information. The media as published into the BitTorrent ecosystem will be secure,” a BitTorrent Inc. spokesperson told TorrentFreak.
By “secure” BitTorrent Inc. means that there is no malware or other nefarious content inside. However, there are no technical restrictions that prevent users from sharing the “premium” content with friends or family, without paying.
The company couldn’t tell us under what license the content in the premium torrents is being released, but the company stressed that people are not supposed to share these torrents in the wild.
“We expect people to do the right thing. When given the option, we have seen that people want to reward the artists for offering good, accessible content.”
TorrentFreak looked at the premium torrents and they appear to be just regular torrent files, using popular public trackers. There are no built-in restrictions to prevent sharing which means that like all other bundles, they may end up on random BitTorrent sites.
BitTorrent nevertheless hopes that, to reward the artists, its users are wise enough not to share these premium torrents with unauthorized downloaders.
“What we have found during our past experiments is that our users are inclined to support the content creators that publish into the BitTorrent ecosystem. They appreciate that the artist ‘gets it’ and is willing to engage fans on their native turf,” BitTorrent told us.
“We anticipate that given the choice between content officially published into the ecosystem and infringing content, a majority will support the artist.”
While people should indeed appreciate the fact that artists want to try out BitTorrent, putting content in a restrictive area is of course not really ‘native turf’ for BitTorrent users – apart from those using private trackers of course. To most users the BitTorrent “ecosystem” consists of finding and discovering content through torrent search indexes and search engines.
BitTorrent Inc. is to be applauded for helping artists to leverage this great technology. However, whether this will be successful is another question. After all, many people turned to BitTorrent in the first place due to their dislike of restrictions.
BitTorrent Bundles
Source: BitTorrent Lets Artists “Share” Behind a Paywall
"Dead in five years": The reports of the tablet’s demise are greatly exaggerated
There are wildly differing viewpoints on whether or not the tablet is on its way out, as you might guess. One perspective is that of the smartphone taking over what the tablet does; which is basically content consumption and creation, albeit the latter on a more limited scale than, say,… … Read More
SOPA reincarnated? Norway readying draconian anti-piracy internet law
The proposed amendments make it easier to locate both website owners and end-users of unauthorized material online.Thus, the new legislation would allow rights-holders to take to court site owners involved in illegal content sharing and order the internet service providers (ISPs) to “prevent or impede access” to sites that have “extensively made available material that clearly violates copyrights”, Torrenfreak quotes the amendments. And if the website owner is unknown or cannot be located “the case can be decided without the person concerned being given an opportunity to comment.” This would make it very easy to block off sites whose owners wish to remain anonymous.Also, the introduced amendments exempt pursued individuals in question from the protection of Electronic Communications Act when a legal claim is underway.“If it is likely that copyright or other rights under this law have been violated, the court may, notwithstanding the confidentiality provided by the Electronic Communications Act, at the request of the licensee, require a provider of electronic communications to disclose information that identifies the owner of the subscription used for the violation,” according to the amendments.In order to waive confidentiality the court “must find that the arguments in favor of disclosure outweigh the interest of confidentiality.” Experts are saying that the bill will most certainly be passed.Even though the amendments need to go through a second parliamentary hearing before being formally adopted, it is unlikely that the outcome would be any different from the first hearing, Jens Christian Koller of the Parliamentary Information Service told Teknofil.no.“In practice therefore these amendments to the Copyright Act have been adopted, but it is still not correct to say that it has already been formally adopted by the parliament. What you can say is that it is now very difficult to stop this law,” he stated.This issue of piracy versus privacy is not new in Norway and has partly been trigged by The Pirate Bay website case, according to Torrentfreak. In March 2009, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and other local movie studios asked Norway’s largest ISP Telenor to block subscribers’ access to The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest file-sharing site. Telonor refused to proceed with the request, citing no legal precedent.Telenor was taken to court, where a ruling confirmed that ISP is not obligated to block access to sites such as The Pirate Bay.Then the Ministry of Culture in May 2011 announced new proposals to amend the existing Copyright Act. In January the amendments were presented and on this past Monday the parliament voted on them for the first time. The ruling parties were in favor of the bill, while only the opposition voted against it.The Pirate Bay website, which was the force behind the new amendments, was created in Sweden in 2003.In 2009 the website’s founders were charged with facilitating illegal downloading of copyrighted material and sentenced to a year in a prison and a US$3.5 million fine. Since then in order to stay online the site’s domain keeps moving to different countries, with the latest relocation to Iceland.Internet users are equating the Norwegian amendments to the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced in October 2011 and proposed to broaden law enforcement’s rights to fight online copyright infringement and trade of counterfeit good. Proposal included introduction of court orders to ban advertising networks and payment facilities from doing business with infringing websites, prohibiting search engines from linking to the websites, and requesting ISPs to block access to the websites.Many internet users and organizations heavily criticized the plan. On January 18, 2012, the internet blackout was used by more than 7,000 websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit and Google, marking the WWW-wide protest against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which was then shelved indefinitely just days after the action. … Read More
