Wall-E’s Indian TV Spot Uses Pirated Telesync Footage

It’s ridiculous. I was watching TV, there’s this WALL-E ad and I stuck around watching it because it’s all just so cute, even if it’s paired with a Salman Khan Bollywood song. I start noticing things. Some footage in this ad doesn’t look right. It’s from a Telesync, and is painfully contrasting to the high-quality official footage.

Probably goes to show how open piracy is here. Also probably goes to show that whoever was distributing WALL-E here wasn’t getting any official footage, which is a pity, because then they had to resort to pirated media (if I recall correctly, judging by the quality, it looks like Prevail’s Telesync). They could have at least looked for a screener or a DVD-Rip.

I wonder what the MPAA would think of this, or whoever is distributing WALL-E. They’re using pirated media, the same media they’re trying to prosecute and ban to promote their products. Hypocrisy much? I’m looking for a YouTube, but can’t seem to find one, sadly.

Sorg Uten Tårer

Was searching for some good Folk Metal and found Sorg Uten Tårer, a Norwegian one-man project that would actually more of Folk Metal bordering on Melodic Black Metal. Regardless, the sound is very, very good and I’d like to see the artist, Retribution be very big one day.

Meanwhile, all of his songs are available at Last.fm!

Edit: Since downloading off of one server is rather unreliable and lame and 1990s, I’ve taken the liberty to set up a torrent for the entire Sorg Uten Tårer discography to download here at Demonoid, which also becomes my first ever torrent contribution to any site ever. Of course, since the songs are free anyways, the torrent is 100% legal.

Korven Kuningas

I see that Korpiklaani is coming out with a new album in 10 days, named “Korven Kuningas”, the meaning of which escapes me, but I have no doubt that somebody at DarkLyrics will help me solve out.

I’ve found a torrent of it here, and am downloading it now (at a shameful 1-digit speed, for some reason) – it’s in a RAR file, so I’m not too sure if its real or not. I can’t imagine a person so vile that he would release a fake of a comparatively non-famous Folk Metal band…

Wikipedia also lists that a video for Metsämies was/is to be released in 2008, but I didn’t find a link on YouTube, and if it isn’t there, it’s nowhere. Hope it comes out soon, though – I love Korpiklaani’s videos.

I also like the album art – while it has that annoying antler-horn-dude mascot, he seems at least bearable, perhaps a little cool. The album art has been hand-painted, which is perhaps why it looks so complete and well-done (all the others were done in Photoshop and looked terrible, except the first two – Voice of Wilderness looked great).

I see that a single for “Keep on Galloping” is out – I’ll go check it out now.

How to spot Fake Torrents!

I’m becoming incereasingly pissed with all the fake torrents that litter the Internet. Yesterday, as I looked for Cloverfield torrents, I could see dozens of fake torrents. What the hell is up with that? And many of these fakes even take up names of the more reputed rippers.

Half the torrents are malware scams, like the WinZix one I blogged about before. The ones that are more annoying, though are the ones where you have 700 MB of garbage data. Many of the fakes I saw had a “sample” video, that was actually a slightly edited version of the 4-minute Cloverfield trailer. And there was 700MB of utterly useless data. I suppose the uploaders get a kick out of reading the comments saying “FAKE”.

Edit: Did some editing to add on to the post, seeing as how it’s gotten fairly popular.

How do you spot a fake torrent? Here’s what I’ve learned:

Always check the Comments first
Always check the Comments for whether the file is fake. The BitTorrent community consists of good guys (well, mostly so) and fake torrents are immediately pointed out in the comments section. And that’s why you should not download from sites that do not support comments.

If you encounter a fake torrent, notify that in the comments ASAP. Similarly, if you find a legit torrent, link to it in comments for fake torrents to help misled downloaders. Also comment back on the legit torrent’s page assuring its quality. Do not tag good torrents as ‘fake’ and fake torrents as ‘high quality’. You are being an ass.

Many sites also support reporting of fake torrents now (at least most major sites), using that option is a good idea, as that’ll get the torrent off the site faster. Using private or semi-private sites like Demonoid is also a good idea as they have better moderation. I’ve yet to see a fake torrent on Demonoid, but moderation’s pretty good on sites like The Pirate Bay, isoHunt or Mininova nowadays too.

RAR/ZIP files
Reputed rippers never put their video files in RAR archives. It will always be a straight and clean AVI. If you see a movie torrent with the main file being a RAR, abort it immediately.

This does not mean that RAR/ZIPs are not used at all in the community, they are used fairly often for software and games, usually if their sizes go beyond a gigabyte. Compressed archives are fairly safe for software and games, but definitely not for movies.

There are also many legit movie torrents that are compressed in multi-part archives, but I generally don’t support them because it’s a pain to unzip them and then seed the archive when you could be seeding the movie itself and saving tons of valuable space.

Suspicious Instructions
Many fake torrents will have files (especially HTML files) named “IMPORTANT – READ ME FIRST” or “READ THIS” or “UNRAR INSTRUCTIONS” etc. Firstly, most rippers put their info in an NFO file, with a minority doing TXT files. The HTML file is first indication something is wrong.

Secondly, rippers generally put information about the movie (running time, cast, synopsis etc.) in the NFO/TXT file first, in a systematic manner before their personal comments. This may be ignored by some rippers (especially casual rips of rare/obscure movies), but is something to check out all the same.

If the Readme file tells you that the file had to be compressed to RAR because of MPAA threats – that’s utter bull. Same goes if it tells you that you need special codecs, because these codecs are nothing but malware.

Password Protected
BitTorrent is all about freedom, and unless a torrent is private and meant to shared in a small, closed community, no torrent should be password protected. If you see anything about a password in the Readme, Title or Description, abort. Even if the Readme says “You may be asked for a password”, it means “You will be asked for a password.” This is a fake, a sham and needs to be discarded. Even if it is legit, do not seed Password Protected Torrents, just because they need to get the hell out of the Internet.

Screencaps
Most legit torrents have screenshots or links to screenshots in their descriptions these days. Checking is out is usually a good idea. While theoretically even fake torrents can have these (steal shots from trailers, promos), I’ve yet to see a fake torrent with screencaps.

Remember the general quality guide: CAM and TS releases will have poor video quality while DVDRips, Screeners and other releases will have high video quality.

Do not seed fakes!
As soon as your download is done, verify it is real. As soon as you get the slightes clue it is fake, delete it and stop seeding it ASAP. The only way you can make the world a worse place is to seed a fake torrent.

Use VCDQuality
VCDQuality is a good site in that it serves a database for working, high-quality torrents from reputed rippers. It does not host any torrent or download. It is only a great way to check if the movie you want has a working torrent yet.

Serve the community well, report bad torrents, download lots and kick the spammers out!

YouTorrent: Great New BitTorrent Search Engine

YouTorrent is really good in that it takes torrent searching seriously. The search interface is incredibly organized and makes hunting torrents a lot more convenient. Sort of makes you wonder why nobody did this before! As one of the Digg commenters pointed out, it does need a bit of tuning up in the broken date sorter, but it seems great otherwise. Still, I think Fenopy has the best looks when it comes to raw design on torrent sites.

read more | digg story

Songza is great

Found songza on the January 2008 edition of PC Magazine (which I got off mininova, of course). It’s pretty much the an audio search engine and player, somewhat similar to the classic SingingFish and the existing Spool.fm, which I think I will now sadly leave in favour of Songza.

Songza has an excellent design that is both different and simplistic, with a strong hint of Web 2.0 fashion. It’s giving me songs that Spool doesn’t, so I suppose I will be using Songza for all my random music-listening and previewing moments. Sorry, Spool.

Steal This Film II

Just finished watching Steal This Film II and I really liked it, the documentary style is slick and well-polished. It concentrates a lot more on the more ideological and philosophical ideas of internet piracy (or rather, BitTorrent in specific) than the last movie, which talked about The Pirate Bay.

I really like how the film is presented, and the ideas it introduces, that the world will eventually look at information exchange the way it was meant to be – free. People will give and take information without the greed of earning money from it. It also traces a great route of information exchange through the ages, including say, the “evil” printing press.

I’m interested in the next film from The League of Noble Peers, titled “The Oil of the 21st Century”, which appears to further the cause of the anti-copyright movements going on.

I’m seeding the movie right now, and probably for quite a while.

Do NOT trust WinZix and the .zix file format

I’ve learned something important today, and that is never to trust the .zix file format. It is a fake format developed by a bunch of scammers under the name “WinZix”. It claims to be a super-efficient compression utility, but functions as nothing more than a file container – it doesn’t compress files one bit. It instead, loads a large party of spyware and malware on your system.

They often create garbage files (mostly AVIs) and upload them to torrent trackers, with the files neatly packed in a .zix file. First off, look for the .zix format in the files and comments for the file you are about to download. Abort immediately if a .zix file is present. While there is still a chance of the file inside being valid, you’ll do better without it.

I’ve found UnZixWin to be the most helpful so far. Its latest version, 0.0.9 also allows you to open up version 2 files, so it’s the most up-to-date, in a way. There’s also a chance that the AVI file will be “encoded” in a special video format that only a player named 3wplayer can read. That player is filled with as much crap as WinZix. UnZixWin seems to do a good job of clearing up the AVI file as well.

Most importantly, avoid the format from the start. If you see anyone using it, tell them to stop it (unless it’s perpetrated by WinZix themselves – in such cases, it should be fairly obvious. Do not seed torrents with .zix files in them. You will be doing more harm to the community than good.