FrostWire integrates Bitcoin donations and Creative Commons licensing into Torrent files.

Bitcoin LItecoin Coins
~ gubatron ~ 3 Comments

FrostWire has introduced the possibility for of adding Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin wallet address into metadata of the torrent file format in order to enable optional donations. By eliminating middlemen and transaction costs, microtipping is now fully possible and the recipients can collect 100% of their contributions.

Mainstream centralized digital distribution platforms have been relatively successful at providing big content creators with means of monetization and discovery of their works. In spite of their success however, many self-publishing artists are still struggling with having have to share a significant portion of their revenues with the stores and middlemen, just for being able to bring their works to their fans. The centralized systems also often impose censorship and are ridden with bureaucratic structures that inevitably increase costs, making it impossible for a digital media micro-tipping economy to be born.

The FrostWire team believes that by integrating a free, peer-to-peer payment method, Bitcoin, into the free, peer-to-peer file distribution network, BitTorrent, our community can help bootstrap the largest micro-tipping economy of the Internet.

By enabling over a quarter of a billion BitTorrent users worldwide to support their favorite content creators with tips of any amount, from a fan directly to the artist, for the first time ever we would enable content creators to collect 100% of their revenues, easily and instantly.

This would be the first step towards not only creating an alternative massive monetizable distribution channel, but a decentralized digital media catalog that would make it easier for fans to discover new artists and more beneficial for any content creator to use the power of BitTorrent for a free, uncensored, and direct worldwide distribution.

We also believe that the world cannot experience an evolutionary step in digital media distribution if existing copyright licensing is antiquated and not fit for global reach. We want to help speed up the adoption of alternative licensing models by building the tools that make it convenient for content creators to embrace licensing solutions like Creative Commons.

Content Creators can now select from any of the available Creative Commons licenses available and express in advanced how their content can be used.
Content Creators can now select from any of the available Creative Commons licenses available and express in advanced how their content can be used.

As a first step in making this vision a reality, the FrostWire team has developed a way for the payment & licensing information to be included into the .torrent file. Now all BitTorrent Clients and search engines can read that information and present it to their users.

The newest version of FrostWire (5.7.1 beta) can already process the payment information.

After FrostWire starts downloading a torrent file containing metadata related to a Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin wallet or PayPal donation url it will show “Tipping” buttons anyone can use to voluntarily support their favorite content creators. This version of FrostWire already allows for creation of the enhanced torrent, giving the creators an ability to add their Creative Commons License information into the torrent itself.

When tipping options are available these appear bolded, and one click takes them to the payment page.
When tipping options are available these appear bolded, and one click takes them to the payment page.

Just imagine a BitTorrent bundle in which Bono from U2 shares free songs or a free video documentary to raise awareness and collects Bitcoin donations for the (Red) foundation to further the fight against HIV worldwide. We can’t wait to see all the imaginative use cases this integration can inspire!

If you are or know an artists how would like to create their own Bitcoin empowered torrent, please have them contact us at contact@frostclick.com. Before we roll out this particular feature to the general audience, we would like to test to make sure it’s absolutely perfect and bug free.

We encourage to try it out yourself and tell us what you think. We have created beta installers for different operating systems so that you can test the tipping/payment process yourselves.

Hack it

Technical Documentation on Github

Here is the Source Code.

Download Test Installers

Beta installer for Windows (5.7.1 build 1)

Beta installer for Mac (5.7.1 build 1)

Beta installer for Debian based Linux distros (5.7.1 build 1)

Beta installer for RPM based Linux distros (5.7.1 build 1)

Try the first Bitcoin-tippable .torrents in history:

Sample .torrent frostwire-5.7.1.dmg.torrent (includes all payment options and CC license)

Sample .torrent bitcoin_revolution_by_FriCtrl_CC-BY-SA.mp3.torrent (includes just Bitcoin payment option and CC license)

Try the Payment pages

Payment options page for frostwire-7.8.1.dmg.torrent

Bitcoin only payment/tipping page for bitcoin_revolution_by_FriCtrl_CC-BY-SA.mp3.torrent

If you want to spread the word about this integration, feel free to use the text and all images in your articles. Everything in this blog is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. FrostWire logos are here.

Technical document on how we are working to allow Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin tips/micro-tips for BitTorrent content

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Motivation

Mainstream centralized digital distribution platforms offer content creators means of monetization and discovery for their works, however these centralized systems often impose censorship and are ridden with middlemen which inevitably add up costs that have made itimpossible for a digital media micro-tipping economy to be born.

With the combination of peer-to-peer file distribution through the BitTorrent network and peer-to-peer cryptocurrency networks such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin, our community can help bootstrap the largest micro-tipping economy of the Internet by enabling over a quarter of a billion BitTorrent users world wide to support content creators with tips of any amount, no middlemen involved, no chargebacks and no fees so content creators get 100% of the revenue collected, instantly.

Read more

People friendly press release coming out later today.

FrostWire 5.7.0 is out for Windows, Mac and Linux now at FrostWire.com

~ gubatron ~ 1 Comment

Download FrostWire 5.7.0 for Windows (torrent)

Download FrostWire 5.7.0 for Mac (torrent)

Download FrostWire 5.7.0 for Ubuntu (torrent)

Download FrostWire 5.7.0 for Red Hat/Cent OS/RPM

Download FrostWire 5.7.0 for any other Linux Distro

Salsa Sara hoops in Wynwood, Miami for the FrostWire Team
Salsa Sara hoops in Wynwood, Miami for the FrostWire Team

What’s new?

  • Updated BitTorrent Engine to the latest code from the Azureus project along with FrostWire’s Team’s tunning and hacks for energy efficiency (as we reuse this same on code on Android)
  • Updated Java Runtime to fix compatibility launch issues Windows XP users were experiencing.
  • IRC Chat replaced for an HTML5 Chat App (Kiwi IRC), bye bye pjirc client.
  • New Torrents.com search engine integration.
  • Several UI bugs, freezes and crashes fixed.

Stay tuned for our Android release…

Try the new FrostWire 5.7.0 release candidate installers

~ gubatron ~ 2 Comments

Image

A new generation of FrostWire is almost here for 2014 and you can try it now before the official release on frostwire.com

FrostWire developers have upgraded the older vuze BitTorrent engine with the latest code from the Vuze/Azureus project, they’ve also replace the java runtime with the latest one from Oracle and this should eliminate binary incompatibility issues some Windows XP users had with the 5.6.x series.

The old chat tab is gone and it’s been now replacd by an IRC Web Client so now FrostWire boots up a bit faster.

Upgrades to search include integration with Torrents.fm a new torrent index with over 3 million torrents and tens of millions of files to search from, as well as bugs and crash fixes.

Help the development team by testing the release candidate installers, if you have any issues with the 5.7.0 RC build 1 installer please leave a message in the comment section below with as much detail as possible about your computer and the conditions under which a problem may have ocurred.

FrostWire is a free, open source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including BitTorrent support.

New FrostWire 5.6.9 for Windows, Mac and Linux out

~ gubatron

Download FrostWire for Windows
Download FrostWire for MacOSX
Download FrostWire for Ubuntu/Debian/Mint

In this release we’ve made considerable upgrades to make search more reliable, even in the event of a search engine not being available due to high load, errors, or even blockage by network administrators.

88aeda7059f811e3841c0e942e28d0cc_8

We’ve done away with jDownloader libraries (thank you guys, we learned a lot from you, great project), and found more ways to optimize memory usage, hopefully you will feel the difference when searching and using the application overall as we strive to use less resources with every release.

Here’s the full changelog

frostwire (5.6.9) stable; urgency=high
* Insanely faster cloud search results.
* Significant memory optimizations on search result parsing and display.
* Removed jDownloader libraries, less complexity, lighter app.
* Cloud audio downloads are much smaller, no audio demuxing necessary from
video services.
* Cloud video DASH download support.
* Smarter playlist name suggestion algorithm takes into account ID3 tags.
* Fixes bug where new playlists wouldn’t be saved if default name was used.
— FrostWire Team Mon, 2 Dec 2013 17:49:38 -0500

Is FrostWire Safe?

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FrostWire – free at http://www.frostwire.com – is a file sharing
application and media hub.

FrostWire, as a stand-alone application, is 100% safe to use. FrostWire
itself will not install any viruses, adware, malware or spyware. But is
there a way you can get your computer in trouble while using FrostWire?
Sure.

FrostWire connects to other computers & online servers to find the
content you are looking for. FrostWire does not itself create, host or
control the content it finds on the internet – the same way internet
browsers do not create, host, or control the websites & files you view
and download through them. There are some safeguards in place to
recognize and prevent malicious content from showing up in the search
results, but none are perfect. Before you download a file:

1) Check if the file size makes sense for the content type you wish
to download
2) Check the Source link to see file comments other
users have left on the hosting website and most importantly, if you
are a Windows user and do anything online, always
3) Make sure you have an up-to-date anti-virus software installed
and you check any file you download before opening it.

—

Music Credit: “The Big House” by Jason Shaw

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/
Audionautix_Tech_Urban_Dance/TU-TheBigHouse

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

FrostWire 5.6.8 out for Windows and Linux (Mac coming soon)

~ gubatron ~ 2 Comments

Download FrostWire 5.6.8 for Windows (.exe)
Download FrostWire 5.6.8 for Ubuntu/Debian/Mint (.deb)
Download FrostWire 5.6.8 for Red Had/Fedora/CentOS (.rpm)
Download FrostWire 5.6.8 for other Linux Distributions (.tar.gz)

This release fixes issues related to YouTube search and greatly improves the translation to spanish, thanks to our new contributor from Chile @dennistobar.

To our Mac users: You can try running from source until we figure out the digital signature issues brought forth by Maverick. We’re hoping to have a 5.6.8 very soon for you.
Update Download FrostWire 5.6.8 for Mac (.dmg)

To UK Users: a final fix is coming to bring back all the search results, we’re working as fast and hard as we can.

OSX Mavericks users, How to Prevent App Nap on FrostWire

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Screen Shot 2013-10-31 at 1.33.04 PM

Go to Applications (or wherever you have installed FrostWire)

Right click on the the FrostWire Icon > Get Info (or just Press Cmd+I after you’ve selected)

Make sure FrostWire won’t nap when it’s in the background.

Otherwise, you may start a long running transfer and OSX Mavericks will put FrostWire to sleep and your transfer won’t finish.

This is only a temporary work around to this new issue introduced by Mavericks and its awesome power saving tactics, we’re working on an update so that you don’t have to do this in the future.

New FrostWire 5.6.7 for Desktop available.

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Download FrostWire for Free Now

FrostWire, the free and opensource filesharing client for Windows and Linux is out with a new version which improves heavily on its core search features. (Mac is coming out very soon, we’re dealing with some issues to sign the binary with OSX Mavericks)

On this release we’ve revamped our smart meta search architecture to be faster and more energy efficient, it also increases the range of torrents and files indexed by several orders of magnitude even though ISOHunt has been removed from the list of search engines, with the addition of new search engines. The 5.6.x series will focus on adding even more search engines without taking a hit on CPU usage and bringing better quality search results.

It is highly recommended to install this update, while we work on 5.6.x updates and a new generation of distributed search that will come about for the 5.7.x series.

New Feature for Advanced Torrent Seeders
At long last, 5.6.7 introduces features to edit, update and scrape the trackers of your ongoing torrent transfers!

Full Changelog

frostwire (5.6.7) stable; urgency=high
  * New Advanced Feature: Edit Trackers.
  * New Advanced Feature: Scrape Trackers.
  * New Advanced Feature: Update Trackers.
  * New BitSnoop meta search.
  * New TorLock meta search.
  * New EZTV meta search.
  * Fixes Monova meta search.
  * Removes ISOHunt meta search.
  * Tips of the day updated.
  * Updated Catalonian flag.
 -- FrostWire Team   Mon, 4 Nov 2013 11:06:30 -0500