Mininova has evolved quite a bit since it has started three years ago. Within a year it was one of the most visited torrent sites on the Internet, and the ever increasing number of users resulted in the 4 billionth torrent download recently. Time to ask some questions.

The Mininova team has always been on top of the latest p2p developments. They recently launched a content distribution platform for independent publishers, a music streaming feature, and in the meanwhile they served billions of torrents. In fact, Mininova celebrated the 4 billionth .torrent download earlier this week.

Contrary to the Pirate Bay guys, however, the people behind Mininova prefer to lay low, and don’t speak out in public very often. We had the chance to do a short Q&A with Niek, one of the co-founders and the CEO of Mininova (yes, it’s a company).

TorrentFreak: Recently you have started to focus more on legal content, that is .torrent files uploaded by approved publishers. What are your plans with the Mininova publisher platform for the future, and will this affect the other .torrent files hosted on Mininova? Read the rest of this entry »

Former Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra has torn into the RIAA, likening them to the mafia, threatening to leave a horse’s head in the beds of old women and children alike, whilst destroying the education of student file-sharers. Don’t even get him started on the media: “Goebbels would be proud” he said.

Born Eric Reed Boucher in 1958, Jello Biafra is no stranger to controversy. He first became well known as songwriter and lead vocalist with the band Dead Kennedys. The band split in 1986 but 1998 saw the start of a six year battle over the royalties to the band’s music. No doubt this was a miserable experience, so maybe Biafra’s outburst this week was to be expected.

In a translated interview with Norway’s Aftenposten entitled “Goebbels Would Be Proud”, Biafra tells us a little bit about how he feels about the RIAA, big record labels and even the media. He isn’t pulling any punches either.

“I have two different opinions on file-sharing” says Biafra, drawing a metaphorical line in the sand - with good (small labels) on one side, and bad (big labels) on the other.

“You may take from the big labels,” he orders, “because the only thing they do is steal from both the artists and the audience.” Not many would disagree with you there, Jello. Read the rest of this entry &raquo

The South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival is one of the biggest and most popular in the United States. For the fourth year in a row, SXSW has released a DRM-less collection of songs that - thanks to Greg Hewgill - can now be downloaded for free via BitTorrent.

SXSW has embraced BitTorrent as a distribution method for showcasing artists since 2005, as they release a large collection of MP3s every year, a few weeks before the festival.

This year, for some reason SXSW decided not to release a torrent showcasing the artists (yet). However, all the mp3s are available for download on the SXSW website. Luckily, Greg Hewgill took the time and effort to put all the MP3s in one big torrent, which makes it much easier to download and share. It’s no OiNK, but it is certainly a good way to discover new artists. Read the rest of this entry &raquo

In a major file-sharing legal case in the United States, a renowned P2P expert has offered his critique of the expert witness report offered by the RIAA. Prof. Johan Pouwelse’s testimony will be a devastating blow to the music industry as he labels RIAA expert Doug Jacobson’s report as “borderline incompetent.

In file-sharing cases, the prosecution always claims to have irrefutable, cast-iron, even forensic-quality evidence, with which to batter alleged pirates into defeat. Organizations such as the RIAA claim to carry out their investigations using sophisticated equipment and software which, unlike every other piece of equipment and software in the known universe (especially operated by humans) never, ever goes wrong.

In order to prove they ‘got the right guy’, in UMG v Lindor the RIAA offered an expert witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, a director of the Iowa State University Information Assurance Center. Now, according to Recording Industry vs The People, Marie Lindor is fighting back and has served a report from her own expert, critiquing the RIAA’s witness. Internationally renowned P2P expert “Assistant Professor” Johan Pouwelse, agreed to take on the RIAA expert back in May 2007 having previously been a witness in a high profile case in the Netherlands. Read the rest of this entry &raquo