Monday, July 26th, 2010
About a year ago there was a stir of a new movie on Bittorrent sites. This movie was called The Lionshare and got a lot of attention because it was only released via torrents. That’s right, no DVD release, no theater time, just a torrent download for anyone who wanted it. It was distributed by this interesting company (I guess you could call it a company) called VODO that distributes indie films via torrents. Now why you would need some sort of service like this, I do not know. I suppose that this kind of thing may help get your film out there, but I don’t even know how many people had heard of VODO before The Lionshare, and I wonder if The Lionshare helped out VODO more than vice versa. I do understand the need for a like-minded distribution site. It can be hard to track down more of the same genre of stuff when all you have to go on are torrent links and word of mouth.
So as for The Lionshare, I watched it a few months after I downloaded it. I was mostly deterred from the reviews. The minority seemed to like the film and praised it as an honest look into the life of a twenty-something in modern day, but the majority of reviews I read said the movie was nothing more than a bore, and showed the limits of releasing a film in this manor. I got around to watching it and have to say my opinion lies somewhere in the middle. I think that the movie starts out beautifully, but loses momentum before you really start to learn anything about the characters. Without ruining the story, I’ll tell you that a guy goes on a blind date with a girl, and she invites him to a torrent site, and it follows the guy. This might be as far as this reflects the life of someone today. Women and technology are always good subjects, but I feel that the movie starts to get too hip considering anything besides this.
About two months ago, I found another link in The Lionshare’s universe. There was a Kickstarter (see my previous post) project dealing with a new science fiction show released only on Bittorrent. At this time, internet only television has become an interest phenomena. I’ve seen billboards all over the sity for a show released only online called Reinvent The Wheels which looks to be more of a mainstream thing following a niche concept. This science fiction show, Pioneer One, is a television episode by the same crew that pulled off The Lionshare, and I have to say that I like this work much better. Without giving away too much, it has a watered-down X-Files vibe that I really enjoyed, and centers around a strange piece of debris that lands in the United States. The production value for this is also much higher and looks professional, there there are hiccups. After watching the first episode, I was sad that there were no more. The Kickstarter was only made to produce one episode, so who knows if more will ever be created.
So give these videos a try if you see something you like. Both are available freely on torrent sites and I’m sure there are direct download links up somewhere by now. You might just end up having some new favorite media.
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Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
Most people are aware of GGF‘s acquisition of The Pirate Bay and the plan to turn it into a legal pay-site. The Pirate Bay, as many know, has served the BitTorrent community as a large public tracker/indexer as well as something of a project team known for relaunching Suprnova, ShareReactor, as well as original sites such as bayimg. Proving to be an old favorite, the acquisition of TPB marks a sad day in BitTorrent history. Despite this, the hydra theory comes in to play: when one head is cut off, two grow in its place. Though as of right now the TPB website remains active in something of a weakened state (the trackers are down) there are already a slew of alternatives available to the BitTorrent community.
Besides TPB, many other tracker/indexer sites have been around for a long amount of time. For example, H33T and SUMMOTorrent (and Demonoid to an extent) offer both in-house trackers and indexes. Other indexing sites, such as Mininova or TorrentBox offer free use with 3rd-party public trackers such as OpenTracker. Next to these public trackers are private torrent sites that usually require a user to be invited to it by another. These private trackers offer a level of safety due to their exclusivity, but are by no means completely safe from anti-piracy outfits.
Since the acquisition of TPB was announced, many new sites have popped up to offer new outlets to BitTorrent users.
Starting off, there have been a few public trackers popping up that look promising. The first being OpenBitTorrent, which from research proves to be the trackers from TPB using a new name (so the offline time for them is questionable). A similar project using the same software, but this time spearheaded by the administrator of BTJunkie, is known as PublicBT. These two trackers are virtually identical in use and message. They are simply for the tracking of torrents with no needed registration or limitations.
Besides these two trackers, a third entitled TheHiddenTracker should be noted for an interesting execution. TheHiddenTracker hides itself and its connections using TOR. Many torrent users know not to transfer files over TOR as it is slow and degrades service, but in this case, only the tracker is reached through TOR and file sharing happens normally. To use this tracker, one would have to either install TOR, or use a handy web service entitled tor2web that allows an internet user to access TOR addresses without downloading any additional software.
Now that there are new trackers, there are also some practical and interesting ways to share them amongst others. First off, if one possessed any torrents utilizing the old TPB trackers, these torrents could easily be edited to reflect new trackers using TorrentEditor, which helps edit torrent files online.
One interesting way to share torrent files is through the use of a service called Hid.im which will turn a torrent file into an image. This way, torrent files can easily be shared in places like forums or social networking sites. Anywhere an image can be hosted can now host a torrent.
Another service entitled Torrage (combinging the words Torrent and Storage) attempts to hold torrents without providing a search function. The only way torrents can be found through this website is if a user knows the info hash that the site generates for every torrent upload. Some torrent indexing sites are already utilitzing this as a way to store torrents more effectively, in a more decentralized manner.
Last but not least, isoHunt recently launched a “social networking torrent site” by the name of Hexagon.cc. Hexagon is made up of a bunch of different, smaller groups within the whole of the website. So say thay you are a fan of Creative Commons content. You can then join the group, download torrents associated with the group, and engage in discussions. Besides the public groups, there are also private groups that can only be accessed and seen through invites. They are also apparently SSL encrypted for added protection. Even though the site is less than a week old, it already houses over 45,000 torrents and is growing every day. The site is currently only joinable through the use of invites, but expect it to open up more as it expands.
So although TPB appears to be burning down (though some argue that the acquisition is doomed) loyal torrenters can rest assured that new services will rise from the ashes. Things such as The Hydra Project and (the now defunct) Securep2p project could come to light and revolutionize how people think about file sharing. The end of an era may be upon us, but a new chapter of BitTorrent history is being written as we speak.
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