USA Here I Come

By Sooti

I will be posting all future posts for the next year about, from the US, since i will be living there for about a year, working and experiencing the "American dream" (and finally high speed internet) for my self, i will continue to update about Israeli P2P related issues, and will open a new blog updating my life's progress in the states, I will post here some new tutorials as well.

Israeli Copyright Law Updated After 96 Years

By Sooti

After Being outdated in favor of file sharers, the Israeli copyright law has been updated after 96 years (last time was 1911 by the british mandate), the old copyright law prohibited duplication of physical media (tapes) and was not updated to the digital age, but now the Israeli government has updated the copyright law, but is this the beginning of law suites against file sharers in israel? probably not, hopefully the Israeli government and the music organization 'ALIS' will learn from the failed suit em all attitude the RIAA took against file sharing users, in my opinion another wave of law suits against websites will come, but i don't believe that 'ALIS' will suit file sharing users, but time will tell.

A.L.I.S Shutsdown Major Israeli P2P Sites

By Sooti

Last month, The Israeli Copyright Organization, also known as 'A.L.I.S', got a court order to shut down servers hosting some of the major Israeli p2p file sharing websites including:

myakuza.net
xvoom.co.il
donkey.co.il

All hosting links to files hosted by users on the ed2k network, although it is a major blow to the Israeli p2p community, there are new 'Direct download' websites becoming very popular in the download community do to the high speed and simplicity of the sharing method. There are also to Israeli bittorrent private community's at the moment

Downrev.net
Esooti.com

So there are always alternatives.

Sootech Is Back!

By Sooti

After a long period without any posts or updates, the 'sootech' blog is back! with more updates about p2p file sharing, israeli tech and p2p news, and general world technology news.

Israeli Music Fedration Agains DRM Removal

By Sooti

The Israeli version of the RIAA has decided to go pro DRM, just like the RIAA did up until now (they are starting to distribute DRM free mp3s).
In the last few months a new Israeli copyright law has been cooking up, since the current one is considered outdated as it was set during the British occupation of Israel in 1911, and is not updated according to the government and the 'music federation' to the new generation of copyright uses as p2p. now the 'Music federation' wants to add a DRM law, that outlaws any removal of the DRM from CD's, mp3's etc. many Israeli's fear that this law may outlaw any downloads and start sewing users for downloading songs instead of buying first (most Israeli's would buy the albums if they weren't $20 a piece), many versions of the law have been revised, one of them was to include specifically p2p, Israeli internet users began a petition and the law was not offered, most Israeli's want a CD tax, that would compensate artist for not buying the cd, and people on cheaper prices on CD's, but it's hard to know if the goverment will go RIAA style on Israeli's or learn from their mistakes and try to find another solution to get money, that is appropriate for the 21st century.

Israeli Copyright Bill Open To Changes

By SoOTi

Last week I reported that Left wing political party "meretz" dropped their anti-p2p copyright bill, now, in a brave move, Meretz leader 'Avshalom Yalin' has offered to open the bill to changes by citizens, who can send the local Israeli newspaper "Maariv" suggestions to change the copyright bill, according to Maariv, the interesting suggestions will be sent to Avshalom by email, and maybe inserted into the final draft of the bill, if proposed again. This is a brave move towards music fans who use p2p networks, it is an opportunity to avoid the stupid tactics of the American RIAA, who is on a suing campaign of it's consumers, and has gained nothing, but losing it's reputation.

Israeli Anti p2p bill falls

By SoOTi

As reported a couple months back, left wing party 'meretz' proposed a new copyright bill, that states that any copyrighted work transmitted over the Internet will be considered a crime, and new limits will fall on the Israeli ISP's to prevent p2p traffic, at the moment Israeli copyright laws are outdated, and do not include virtual transmission of copyrighted material, which is a complicated issue, because it is not physical trading but virtual file trading, therefore it's not included in the Israeli copyright law yet, the record companies in the country have sued p2p websites posting e-donkey links to copyrighted material, but with limited success, as the amount if Israeli p2p sites doubled in the past two years since the law suites against the p2p operators.
After 'Meretz' proposed the bill, many p2p users protested against the ignorant law, signing more then 5,000 people on a petition against the anti-p2p law proposed, after getting this petition and a lot of criticism on the party, 'Meretz' had no choice but to drop the proposal if they want to get any votes next election (not likely), but it's just a matter of time before Israeli becomes the USA in it's law suites against music lovers, as Israeli is one of the highest p2p users in the world, especially in the emule network.

New Domain name: esooti.com!

The new domain for this website is: http://www.esooti.com
hopefully i'll have more stuff there soon besides this blog...

GoogleTube? It May Turn Out a Nightmare

Google's takeover of video-sharing website YouTube may look like a nifty business move. For the company's legal team, however, it may soon turn into a long and nasty nightmare.

Upgraded finally to 2.5MBPS/256KBPS connection

By SoOTi

Boy, have i missed out on speed, until now i was on a 1.5/96 connection which was later upgraded to 1.5/150 for free by the Israeli ISP's, i then decided it was time to move an ISP, and upgrade to 2.5/256 connection (still low by international speeds), one thing good i can say about Israeli ISP's is that 90% of them if not more do NOT throttle BT, since it's not as big as emule here, if once i got 30kb/s on a torrent which was with say 50 seeds and 300 leechers on my old 1.5MB Isp 'netvision', i now get 100kb/s on average on ISP 'bezeq international', bezeq is the biggest ISP in the country, it also has the most bandwidth therefore allowing even heavy downloaders to enjoy good speed, and i got a sweet deal too :-)