07.21.16
The NYT, at the GOPCon, next to the pirates
Here’s to laughter, from Andrew Rosenthal, one of the NYT’s six figure explainers:
What on earth is BitTorrent News?
At this point, it’s no surprise when an organization experiments with ways to use technology to advance the distribution of news. The New York Times is one of many doing so.
BitTorrent — a company based, of course, in San Francisco — is using news to advance technology.
Until fairly recently, BitTorrent didn’t have a news site. In fact, it wasn’t really a website at all. It’s a “protocol??? — a bunch of software used to transfer files across the internet.
BitTorrent’s technology, now about 12 years old, was a success among companies that distribute large amounts of data to large numbers of people at the same time, like Facebook or the online gaming company Blizzard.
More notoriously, pirate websites use the technology to offer illegal downloads. Erik Schwartz, a vice president for the company, was quick to say that his company does not offer those services …
BitTorrent — “a bunch of software” — actually, a utility, an application, used on a PC to get pirated movies, books, music and commercial software from sites like Kat.cr (aka KickAss torrents — see footnote), which aggregates “torrents,” collections of individual networked computers with the stolen stuff on their hard disks.
It’s how I steal all my stuff, since I can’t afford anything. In fact, I may steal a movie tonight using BitTorrent, along with thousands of others.
So, yes, let’s pretent BitTorrent is at the RNC getting into the news biz. Do that.
1. The Evil Empire Strikes Back:
Kickass Torrents’ alleged owner, Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in Poland as part of a lawsuit filed by the United States. Many of KAT’s domains have been seized in the lawsuit and, as a result, none of the popular torrent site’s webpages are currently working. The lawsuit was filed in Chicago, with the alleged owner, Artem Vaulin from Kharkiv, Ukraine, being sued for copyright infringement and money laundering conspiracy …
No stolen movie tonight. The US government, on the job, guaranteeing the intellectual property of the haves who’ve alredy made billions isn’t infringed by the dirty poors.
Nobody’s going to rip off Captain America: Civil War using BitTorrent anymore, I tell ya.
Christoph Hechl said,
July 23, 2016 at 11:22 pm
Try movie4k.to, but have a scriptblocker and maybe adblocker active.
Ted Jr. said,
July 25, 2016 at 8:06 am
Aww face it, the whole Bittorrent scene has been too quiet of late, what with the pirate bay sharing all traffic info via Cloudflare and the non extinguishing of isohunt and demonoid, one is left with the boredom of business as usual. That leaves the timing perfect for another disturbance in the force.
Another poster on a blog hinted that the same companies who brag to their shareholders about how much money they make are the same companies who whine to the US government how much money they lose to these so called pie-rates.
So not to fret, this whole bittorrent scene has become another large data collection exercise similar to faceplant and tweeter catering to the alphabet agencies need to quickly identify patsies for the next synthetic terror exercise.
Relax and pop some popcorn.
George Smith said,
August 4, 2016 at 8:51 am
I’m waiting for the pirates to catch up with where Kickass was with ebooks. I’ll say that movie4k.to has a better presentation than kat did.