One of the Hollywood executives' worst enemies.

The MOST WANTED

Pirate of the Internet. Public enemy number one for the MPAA. A hero for
film fans all over the world.

Meet aXXo. Captain aXXo.

One of the world's worst enemies and friends is aXXo. He has uploaded
thousands of ultra-high quality movies on the internet for years. The
Motion Picture Assosiation of America has been chasing him in vain for
ages. His identity is unknown. Each aXXo torrent is a .avi movie file with a
size of exactly 700 MB- just the right size to fit on a standard CD.The
name aXXo first appeared in November 2005, when he began to post
pirated movies to the message board at Darkside_RG. He quickly acquired
a reputation for both quality and convenience. All of his films were copied
to DVD quality (or near enough for the amateur eye); in a simple format
that would play instantly on almost any computer as soon as the
download was complete.

Catch Me If You Can

The blog Torrentfreak.com is devoted to the torrent sharing culture. In

March 2007, its creator, a 28-year-old academic from the Netherlands who
writes under the pseudonym Ernesto, appeared to have landed a brief but
exclusive email interview with the elusive aXXo. His blog Torrentfreak.com
is devoted to the torrent sharing culture. In March 2007, its creator, a 28-
year-old academic from the Netherlands who writes under the pseudonym
Ernesto, appeared to have landed a brief but exclusive email interview
with the elusive aXXo. His interviewee claimed to be a teenager working
alone, a naive but philanthropic soul who believed that, if a good film is
out there, everyone has the right to be entertained by it. The interview
was quickly discredited by the ensuing web chatter, and Ernesto, asked
today if he thinks his interviewee was a hoaxer or the real deal, replies
curtly: I have no idea. My own request for an email interview with aXXo,
left in his Darkside_RG mailbox has gone unanswered. A number of
individuals have claimed to be, or had their name attached to, aXXo. Files
released by aXXo follow the naming convention name of
movie[year]DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo.avi with the message "Be aware of bogus
sites and lamers, download your aXXo files from aXXo accounts. Enjoy!"
appended.

When the Bad gets Ugly

But aXXo's popularity can be a curse.Once his name became common

currency among downloaders, it was simple enough for less sophisticated
pirates to piggyback on his success by imitating his tag in their own
torrent files. Many fake aXXo files have been uploaded by jealous people
intent on giving him a bad name. They usually contain RAR format files
that require the user to download a trojan virus disguised as a codec
needed to open alleged AVI format files. Other fake files encourage the
user to register on dubious websites or require the user install the
DomPlayer software(a rogue media player similar to the notorious
3wPlayer that is infected with Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.en). Fake files
might also contain malware being capable of retrieving the IP address of
its user's computer.One site turned up calling itself axxotorrents.com.

There were also more sinister schemes afoot. In 2007, word spread
through the community that the Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) was uploading fake, blank torrents labelled as aXXo releases, in
order to collect the IP addresses of downloaders. An angry aXXo got into a
dispute with both axxotorrents.com and the torrent portals that chose to
host his imitators. The pirate was infuriated by the appropriation of his
work in spite of appropriation being his own stock-in-trade and ceased
uploading altogether until axxotorrents.com agreed to close down its
domain name. In aXXo's absence, other uploaders had their moment in
the sun. FXG, whose DVD rips were about the same quality and size as
aXXo's, became a popular alternative. One smart uploader named himself
Klaxxon, so that each time a casual downloader searched for aXXo's
name, they would find a Klaxxon torrent instead. Rumours circulated that
Klaxxon was aXXo’s other account.

Die Another Day

Perhaps concerned that he'd been forgotten by his fickle public, aXXo
resurfaced in March. When you have millions of people downloading your
content online and they know who you are, that's quite an achievement.
Even if he's not getting any money, he is getting name recognition and
status. To commemorate his return, aXXo chose as his first post the
symbolic and hubristic film title, I Am Legend.

Paparazzi

aXXo torrents are loaded with seeds. Some aXXo torrents get more than
570,000 seeds! On December 15, 2008, aXXo's thousandth movie upload,
a copy of the Kiefer Sutherland horror film MIRRORS, appeared on an
internet forum for the Darkside Release Group. aXXo is like a god to film
fans. Whenever aXXo posts a new film (which can be as often as three
times a day) his followers fill the comments boards with praise. He is the
lowly film-fan's Robin Hood. Last year, one aXXo fan, codenamed
the_dwarfer, composed a version of the Lord's Prayer for his idol, which
began: “Our ripper, who art on Mininova, aXXo be thy name....”.Uploaders
generally have a shelf life of a few months before they get bored or
caught, but aXXo persisted. aXXo guarantees quality. In the piracy world,
there's no catalog to tell you which version of a film to download. Instead,
the community tells you that aXXo is the guy to look for, because
everybody else downloads him. As soon as a DVD rip of a film appears
online, people search out aXXo's copy, because they know they're
guaranteed a good piracy experience. The question of aXXo's identity is
undoubtedly of interest to the authorities, but it's also an abiding
obsession for his fans. One Canadian documentary film-maker, for
example, is working on a film entitled Searching for aXXo.

The Subtle Knife

BitTorrent, aXXo's chosen distribution method, is a file sharing technology

that, serendipitously, arrived online at around the same time as home
broadband became standard. Created in 2001 by Bram Cohen, then 26, a
programmer from Seattle, the software was intended to be a means for
music fans to share bootlegged videos of live performances by artists
such as the US singer-songwriter John Mayer, who encourages such
recordings by concert-goers. Though the BitTorrent software itself is legal,
and can be used to share any number of legitimate digital items, its
efficiency and user-friendliness inevitably made it the amateur pirate's
weapon of choice. As a trusted brand name, users rush to acquire aXXo's
releases as soon as they appear online. His small torrent file takes a
matter of seconds to download from a torrent portal site like Mininova,
after which the user just has to add it to their computer's BitTorrent
queue, sit back and watch the data flood in. With so many people
downloading the same files at once, an entire aXXo film can be complete
and on a user's desktop in a few hours at most. To Hollywood executives,
he's public enemy number one. To film fans around the world, he's a
modern-day Robin Hood. Owing to the prevalence of aXXo as the main
perpetrator of civilian DVD piracy, The Independent (UK) decided to
dedicate a three-page spread in their Life section to aXXo's piracy on
December 29, 2008 and the pirate movie industry as a whole named
Scene Stealer:The aXXo Files. You can read it at
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/films/features/scene-stealer-the-axxo-files-
1214699.html

On March 11, 2009, aXXo stopped uploading new files after releasing
Punisher: War Zone but he was still regularly logging on to his Mininova
and Demonoid accounts. On April 19, 2009 aXXo made his last known
comment on Message Board 'Darkside_RG', in response to rumors that he
had stopped posting on Darkside_RG and was now a father. He states "I
can only say a big thank you for your appreciation mates, hope you all
enjoy the darkside as much as you can. My home is my beloved Darkside
and as I've said so many times before on each of my torrents.... Be aware
of bogus sites and lamers See ya.". Since then no-one has seen aXXo in
action, and millions pray for his safety, with rumours that he became a
father, got arrested and quit the Darkside_RG group circulated. Till date,
he is missing.

But no human has ever had the mystique of aXXo. They're flesh and
blood. You might be able to find their faces on Google. Their fame may be
remarkable, but they achieved it straightforwardly and legally. The
abilities of aXXo, on the other hand, seem almost superhuman. To his
followers, he is Robin Hood, Superman, and God: he is everywhere, and
nowhere.

But we will hunt him down for he can handle it, for he's our hero, but not
the one we need now. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector...

A Dark Knight.

By Sankaran Vaidyanathan

IX B

SRI SANKARA SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL

The .nfo file appended with the movie Transformers.