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Sunday, August 23rd, 2015
| Time | Event |
| 11:01a | This Anti-Piracy Campaign Will Leave You Speechless
Created for Universal Music, the 2007 campaign featured severed body parts alongside the line ‘Stop Destroying the Band You Like, Say No to Music Piracy.’ The gory manner in which the message was presented certainly touched a nerve but when compared to a new anti-piracy campaign just completed for Virgin Radio, the graphic images barely feel controversial. Titled ‘If you knew what went into it, you wouldn’t steal it’, the campaign is the brainchild of Leo Burnett, one of the largest U.S. ad agencies with several thousand employees and dozens of offices worldwide. Aimed at printed media and outdoor ads, the campaign features imagery and backstories associated with the lives of Marvin Gaye, Elvis Presley and Amy Winehouse. Those expecting fun and nostalgia can move along now though as things are about to get very dark indeed. In fact, the ads are so provocative that many will need assurance that this isn’t some kind of twisted prank. Sadly the campaign is absolute real and deadly serious – in more ways than one.
“The goal was to create a connection to each musician and the blood, sweat and tears that created the now-legendary music,” said Leo Burnett in a statement. While readers will certainly form their own opinions on the campaign, Leo Burnett have already given it their gold seal of approval. Using a 10-point assessment mechanism known as the “HumanKind Scale”, the company’s Global Product Committee has rated ‘If you knew what went into it, you wouldn’t steal it’ a 7.3. “Work that receives a 7-point rating is considered to be the benchmark for excellence in craft,” the company says. Feel free to leave your own ratings in the comment section below. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services. |
| 6:43p | uTorrent Explores Options to Make Users Pay
This dazzling number is a dream for most software companies as it presents major revenue potential. The problem is, however, that uTorrent is free. In recent years uTorrent’s parent company BitTorrent Inc. has monetized the client through advertisements and bundled software. This works, but it’s also an annoyance for users and the company itself, as it associates the torrent client with riskware. If it’s up to the uTorrent team, the added software will soon be a thing of the past. Over the past several months the people at BitTorrent Inc. have been discussing the possibility of replacing this revenue stream. “Specifically, we want to find a way to improve uTorrent for our customers while financially supporting the amazing team that works every day to make uTorrent great.” The uTorrent team says that it’s never been happy with the bundled software approach and wants to try alternatives during the weeks to come. “As you know, uTorrent is a free piece of software. To support it, we use bundled software and offers to offset the cost that would otherwise be paid directly by the user,” they note. “We’ve never been satisfied with this revenue model. It requires compromises that detract from a premium user experience. We want to find a model that adds value to our product and our users. We want to find a better way.” What the alternatives might be is not yet clear, but the uTorrent team says it will be testing a few options during the next few weeks and months. In doing so, their goal is to make uTorrent the best client out there while being transparent about the changes in the revenue model. In addition the team says that there will be options for every budget. This suggest that uTorrent will start to charge users, at least some of them. Or to use their own wording: “Provide our users with clear options for supporting uTorrent (with options for every budget)”  While we can only speculate for now, one option could be to ask for a monthly, yearly or even a lifetime subscription fee for future versions of uTorrent. With 150 million users, this can be quite profitable even if it costs as little as 99 cents per year. A similar subscription (but more expensive) model is already in use for BitTorrent Sync, which is developed by the same company. Another alternative is a significant fee for a lifetime subscription/license, but this may be too much of a hurdle for the average torrent user, so that seems less likely. Similarly, a voluntary “donation” based revenue stream seems destined to fail, as previous experiments have shown that torrent users are generally hesitant to contribute freely. Alternatively, BitTorrent Inc. may come out with a trimmed down version of the client with more limited functionality. Users could then upgrade this to a standard version if they choose to pay for it. Again, we can only speculate for now, but the fact that the uTorrent team is hinting at asking users for money is destined to cause a heated debate. We contacted BitTorrent Inc. for additional details but haven’t heard back from the company at the time of publishing. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services. |
Earlier this month an anti-piracy campaign from many years ago was resurrected by 
With roughly 150 million monthly users uTorrent is by far the most used BitTorrent client.| << Previous Day |
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