The Inquirer.net published an interesting article about the MPAA's response, or lack thereof to Guba. Guba an usenet indexing site offering feature length movies for $.99 and TV shows for $.49 is apparently completely protected by the MPAA, rather the MPAA is not interested in their illegal offerings.

BitTorrent trackers and ED2K indexing sites as of late have been the focus of the MPAA's wrath, but they are ignoring Usenet. Why? Is there an unspoken rule, is there a deal striked up somewhere that makes Guba and usenet untouchable? Yet another reason why I love my newsgroups and newsleecher.

"They've been working with us in good faith, and they'll continue to do so. We have a relationship with Guba, and they have a commitment into making sure that they don't offer copyrighted content. We'll continue to monitor the situation, and if for some reason it doesn't happen we will talk to them," a spokesMPAA said.

The article goes onto describe how evidence was shown to the MPAA proving that there was no filtering and that illegal downloads were readily available. However, the contact at the MPAA was trusting enough to ignore all evidence and go on faith alone that the network was operating properly and within legal ramifications. pfft

Boy, that just has a cool ring to it, unfortunately it spells bad news for those looking to get Sony's first standalone player. For the third time the BDP-S1 Blu-ray Disc player launch will be postponed until December or possibly even sometime in 2007. eeek!?

According to EETimes.com, the problem comes from supplies, rather than an actual problem with the hardware. Sounds like the same thing to me and is clearly steering more and more each day toward an HD-DVD player. Sony has been screwing up more than I like to see lately, especially since they closed down Lik-Sang.

On Oct 19th, The Guardian posted an interview with Ashwin Navin, President and CEO of BitTorrent. This self-proclaimed creator of the BitTorrent business model floats through the interview walking on piracy eggshells....pfft.

Navin's ability to dance around questions like, " The judicial system in the US has taken a dim view of peer-to-peer networks - in fact, Grokster is out of business. Why is BitTorrent still around?" , make me wonder if this isn't just a face man. Consider this, who's the fall guy going to be since BitTorrent has incorporated and Brahm Cohen is striking deals with the likes of the MPAA? Navin answers politely, but dances as usual, assuming we're all idiots.

If your technology looks like it was designed for illegal purposes, you'll be held liable for it. It's kind of like the pornography standard, I can't define it but I know it when I see it and that is basically what the court handed down. From the beginning of BitTorrent, Bram vociferously discouraged the use of BitTorrent for piracy and warned users there is no anonymity.

The only reason the official BitTorrent company is still around is because they striked deals.  In no way have they "vociferously discouraged" piracy, other than instituting some very lackluster filter techniques. Essentially, signing deals with the devil will get you a seat to the right of the MPAA, of course it's hard to turn down a $1 million dollar contract.

It seems that no matter who the MPAA/RIAA works with they only suceed in clouding facts and confusing the consumer. We all remember the worm escapade that the RIAA knowingly added to their cds, but what about pricing structures. There is a fine line between greed and profit minded decisions, I think it's clear to the consumers what side of the line the MPAA is on and it's abundantly clear from what Navin has to say about legitimate pricing.

One of the things that seems to be proven is that consumers need a consistent pricing framework. The pricing needs to be commensurate with the value proposition of getting a digital download and so we are learning from others. We are shaping that up.

That's about as clear as mud, where do I sign up?

The official BitTorrent company, created by Brahm Cohen, is currently working with manufacturers to integrate their p2p protocol with consumer electronics. The idea is that you could download torrents via a router, media server, or any non PC based hardware.

Keep in mind this advancement will be centered around legitimate p2p seeds. So sorry, those bastard child torrents will most likely not be able to pass through whatever DRM infested protocol they create for the systems.

It seems I'm still trying to find a theme that fits my blogging style and mood. Today, I think I may have found it, after a little bit of modification this one just might stick. The theme being used is ChaoticSoul by Bryan Veloso and the basic installation does not fulfill my SEO needs, so bring out the tools.

I'll briefly highlight some of the minor changes I've made thus far. First and foremost I need to have my blogs name at the top and NOT ChaoticSoul. Afterward, it's important to me to have some distinction between my theme and the thousands of others being used in standard form. I've compiled a few images that embody everything I'm about on the net and used them as my left/right images in the header, I think the end product is nice.

Search engines give my blog intermittent love and usually sends visitors to a single page, possibly months back in the archives. This is great, however with that single_post template they have no idea what my blog is about. By installaing FuzzyPosts and placing a latest_posts.php in my singlepage template visitors can now see my last 10 posts in the sidebar.

What bothers me is that this theme does not include a blogroll standard, it must be added to your sidebar. You can get your blog roll up and running again by placing the code ?php get_links_list(); ?> anywhere in the ChaoticSoul sidebar where you want your links to show up.

For now, that's about as far as I've made it, although I'm far from being finished. Throughout the day I'll be modifying my AdsenseDeluxe so that my ads blend with the template. Hope others enjoy this template as much as I do.

SlyckTom, in an attempt to bring back news to an otherwise flat news site, sets fire to a great p2p controversey. In a rare link to Zeropaid.com, SlyckTom announces his support of Bram Cohen and his stance on leeching. However, all of his arguments are rooted in a leechers mindset, not taking both sides into consideration. Lol, he considers himself a true journalist.

In essence the implementation of ratio enforcement only forces those who have no intention to share beyond they completed download to use spoof clients; while the policy is irrelevant to those who naturally feel obligated to seed.

This argument would assume that BitTorrent tracker operators were not in the "know". Private tracker operators are very aware of how to block spoof clients and actively hunt down/ban said spoofers/clients.

Charging for information not owned by the seller is frowned upon not only in the physical world, but online as well.

I agree 100%! 

The once famous P2P client generated legions of followers, and not just because it was a decent source of information. Rather, Blubster created a community environment that challenged Napster. It had a concise news section, and an entire .net domain dedicated to the sole purpose of furthering its large community. 

That's the point of private bittorrent communities, it's all about community. Unfortunately, an isolated few private communities promote pay-to-play requirements, that hurt the image of the whole. Take it from a torrent veteran, there are quality meaningful private communities and there are those that are focused on the almighty dollar.

As file-sharing stabilized, much of the magic that initially surrounded it has dissipated. Those around since the beginning may even question the relevance of file-sharing. Maybe people are taking the whole deal too seriously. Sit back, relax, and see what’s happening out there.

I remember when I began my p2p endeavors with Napster, although after it's fall I immediately got out of the scene all together. In fall of 04 I discovered bittorrent and have been hooked ever since. Admittedly, my re-addiction to p2p began with one thing, becoming a part of the community.

Google Webmaster Tools has stepped it up again by offering more features and controls over how Google bots view your site. One of the most noteworthy of options is the ability to control how often your site gets spidered, rather how much bandwidth is used during the indexing process.

In addition, a key statistic tool added is the ability to see how many urls your sitemap submitted. This is especially important to insure that your site is being crawled as deeply as possible.

Check it out and more at the Google Webmaster Blog.

Man, I just don't know how I'm going to pay the electric bill this month. Nor do I know how much longer I'm going to even have a presence on the internet, especially considering all the readers I've lost do to my PayPerPost involvement.

I'm sure the 10's of thousands of readers I'm losing to ignorance will eventually ruin me. Personally, this is the first hate link I've ever received...freakin sweet, more backlinks.

I've completed my installation and configuration of my XP MCE 2005 OS and communicated with the 360 in my living room. The process was very simple, once I got MCE to install properly...damn usenet kiddies. However, my install is through a wireless home network, so I hope to see how the quality is to stream HD.

I've already tested a few small clips from the Matrix 1080i and experienced some pretty harsh particle effects. I'm hoping by tweaking my wireless connection and making sure my PC is running at open resources I can achieve a fairly close to perfect HD experience. In that vein, I've subscribed to a new newsgroup, alt.binaries.hdtv.

If anyone has any questions, comments, or concerns about my project please feel free to leave a comment.

In the same vein as GetFireFox, Azureus has started a Get Azureus. Their homepage features the latest and most popular content on their tracker.

Not for me, but yet another step in the direction  of creating legalized torrents. pffft