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http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-disney-20100708,0,4051564.story

But how do they select trackers? Some Linux, and other legal software, distributes on private trackers. Also, the ubiquitous example of Blizzard, on various patch days they spike the whole pool of torrents with over 11 million (not counting other games, and uses) new users. Torrent Freak also brought up the interesting fact that Jamendo uses public trackers, and distributes only Creative Commons music, and represents more than 1% of some trackers base. Also in the article; their top seeded torrents are completely dubious, which is obvious just looking at them.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if most torrents are actually illegal (in some countries), but I am deeply distrustful of most studies on it, especially ones like the one in the TFA, which is through an anti-piracy organization whose best interest does not really allow any estimate except the one most supporting their cause.

The Princeton study is a bit more trustworthy. But I'm not sure of their methodology. A combination of the methods of Princeton study and the anti-piracy study should be combined, with Princeton taking into account the the actually usage of the listed files, while maintaining the random selection. Also more care should be used in determining the ACTUAL content of the torrents. I'm surprised that neither study had a percentage of fake torrents, Trojans, or viruses, and on the slightly less destructive end, mere keygens, other cracking software.

Maybe someone with a little insight into how BitTorrent works could comment on the rigour of their methodoly?

I did comment on it. You can read it here http://ktetch.blogspot.com/2010/07/ars-forgets-how-torrents-work-cites.html i've been working on, and researching with torrents since 03. TorrentFreak has also covered things http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/ They make much the same points. I'm working on a study of my own now, one that avoids tracker bias, by not using trackers as a selection method.

And just while the music industry is shoring up its defences in that particular house.

utorrent is working on a Linux port: http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-for-linux-is-coming-finally-100601/

Wrong. You're looking at January 2009. In November 2009, Pirate Bay disabled their tracker. http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tracker-shuts-down-for-good-091117/
For a guy with a 5 digit /. id, you're pretty clueless. *sigh*

This study actually correlates purchases and piracy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music

The rest of these articles link back to the studies they quote. They are basically information that states how piracy has actually helped industries to make money.
Piracy is good:
http://www.mindjack.com/feature/piracy051305.html
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/internet-piracy-is-good-for-films-1
http://torrentfreak.com/why-most-artists-profit-from-piracy/
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/99958-toc-piracy-may-boost-sales-research-suggests.html

It has been shut down since last November.

I have a warning to you. We're committed to putting you out of business. Not you in person - your friends in the music and film industries. They are relying on broken, decaying business models, and no matter how much you try, you can't save them.

Even if it were feasible to have some sort of economic impact on the media industry, no matter what you do it'll never have any impact. Remember the "Drudge Tax" that the FTC was mulling over (now bear in mind, this was only a report and not something that is going into effect)? "Oh, but that's just Drudge" you say. "He's a right-wing lunatic."

Think about this carefully: the "Drudge Tax" was an idea concocted to make news aggregators (hi, Slashdot!) pay a small tax for linking to third party stories. Essentially, it would be in place to prop up an industry that is effectively in the process of dying. It sounds a lot like something Rupert Murdoch was proposing, too, doesn't it?

Remember, too, that every blank CD-ROM you purchase includes a small fee that goes straight into the coffers of the RIAA to help offset the costs of piracy. Sure, it's only a few cents, but during the peak of CD-ROM sales it was a figure undoubtedly rather high. Worst of all: most people have no idea they are paying what is effectively a tax.

So, no, I don't think that economically hurting the media industry is going to have any effect. Congress will simply levy taxes against the rest of us to keep their buddies afloat. If we truly professed to be a semi-capitalistic society, we would simply let these companies fail when they can no longer afford to keep their doors open. We're not; instead, we sink countless millions of dollars into failing industries simply because they have lobbyists.

You and I? Well, we're just taxpayers. We have no lobbyists. Plus, even if you could convince the vast majority of consumers to not purchase popular media (hint: won't happen), it'll never work. It'll instead be blamed on piracy, and you might just wind up paying a tax on every hardware component you purchase to build a computer, because--by golly--that device might just be used to pirate goods. In fact, I think there was a proposal of the sorts in the works.

I hate to sound so cynical. Instead, I'll end this on a positive note by welcoming you to serfdom.

No matter what side you're on, please don't mention morality being subjective. That's obvious to everyone, and comes across as a mild insult, or pointless padding at best.

Then the person to whom I replied also made a mild insult when he made a blanket statement that piracy is immoral, did he not?

I (and everyone else here probably) has at least an inkling on how bad copyright abuse can be. But in all likelihood kiwimate was referring to the other side of the coin where individuals would download media days before/after it's release (the whole "why two wrongs make a right" line) which I think most here would find objectionable.

Really? What's wrong with it? This interview with movie director Sam Bozzo gives an interesting perspective on pre-release leaks. Essentially, he says that the only works (in his case, movies) that are actually harmed by pre-release leaks are mediocre or bad movies that rely on hype and marketing to bring people into the theater. Pre-release leaks allow people to determine for themselves whether a certain movie is good or bad, and let's not forget that the experience of seeing a movie in the theater cannot be pirated, so it's entirely likely that good movies that are leaked online prior to release will draw in a larger audience than those that don't leak. Bad movies, on the other hand, will financially suffer, which is exactly what's supposed to happen.

As for movies that have little in terms of advertising or word-of-mouth, p2p networks help those movies by spreading awareness of them and enlarging the fan base.

Only failed directors have something to fear from piracy says Sam Bozzo, director of the documentary Hackers Wanted, to TorrentFreak.

Sure fire 100% guaranteed way to not get sued for pirating movies.

Don't pirate movies.

Hhhm, tell that to the printer at UW that got literally hundreds of DMCA notices.

Why? Because it's politicians that have no idea how the internet works who want this. Remember, Conroy said a few years back that it was possible to filter torrents . We have idiots in charge.

Please not that comments here are just pessimistic due to how things were developing so far (see other news at http://torrentfreak.com/), and people only say you'd take greens becouse other courts probably did (or pressure, or in one case, they were/are actually pro-copyright lobbyists themselves).
In reality, what we mean is that this is finally a ruling with some common sense. And don't be discouraged by many other courts ruling differently. You beat them hands down (due to your open mindedness I guess).

I'll leave this here in case it's useful for anyone. http://torrentfreak.com/everything-you-need-to-refute-a-file-sharing-legal-threat-100114/

Some directors have thanked pirates.

I would have never heard of the Man from Earth if it didn't show up in an RSS feed.

Ink is another more recent movie.

Games too

Well, at least IsoHunt can introduce ban for certain movie names that studios need to tell them. Swedish courts made three injunctions yesterday which,

1) Took OpenBitTorrent tracker completely down
2) Banned TPB (ex-)admins from working with the site or any other torrent related site in the future
3) Ordered the upstream provider of TPB to stop serving bandwidth to them.

With ACTA and all of these recent developments, I don't think piracy will be so widespread for many more years. It's great theres good services like Spotify and Steam now though - just need similar for TV shows and movies now (and Voddler is coming).

As far as HTML5 Video goes, a new upcoming Flash will make things even more interesting and mix them up. The final version of Adobe Flash 10.1 supports P2P to reduce the bandwidth costs for site owners. It works out of the box too, so users can still get the video normally streamed, but it will seriously lower bandwidth usage and hence costs for video streaming sites. This same P2P feature also works for both on-demand and live video aswell as Flash based multiplayer games.

Live streaming should have some common specs too, but P2P streaming requires such to be made into the standard so it works for all. It's a quite large feature for site owners too, since it dramatically lowers bandwidth costs.

I don't think we will still see Flash going away, even if we at some point can even decide about the codec used for HTML5 Video. There's still too many features Flash has that HTML5 Video doesn't support at all.

"Myth was a Scene group which ceased to exist after it was targeted in the FBI “Operation Site Down”" -Source

I personally believe Rockstar understood the logo was in the exe and left it there on purpose as sort of a "suck it pirates" attitude knowing there's nothing the pirate group could do about it.

Yeah, wait, you're talking about Sims 2, the *most widely bought* computer game ever? Yeah, lots of people pirated it. Lots more bought it, enough that they turned a handsome profit. I'd reckon atleast half of those people who bought it lost their discs in some way (dog chewed on it, it was forgotten at Uncle Bobs house, etc) and thus got another copy... On the internet.

We can take something even more recent, the Humble Indie Bundle released last week [1]. Now, six games cost a penny, so money isn't an issue here. But let's look at facts. About 25% of the downloads there are illegal. But the reasons for it are several;

1. Someone made a direct link to the download in a forum somewhere and people are too lazy to go back and fill in the form
2. No means of paying in your country and/or no access to a credit card
3. You already paid for it once and wants to download it again on your spare computer or monitor
4. You're a thievin' moneygrubbing pirate

Now, I'd consider 2 and 3 to be entirerly valid reasons, 1 a dumb excuse and 4 isn't very common. If this bundle had DRM and a set price, I'd add two more items on the list:

5. The DRM screwed the customer over so they said "fuck it" and found a torrent instead
6. The game cost too much for your average teenager to afford

So what does this tell us? That most people pirate because they:

a) Find the price too high
b) The pirated product is superior to the bought product (pirated product lets me play my game, bought doesn't)
c) The product is not available in your country (yet), and might never be
d) The product requires you to pay for it with means that are not available to you

Solving these four points is the key to win over piracy. That is my firm belief.

[1] http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-when-even-a-penny-is-too-much-100510/

"Really? All you have to do is be on the torrent and connect to them."

What about protocol encryption or PeerGuardian? Do either of these help or are they worthless? Article is very light on details, just says "use torrent, we c u IPs"

The Mysterious And Scary BitTorrent Monitoring Site

Except that neither IsoHunt or it's owner are in US or US citizens - he's Canadian.

Your Spain link is out-of-date too, see this newer one: Judge Orders Blocking of Torrent Sites in Spain. Russia also banned ALL torrent sites and so did China. Where will you go? Somalia?

Except that neither IsoHunt or it's owner are in US or US citizens - he's Canadian.

Your Spain link is out-of-date too, see this newer one: Judge Orders Blocking of Torrent Sites in Spain. Russia also banned ALL torrent sites and so did China. Where will you go? Somalia?

Rapidshare is changing, perhaps the catalyst was this decision: TorrentFreak and also the fact that they share uploader information with rights-holders: TorrentFreak. All in all I think this represents a change of strategy by rights-holders: they know they can't win any public sympathy by suing the life-blood out of a single-mother with a family of five so instead they are going after the faceless "platforms." So, geeks, write some decentralized platforms now! Something that ideally lets you put in a seed and that is your first connection and then web-of-trust from there!

Rapidshare is changing, perhaps the catalyst was this decision: TorrentFreak and also the fact that they share uploader information with rights-holders: TorrentFreak. All in all I think this represents a change of strategy by rights-holders: they know they can't win any public sympathy by suing the life-blood out of a single-mother with a family of five so instead they are going after the faceless "platforms." So, geeks, write some decentralized platforms now! Something that ideally lets you put in a seed and that is your first connection and then web-of-trust from there!

My understanding is that the DMCA requires a copyright owner to notify the hosting site of each infringing item. Knowing in general that content is posted without a license isn't infringement.

Viacom is trying to kill the entire possibility of letting the general public post anything at all, for fear somebody somewhere might think they own it. Google's just a convenient target with deep pockets just in case a court is dumb enough to swallow.

This point is accurate. Viacom doesn't care that you can hear it's music or see it's shows on Google's services or on Youtube. Viacom knows as well as we do that it isn't losing any sales, and oftentimes even gains sales when this happens.

What Viacom cares about is that in the coming decade indies will compete against it, and indies will rely upon open services to do so. Viacom will use any means available to make it illegal for anyone to upload anything, due to the one in a zillion chance that the content might be copyrighted by someone somewhere.

Copyright law isn't good enough for the entertainment industry, they don't want the expense of dragging millions of individual infringers into court. They don't want to be on equal footing to the little guy. So they created the DMCA.

But the DMCA wasn't good enough either, because even when they ask Youtube to take down material scattershot (often opening themselves up to perjury because they do not make qualified humans check their assumptions and oft times sabotage material that clearly legal on a regular basis) many uploaders file a counter-DMCA to bring it back up, and the industry is back to the expensive process of settling matters in court one citizen at a time.

So now they would much prefer to see open media sharing die completely. They pine for the days when the entertainment oligopoly effectively controlled the global distribution of all media. When media distribution was an economy of scale.

Viacom wants nothing short of protectionism. Piracy is just a red herring to achieve this goal, and Viacom is glad that it can get some of that herring juice onto Google's brand now.

Of course they're irrelevant to a discussion about browser share.

Of course the context is irrelevant to "John Hasler"'s point, up-thread, that confusing the Net with the Web is wrong.

Let me try to make this as clear as I can for you: 90% of the Web is not the same thing as 90% of the Net. This is because the Net includes, in addition to the Web, such things as e-mail, VoIP, BitTorrent (and other p2p), games, non-web video, and VPNs, as well as infrastructure like DNS, DHCP, and BGP (which I didn't mention before but deserve a nod). The browsers that account for 90% of Web traffic, only account for (90% * Web traffic / Net traffic) of Net traffic. Thanks largely to p2p, the Web traffic / Net traffic ratio may be well less than 50%; which would make 90% of the Web be something less than 45% of the Net. So confusing them is not even approximately correct.

Stuff traffic volumes, think about users. To Joe Sixpack and Aunt Mary, that blue e thing is the internet.

And we should allow the same sort of ignorance in tech journalism? I can forgive Joe Sixpack the confusion; I don't think we should forgive CNet so easily.

I couldn't find it when I wrote my post, but this is (I think) the instance I had in mind. There was also personal experience, when I got detected by my university's automatic system for sharing music from Jamendo. The detection system used lists from major labels, and the music was under a CC license that allowed sharing.

It's been cracked guys : http://torrentfreak.com/ubisofts-uber-drm-cracked-within-a-day-100304/ I can't believe how ironic it is. Not only Ubisoft DRM will piss customers so much that help pirating their own product, but an incredible blow have just been made to anti-piracy group.

I unfortunately have a Virgin Media connection, it sucks, the downloads are throttled http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media#Bandwidth_throttling a lot, often to 1/4 speed. Uploads are currently going at a paltry 20-30KB/s - That's Over 6 hours to upload a 700MB CD!!!!!!!!!.

Also - See http://techdirt.com/articles/20091130/0316037113.shtml/ Deep Packet Inspection and File Sharing Monitoring http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/26/virgin_media_detica// and Phorm the advertising crap http://badphorm.co.uk/news.php?item.46.4/

And they don't support filesharers like Talk Talk http://www.pcworld.com/article/146785/virgin_music_campaigns_against_illegal_filesharing.html/ and http://torrentfreak.com/isp-will-protect-file-sharers-from-music-industry-disconnection-threat-080404// they will happily hand over your details to all and sundry if accused of copyright infringement - this handing over of personal details is probably Illegal itself under the data-protection act. Also they force you to have a phone line with high call costs or else you are charged an arm and a leg for the internet connection.

Do a quick Google on "Spore pirated", just for fun. Page after page of links to articles about how Spore's DRM did affect pirating. Now if that hasn't reached EA...

Spoiler: it has, EA has in fact announced they'll use less obtrusive DRM in the future. Plus, they released this tool to reduce DRM obtrusiveness from certain games, including Spore.

TFA and TFS both say that ISP's are required to block access to TPB's "Tracker". TFA goes on to mention "sites offering torrent links" but doesn't seem to make a distinction between .torrent files and the notorious "tracker".

Which is it? Because TPB shut down their tracker a couple of months ago

Thankfully the Lisbon Treaty serves for something, even if it has downsides. It also gave the Pirate Party its second seat.

The game sold 15 millions units overall, not just on PC. It probably sold more on 360+PS3 than on PC.

You do appear to be correct on the breakup of sales figures. If you believe Torrentfreak's numbers, you might be right on the piracy stats as well. The piracy figures for the x360 version are also quite interesting, but of course you run the risk of getting banned by MS.

So I do concede that you may in fact be correct on 80-90% figure, although I still argue that Ubisoft isn't helping matters any. I just have a thing about verifiable sources ;) .

Actually, pirates are the music industry's more valuable customers. It turns out that people who download the most music actually go to the most concerts and buy the most music also. It's still a terrible idea though, since it's basically mp3's with built in ads. I'm not sure where they will find people willing to pay extra for that.

For movies there is Nina Paley and her movie Sita Sings the Blues , but there are plenty of others, including Michael Moore.

For books, lots of authors and even publishers are making more money by having their books freely available using smart economics.

The music industry has even more examples of unknown indie artists as well as well known artists and everything in between making money by using smart economics. Movies and books are going to go through the same transition. They can choose to do so kicking and screaming and make it painful for everyone, or they can try to actually give their customers what they want and be successful. It's very simple, you give people a reason to give you money, and they will do it. The happier you can make them, the more they'll give you.

It amazes me that people can freak out about free music, movies, books, etc., yet these same people don't see anything wrong with Krispy Kreme handing out free doughnuts to customers standing in line, or any of the other freebies people get. No one in their right mind thinks a basketball team is going to go bankrupt because they give out free t-shirts during the half-time show, yet many of the same people think that 50 cent is crazy to be happy that his music is freely available, yet he's making money and thinks it's just part of the marketing.

Oink is not up and runnning as Ellis' computer equipment was taken as evidence by the police and returned with the hard drives returned. It's amazing to think that Oink pulled in so much money from donations, a site like that could be quite lucrative for the record industry if they found a way to legitmise the business model. But alas only pirates and certain indie record labels will ever get sharing music.

I believe it's nearly time to upgrade our old outdated operating system controlling our laws when we ourselves can't vote each day, like checking e-mail on whatever's current, old outdated laws and reform them, and of COURSE future laws as 360,000,000 North Americans (330 America, 30 Canada, keep it simple. :D)

I'm just a garbageman but Love Firefox for web browsing.

Then I loved Ubuntu Linux for an operating system.

Just figured the next step along the path of:

What's important to me?

I could give a shit about a vote every 5 years, most likely rigged, and once in WHOEVER it is, even the "good ones" are most likely given 2 choices, briefcase full of money, and, well, you don't want THE OTHER ONE. ;)

So in tribute to Linux I made a crappy website, http://www.opensourceg.com/

I'm not sure it could handle slashdotting but I think the cause is just. I've posted it on torrent freak, http://torrentfreak.com/ , cbc (deleted or buried in oblivion of other people, ALL SCREAMING AT YOU, WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN??? DAMNIT! AHHHHHHHHHHHH

:P

So ya, the very laws we obide by are in no control over. It's messed up with all this Internet we don't got an organized government to do daily online polls. Surely there are white hats up to the challenge (and black hats to cause troubles. :D, i'm sure everyone'd still get paid, lmao, point is everyone then "has a say" on a national website, federal white hat guys. I don't even KNOW, I just know Firefox and Ubuntu ROCKED.

Ubuntu's got a live add remove programs for God's sake! The swarm is the most powerful. More then anything. Even p2p can't be shut down even if the guys buying the laws say it's illegal.

So I spent 15 bucks and thought the idea was great. Rather pick Open Source distros then politicians . The ground rules should be set like Linux stuff is. You guys will get it (if anyone has, it's been a crappy website for so long and a buddy helped me get a blogging feature so I can rant in a corner of the Internet)

Far as building a voting site, don't think "I'd" be able to. I'll sure as hell link to it if one get's built.

Closet things I found in my quest were: http://www.opencongress.org/ - American one, just liked the voting, just kinda wish a 3rd party does it, like, "here, were not rigging those electronic numbers". Protect a country militarily but the management needs an upgrade. Doing all THEY can in a restrictive environment. Imagine the 1 GOOD congressman pretending to be bad just to TRY and help their country? (or maybe they are all good and just fighting each other instead of the issues)
http://www.mysociety.org/ - UK based, they fix road problems or organized a nice "email your politician" thing.

Granted I'm a complete idiot who shouldn't even vote, I'm pretty ignorant to current politics b/c of lack of faith. No public trust from me. Enhancing people's lives instead of beating them down would be a GREAT start.

Kinda like sending out an email to get Google doing real tv. They are big enough to make it happen and I just want some smart dude to make the ir remote work as standard on websites. :) Anyways trying to get them doing it b/c they COULD and maybe make ad money, voip the cable tv market even. I just want things done by people willing to exploit me for money. Here's my 200 bucks/month, where's my fiber optic options? I'm alright /w being a slave. It's cool. Just pimp my slavery already.

Any way to port Linux to our govt? Format whatever junk was on the drive, install, reboot (once, ever, :D). I'm sure all KINDS of awesome ideas could be done. I'd like to at least link to em.

Yahoo Answers, the 2 that replied both said no. Wouldn't work f

http://torrentfreak.com/automated-legal-threats-turn-piracy-into-profit-090628/

The company that sent those notices is very gray at best, quite illegal at worst.

The big labels have been pulling this stunt world wide during years. Recently in Mexico, Police raided the major offices of Sony after it decided to tell Alejandro Fernandez (a Mexican folk country singer) they were going to publish some of his tunes with or without his permission. After the smoke had settled, the Police seiged over 6K pirated CDs from the same offices of those who can't keep their mouth shut when it comes to bashing pirates.

They still are, generally (Rounding three years in Madrid quite soon) - Lately a judge decided that P2P sites are okay for private sharing. However, the government tries to slip in above kind of Internet law ruling for quite some time now, it is not the first time and sure it will be not the last time.

I agree, the Spanish and its current government are really good when it comes to the internet (Also living in Madrid 7 years or so). Spain has once again demonstrated itself far more wise than France, UK when it comes to bowing to international lobbying pressure. Let me explain: The Spanish government, like all the worlds governments, has been under intense lobbying pressure ("presiones políticas"). You get no points for guessing who has been working the hardest to change the democratic system here in Spain and around the world: Yes that's right, good old US of A. Proof: Here is last years US annual IIP 301 report lumping Spain along side China, Rusia, and many others as the worst offenders for not bowing to intellectual property demands of the United States "authors". Summary of 301 report: Aims of the US here and elsewhere in the world:

The Administration's top priorities this year continue to be addressing weak IPR protection and enforcement... Although this year's Special 301 Report shows positive progress in many countries, rampant counterfeiting and piracy problems have continued... indicating a need for stronger IPR regimes and enforcement in those countries.

How do you think they are "helping" countries like Spain implement stronger IPR regimes? Through democratic process and listening to the will of the people? (blackmailing, extorting and corrupting are more applicable words). Oh I forgot, here in the US we call the process "spreading democracy", silly me.

What we have got is a extremely powerful country running around this little planet with an exceptionally big political stick, beating any country into submission that dares listen to the will of its people over their idea of Intellectual property enforcement (and anything else). Don't believe me: try reading the "INTERNATIONAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ALLIANCE (IIPA) 2009 SPECIAL REPORT" on Spain. (their title, not mine sorry - I guess they want to shout the message). First line summary for the lazy:

Executive Summary: Internet piracy in Spain continues to worsen, such that many of the copyright industries believe that Spain has the worst per capita Internet piracy problem in Europe and one of the worst overall Internet piracy rates in the world. Exacerbating the high piracy levels are the Spanish government’s policies of: (1) “decriminalizing” P2P file-sharing (as reflected in the 2006 Circular issued by the Attorney General) and (2) failing to establish the minimum EU-level requirements regarding liability for Internet service providers under the E-Commerce Directive so that rights holders have the necessary tools to enforce their rights on the Internet. As a result, the police have ceased taking Internet enforcement actions given the legal uncertainties, and the Attorney General has requested dismissal of current criminal cases against illegal portal and link sites. Importantly, negotiations between rights holders and the Internet service provider (ISP) community to find ways to prevent infringing content from being distributed over the ISPs’ services and/or networks finally

They still are, generally (Rounding three years in Madrid quite soon) - Lately a judge decided that P2P sites are okay for private sharing. However, the government tries to slip in above kind of Internet law ruling for quite some time now, it is not the first time and sure it will be not the last time.

...got 1/2 way down the page before someone said something worth logging in to talk about. Like I agree with people who got there first but this one was worth the login time. reddit and digg.com are the same. Don't always log in and often just read stuff.
This copywrong industry sure needs it's head smashed in though. The best idea I could come up with is that our government, bought and paid for by lobbyists, needs a MAJOR reform (non violent, just better political parties).
...so I went out and bought http://www.opensourceg.com/ in hopes that the ideal of Open Source Government takes hold and becomes the majority party, worldwide, in every free nation.
The site sucks atm but I work on it each day in hopes it'll get a bit better and of course just to park the idea that since it worked so well for Linux vs Microsoft in computer land, FILLED with corruption and "need to know security" instead of "lets share this code /w everyone to hunt out flaws in it to REALLY be secure.
Well I can't think of a better thing to secure then the hard working people of North America's vote. Every 5 years is good, open source voting machines are a great step forward so the 2 past stolen terms are not repeated (like a Bush inoculation to prevent even worst presidents from stealing their way into office).
I'd rather see a Slashdot for politics, anyone who can reply and leave some links I can add to my pathetic website is appreciated. I'd love to see DAILY VOTES instead of every 5 years & 3 days after elections the lobbyists buy their new "leader's" opinions, stealing the vote from the 360,000,000 people in North America from, maaaaaaybe 500 people that have an interest depriving others instead of trying to cater to the populace.
So we'll take BACK our culture, it's a political thing in my eyes. ISP's can't do much, the power that has been given to the government is being abused and needs reform.
Love to see Open Source parties instead of Pirate Parties (but still support them, just crappy name, liking themselves to people who urder, rape and steal from the populace, nothing like the general population who just wants their tv shows online, in downloadable non drm formats.
So if any of you got an axe, bow or sword and want to waste some time I believe the battle for middle earth will be 2010 when they force countries into submission by FORCING ISP's to cancel your internet after 3 songs are downloaded (even though you pay 100 bucks.month for service and just want your shows in avi instead of on cable tv, f*ckers)
http://torrentfreak.com/30000-internet-users-to-receive-file-sharing-cash-demands-091125/#comment-619278
30,000 UK residents are already getting the first wave. I send my support their way for unjust, non elected laws being forced upon them by unelected officials. These front line men and women will be so pissed I hope they join the "enemy" camp of freedom, democracy, and fair use we all enjoy on the Internet.
I'll walk to Mordor, I just don't know the way. (where's a few good men /w axes, bows and swords when you NEED them? I need a f*cking bunch of Linux coder guys to admin my website /w me and rock some parliament! :D)
Don't just bitch and whine about the problems, TRY and find ways to counter it. Letter to congressmen (men, pfffft!) are pretty much useless when they are mostly bought by media guys. Pirate Bay went for parliament, so proud they were willing to "step up".
Just SICK of the abuses in govt w/o accountability nor transparency.

http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-encrypt-bittorrent-traffic/
Just turn on encryption in your favorite torrent client, and only allow encrypted connections. In combination with the Distributed Hash Table, Magnet Links, and Peer Exchange, an entirely decentralized file sharing system will work

Why has bittorrent still not been decentralized from trackers?

It has... The Pirate Bay shows magnet links along with the regular .torrent file and they've shut down their tracker. Torrent Freak as usual have a nice writeup on the action.

it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Indeed, Sony must think the same way.

Of course, corporations can do this, but you're evil if you do it, citizen.

Erm, the press did name and shame the judge, it's been pretty high profile.

Why do you think the pirate party has two members of the European parliament when Sweden only gets a total of 12 members? The Swedish people were so outraged they were willing to place their vote on it.

At least have a clue about what you're talking about before making such ignorant assumptions please. Really, it'd only take a quick Google search to find out that your suggestion that this hasn't been discussed in mainstream media - national and international is false.

Oh, and stop misrepresenting the link you posted- it's the corruption perceptions index, not the corruption index. Perception and reality are not always the same thing so please don't try and sell them as so. Here, enjoy some facts:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/retrial-threatened-as-judge-denies-conflict-of-interest-in-pirate-bay-trial-1673261.html

http://www.thelocal.se/22602/20091012/

Perhaps the most damning though, is this:

http://torrentfreak.com//images/pirate_mpa.pdf

The letter was followed by a police raid against The Pirate Bay, after which eventually no criminal charges were brought and equipment eventually returned to them.

Bear in mind also, that the judgement against the pirate bay folks was even known by the MPAA and so forth and leaked to them before the judge had formally announced the decision in court, where the decision is supposed to be announced also.

I'm sorry if it hurts your false illusion of Sweden as a nation that's immune from corruption. If anything though, it should illustrate to you how bad corruption is internationally, the fact that even some of the better countries in the world are still corrupt to the core, it's an illustration of the sad state of affairs today.

"since ISPs are protected by safe harbour provisions, and the MPAA has to file lawsuits against individuals, even if it's a jane/john doe discovery thing"

Tell that to AFACT (a company representing multiple major media corporations battling a lawsuit against a Australian ISP [iiNet] over infringements of their customers)

"Won’t be long before DECAF is released, which will block attempts to use COFEE on your machine, I’m sure."

-- Mister Toast, Nov 08, 2009, 13:58