The Hanger

iXtreme 1.6 XBOX360 Firmware Upgrade - The Hanger Shop

Get your XBOX360 Firmware upgraded to iXtreme 1.6

(Play Backups / Copies) - Price Includes Return Delivery!

iPlayer for DSi - DSLite and DS - Play Movies on your DS

The New iPlayer Media Player for the DS, DSLite and DSi

Over at The Hanger Shop we have recently had a delivery of the new iPlayer which allows DS, DSLite and DSi owners to play movies on there handheld console without converting!! Simply drag and drop the movie file onto a micro sd card - insert it into the iPlayer and away you go!

Come and take a look here: http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/hangershop/products/iPlayer-Media-Player-for-DS-%252d-DS-Lite-and-DSi-|-UK-STOCK.html

The Piracy Dilemma

by Thomas Mennecke

Smaller businesses face tough questions when it comes to the bottom line. Software costs money, and a lot of it. Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office and Vista are rather expensive pieces of software. And it's not like a business can just buy one copy and install it on every computer. Typically, the license agreement only covers one copy for one machine. For a business that has multiple computers, a shoestring budget, and a family to feed, decisions have to be made.

It appears that decision is to cut the software budget. The Federation Against Software Theft, a UK firm which dedicates itself to promote legitimate use of software, published a study which found that 79% of business directors would be more likely to find ways around legitimate licensing in times of economic distress.

The logic seems sound enough. If a business is struggling to make ends meet, yet needs to install Office on several machines, the owner may be tempted to bypass the necessary licensing.

MPAA Defeats TorrentSpy

A Los Angeles Federal court has rendered a $110 million judgment against Valence Media, the company which operates the now defunct TorrentSpy. This judgment represents the culmination of a lengthy decline for TorrentSpy, which was slowly strangled to death by the movie industry.

“This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites,” said Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. “The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

Unlike many other BitTorrent websites such as The Pirate Bay or isoHunt, TorrentSpy was never quite able to shake off the MPAA's legal pursuit. Much like BitTorrent, Inc., TorrentSpy attempted many avenues of legitimacy. This included creating a program which allowed copyright holders to remove indexed torrents, and a policy of blocking US search requests. None of this seemed to matter, where in the US, the political climate is notoriously hostile to P2P development - the exception being BitTorrent, Inc.

According to the judgment posted on PACER, an injunction was also ordered against TorrentSpy. Interestingly, Valence Media can retain possession of the site, however is barred from indexing copyrighted works in the future.

RIAA Wants ISPs to Act on Piracy

The RIAA's Mitch Bainwol is back on Capitol Hill, and this time, he's not touting how online piracy has been contained. Actually, quite the contrary. If there was a music industry equivalent of an SOS, today's testimony would be it. Authorized downloads are way down, revenue has plummeted, and file-sharing networks seem impervious to just about anything thrown at it.

In general, file-sharers typically render a high degree of skepticism whenever the music industry describes the piracy situation in statistical detail. However, Mr. Bainwol's description today is within the realm of acceptability. Consider the following numbers testified today by Mr. Bainwol:

• During the past two years, music acquisition has jumped 15%. During the
same two year period, the share of legal acquisition of music has plummeted from 56% to 42% - now less than half of the music is acquired legally.

• In 1999, the recorded music industry had $14.6 billion in revenues – all from physical sales. By 2007, revenues had dropped to $10.4 billion, of which only $8 billion was from physical sales and $2.4 billion of this was from digital sales.

• In 2000, the ten top-selling albums in the United States sold a total of 60 million units. Last year, they totaled just 25 million, less than half of the 2000 sales.

The Hanger RSS Feeds - NEW!

The Hanger now has RSS Feeds for the most popular forums - They can be entered straight into your RSS Reader and you''ll then be the first to know when a new post has been added to that forum!

All are set to feed the last 10 posts. Here they are:-

(Dont click on them direct, copy & paste as a new feed into your RSS Reader)

Applications General
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=2&count=10
Applications Security
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=11&count=10
Films DVD Rips (General)
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=6&count=10
Film Collections
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=50&count=10
Films DVD-R
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=29&count=10
Films Low Qual/Cam/Screener/R5
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=27&count=10
HD Movie Releases
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=60&count=10
Music HQ No Loss
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=48&count=10
Music LQ Lossy
http://www.hanger.org.uk/h/rdf-hanger.php?fid=8&count=10

Enjoy - Mike

TorrentSpy Closes

TorrentSpy, one of the largest BitTorrent search engines, has ceased operations. According to Justin Bunnell, administrator and owner of TorrentSpy, the decision was made out of a desire to protect the privacy of its users - not because of any legal influence.

"We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008," a post on TorrentSpy.com reads.

"The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves."

TorrentSpy has been engaged in a protracted legal dispute with the MPAA since 2004. During this time, TorrentSpy has ventured down various avenues in an attempt to convey legitimacy. In early 2006, TorrentSpy considered opening an online distribution store. The proposed store would initially focus on files such as program updates, patches, and other smaller files. Eventually, Justin had hoped to integrate a music and movie distribution store with TorrentSpy.

Click READ MORE for the full story.

BitTorrent Bummer

BitTorrent throttling isn't just a concern for Comcast customers. If you're a BitTorrent fan, you might be ready to blame Canada as well. Specifically, Bell Canada, one of the largest backbone providers for our northern neighbors, has engaged in bandwidth shaping to the dismay of not just direct consumers, but ISP resellers as well.

The most vocal reseller is the family run ISP Teksavvy. The CEO of Teksavvy, Rocky Gaudrault, first reported on Bell's alleged throttling on DSL Reports.com

"After some discussions with Bell, while doing upgrades to zones that are under capacity, it looks like they've now started to implement a type of load balance system of sorts...As a side note, we have no plans to throttle anything, so if anyone is experiencing anything remotely related to this, it would be before it hits our side...Our concerns are that they are doing it without telling us. That we don't know where they are doing it. That we don't know if and when it will end. What are the plans to add capacity... what's going on? what are we getting for our money? what can we tell our customers?"

Click READ MORE for the full story.

New Project Sniffs Out Bandwidth Shaping ISPs

he file-sharing world has been consumed by a continuous barrage of coverage on the Comcast vs BitTorrent battle. While Comcast may be able to escape their policy of delaying traffic relatively unscathed, their image has taken a beating in the public relations department. In response to the growing distrust of ISPs, members of the p2pforum.it community developed a tool, dubbed Project Gemini, which allows users to test whether their ISPs block traffic.

According to a forum post, a spokesperson for the project states that, "our aim is to produce evidence with the technique below: we've developed two "Live" operating systems designed to connect with one another over the Internet, to start a BitTorrent transfer, and to record the transmission - after which it will generate a report containing the analysis of the traffic."

Testing for a shaped BitTorrent transmission isn't terribly difficult, but may be foreboding for the less computer savvy. The project requires the end user to download and mount an ISO to CD, change the boot sequence to initialize from an optical drive, and run the program which can only function with Ubuntu. The end user isn't required to have Ubuntu previously installed, rather the CD is a self contained with all the required data.

So if you can burn and mount an ISO - a familiar task in the file-sharing world - and are suspicious of your ISP, this program may be worth a try.

Limewire Opens Music Store

LimeWire is the only original P2P development company that remains in business in the United States or North America. As a free P2P application, it has survived WinMX, BearShare, a myriad of BitTorrent indexers and trackers, Kazaa, iMesh and many others. Additionally, it has maintained its open source nature and regularly publishes new software updates - a fact virtually unheard of in the United States.

BitTorrent, Inc. is the exception to this rule. Unlike its file-sharing brethren, BitTorrent has managed to survive in rather hostile environment, thanks largely to its understanding with the MPAA. LimeWire hasn't managed to reap this benefit, perhaps because it's still primarily used as an MP3 and music trading tool. BitTorrent is also used for music sharing, however its overwhelming usage is geared towards large movie files - something the MPAA sees value in.

Click READ MORE for the full story.