BitTorrent’s Ultra Music bundle asks fans to sign up for a newsletter to unlock additional content.

The first bundle released by BitTorrent comes courtesy of Ultra Music. Fans of dance music producer Kaskade will get a free MP3 of one of his tracks, as well as a trailer for the release of Kaskade’s upcoming tour DVD as soon as they download the torrent. An additional 10 minute concert video and an exclusive booklet can be unlocked by signing up for a Kaskade newsletter.

However, this is only one iteration of the bundle. Artists can also elect to use torrent bundles to directly sell additional content to their fans. From BitTorrent’s blog post:

“We don’t need another digital radio station. We don’t need another walled garden or standalone content store. We need ways to place value exchanges within the content itself – allowing these exchanges to travel freely, without barriers or limitations; allowing these exchanges to multiply as content is shared. Our goal is to move the interaction to where it matters; making it a property of the file, versus the distribution framework; giving artists real data about, and real access to, their fans.”

This isn’t the first time BitTorrent is trying to sell content to file sharers. The company launched a digital download store dubbed the BitTorrent Entertainment Network in 2007. The store featured DRM-protected movies from major Hollywood studios — and was largely ignored by the file sharing masses. BitTorrent eventually shut down the BitTorrent Entertainment Network at the end of 2008.

The company went through a bit or a rough patch in the following years, but has since recovered, and put a bigger emphasis on working with independent artists in recent months. Asked whether the company wants to take a cut when people start to sell their music or movies through bundles, a spokesperson told me that there are “no immediate plans for this.”

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Or so writes Eric Klinker, in the Harvard Business Review blog, in a solid post about how we’re going to manage the growth of the internet. While Klinker sounds like many a telco-funded astroturfer in his worries about ISP profits, he’s actually the CEO of file sharing site, BitTorrent. And his arguments are worth listening to on both sides of the internet divide — the ISPs and the content companies looking to ride those pipes.

In the post, which is similar in spirit to one he wrote for GigaOM in 2011, he agues that the problem on the Internet is congestion, and that there are far more ways to address congestion than just adding more lanes. And of course as the CEO of BitTorrent, which has a proprietary file transfer system that is composed of masses of distributed computers, his main idea is distributed computing. From the article:

Distributed computing systems work with unprecedented efficiency. You don’t need to build server farms, or new networks, to bring an application to life. Each computer acts as its own server; leveraging existing network connections distributed across the entirety of the internet. BitTorrent is a primary example of distributed computing systems at work. Each month, via BitTorrent, millions of machines work together to deliver petabytes of data across the web, to millions of users, at zero cost. And BitTorrent isn’t the only example of distributed technology at work today. Skype uses distributed computing systems to deliver calls. Spotify uses distributed computing systems to deliver music.

The challenges associated with this are obvious. Customers have to download clients in order to use such networks, and they will still affect the end user’s connection at the last mile or in the airwaves and at cell sites on mobile networks. Thus, they can tax ISP networks (although they can be optimized). But with video a huge driver of congestion on the consumer side, it’s a solution that could work, since people will download software in order to watch TV. Even ISPs have tested distributed computing when they tried out the P4P network protocol way back in 2008.

Distributed computing would force many popular web services to reconsider how they build their applications and stream their files, which could have a large effect on big web sites such as Facebook or Google as well as content companies and content delivery networks. Another option, and one that we’re inching toward, is smart routers and prioritization schemes where the user can set their own network parameters to best use the bandwidth they have available. Software-defined networks will also make such prioritization easier and cheaper to manage inside the core telco network as well.

There’s also a more controversial idea of ISPs charging more for broadband during peaks times, as opposed to current data caps that limit people no matter if they download information at 2AM or during prime time. True congestion pricing would also force users to bear to cost of overburdening the ISP network, although ISPs would then have to be open about how often their networks are congested and would risk consumers losing their appetite for broadband. My hunch is that neither the ISPs or the content companies want that to happen, although it’s still far from clear that upgrades are the death knell for the cable and telco companies, as opposed to a painful shift in their margin profiles.

Regardless, we’re only asking for more broadband and more internet services, so Klinker’s article is a welcome reminder that none of that will come for free.

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BitTorrent Live can stream straight from your webcam.

Broadcasters can either start streaming with their webcam, or use an app like Flash Media Encoder to stream their program. Users will have to download the BitTorrent Live plugin to tune into any of the streams on the platform. The BitTorrent Live website can be used to find channels to watch, and broadcasters can interact with viewers through chat rooms on their channels.

BitTorrent hasn’t said yet how it wants to monetize Live, but there may be less pressure to do so than for other live streaming services: Live uses P2P for video broadcasting, so there is little to no overhead to facilitate streaming.

BitTorrent Live is the brainchild of BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, who has been working on the underlying P2P protocol for a number of years. BitTorrent started to test the service with a limited number of live events back in 2011, and gradually invited more broadcasters to join. Check out this interview I did interview with Cohen about live streaming all the way back in 2010 below:

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SoShare keeps copies of files available for up to 30 days, unless a user opts to take them down beforehand. Users need to install a plugin to upload or download files, but it’s not necessary to register in order to access shared files.

BitTorrent launched a first alpha version of SoShare a year ago under the name Share. While testing Share, it discovered that photographers, videographers and musicians were most in need for this kind of service. “No one is designing media delivery for the media industry. We saw an opportunity to build a reliable solution for this user group,” said Catherine Meek, Director of Product Management at BitTorrent, adding:

“There are 3.34 million Americans employed in creative industries. They work in large file formats – photo, audio, film. And their work is dependent on being able to send and deliver these large file formats to collaborators and clients. Right now, doing so is costly and difficult.”

Speaking of costs: SoShare is absolutely free during its public beta test, but a BitTorrent spokesperson told me that the company may be looking at different options to monetize the service down the line.

SoShare is one of a number of new products developed by BitTorrent as parts of its BitTorrent Labs effort. Just last month, BitTorrent announced a new file syncing app that competes with traditional syncing services like Dropbox and Sugarsync.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Carlos Maya.

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The case centers on the search engine’s autocomplete feature — the suggestions for commonly-used search terms that pop up when users start typing something on Google. While they are generally seen as a way to make search more efficient (and provide some amusement when the results behave strangely), not everyone is amused: in fact the French music royalties society SNEP has been campaigning for several years to force Google to stop associating musical terms with terms like “torrent” or the names of filesharing services like RapidShare or MegaUpload.

The group argued that Google was promoting piracy by associating the two terms in public, making it easier for users to infringe copyright of the artists it represents.

But the French courts disagreed, rejecting those claims in 2010 and concluding that making commonly-used search terms transparent in this was was not the same as encouraging unauthorized copying. When SNEP appealed in 2011 and failed again, it looked like the case was over.

Now, however, the Court de Cassation, France’s court of last resort, has said it will set aside the verdict because of a technicality.

In a ruling made on Thursday, the Supreme Court said that the Court of Appeal had actually violated a key clause of the country’s rules on intellectual property in its interpretation of the legal arguments.

The rule states that collection societies like SNEP are within their rights to demand that the court take “all measures to prevent or stop such an attack on a copyright or related rights.” This, said the Supreme Court, was something ignored by the previous ruling: it has now referred the case back to the lower circuit, specifically the Court of Appeal in Versailles, for another go-round:

“CASSE ET ANNULE, dans toutes ses dispositions, l’arrêt rendu le 3 mai 2011, entre les parties, par la cour d’appel de Paris ; remet, en conséquence, la cause et les parties dans l’état où elles se trouvaient avant ledit arrêt et, pour être fait droit, les renvoie devant la cour d’appel de Versailles.”

Although the decision is not really a victory for anyone yet, it does open the door for a different decision. As such, it was welcomed by SNEP, whose CEO David El Sayegh said:

“This decision showing that search engines should be responsible for regulating the internet is a first in France”.

Google France, meanwhile, reiterated its argument by saying that, while it “takes very seriously” online infringement, autosuggest is simply an automatic display reflecting the searches completed by other internet users.

But here’s what’s even more peculiar: even though SNEP’s case failed in the court, it actually had the desired impact in the real world: Google did start filtering some phrases voluntarily after the initial appeal, despite the fact that it had won.

As The Register reported some 18 months ago:

“The company said in December that it would play nice with the big name record labels, TV networks, and movie studios, by providing better protection against piracy on the interwebs.

“Accordingly, various search terms and file-sharing websites have now been erased from Google’s not-altogether spotless mind.”

That means SNEP appears to be trying to make sure that this approach is not merely voluntary, but covers all sorts of copyright material and enshrined in law. That would put it in accordance with some other censorship activity in France, such as the rules that force internet companies to censor pro-Nazi material, for example.

And it also adds to the complicated situation around France’s three strikes law known as Hadopi, which has been in force since 2010 but has had questionable impact on filesharing. New president Francois Hollande has already suggested that he’s considering overturning the law.

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These kinds of costly cease-and-desist campaings against file sharers aren’t uncommon in Germany; hundreds of thousands of Internet users have been targeted by music labels, porn studios and others with similar demands in recent years, netting rights holders millions. Unusual about this case is that Iron Sky is a crowdsourced and crowd-financed movie, produced by people who made names for themselves with Creative Commons-licensed content that could be freely downloaded and reshared.

Iron Sky is a science fiction comedy, depicting a world in which the Nazis fled to the moon at the end of World War 2. It’s director Timo Vuorensola and its visual effects producer Samuli Torssonen previously rose to fame when they released the Star Trek parody Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning in 2005. That movie was offered for free online and clocked three million downloads within three months. The filmmakers have also in the past  lambasted old media for their take on piracy. In a blog post from 2009, Vuorensola wrote: “Piracy in its current, most common form – the digital download – is not a crime.”

His current German distributor, Polyband, seems to disagree. The company has hired local law office Sasse & Partners, which has in the past sent out similar letters on behalf of German record companies, according to a local law blogger.

Iron Sky has been heavily relying on crowdsourcing for animation, modeling and other parts of the movie making process, and €1 million of the movie’s €7.5 million budget have been contributed by fans. However, the film makers are relying on traditional distributors to actually get the movie in the theaters, and that apparently has resulted in a number of problems.

Iron Sky’s British distributor initially intended to only show the movie in theaters for a single day and then immediately take it to DVD. This strategy was opposed by the film makers themselves, who wrote on their blog: “What they are doing is basically stabbing us in the back.” The duo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit threats in Germany, but one can imagine that they’re not too happy about threatening their fans with lawsuits either.

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Cohen has worked on P2P live streaming for a number of years, and told us a while back that he completely had to start from scratch because traditional P2P algorithms introduce too much latency for live applications. BitTorrent Inc. hasn’t said how exactly it intends to productize the protocol, but Cohen said on Monday that he is talking to a number of potential partners. BitTorrent has also started to run a number of  field tests on its website in recent months, streaming weekly live music events with the P2P protocol.

The ultimate winners of a P2P-based solution could be consumers, he argued, because it would enable publishers to put much more content online at a fraction of the cost of traditional CDNs. “Most of the video that people consume today is still not on the Internet,” said Cohen, adding that existing protocols aren’t set up to support big live events.

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Now BTJunkie, another of the world’s largest filesharing sites, seems to have bitten the dust.

The site — a torrent search engine which seems to have been based in Europe — has been running for the past seven years, and at one point boasted at least 80 million users. But over the weekend its pages were replaced by a single blue screen marking its lifespan and a simple message:

“This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!”

Although not as well known as some others, BTJunkie was one of the world’s most active torrent search engines, linking to millions of active torrents. That catalog which made it a big deal: in fact, according to data from Compete, it was the 3rd largest site of its kind in 2011.

But unlike Megaupload, which only shut when the police raided the company’s HQ, this closure seems to be proactive on the part of the BTJunkie’s owners. The site was never the target of any direct legal action, but it has been in the crosshairs of entertainment industry for some time: searches for the site are generally blocked by Google, and it became a thorn in the side of the MPAA when a BTJunkie admin was the first to spot that the MPAA was uploading fake torrents back in 2007.

It appears that mounting pressure from recent events has finally broken the resolve of the site’s anonymous owners, with Torrentfreak claiming that one of the site’s owners said the stress and trouble wasn’t worth the effort:

Talking to TorrentFreak, BTjunkie’s founder said that the legal actions against other file-sharing sites such as MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay played an important role in making the difficult decision. Witnessing all the trouble colleagues got into was cause for a lot of worry and stress, and those will now belong to the past.
That said, BTjunkie’s owner still thinks there might be a future for other BitTorrent sites.
“I really do hope so, the war is far from over for sure,” he told TorrentFreak.

That certainly makes this move closer to recent changes by The Pirate Bay, which closed down its .org domain in order to prevent seizure by the American authorities, than a move caused by a direct threat.

In the short term this will certainly be seen as a victory for the content lobby, though in a way it really proves that they don’t necessarily need more legislation to get what they want. But will it make a significant difference to the amount of filesharing in the long term? That seems less straightforward.

It’s unlikely that BTJunkie’s users will simply disappear or stop torrenting: they’ll just move off to other services, or start replacements that take the process back towards square one. But however you spin it, this could be an important moment in the arguments about whether the carrot of better service provision is more effective than the stick of legal threat.

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In a ruling on Wednesday, the court said it would not grant the right to appeal to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström, three of those convicted in 2009 — effectively cementing their jail sentences and a SEK 47 million ($7 million) fine. Another one of the site’s founders, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, had already lost the right to appeal after missing a hearing due to illness. All four have since moved abroad.

But Sunde, who now runs the online payments service Flattr but faces an eight month jail sentence and multimillion dollar fine, told me that the group would “probably” take their case to Europe — although other options were still available.

In addition, in a post on his blog, he said that the Pirate Bay had broken “the monopoly of information”, accused the Swedish legal system of corruption, railed against the entertainment industry, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and drew parallels with Wikileaks.

TPB has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship. All of the people involved in TPB at some time have been involved in everything from famous leaks projects to aiding people in the arab spring. We’ve fought corruption all over the world. We’ve promoted equal opportunities to poor nations around the globe.

The ethical argument will rage on, particularly in the wake of controversial legislation such as SOPA and ACTA.

But in the meantime, the organization appears to be taking defensive measures and the main Pirate Bay site appears to have been taken down. It is currently redirecting to a Swedish mirror, thepiratebay.se, in what Torrentfreak reports is an attempt to prevent domain seizure by US authorities — as was seen recently with the shutdown of Megaupload

A lawyer for Lundström, a pharmaceuticals millionaire with ties to extremist groups who had helped fund the Pirate Bay in its early days, told Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter that the decision was “absurd” and that the technical legality of torrent services still had to be examined closely.

“I am disappointed that the court is so uninterested to dissect and analyze the legal twists and turns of one of the world’s most high-profile legal cases of all time,” Per Samuelsson told DG.

However the case proceeds, it seems that the Swedish court’s decision could spark further action against other sites, according to the country’s Anti-Piracy Bureau.Stockholm’s Aftonbladet newspaper said the APB is preparing “a new offensive against filesharers”.

The highest court has made it clear that anyone who takes any part in these crimes, even those who supply the internet connection, will have to face up to their responsibility,” said Henrik Pontén, legal counsel for Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Bureau

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The report was commissioned by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which counts companies like Google and Facebook as its members. It’s definitely worth a read (check out the full PDF) and will likely provoke discussion, especially in light of the entertainment industry’s ongoing push for tougher copyright laws. For a CliffsNotes-like version, check out the following infographic:

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