With all the anti torrent press in the media lately, we feel that the legal use of P2P and torrent sites has been completely overlooked. Our music production website Togeo Studios has been using the Mininova website for quite some time under the featured torrent section to help distribute our products. Our torrents have been downloaded over 75,000 times which has saved us a lot of bandwidth costs. We do not in any way support piracy of copyrighted material but think that people should not overlook the P2P/torrent technology as a delivery system for legal data sharing. There is a huge amount of music, video, software and artwork that is being released on the internet legaly. We have been providing our music and our resources for free for quite a while now and to be honest donations and ad clicks just barely cover our server costs. So an alternative distribution system is important to us.

Mininova will be defending their actions in court soon and whether they are guilty of infringing on copyright or not is not for us to decide. What concerns us is the fact that in the last few monthes hundreds of torrent sites have been taken offline and to be honest many rightfully so. But do not be fooled into believing that it is being done in the interest of consumers. Right or wrong we will soon have no choice but to pay for all content provided on the net, news, music, videos and pretty much anything else thats provided, if certain groups have their way. The forces behind these groups would like nothing better than to return to their old ways of holding the consumer hostage to their demands by eliminating free and low cost content as an alternative source.

But there is a hint of ethics in the air and the transparency of informazion provided by the people online has taken us to a new age where people can no longer be manipulated as easily as before. What is needed is good way to distribute free legal content online that can pay for itself, provide fast and efficient downloads and still maintain its integrity where copyright is concerned. While at the same time be a benefit to the content providers and not a financial burden to the consumer.

Make no mistake, there are bright points of light shining through the mist. We have been providing our music for free on the Jamendo website. When we first started uploading our albums to Jamendo two years ago, there was only about 4000 albums available, that number has grown to almost 20,000 now and all of them are released for free under the creative commons license. Artist on Jamendo provide some really excellent music in a wide variety of music genres and styles that argueably rival that which is being offered commercially. Then there is the Internet Archive, Legal Torrents, Trent Reznor of NIN and Tom Cosm providing free content just to name a few.

So Pirate Bay be damned, Rupert Murdoch says the free ride is over. But then what else would he say, him and his like have never understood the internet in the first place. The latest retiring judge from the Supreme court of the United State declares as a matter of pride that he doesnt use computers, instant messengers or the internet. They have declared victory, stood up to the revolution and believe that we will just follow what they say, fall into line and start handing over monthly fees for every single service that they decide to charge for. Well maybe its time to tell the Rupert Murdochs of the world that their free ride is over, that we want a new business model that benefits the consumer as well as the provider. It is time for ethics, transparency and change, but will we stand up and demand it or simply succomb to overwhelming deluge and return to the complacency of the past.