Movie Torrents: March 2007

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Fake Your Ratio With GreedyTorrent

Fake Your Ratio With GreedyTorrent

Boxmade A new application has popped up that can spoof a BitTorrent tracker, telling it that you're uploading more data than you actually are.

GreedyTorrent is not a BitTorrent client. It's a Windows app that runs independently of your client, intercepting and altering what's being reported to the tracker. Basically, it's a proxy. The app plays it "safe" by only reporting values akin to a better-than-average uploader, as insanely high upload data would likely tip off tracker admins.

So, why does this software even exist? The short answer: many feel that even download ratios are next-to-impossible to maintain, and that they stand as unfair regulatory benchmarks on private trackers.

There are loads of private BitTorrent trackers out there -- often centered around user communities with specific common interests, like Japanese TV shows, live jazz trading, horror movies and so on. A private tracker usually polices its user base by enforcing download/upload ratios. A "good" user is one who uploads as much as he downloads, thus maintaining an even 1:1 ratio. As a user begins to leech off the others on the tracker, his good standing begins to erode and punishments can result. Some trackers force leechers with ratios worse than 2:1 to upload before they can download any more. Others outright ban leechers. Most tracker administrators gently persuade leechers, in one way or another, to contribute more.

GreedyTorrent, which was written by Alex N J, has been getting some attention today. I just read about it on TorrentFreak. Not that it makes much difference, but I just don't see the point. Cheating is cheating, no matter what you call it (and this app, just in case you didn't notice, has "greedy" in the name).

There are enforced measurements for sharing built into the BitTorrent protocol, but, granted, those don't do a whole lot for your ratio.

TorrentFreak's enigmax lists two popular arguments used to justify GreedyTorrent: unbalanced data transfers are common for ADSL subscribers, and competition for uploads on private trackers squeezes out the less aggressive users.

Maybe 1:1 ratios are bad news. I don't have any problem maintaining mine. Then again, I don't have any problem leaving a few torrents running for 2 or 3 days.

I want to give enigmax the final word here, because I think he (she?) really nails the larger issue with this bit at the end: "Greedy people exist in all sections of society but it is the unconditional altruism of most in the BitTorrent community that have ensured its meteoric rise to success over the last few years."

Netgear partners with BitTorent Inc.

The two have formed a collaboration to deliver HD videos, music, Internet radio and digital photos from your home PCs and storage devices to your HDTV.

Netgear has announced an ongoing "collaboration and agreement" with BitTorrent Inc. to promote video download streaming to HDTVs via Netgear's new Digital Entertainer HD (EVA8000) media receiver device.

The Digital Entertainer HD connects to an HD TV to stream digital media from PCs, network storage, and USB media players.

The receiver automatically locates, organizes and plays HD movies, TV shows, music, and pictures. It wail also stream internet-based video, news feeds, weather reports, or radio programs.

It supports HD playback of Windows® Media Video 9 or MPEG-4 file formats at up to 1080p resolution on your HDTV.

It will also allow you to do the following:

* Stream HD videos, music, Internet radio and digital photos from your home PCs and storage devices to your HDTV

* Automatically find all the digital media files on your home network and organize them into an easily accessible library

* Play YouTube Videos on your TV

* Plug your USB flash drive, digital camera, iPOD, or other USB storage device directly into the Digital Entertainer HD and instantly access stored digital media on your HDTV.

* With a TV tuner card installed in your PC, the Digital Entertainer HD can schedule recordings and pause and rewind live TV from your living room (TV Tuner card not included).

* Using two or more Digital Entertainer HDs in different rooms, synchronize music throughout the house (Party Mode) or pause a video in your living room and resume it in another room (Follow Me

All of the features of this new device from Netgear sound pretty cool but, I think they could have left out the "play YouTube videos" capability. Don't think watching a grainy video of some guy playing a guitar is what an HDTV is meant for.

What types of digital media file formats will it support?

- MP3 up to 320 Kbps or variable bit rate (VBR)

- WMA8 and WMA9 files up to 192Kbps or variable bit rate(VBR)

- WMV up to 1080p

- Internet Radio (streaming MP3, WMA)

- Video Formats: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, Xvid

- Audio Formats: MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, FLAC

- Photo Formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF

- Playlist Formats: WPL, ASX, WAX, WVX, PLS, M3U, RMP

For those who use iTunes to acquire digital music media, the Digital Entertainer HD will apparently stream iTunes songs downloaded onto a Windows PC but not a MAC. The reason for this is that it is only able to stream it once iTunes authorizes the music for playback, and evidently this DRM is only able to be overcome on PCs and not MACs.

What's primarily interesting about this partnership with BitTorent Inc. is that it makes you wonder whether it is because of content or software that Netgear entered into this collaboration in the first place, or was it in fact both?

BitTorrent Inc. has already announced distribution partnerships with many of Hollywood's major movie studios as well as the UK's BBC, and is set to begin offering their content sometime in February of this year.

Content is crucial for Netgear otherwise it's just a fancy router, especially when the price is to be a reported $349 bucks.

Now when it comes to software, I have a sinking feeling that Netgear is using the uTorrent client server that BitTorrent Inc. recently acquired. It's small size and memory footprint really do make it an ideal means of delivering high quality audio and video quickly and efficiently.

"Our customers' growing appetite for quality HD content is well-served through NETGEAR routers, adapters, media receivers and storage devices," said Patrick Lo, NETGEAR's chairman and chief executive officer. "Even with broadband connections, however, the experience is only as good as the technology delivering the content over the Internet and to the HDTV screen. The audio and video quality of the Digital Entertainer HD -- combined with the speed, simplicity and security in BitTorrent's delivery technology -- offers exactly the type of experience our customers demand."

Hmm, I thought so. So BitTorrent IS slowly going legit after all.

"BitTorrent provides the most sensible content delivery platform for high- definition entertainment on the Internet," said Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent. "We are pleased to add NETGEAR to our family of innovative hardware manufacturers as we continue to expand BitTorrent's delivery capabilities beyond the PC."

I must admit that it is pretty cool to see the expanding potential of the BitTorrent protocol, the team over at BitTorrent Inc. taking it in new directions that will only get more exciting and revolutionary as time goes by.

In case you were wondering, Netgear's Digital Entertainer HD (EVA8000) will be avialble sometime in the next fiscal quarter(?), whenever that is.

OpenOffice 2.2 available for download

The OpenOffice.org Community on March 29 announced the release of a major upgrade to OpenOffice: version 2.2. The group claims that with upgrades to its word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database software, the free office suite provides a real alternative to Microsoft's recently-released Office 2007 product.

Current users of older versions of Microsoft Office will find OpenOffice 2.2 to be an easier upgrade path than Office 2007, the group suggests.

Overall, version 2.2 should appear better to users thanks to its support for kerning, a technique that improves the appearance of text written in proportional fonts; kerning is now enabled by default. OpenOffice's PDF (Portable Document Format) export function has also been enhanced with the addition of the optional creation of bookmarks feature, and with support for user-definable export of form fields.

A quick look at the release notes also reveals that many minor bugs have been repaired in this new version. Most of these appear to relate to the Calc spreadsheet and Base database programs.

OpenOffice 2.2 also has enhancements to its individual components, according to the group. For example, the Calc spreadsheet has improved support for Microsoft file formats, including enhanced support for Pivot Tables and some specialized trigonometric functions.

Base, the database component, has improved SQL editing functionality as well as a new "Queries within Queries" feature. Compatibility options for some database drivers, such as Oracle ODBC (Open Database Connect), have also been improved. Impress, the presentations component, offers improvements in the handling of hidden slides -- this function has been made more intuitive, according to the release announcement.

The group also claims that while OpenOffice 2.1 functioned well on Microsoft's Windows Vista, version 2.2 makes better use of some of the new cosmetic changes available in Vista.

Apple Mac users will notice a smaller download and a smaller installed size. The Apple Mac Intel version has many stability improvements, and bug fixes ranging from .PPT (PowerPoint) export to improved UNO connections, according to the release announcement. Version 2.2 now requires Mac OS X 10.4.x running X11.

In addition to improvements to the OpenOffice software in version 2.2, there have also been enhancements to OpenOffice.org as a development and user community, the release announcement noted. For example, third-party extensions to the software suite can now be more tightly integrated, and features have been added that "dramatically simplify" their installation and updating. In addition, features have been added to assist those participating in the translation and localization of the software suite.

In addition to being immediately available for download from OpenOffice.org's download servers and mirrors, OpenOffice 2.2 is also available via BitTorrent. At this time, there are no distribution-specific versions of version 2.2 available.

For Linux, OpenOffice 2.2 is available as a compressed RPM. For both better performance and Java integration, OpenOffice.org recommends that you have the latest JRE (Java Runtime Environment) installed. It should be at least JRE 1.4. The latest JRE, Version 5.0 Update 11, is available for download in RPM format, here.

Tribler 3.6.0: 4th gen file sharing

"Dutch researchers have developed a network for a new generation of p2p file sharing through which, they say, faster down- and uploading and live video streaming will become a reality," p2pnet posted last year.

"Instead of the lone hacker, for the first time, it was written by a team of more than a dozen scientists," Johan Pouwelse, one of the group, said.

Now, a little more than a year later, "Define 4th generation file sharing system with social networking, recommendation, tag-based navigation, moderation, and real-time streaming," says the Sourceforge project description. "Remove .torrent, tracker, and website from architecture. Create reference implement. with Bittorrent ABC project."

Done. And Tribler 3.6.0 is a, ""This is a new type of Bittorrent client," Pouwelse tells p2pnet, going on:

"Just sit back and relax while Tribler scans The Internet and automatically finds .torrent files.

"No need to visit thevarious .torrent websites."

Definitely stay tuned.

Greedy Torrent -

There's another bad boy on the block and his name is GreedyTorrent.

Following in the footsteps of RatioMaster and the like, GreedyTorrent is the latest and greatest ratio cheating software program to shake the BitTorrent community.

The freeware software program that pledges to help you boost your BitTorrent upload ratio was developed by Alex N J, a freelance software and web developer, based in India.

GreedyTorrent was developed in C++ using wxWidgets 2.6.3 library http://www.wxWidgets.org), to make porting to different platforms easier in the future. It was compiled using MinGW+MSYS and the installation package was created using Inno Setup.

How Does it Work?

GreedyTorrent is implemented as a proxy for the BitTorrent tracker protocol. Once installed, it sits in the system tray and waits for the BitTorrent client server to make a request to the torrent tracker. Once the BitTorrent client server is connected and attempts to report the uploaded quantity, GreedyTorrent modifies the upload ratio to report the results according to your predetermined preferences.

GreedyTorrent advertises the ability to be in control of your upload ratio, which you can set to be increased as a multiple of either your download or upload speeds. For example, to maintain a 1:1 ratio for a poor uploader, a multiple of 1 times the actual download would be enough. This has the advantage that the torrent file you download always maintains 1:1 ratio, no matter how poor your actual upload speed is. Suppose you have a fair upload speed and you just want to double your upload ratio. You can select a multiple that is twice the upload.

Features and advantages?

# Unlike many other utilities out there, GreedyTorrent is set-once-and-forget type software. You do not need to configure settings each time you queue a torrent file to download.

# No complicated options to configure. The default installation of GreedyTorrent is configured to provide you 5 times actual upload, enough for the survival of a normal ADSL user. Also there is no need to manually find the hash values or to set tracker URLs, GreedyTorrent takes care of them automatically. GreedyTorrent was developed with a novice user in mind, with an easy to use interface.

# Unlike many other utilities, GreedyTorrent generates no additional traffic. GreedyTorrent does not run or emulate an "extra torrent client", and thus does not waste your precious bandwidth.

# Only one set of client identification and upload ratio are reported to tracker. Clients that emulate an extra BitTorrent client server have sometimes the disadvantage that two sets of ratio and client identification are reported to tracker, one from the utility and another from your actual bittorrent client.

# You dont need to stop using your BitTorrent client server while using GreedyTorrent. This has the advantage that you can download 24x7, while GreedyTorrent automatically maintains the specified upload ratio.

# The upload values reported by GreedyTorrent are no different than what an actual high speed uploader would generate. For instance, some utilities can increase your upload ratio dramatically by reporting a very high upload, lets say in the order of gigabytes in just one instance. However, this discrete abnormal value is easily detectable by an administrator. It remains as a contradiction to yournormal upload, and is likely to result in an account ban. When it comes to GreedyTorrent, even if you are setting the upload as 50 times your actual upload, the ratios reported are consistent and continuous in nature -- it can only be inferred by the administrator as a high speed upload.

# GreedyTorrent does not generate any extra client identification, thus it cannot be banned by the tracker. You can use your favorite Bittorrent client server along with GreedyTorrent, the client identification generated by it will be preserved and reported without modification.

I don't know. We've had this debate many times here at ZeroPaid and I think it's really up to the individual to decide that on his own.

In some ways it's good as it can help force overzealous BitTorrent tracker site admins to be a bit more lenient in their ratio enforcement strategies. For in some cases users who have yet to progress high enough to be amongst the first peers in a torrent swarm get penalized in the end by not being able to upload nearly as much as others. These folks are then oftentimes forced to either limit themselves to what they can reasonably afford to grab, a download "diet" if you will, or seed content for an unreasonably long time. In these circumstances I think GreedyTorrent has justification for usage.

On the other hand however, it can also undermine the health of the BitTorrent community as a whole if everybody is hoarding their upload speeds and thereby falsely seeding content. If you download 1GB it's only fair that you upload a 1GB in kind.

Azureus' Swarm Feature

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Ahead of the Bell: CEA Washington Forum

The Consumer Electronics Association on Monday hosts a two-day forum on the industry in Washington.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., along with political analysts James Carville and Mary Matalin will attend the conference.

Wyden is expected to comment on environmental issues affecting the consumer technology industry, including e-waste and electronics recycling legislation.

Issa is a former chairman of the association.

BitTorrent Inc. and Sling Media Inc. are among the companies expected to be on hand.

A Bit(Torrent) of Advice

In preface to this article, piracy is illegal. Now that I've made myself clear, on to more important things.

You probably have not heard of BitTorrent (unless you slogged your way to the end of my last column) and I'll give you a warning: you're going to get confused, but don't give up I assure you, the results are worth it.

BitTorrent is a peer to peer file sharing protocol. You might immediately think of programs like Kazaa and the late Napster, which also utilized peer to peer methods to allow transfers of MP3s. But unlike Kazaa, which is constantly corrupted by bad files and encumbered by slow speeds, BitTorrent enables file sharing in a different way.

Before explaining exactly how BitTorrent works, it's important to realize that there are two different components to torrents; first you need to download some sort of BitTorrent client. This is a program that has a similar interface as Kazaa, but doesn't have a search bar.

There are quite a few different options for clients, but for Macs I would recommend Azureus, and for PCs, uTorrent.

Once you have a client, you search for the files that you'd like (music, movies, games, etc.) to download from various Web sites, the most popular being Isohunt.com and ThePi-rateBay.com. After download-ing a few times, it's easy to navigate around to find what you need.

When searching for torrents, you will see how many seeders and leechers there are for each file. Seeders are people who are currently sharing the file while leechers are people who are currently downloading the file. To get the fastest download speed, you want more seeders and less leechers.

BitTorrent works almost like an assembly line. Rather than obtaining information from one server, the information is passed from peer to peer, and once all of the bits and pieces are downloaded, they are put back together to form the final product, or the downloaded file.

This process alleviates pressure on the server and also means that no one has to maintain that server and prevent it from getting bogged down, saving you time and the creators of BitTorrent a whole lot of money.

Another advantage to Bit Torrent is the integration of user comments. This allows users to warn other potential downloaders of corrupt files or other issues they had with a specific file, eventually weeding them out.

BitTorrent seeks to amass both free and content and priced products in the future. But at this point it's easy to find pretty much any content you would ever want, for free.

Torrent Raiders: Interactive BitTorrent Game Project

Torrent Raiders is an arcade-style video game and a dynamic network visualization.

Driven in real-time by the activity of bit torrent swarms, Torrent Raiders takes place on the ad-hoc networks created by bit torrent users. Torrent Raiders playfully addresses issues of domestic surveillance, amidst the recent revelation of the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping and the increasingly Orwellian nature of our so-called “homeland security”. Players take on the role of a government agent tasked with surveilling the ad-hoc networks generated by torrents linked to copyrighted material.

Bit Torrent is a protocol for peer-to-peer file distribution; according to a recent study by CacheLogic it accounts for 35% of all traffic on the Internet. The most popular torrents on the web are new DVD releases. These massively populated swarms will be the playing field. With gameplay and graphics in the nouveau retro tradition of shooters like Rez and Geometry Wars, the core mechanic of Torrent Raiders revolves around capturing data packets from users on the torrent swarm and identifying their geographical location. Players use their Torrent Raider ship, equipped with an array of dazzling projectile weaponry, to search and destroy virtual violators in the torrent swarm. The Torrent Raiders game will be built using C# and the .NET platform; the graphics will be powered by Direct3D and it will use the open source btSharp library for real-time interaction with torrent swarms.

While the decentralized nature of the bit torrent protocol makes the visualization of a swarm impossible with a conventional client, Torrent Raiders permits torrent swarm visualization through distributed surveillance. The information gathered by a player in the game is uploaded to a central MySQL database on a companion website. This website will host animated visualizations created in Processing, driven by the aggregated database of information collected by players of the Torrent Raiders game. As more people play Torrent Raiders, the visualizations become more complex, accurate representations of the swarm. Each week, Torrent Raiders will be automatically directed to a new torrent, creating a gallery of visualizations for the shape of torrents passed.

I am developing Torrent Raiders as my thesis at the USC Interactive Media Division; it will be realized as an arcade cabinet-based installation for the MFA thesis exhibition and future exhibitions. I will be responsible for the majority of its development including programming and design. Artist Corey Jackson will assist with the creation of concept art, additional assets and 3D models. An additional network programmer will assist in integrating the bit torrent protocol functionality. Michael Naimark, Julian Bleecker and one additional adviser will sit on my thesis committee.

Neokast: Streaming for Everyone?

If it delivers as advertised, the forthcoming peer-to-peer video distribution network from the Chicago-based Neokast could shatter current illusions about what it takes to stream live video over the Internet, allowing anyone with a webcam and a Net link to broadcast live to “an unlimited number of viewers.”

But after just a quick demo and fly-by interview at the Spring 2007 VON show in San Jose, there’s not enough information to assess whether or not this is indeed the next great leap in net-based video.

Neokast, which claims to be the creation of a group of smart about-out-of-college guys, said among other claims in its handout materials at VON that “Neokast is the next generation of media broadcasting on the Internet,” and that “With Neokast there is no downloading or buffering time, and the stream can continue indefinitely without interruption!”

Looking just a little bit silly in their team outfit of first-job-interview dark suits, the Neokasters at VON didn’t offer much in the way of hard details about their invention, other than to say to trust them it will work. They are accepting sign-ups for beta testing, so maybe we will learn more when real people start poking around.

The legendary Bob Cringely took an in-depth look at Neokast in his column last week, and calls it a play on the old idea of multicasting. But even Cringely’s detailed questioning doesn’t provide all the answers about how Neokast will actually make it happen. We tried to pry a few more details out of Neokast Wednesday on the VON show floor.

Noah Clemons, Neokast’s chief information architect, said the streaming video will be supported by a network of peers who download Neokast software. We can’t quite understand how anyone could continuously stream video over this network, where it can also (theoretically) be archived or registered for pay-per-view streaming, without central servers or cached content. Would you have to leave your own computer on, all the time, to stream? Would the company’s “advanced peer-to-peer protocols” impact networks the same way BitTorrent does today?

We didn’t get clear answers from Clemons on a lot of the questions, which may have been more to blame on the available person-to-person bandwidth of a noisy, busy show floor than any crafty evasiveness on Clemons’ part. There will be both a free and a “premium” service, the latter offering things like payment services to earn Neokast revenues. Clemons did clearly state that Neokast users will have to register all streams with the network, and that Neokast will have copyright-protection schemes in place to kick off unauthorized usage. So for now, they’re at least safe from the Viacom legal team. Whether or not Neokast will become the next BitTorrent is a story yet to be told, but one we will continue to monitor. Or stream, as it may be.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

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