Pirate Bay releases map of Pirates

Pirate Bay the King of BitTorrent piracy websites has recently released a Google powered map that charts the locations of Pirates around the world. Which is based on the origin of the tracker that a person uses when downloading items from Pirate Bay states Torrent Freak.

At the time of writing this post I wanted to see how many Papua New Guinean users were downloading items from Pirate Bay. I was amazed to find out that their was 14 users per minute at 9:50pm tonight (9th Feb 2009) downloading items from Pirate Bay, or 0.001% of Pirate Bay users at this time were from Papua New Guinea. I pebble in the ocean. When you compare the figures of people who live in Papua New Guinea with other countries.

The interesting thing to notes was that the country where the most users came from was China which you would expect it to be. With 33% of Pirate Bay users coming from China, around 7 million users. The interesting part about it is that Pirate Bay is banned in China. So I guess where there is a will there is a way.

The statistics is now based on unique users connected per minute! Keep in mind that a torrent client usually only connects to the tracker once every 15-20 minutes. Total unique users per minute : 1343613 (at the time of writing this post)

BitTorrent power is now a add on in Firefox - Fire Torrent

It seems that BitTorrent has now leaped a huge gap in how it can be used. This was achieved by Firefox extension Fire Torrent. Basically what this extension does is let anyone using Firefox 3.0 or greater start downloading torrents from any source.Just like you would download a normal file, with out the use of separate BitTorrent software like FrostWire etc.

This Firefox add on is still in its alpha stage but I predict it will become one of the most popular Firefox extensions ever if it lives up to expectations. At the moment in Alpha testing it is invites only. But when it is released to the general public BitTorrent is going to take off in a big way. Thanks mainly to the global market pentration of Firefox.

If I was a big movie studio or music lable I would be very worried about the potential of such an Add On like Fire Torrent. The potential for it to be used to download copyrighted material is huge and big movie studios and music lables will stand to lose heaps. On the local scene record labels like CHM should be worried about this Firefox extension because of its ability to be used to trade copyright material. You may think in the sceme of things this is not something for CHM to worry about. But when you think about how easy it is going to be to trade copyright music etc, you will change your mind. For example now people won't need to have thrid party software to share files e.g. LimeWire, FrostWire, etc (except Fire Torrent). It is going to make file sharing a hell of a lot easier.

Look out Papua New Guinean music labels this is a sleeping Giant.

10 Most Pirated Movies of 2008

The 10 most Pirated Movies of 2008 according to Torrentfreak are:

1. The Dark Knight - 7,030,000 downloads
   
2. The Incredible Hulk - 5,840,000 downloads
   
3. The Bank Job - 5,410,000 downloads
   
4. You Don't Mess With The Zohan - 5,280,000 downloads
   
5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets - 5,280,000 downloads
   
6. Juno - 5,190,000 downloads
   
7. Tropic Thunder - 4,900,000 downloads
   
8. I Am Legend - 4,870,000 downloads
   
9. Forgetting Sarah Marshall - 4,400,000 downloads
   
10. Horton Hears a Who! - 4,360,000 downloads

It would be interesting to find out of the amount of Pirated Movies that were downloaded in Papua New Guinean.

P2P freeware software - FrostWire

For those wantoks out there that use the peer to peer software Limewire I would suggest you take a look at Frostwire. Frostwire is a peer to peer file sharing software on the Guntella network and uses BitTorrent protocols as well. It is writtern in Java, and comes under the GNU licence and is a free software. It has all the features that Limewire Pro has and the best thing about it for people that use file sharing software is that it connects to BitTorrent. So basically don't pay for Limewire when you can get Frostwire for free and it connects up to BitTorrent.

The features that Frostwire offers are:

• Completely free & open source
• No spyware or adware
  
• itune intergration
• BittTorent Support
• Connects to more sources then Limewire & Limewire Pro
• Junk result filters
• Community Chat rooms
• Proxy support
• Firewall to Firewall transfers

The Frostwire GUI is looks the same as Limewire and opperates the same as Limewire. With a fee add bouns of having a section where you can connect up to BitTorrent. To be honest while trialing Frostwire over the last week to do this post, and you would not go back to using Limewire or Limewire Pro. So file sharing wantoks save a few kina and use a free and more superior product then Limewire. If you are going to do Peer to Peer file sharing use Frostwire.