MiniNova intros a stats bonanza

A few months ago top BitTorrent meta-tracker and SuprNova successor, Mininova started distributing content for anyone that wanted to put media in-front of their millions of users. This weekend the good folks at Mininova upgraded their Content Distribution service to include stats generated though Google Charts API. The stats themselves are an interesting window into the pull of specific types of content in different areas of the world. More fodder for algorithmic marketing efforts that can process the data and pull out usable insights into what people want and how they want to get it.

Music industry sues Torrent site. Yawn!

An interesting article from the good folks at TorrentFreak. While it wont have any of the humor and fireworks ThePirateBay brings to the party, I still think this will be an interesting battle. Mininova doesnt run a tracker or host files it is truly only pointing in the general direction of both legal and questionable torrent files. However the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BRIEN disagrees.
<Insert trite music industry is doomed comment here> blah </insert>

I noticed that the article keeps referencing the DMCA, which as a US law and as such probably has little applicability as a defense in a Dutch courtroom. Hope the folks at MiniNova have a better battle plan up their sleeve then “we kinda follow a fuzzy US law”. The Dutch agency persuing the case counts among is success forcing Demonoid offline for a couple of months and getting them to move their popular bitTorrent tracker to a different ISP.
<Insert music industry loves whack-a-mole comment here> blah </insert>

BitTorrent News via Torrent Freak

The good folks at Torrent Freak caught my attention this morning with news of the possible resurrection of Demonoid, of one my favorite BitTorrent trackers, for stats. They have been tracking the fate of Demonoid since it was taken offline last year. The site seems to have gained a new host in the Ukraine and its torrents are working again. Ernesto of Torrent Freak speculates that it could come back online in the next few weeks. In other BitTorrent news the fall of Torernt.is, an Icelandic BitTorrent tracker which accounted for 50% of Icelands internet traffic seems to be nearly complete. I really do love that 10% of the population and 50% of the Internet traffic on the island nation was accounted for on one site.

Battlestar Galactica Razor 3 Weeks Early. Thanks NBC.

If your not watching the geek greatness that is Battlestar Galactica then you are missing one of the greatest male soap operas on TV. Yesterday, while perusing my favorite Bittorent sites to get caught-up on the latest episodes of Avatar, Weeds and Dexter, I saw an entry for Battlestar Galactica Razor. “This couldnt be the highly anticipated 4th season premier”, thought I. I joined the crowd leeching the file and sure enough, in about an hour, I had all 87 minutes of the yet-to-be aired season opener, complete and commercial free. Oh and its back to its original, tension filled, beautifully shot glory!

The official Battlestar Galactica site says the show will premier on November 24th at 9pm… A full 3 weeks from now. Why? Its been shot, its been edited, its been pre-sold to advertisers and you can even order the DVD. So why arent our good friends in TV land acknowledging that online distribution is another release window with its own rules, and value chain?

Why is Hollywood still fighting this losing battle? The early release of Razor means I wont be watching its premier on TV and NBC Universal has lost another opportunity to advertise at me. Where is Hulu, NBC’s vain attempt to replace YouTube, in all this? Its out there struggling to attract a user base with a silly name and few shows you can get a bunch of other places, without the weird commercials interruptions.