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BitTorrent Gives Hollywood a Headache
fudgefactor7 writes "Although the MPAA and the RIAA, and practically anyone else who has an interest in protecting their intellectual property rights online, are fighting against P2P programs like EDonkey, Morpheus, and Napster, BitTorrent is coming under even greater scrutiny, albeit with less actual success so far, and that is giving Hollywood a headache, since they really don't know what to do about it and they can't go to Cohen and moan. Once he let the genie out of the bottle there was no way to put it back in. And with the likes of PeerGuardian, et. al., it only gets harder for the corporations to put the virtual, and legal, smackdown on file sharing."
Are BitTorrent users more vulnerable legally (not practically) since they automatically upload? I'd think that makes them distributors, which presumably brings higher penalties than consumption.
Is there anything here to discuss? The submission seems like an offhand thought, rather than a story -- and it's not even a thought that's really in dispute.
The tracker is what facilitates the download, the person who runs the tracker has set it up with the intent to share the specific file being shared. The tracker site is typically also the root of all the sharing through being a base seeder as well. So, basicly this brings things back to the days of piracy over public FTP and HTTP download sites, just attack the one facilitating the downloads. While foreign hosting and such might make this trickier it sure is way simpler than trying to attack the typical P2P network where the users are also the ones bringing the content to the table.
I imagine the copyright holders will go after the people who index bittorrent seeds, rather than the people involved in the filesharing, for facilitating the crime. If they hit these people, BitTorrent will become less popular as it becomes increasingly difficult to find what you want. It probably won't even matter if this is dubious, legally, just look at the RIAA's actions. A few C&D letters will cool off most people who have neither the money or inclination to fight a protracted court battle.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Kazaa:
BitTorrent:
(The effectiveness and ethics of this method are a different story.)
Perhaps the difficulty in battling BitTorrent is because it's harder to argue that its only purpose is to pirate material? We've seen plenty of good uses for it, such as alleviating the bandwidth pains of downloading Windows XP SP2, high demand game patches (Take THAT, Gamespy and your system of waiting behind 400 people in line!), etc.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
of Bittorrent (e.g. downloading Linux distros), the RIAA and MPAA have no legal way of killing it off. Bittorrent is outstandingly useful for downloading all sorts of large files, and not all large files are copy-disallowed material.
As the article said, the genii is now out of the bottle, and there's no way it can be captured and contained again.
Not a problem. We'll just torrent the torrent index.
Even here in Ireland one friend of mine got a notice from his ISP saying he was downloading from suprnova and that Universal had tracked his IP.
So sites like suprnova are wayyyy to open and as time goes by the smart people have moved away from such sites.
But there are private trackers as well they have.
- Alot of people
- Alot of content
- Good ratios so speeds are good
Nothing like suprnova and they are monitored carefully by the owners, so how are the MPAA/RIAA going to monitor these?
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
I'd be willing to pay for legal (non-DRM:ed) downloads of movies and tv-shows. Subscription or just per download, take you pick, I don't care.
I fail to see why Hollywood won't learn from RIAA's mistakes (and Apple's success) and start a service like this, the audience is global, there's tons of cash to make!
I live in a small nordic country (Sweden) where you have to wait 1-2 years for most "cool" shows (and even then they might get a timeslot around midnight) or get passed altogether (example, they just started running Angel Season 1, 01:00), so downloading series and buying them in DVD formats is more of a norm for me and many of my friends.
Now, a legal torrent.. that I'd pay for (and they'd even get my upload bandwidth for free).
Encrypt the file (breaking it would violate their own laws, should they pass), and give out the key in a special license, so that anyone/anycorporation/anyorganization that uses the key in any way forfeits all ability to punish anyone/anocorporation/anyorganization for it's contents.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Can someone explain in laymans terms exactly what this program does? What do the blacklists consist of and who compiles them? Why do I need this?
Maybe the licensing schemes need to be re-thought if people have resorted to stealing. Lowering the price could do the trick.
In some countries, like sweden, bittorrent trackers are legal. Since they do not spread copyrighted material but just link to where one can find copyrighted material.
:)
Also there is a court ruling from the BBS-time that says that the BBS administrators is NOT responsible for what the users do on the BBS (such as trading warez). It is argued that the same reasoning can be done for a torrent tracker. However if there are copyrighted material transferred without the copyrightholders approval, people that USE the tracker is still doing something illegal.
The industry has tried to remove torrents from piratebay.org, which is the biggest torrent tracker in sweden, with limited success. (they have even gotten calls from Microsoft when Halo 2 was up for downloading)
I like bittorrent and all but I don't see this being a real headache for MPAA as there isn't any kind of centralized database where one can search all published torrents. True there are sites like suprnova and such, but that isn't a reflection of all torrents.
Also what's the point of sharing twenty slightly, if that, different files instead of just one common file. Plus there needs to be more privacy, while also making leaches more accountable by having internal tracking of up/down ratio for all shared files. So that one who shares more will get priority when they download anything. Instead of merely tracking the bandwidth of one file, track the up/down bandwidth for all files of that user.
For you have killed a baboon and stolen his face
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Peerguardian just stop incoming and outgoing connections to it's list of banned IPs? If so, how does this stop a member of the **AA from connecting to a tracker and simply receiving the list of all the IPs connected to that torrent... How does it make a difference?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
They don't seem to be very successful with the site that calls itself "the world's biggest BitTorrent tracker". Link to the legal threats they've recieved, and their rather rude answers. They (RIAA/MPAA) probably need to lobby for some laws forbidding it first, and not only in the USA.
Please don't call it "stealing". Copying is different, in both common sense and in a legal sense. This has been gone over many times, despite massive media campaigns.
Pet peeve..
Or is there some technical reason that they can't do anything about them?
I believe Harlan Ellison successfully sued somebody who was posting copies of his stories to alt.binaries.e-books (or similar). He also tried to sue AOL, who settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
See details here: http://www.authorslawyer.com/c-ellison.shtml
I'm quaking in my pants!!!! Please don't hurt me Mr. Malcolm!
Perhaps because ISPs are unwilling to provide data on who downloaded what from Usenet? I know if my newsfeed did I'd switch.
I use bittorrent to download episodes of tv shows that I didn't get a chance to watch. How is this different from just sticking a tape in the vcr (if I even had a vcr anymore)?
You might say that by downloading I don't watch the commercials, but there aren't any commercials on shows like Dead Like Me, and I already PAY for the premium channel it's on.
A few C&D letters will cool off most people who have neither the money or inclination to fight a protracted court battle.
But how well does that really work? That has been the strategy so far with ed2k/overnet, and they're no closer to shutting that down than before they started. You kill one site, and a bunch of new ones show up in its place.
I was explained to that torrents are not easily traced because all the data is sent in small packet chunks.. I think it might be in 256k chunks.
:)
And that since all these data packets are being sent randomly from various sources, it would be much more difficult to actually point a finger at a source or destination.
It was described that sure you might be able to intercept the transmition of data, but you are not witnessing the transfer of a in-tact file.
So you could see that maybe it's some sort of mpeg stream or maybe part of a larger compressed archive, but it's just a piece of it. And once the next version of the torrent system comes along with the ability to transfer without use of trackers or servers, it becomes here-say on any legal action.
So does this packet chunk bit torrent stuff actually hold true? And if not, Why?
Allow me to clarify something:
:)
Bit Torrent is a PROTOCOL, not a program or website. The RIAA/MPAA are NOT locking their crosshairs on Bit Torrent itself, but rather the sources that supply copyright infringing 'seeds' which work over the Bit Torrent protocol. This includes (but is not limited to) websites like SuprNova, IRC channels and newsgroups.
Saying "Bit Torrent gives Hollywood a Headache" is like saying "FTP gives Hollywood a Headache."
Doesn't make much sense now does it?
smattawichu
I find the slant of the article quite disturbing. Mentioning that suprnova hosts torrents for atom bomb e-books and beheading videos really gives BT a bad name. But that's mainstream media for ya.
How many government snafu's will be revealed by file sharing? Look at some of the things published on P2P networks already, concerning prisoner abuse by the U.S. military. Some of the information was originally made public by more traditional means, but many hot stories have broke because of pics or videos from Iraq on P2P networks. Of course there is the flip side of beheading videos being published by terrorists or a meere "gore loving freak". I wonder how long until we hear about "those terrorist P2Pers". Don't think it can't happen...
When will they stop putting money on antipiracy and just accept the fact that there's nothing they can do to stop people from spreading any digital material? There will always be ways to share stuff no matter what anyone does.
I hope it was worth it.
Downloading copyrighted material is legal in Finland. There's nothing MPAA or RIAA can do about it.
"I imagine the copyright holders will go after the people who index bittorrent seeds, rather than the people involved in the filesharing, for facilitating the crime."
Facilitating crimes? It's become a cliche, but it's worth reminding ourselves that introducing a new vocabulary to change the meaning of common and well-understood ideas is a tactic as effective as it is disingenuous, yet a tactic that demands not only tacit acceptance on everyone's part, but also a measure of credulity as that typically found on the AM airwaves for its success. Put another way, you need to (and often can) fool all the people all the time.
How else to gain advantage than re-frame the discussion? Instead of concerning ourselves with (or being amused by) the mundane activities of ordinary folks who, when children, were taught to share, we can all become law enforcement officials. Just like on TV. But why just mouth the words when we can complete the picture with the requisite uniform, badge and perhaps a sidearm.
Aiding and abetting? Providing material support? Or maybe offering expert advice and asistance? How about conspiring to commit? It was George Bush who said "There ought to be limits to freedom." but my guess is that both he and his former attorney general John Ashcroft would be just as proud.
The problem with slashdot is that most of it's users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
"its".
Shhh, don't give them ideas.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
When you find a BitTorrent user participating in a big swarm, you can only sue them for that single infringement, not for sharing hundreds of movies or music files via programs like Kazaa. In order to make it cost effective they would have to keep track of your online BitTorrent activity for quite a while to collect multiple infringements.
I thought mainstream media was busy giving media a bad name?
MPAA and the RIAA are never going to win this battle by trying to get all the trackers shut down and suing people left and right. The only true way to possibly put a dent is to stop it at it's source. Get heavier on the security of their films and movies in regards to review copies sent out and security within their own organizations.
Logically, file sharing will eventually destroy the CD and DVD market. Why try to sell something people are just going to steal? So, ironically, no one will have anything to share anymore.
Personally, I don't believe anyone has a right to "share" the data on a CD or DVD unless that right was passed to you by the person who created the data. (I put quotes around share because use of that word is a deliberate attempt to whitewash what's really going on.)
If I don't own all rights to something I make (which , of course, I do, since it is impossible for anyone else to own those rights unless I transfer them), then I can't benefit from its production and reproduction. If I can't benefit by selling some of those rights, I'm likely to quit making things. So will almost everyone else, contrary to the naive opinions often expressed here that legitimate artists just want to give it all away and don't care about making a living.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
trackers are legal. Since they do not
"legal, since".
BBS administrators is NOT responsible
"administrators are".
there are copyrighted material transferred
"are [...] materials" or "is [...] material".
people that USE the tracker is still doing
"people [...] are" or "a person [...] is".
They should make file SHARING (thus not reselling) 100% legal. This has many advantages.
:-)
First of all, there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Peer to peer networks will get better and more secure, up to the point that nobody knows what anybody is sharing or downloading.
Secondly it won't stop people from going to movies or buying stuff... I still like going to a movie because it's just a different experience than seeing a movie at home. So is a concert. And sometimes when you really like something very much you just feel better buying it knowing you support the artists that created it. I know I'm not the only one that feels that way. (This way making lousy holywood movies might actually be BAD for business too...)
There are plenty of alternate opportunities to make money. I would love to buy stuff online if I would know it's just good quality with no hassles, and the prices were decent.
Finally, the current business model is outdated... legalizing the sharing of copyrighted material will get the companies looking for new ways to do business NOW, and will give the greatest benefit to the consumers. In the end they'll have to do that anyway (due to the first reason).
And as an extra bonus, the crime rate in almost every country would go down immensly (no more illegal file sharers! YAY!)
Watch for the latest copyright legislation to contain a special provision allowing the arbitrary execution of any software developer who creates a new file sharing protocol. It will be made retroactive and the Ass.'s of America will then execute the author of Bittorrent as an example. The create of Gnutella and WASTE will be next.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
private ftp servers with a few hundered users - there are still lots of them with lots of warez.
.torrent files. those alone are not illegal.
but they can be found, and it easier who has access to them, and all the warez is in one place, so you can sue each user to a huge amount.
now with bittorrent, it is quite easy to setup a private webserver with a forum, torrent files, and a tracker rejecting unknown users. that does not create much traffic, as most data flows between the members directly. if the site is found and the server is taken in: it only has
also downloading torrent files is not illegal.
and I hope nobody is stupid enough to have tracker log files, so there is not very much evidence for legal battles.
even more important is that with bittorrent a
hundret people with everyone only donating small resources (dsl line, one central server) can have a huge impact.
Thanks. I am bad at english as you can see, but I appreciate any help I can get, such as your corrections.
because your looking at pr0n!!
spend money here
"The program now accounts for as much as half of all online file-sharing activity, says Andrew Parker, chief technology officer of Britain-based CacheLogic, which monitors such traffic."
and from this story:
According to British Web analysis firm CacheLogic, BitTorrent accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet
so .. 70% of internet traffic is P2P? wow ...
Fair use
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Although company logos such as these are often copyrighted and trademarked, the fair use doctrine permits their use in certain contexts without prior permission.The fair use doctrine is a body of law and court decisions which provides for limitations and exceptions to copyright protection in the United States as well as other parts of intellectual property-related law, such as those governing trademarks. If a use is fair use, the copyright holder has no rights to control that use and no license or permission is required: you can simply go ahead and make the copies. Fair use is unique to the United States, but a similar principle, fair dealing, exists in many other countries.
Fair use permits the public to use copyrighted material without prior permission, as long as the material is not fully reproduced. Fair use allows, for example, reviewers of a work to reproduce it in part as an aid to their critique. Fair use also assist in locating a work; as an example, the internet search engine, Google, returns reduced resolution images in order to aid its clients in locating the image they are interested in. Fair use can even aid the copyright owner, by helping people to decide in purchasing a work, by including a portion of the work in a description; online retailers such as Amazon.com frequently resort to fair use to display cover art or portions of a work. Parodies, too, fall under the fair use doctrine.
Fair use attempts to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works, by allowing certain limited uses that would otherwise be considered infringement. It is also considered to be an accommodation of the free speech protections of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
There's some funny examples of various copyright holders' cease-and-desist-mails (and the replies they got) to a Swedish torrent site on: http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/
One they day will get a clue and start hunting down the users instead.
I see PeerGuardian mentioned, but what about ProtoWall? Has anyone run tests to see if either one is better/faster/more secure?
"...and they can't go to Cohen and moan."
Yeah, well, fingers crossed and all that...
Terrorist driving Toyota pickups with mounted machine guns gives Toyota a bad name.
Scott Peterson using a fishing boat to dump his wife's body gives fishing and boating bad names respectively.
The US military using "Wi-Fi" gives wifi a bad name.
and their rather rude answers.
:)
Yes, telling DreamWorks' lawyers "you are fucking morons, and you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons." and "Go fuck yourself." is rather rude...
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Well? This hybrid makes BT simple to use and creating torrents as easy as pie....searching for torrents and/or looking at new ones is also easy.
My ISP couldn't care less about the RIAA/MPAA...I am not sure why, but thats the fact.
Since when did federal law apply to corporations? Meh. It no longer surprises me to know we're living in a communist dictatorship where companies own everything you pay for.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Hollywood wouldnt really notice the dent if there is really a dent in the movie sales world wide. Its just a load of greedy idiots that have nothing better to do with thier time.
shoot all the lawyers...
These dinosaurs are doomed to die, no matter what they do. A meteor called 'internet' hit our planet and the artists they used to suck out just do not need them anymore.
"Rather than fight BitTorrent, the networks need to realize the powere behind online distribution. Here is what a successful TV distribution system needs."
The power of P2P isn't the technology, but the ubiquitous of broadband. A number that's only 20 percent. A demographic that is mostly affluient, white males.* It's greatly premature to speak of the power of online distribution when 80 percent are denied it's fruits, and that's in the US alone.
*A demographic that has the money, but is most likely to aquire it illegally, and least likely ( as we're often reminded) to purchasing it.
The answer is that the MPAA and RIAA are all being lazy.
.02.
Think about what happens when you download music, I'd say 40% of the time. You find that there's a click or a pop or an early cutoff in the song. Not 100% recording studio quality, or maybe even the encoding rate is less than 128k.
Also, anyone who has ever seen a bootleg knows that even TELESYNCS are of worse quality than that old TV that used to be in the garage with the aluminum foil on the antenna, and whose antenna was actually a coathanger.
The answer is to make reasonable quality movies available easily to people. TiVO has the right idea, and this idea may just bury the whole theatre industry (or set it back hundreds of paces).
I've bought bootlegs on every corner of NYC, and they all SUCK, and I'm not just talking about quality. Same has been said about the quality of the music that is being released these days. The RIAA is mad that we're downloading music that isn't worth even a legit 0.99 cent download. The answer? GET MORE TALENT ON THE LABELS!
Same is true for movies. Let's do a brief history of movies that have come out recently, shall we?
Lady Killers - I fell aasleep, personally. Horrible.
Van Helsing - PUH-LEESE. Should have ended 45 minutes before it did.
White Chicks - umm...right. White Chicks.
So one could argue that buying/downloading bootlegs is really just saving us from having to spend $10 now on a crappy movie. 10 BUCKS! Maybe there wouldn't be so much downloading if tickets were still reasonable. $10!
When I buy/download a good movie, I go to the thetre and see it.
SAW is a perfect example. GREAT MOVIE, new, fresh, original. Bought a bootleg, watched 15 minutes, and went to the theatre. They DESERVED the price of the ticket.
Spiderman 2 also....downloaded it, watched it, and went ot see it 3 times in the theatre.
My advice to MPAA/RIAA...better product. Make it so that we're foolish to try and get a cheap copy of your product. Nobody is out there manufacturing BMW knockoffs, are they? THey'd be FOOLISH to.
Take a lesson, and stop complaining.
Just my
"Pretty interesting article, and it seems to show quite clearly that some people will stop at nothing to destroy large sections of the internet."
As pointed out. P2P!=internet. And you haven't made the case yet that P2P is "large sections of the internet".
"Uh-huh. Yes, the internet is resistant to people attempting to destroy it, that's part of the design. The worrying thing is how many people are completely open about wanting to do so."
And it's amazing how open people are about violating copyright.
"[John] Malcolm of the MPAA declined to say whether the trade group intends to sue Cohen" - I think that says it all really, that such options are even being considered. You may as well sue the founding fathers for allowing people to speak in public."
Copyright violations aren't a free speech issue.
I receive tons of hits from various groups sniffing about while I'm d/ling via BitTorrent (I run PeerGuardian) and I often wonder how culpable I am. While not all of my downloads are technically "legal," it's all stuff I'm pulling down because it's the only way I can get it.
My most recent downloads, for instance, have been copies of Sifl & Olly (which hasn't been released on DVD) episodes of the BBC's Spaced (which, while released on DVD, is only available in the UK on region 2 media, and I'm in the states), and the Drive-By Truckers Pizza Deliverance, which is woefully out of print. In the case of the Truckers, I already own a copy of the record, but it's beat to shit. Supposedly they'll be re-releasing it sometime in 2005, and I'll undoubtedly be buying myself a new copy. In the meantime, however, I'd like to be able to listen to it.
I'm one of those folks who would happily purchase the stuff I pull via BitTorrent... if I could. It irritates the shit out of me to be snooped online, and to read article after article about the RIAA and MPAA pissing and moaning over downloading, when they don't really seem to be paying attention to what is being downloaded.
Sure, there's a shit-ton of folks dealing in warez and publicly available media, but there are also tons of sites dealing specifically with stuff people seek that can't currently be purchased legitimately (I don't understand downloading a crappy boot of a movie destined for DVD release, or downloading a movie that can be purchased for a few bucks online or rented. Frankly, it's a waste of my bandwidth). You'd think they'd look at the popularity of, say, Sifl & Olly torrents and say "Well shit, there's a market. Maybe we should release a DVD of that stuff."
And hey; how about not pricing it outlandishly (a la Carnivale or Six Feet Under)? Nothing makes me consider downloading more than knowing that, by purchasing it, I'm voluntarily allowing myself to get screwed.
rev.jsfk
Let's make a little example:
Now, in torrent terms:
BigCorporation1267 comes along and sees the library has InfringingBook612. What do they do?
Instead of going to the source (author), or having the distribution of the book pulled (publisher), they go to the library (tracker). "You're aiding in the distribution of infringing materials! Stop or we'll sue!"
The library itself has neither the funds nor manpower to take this to court; if anything, they would likely win a case. Yet, they have to roll over to the big guys.
It's a great plot, at that. Make the library the scapegoat when the book publisher is truly at fault for distributing infringing materials. Of course, the blame should really go to the author, but it's quite hard on the internet. So, take down the library, annoy a bunch of people, and the corporations win. In their own minds, of course; they're not stopping the content, so they can still play victim later. Marketing brilliance, really.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Why haven't TV stations decided to offer up torrents of recent shows? By including ads, they should be able to achieve similar levels of profit as broadcast TV. The bandwidth should not be a stumbling block if torrents are used. It might even increase revenues by exposing their product to a larger market.
And the Movie studio states clearly that they only uploaded '30 seconds' worth of the information before disconnecting from the torrent.
It is incredibly common for studios to offer samples of their work without compromising their rights to to it.
And with the likes of PeerGuardian, et. al., it only gets harder for the corporations to put the virtual, and legal, smackdown on file sharing.
:-S
OK, can someone once and for all tell me how PG makes it more difficult for corporations to track down file sharers? All the have to do is use a public network, right? I just don't get it. Do some think they'll sit behind a special kind of RIAA network to scan people and have totally missed the news of PG mentioned everywhere?
Have we got any data on blocked RIAA connections?
People mentioning PG is always talking about the software like it efficiently blocks the organizations you've picked.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
But the seed will surely play a prominent role in the .torrent tracker? Like being the first entry and being there all the time? So doesn't the .torrent always point to the one who put the seed online, that is you?
.torrent is theoretically separate from the seed, im practice it isn't, since you requested the .torrent to go online..
In fact, while I see that the
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I love bittorrent - I have about forty full length jam band shows that I've obtained over the last couple of months from www.digitalpanic.org.
I have an office cable modem, a home cable modem, a girlfriend's house cable modem, a mom's house cable modem, and most of them have BSD boxes for firewalls. I'm working on a method to automate the three home boxes participating in torrents I seed so when I start distributing shows I'll come with a megabit of bandwidth. Once the process is 'cooked' I have a couple of customers that probably won't mind some torrent activity on their network, so long as I keep it between 9:00 PM and 6:00 AM.
If you worry about the RIAA the solution is simple; get interested in bands that *promote* your right to copy their live work - Widespread Panic, Grateful Dead, Phish, Moe, Jerry Joseph & Jackmormons, String Cheese Incident, Government Mule, Drive By Truckers, Southern Bitch, Star Tangled Angel Revival, and a hundred other, less famous acts I've haven't listened to yet. There *is* something there for everyone
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
So basically your entire argument is wrong. Only the actual filesharers can be held to blame in bittorrent not the central tracker.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Difference is Kazaa, Shareaza, etc, have intrinsic search functions and you can easily and quickly find nearly all instances of files you are looking for.
With Bittorrent, there are thousands of private tracker sites and you can't get into many of them without an account and logging in. Some, like Supernova are open. Even then however, someone has to create the torrent file and either 1) publicize it on the forums, or 2) enter it in the browsable/searchable torrent list for the site. You still have to go to each site, and search each one at a time. (Which brings me to a new feature I'm working on.. RSS feeds for new torrents, but I digress)
Example: Consider one of the companies hired by MPAA to find their movies for download on the Internet. To search Shareaza, ed2K, or Kazaa for Chronicles of Riddick takes about 5 minutes. To search each Torrent site like Supernova would take days, and even then, there would be thousands of torrent sites 1) you don't know about or 2) can't get into. It is similar to the old days of protected FTP sites hosting warez... except if you knew the site was hosting warez, you could find it because people would post links to it and then you could C&D the site and get it shut down, even if you couldn't log in yourself. Since torrent files and trackers have no infringing content on them, you can't shut them down. You *have* to have actual access to the tracker and a copy of the torrent. Even if you have a copy of the torrent file, many torrents use keyed torrent files and will reject you if you are not on an authenticated IP for that member.
Plus torrents usually only last a few days. So they have to check every site, every day whereas with other P2P apps that share every file in the download directory, many people don't remove the files from their downloads so they stay available.
Even if you DO get into membership torrent sites, you will soon get booted because you are not uploading and sharing.
Using a hacked BT client that downloads but not uploads, is almost immediately detected by trackers and other clients, and in many cases, the tracker and the clients will automatically snub you so you are tossed.
Finally, torrents are often FAST. I've gotten some very high-quality XVid encoded stuff at near DVD quality downloaded at faster than realtime (400kBps) in a well populated torrent swarm.
Like the story says... BT is creating headaches for **AA well beyond other P2P stuff.
"Copyright violations aren't a free speech issue."
Its like when Howard Stern says "penis" and "vagina", he gets fined, and then FCC says its not a free speech issue.
Do you realize how lacking in logic your argument is? The supreme counrt has already said that flag burning is a free speech issue. They were right.
So what you're trying to do is redefine terms so you're right, because if you take the commonly accepted, logical view of things, then *of course* copyright are a free speech issue.
Let me put it another way:
Johnny: I know where to get free software. There's a guy giving it away in the truck in the parking lot
You: You're a thief!
Johnny: No, I'm not. I'm just telling you where you can get free software.
You: Well, telling everybody is a crime.
Johnny: No it isn't, its free speech
You: This has NOTHING TO DO WITH FREE SPEECH!
Rest Of World: ?????????
No, not the MPAA, the illegal file-swappers.
Morons like these are the reason I can't play the music CD I just bought (legitimately, from a local shop) in my car CD player. It's not a real CD any more, it just looks like one, because it's full of copy-protection stuff to block the morons spreading it all over the net without paying for it.
A lot of the kids around here think they're very clever: "We'll just develop mass-market, instant, anonymous file-sharing tech and then they'll never catch us!" they cry. Newsflash, kids: if they can't beat your system for breaking the law with their current methodology, they will simply push for still more draconian legislation. It will probably start with making it illegal to run private networks capable of high-speed file-sharing without oversight (see the recent Internet 2 threads). That will quickly be followed by making any sort of anonymous data transfer illegal. (Or those two might be the other way around; it doesn't really matter.) Then there will be a legal requirement to use only "approved" hardware to play any sort of media, followed by a ban on any legacy devices that can circumvent the protections. When measures like these come in, those who are using things like torrents (or video recorders, or CD burners, etc. etc.) for genuine reasons will be the first ones to lose out.
Copyright law is there for a reason, and however much some /. readers might like to wish otherwise, you are not allowed to copy music, films, etc. for free rather than paying for them like everyone else. If you do so, you will get slapped down, and the more arrogant you become the harder you will get slapped in the end. Now please grow up, and stop dragging the rest of us who are trying to do legal things on the Internet down with you.
That is all. YHBT. HAND.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You know, if Hollywood just gave us direct downloads to all the movies for free, we really wouldn't have this 'Bit Torrent' problem.
He writes one good episode of star trek, and then guy things the shit comes from his ass are gold bricks.
Please spare me any drivel about his "early good stuff". Re-read it. His stuff really does suck.
Ya, there is too much money involed in today justice. Justice should not be about money.
It's clear with the law that sharing movies is legal.
1-Fair use permits the public to use copyrighted material without prior permission, as long as the material is not fully reproduced.
It's clear that movies on the internet are not fully reproduced, they are low quality reproduction missing a lot of details.
2-Fair use can even aid the copyright owner, by helping people to decide in purchasing a work.
People can watch the movies on internet before deciding to see them in theaters or buying them so they don't get riped-off.
was standardizing distribution of all the content in high quality digital format. ;o)
-1, title is bollocks.
You said:
Fair use permits the public to use copyrighted material without prior permission, as long as the material is not fully reproduced.
Our Survey said:
We want to download the entire movie, or there's no point.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Doesn't fair use allow you to distributed 30 second samples of audio and video? What if the bittorrent files were chunked by 30 seconds or less?
ironic really, as bit torrent was not designed to be used for copyrighted works yet is harder to stop than those protocols designed for distrobution of copyrighted works.
You can substitute 'Office Workers' , 'Garbage Collectors' or 'Coal Miners' for 'bands' because they too need to do their job continuously, often until retirement age. And they have fewer groupies and roadies.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
What we really need is p2p philosophy and encryption/privacy at every layer...We need to redistribute the net like it was originally intended...
:-)
we need mesh networks so the net (at least locally) belongs to the people and we need freedom/freenet like network all around for every damn protocol...
Let's make the net into something that is free of any censorship so we can all globally think together without having our thought controlled by bigCorp. Inc...
William Gibson said it best:
"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...."
Let's save that dream
Hi,
Sweden is in the EU, in the second tier of countries who aren't as closely involved in the process as say Germany or France, but who are signatories to treaties involving EU jurisdiction over nation's laws. at least I think so, please correct me if I'm wrong.
At the moment places like piratesbay in europe are protected, but will this be the case forever? Recent attempts to make europes copyright laws more in line with America's seem to have stalled (with Poland doing the good deed last time I heard about it), but I'm not confident this will be the case forever.
In this case, will EU legislation take precedence over Swedish law, meaning these type of sites will face lawsuits in their own countries?
I could be wrong, but it gets a little less certain.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
There is no such thing as intellectual property. There is copyright law, trademark law, and patent law. Ideas are not property. We have some laws that are supposed to encourage advancement of human knowledge or prevent product misrepresentation. These laws let people have a monopoly on distributing ideas, but they are not property laws.
Dont rely on peer guardian to keep you safe.
I got a warning from my ISP after they got a nasty gram from the MPAA. I had been running peerguardian and bit torrent d/l off of suprnova.
(with a US bias ...) The file sharing backlash is, IMHO, an example of civil disobedience in response to the **AA organizations cheating the system. Copyright and Patent structures are a *temporary* monopoly granted to the author (and enforced thorough the legal system) in exchange for incentive to expend resources and take risks for the creative process. When the Copyright/Patent period expires, the work is supposed to fall into the public domain for the benefit of society. So, exactly when do the authors make good on their end of the deal? The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension-to-Infinity Act distills down to "effectively, never."
...
There are two paths to changing the law - pursue it through petition to representatives, or pursue it through civil disobedience. Since the congresscritters appear to be bought and paid for, disobedience seems to be the only reasonable choice that remains. The file sharing folks aren't making a buck doing so. In fact, it costs them time and resources (electricity, disk space, bandwidth, etc.) to participate in the activity. The pirates who sell the materials are a different matter
Communist country? Where?
I don't see any 'to all according to need' spirit in either corporations or copyright. Fascist dictatorship would be a more accurate description.
In a communist country the corporations would not exist and power would be in the state (whether or not you have freedom would depend on it being a democratic communist country or a dictatorial communist country).
"If you wanted to do so, you could cite the percentage of internet traffic which bittorrent uses, some figures were even in the article."
It's all relative. A 100 of 1 % is more significent, than a 100 of a 1000%. Also all the rest of the internet functioned quite well before there was P2P, and will function the same in it's absence (maybe better). The only "large section" being affected is the portion that's engaging in copyright violations. While legitimate users have both technology, and the law on their side.
"Indeed. Wasn't suggesting they should be. But trying to shut-down whole systems of communication for fear that copyrighted stuff might be transmitted on them is a free-speech issue."
Free speech was present before there was P2P, and in it's absence will still be. Besides even free speech has it's limits. e.g. libel, yelling fire in a theater.
"My analogy was with speaking in public. You can read a copyrighted book in public. You can sing a copyrighted song. But restricting the ability to speak in public is not a valid solution to either of those problems. Similarly, restricting the ability to use BitTorrent is not a valud solution to the problem of people using it to share other peoples' video.
Or to use a more specific example, I don't want MPAA-funded vandals interfering with my Debian and Mepis downloads, then claiming that what they're doing is legitimate."
Then as an affected user, your ire (and efforts) should be directed against those that have chosen to abuse your chosen method of distribution, rather than against those who are pursuing recourse against those who have neither respect for them, nor you.
It works just as well at sharing RedHat ISOs, trailers, software demos, music, movies, or games.
Just like a VCR doesn't know if a tape is bootleg or not.
So to be perfectly clear, a tracker has one single purpose, to make a file A downloadable for users.
The issue of legality is purely a matter for the downloaders and the initial seeder. It could be argued that hosters, people running the trackers, can be told to take down trackers for illegal content, but that's no different than telling eBay to take down auctions for illegal content. eBay itself is not illegal.
GPL Deconstructed
I don't get it, how is this different from a firewall? Does PG somehow say "cheese it the cops!" and put your pc's hands behind its back while it whistle's innocently until the MPAA kill bot passes over? What gives?
You aren't allowed to upload 1 second of the material, since you don't own the copyright!
Is it that hard to understand? They can distribute as much of it as they want, because they OWN IT. You, however, do NOT.
IMHO....
At first the internet was a big nerdy club and you _could_ fileshare etc but it was _so_ complex to do that only the really nerdy did, and i'm talking about people who never went outside a 2m radius of their 286, and so were unlikly to go and buy media anyway.
The problems only started coming along when your average user realised that they could fileshare really easily. Incredibly high prices for cds, dvds etc coupled with the fact that a good portion of the material available was (still is?) drivil only added fuel to the fire and people started to justify the downloading of music files - your average user still doesn't believe you can download a film, again IMHO!
Now a general change in habits of the western world (i may be a bit ignorant!) made it seem like people were buying less music and, while i belive thats not true, there are still conflicting reports on that subject. Add the relatively massive increase in P2P and the _corporation_ panicked, tried to shut down the software, sued the end users, etc but didn't stop and think.
Apple did. I'm not a huge fan of the apple computer but i respect what they do and full credit to them, they launched a service that people wanted - not wanted, were crying for, and how succesful has the ipod and itunes been? Now there are loads of ways of buying cheap music over the internet legaly. How long before we get imovies?
Whats my point? Well, i don't believe that you can shut down a network or 2 or 6 and the problem will go away. In the_modern_world the users are evolving much faster than the _corporation_ are. We want to have our cake and eat it and up untill a few years ago that wasn't possible but the technology exists to enable all the cake hording and scoffing that you can have but theres nobody making the cakes at the moment. The solution is to adapt the supply chain to give people what they want, no-one will use BT or any P2P if they have a viable legal alternative, won't they?
doug
Reinventing the wheel since 1979
"Yes they are. Anything that reduces my access to information or my ability to send out informatiom is a restriction on free speech. (not being able to yell 'fire' is a restriction on free speech, albiet one that is generally a good thing)."
No it isn't. The information legally isn't yours to begin with. Complaining that you can't be the recipiant, or the transgressor, and hiding the issue behind "free speech" is intellectual dishonesty.
The reason they're resisting all P2P is because they want to be able to sell their shows multiple times through different formats, and to sell as a cartel. They currently own most of the distribution channels, so losing this control is the end of raping consumers.
/.'s perspective, if Linux owns 90% of the market, would you want BSD and other Free software to gain market share? It's the same mentality in different situations.
/. crowd really despise the *aa for their tactics, then begin proving it. The time for talk was over, when they started buying politicians.
You think you're clever showing them how they could be rich by adopting the internet, you're not. Unless you can guarantee their control of internet distribution, they're just going to laugh at your ideas.
Let's put this in
Move on from showing how they can be rich by changing their business practices, and focus on ending support for their cause by buying and consuming their contents. If the
The media companies can fight P2P technologies all they want, but by the time they waste the costs to get one closed down, ten more will pop up, and they will be even more difficult to fight than the last.
Instead, has anybody in the media industries considered leveraging the existing network of P2P technologies and users to the benefit of their respective (but not respectable) organizations? Hell, by all means, make the software shareware and put it on the P2P networks; put movies on there, except you get videotape quality movies; put songs on there, except you get audiotape quality songs. Want it all perfect? There will be links that come with the file you download, which will direct you to purchase a "full" copy at a greatly discounted price. See, when you purchase a CD in the store, there is a physical case, a physical CD, some expensive 6-color printed materials, etc. This costs money to produce. But what does a download cost a company? Almost zilch. They get to keep nearly all of the money.
How do you prevent people from uploading the "full" versions to the P2P networks? Easy. Sign the files with steganography, with a unique signature for each user; A movie is hours long and has tons of frames; you'll never even notice fucked up pixels, if there are only a few scattered throughout the film. When the user buys a movie, the movie company gets the credit card information. When the movie gets uploaded to the P2P networks, the movie industry will know who did it. BUSTED!!!
get a torrent that is distributed say.... monthly...
called "latest torrent trackers", and distribute a zipped list of torrents as a torrent itself.
In fact, the list itself could be encrypted, so you'd have to search for the "torrent list encryption key", also in bittorrent.
Even more... the torrents could be named "Torrent with id AC65FB86EF67CABD76" so you never find out what the torrent is about until you download it...
or if you have the "Torrent id dictionary" also downloadable via bittorrent.
[joker]MUAHAHAHAHA >:) Don't you love those WONDERFUL TOYS!? [/joker]
If the RIAA is suing people, it's much easier to sue someone for sharing $1000 worth of music vs. $20-$40 worth. I think they'd basically piss off any judge that wasn't a small claims court judge, no?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Stop and think about this for a minute. The **AA aren't making money from the people they're suing, and no matter how you you try to rationalise it, it's a good bet that those people are costing them money. The whole argument about "suing their own customers" is one big straw man: they're not customers if they're not buying anything.
If this all happens, the **AA will carry on selling genuine CDs, DVDs, etc. to those who pay for them, backed with huge, confidence-inspiring guarantees about "playable everywhere" and so on that Joe Consumer loves to hear. Suing a few teeny wannabes into oblivion along the way will be a small price to pay for them to save their business model, and when they have as much invested in that model as they do, you can bet your ass they're going to do anything they can to protect it.
The bottom line is that they can't lose by trying to fight this.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Looks like someone got hit by a troll with mod points. Any meta-mods out there? I know it's never going to stop Slashdot's system of ruining posts by supporting troll-mods, but at least it'll help a smidge.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Och det är väl att administratören ansvarar för vad innehållet. Men att länka till illegalt innehåll är ej det samma som att publicera det / eller ha det på sin hemsa/BBS/tracker.
Straw dummy alert!
Seriously, *no*, it's *nothing* like leaving a gun around for someone to use. It's this type of severely flawed analogy that brought us the silly concept of referring to copyright infringement as "piracy".
The photocopier analogy makes much more sense, because it deals with the same basic issue. You put a device out there that is capable of duplicating information, and someone comes along and makes use of it.
Guns are legally required to be registered to their owners, unlike copiers or computers, for starters. They're also capable of killing human beings due to improper use -- and last I checked, nobody was killed by their photocopier while running off copies?
Also, I'd think in the case of products like BitTorrent, it might become a factor that you never really provided a complete copy of a given work to the receiver. The way BT works, you're normally just distributing portions of a file, while other systems help distribute the other pieces. Parts of files get passed around like a dealer dealing from a deck of cards.
What is the percentage of bandwidth used for Bit Torrent like protocols that people suppose is not content suspect to the litigious super-enforcers?
If these protocols are being used by people who don't want to pay for their movies, then can't we expect that the music and movie mongers will want to sue and try to change it?
It seems to me that there are a lot of people who demonize the need for hollywood to make money. And yet they are very quick to want to see the new movies even if they are stealing them.
And so it is then that the total anarchists, who hate facists, compel the super-wealthy to create even more powerful forms of facism. Oh, the irony of it all.
My suggestion: Look away from the TV.
The 'according to need' thing has pretty much no place in communism. That's just a gimmic to keep people duped, much like the 'people have a choice' concept of democracy. Communism is essentially where the state owns what you have whether you worked for it or not. American - and just about all - copyright is where you buy a CD or hard drive but the company still governs what you're allowed to do with it. The company owns what you paid for.
A system built on this principal means you get the bad aspects of communism in exchange for the good aspects of capitalism.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
It's not the content that they are worried about anyway, it's competition. Movie studios are nervous because they are not the exclusive providers of moving pictures anymore. Now anyone can make a movie and distribute it. This is something of a shock for an industry that naturally only had four or five members, was working on vertical integration and hoping to use DRM to hoplessly lock down distribution for themselves forever. Ha, ha, dumb fucks. Movie studios and the music industry know that their position in the world comes from having grasped and mastered obsolete technologies, and they are fighting their new competition before it is well known. The actual content, singing, stories, acting, lighting, beauty and bravado are as common as little theaters. The social implications of monoply story telling and song are also left as an exercise.
Finally, I have to complain about the use of the phrase, "intellectual property rights." "intellectual property" is vague, intentionally misleading and bad enough. But "rights" is even worse. No one has a right to a government granted exclusive franchise, which is what a patent, a copyright or a trademark is. That exclusive franchise can never reduce ideas to real property. No one can ever own a name, a song or an invention the same way they own a pencil. The notion that you have the same kind of ownership and rights to a song as you do a pencil is childishly asinine and that notion's promotion has tremendous social consequences. Song, names and ideas are easy to share and can be enjoyed by everyone at the same time. The people doing all the worrying are not "anyone else who has an interest in protecting their intellectual property rights online." Free software authors, photographers, authors, musicians and many others have the same rights and use the same laws but love bit torrent. The only term that can really tie together copyright, patents and trademark is "exclusive franchise" and that, not basic freedoms, are what movie and music publishers are trying to protect.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"To resume it up, people download copyrighted movies that are not fully reproduced and that's perfectly legal."
j ectID/BABFA71E-97C9-479F-8A9D4C3DB2498663/catID/2E B060FE-5A4B-4D81-883B0E540CC4CB1E
http://www.nolo.com/lawcenter/ency/article.cfm/Ob
Look up "reproduction rights". The law makes no distinction based on "quality of", and the more of the originals present in the copy, the less fair use is a defense.
Hmm.... that's an interesting argument you have there. I've actually never heard someone make that statement before, that a hash is a "derived work" of the original software.
Might have some validity, but I think it's still a stretch. The original point (legally speaking, anyway) of concern over "derived works" was focused on people doing slight modifications to existing code and attempting to resell it as something new and original. (EG. If I have access to the source code to Outlook Express email for Windows and I change the screen colors and default fonts, some of the wording and dialog boxes, and put the folder list on the right instead of the left, I can't run around selling it as a new email product called "MailMaster 5000 Pro".)
A hash, in and of itself, is a very small chunk of alphanumeric data that doesn't contain enough code to conclusively prove it was only able to be created by using a specific original work. (After all, I could write a small program to generate random hashes all day long and theoretically create one that happens to be identical to one made the "proper way", by generating it based on a specific file.)
And when you try to pick up a hooker that turns out to be a cop, you're not guilty. Or when you try to sell drugs to an undercover cop... The accuser has to share the file in order to catch the defendant. As long as this is all being properly documented and the sharing is done specifically for finding copyright violators, the defendant doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Do me a favor, send me a postcard from that dreamland you're in at the moment.
Wiki List which points to:
this
and that.
This is going to become more common. As a recent Pew survey of musicians showed, most artists think of the internet as a way of getting their word out. 99.99% of artists have no real chance of landing on the RIAA monopoly push money train, regardless of merit. For them, you and I enjoying their music is pure promotion and about the only chance they have of their recordings becoming something that gets lost in the attic. Performance is demanding and few people have the inclination to tour for 30 years. Music is still a get it today because it will be gone tomorrow kind of thing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"I receive tons of hits from various groups sniffing about while I'm d/ling via BitTorrent (I run PeerGuardian) and I often wonder how culpable I am. While not all of my downloads are technically "legal," it's all stuff I'm pulling down because it's the only way I can get it."
A common refrain aroud here.
1) Obviously (except around here) no one's entitled to be entertained.
2) The majority of the material found on P2P networks are actually quite easy to get through legitimate channels.
3) None of the individuals who use this defense have approached the copyright holders with the business proposition of becoming middle-men themselves (supply) and fulfilling this supposed demand.
don't you think that there must be sites on the internet where they fish for psychos? They set up these sights to lure in people with a violent or sadistic bend.
.
They have these up and when they get a hit they watch what gets served back to what IP address. Then they make a little addition to their data base and send the satellites to bug the house where the content ended up. .
Or there are just a lot of sick people with too much time.
the fbi warning is the cut out?.
;)
This is the fair use :
j ectID/C3E49F67-1AA3-4293-9312FE5C119B5806
:p
http://www.nolo.com/lawcenter/ency/article.cfm/ob
"Rule 5: The Quality of the Material Used Is as Important as the Quantity
The more important the material is to the original work, the less likely your use of it will be considered a fair use."
No distinction based on the quality you said?
Fixed link : http://www.nolo.com/lawcenter/ency/article.cfm/obj ectID/C3E49F67-1AA3-4293-9312FE5C119B5806
How to Poison BitTorrent for Dummies
Target audience: RAII, MPAA, BSA
Step 1:
Get a DSL or cable account on every major ISP.
Step 2:
Join the torrent for every movie or song you want to poison. Repeat this for each ISP.
Step 3:
After you've downloaded the file, alter a few key bits every few dozen KB. You may need to use sophisticated methods so checksums match.
To throw people off, host a few non-broken files of stuff that's legal to freely share, e.g. Linux distributions.
Step 4:
To fool technology like PeerGuardian, change your IP address every few days at random intervals.
The end result:
People unlucky enough to grab a segment from you will probably get at least 1 altered bit, resulting in a broken download. In the case of sound or video, it may not make it unplayable, but it will mark it as a bootleg copy.
Step 5:
Pay your ISP bills and compare this cost to the net increase in revenue, and realize you are in the hole.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If the **AA pretends to be a client, they open a connection and start to receive the file, would they not then have to also share it back to get the entire file (such that they can prove that the file is in fact illegal)? If they are then sharing it back, are they not now making a legal precedent to the effect that the file is now supported as free to share (since the copyright holder is also sharing)?
**I really don't know what I'm talking about, but this sounded good at the time!**
Huh?
Things that have legitimate uses can be made illegal without obtaining a permit to use the devices, if they're deemed to facilitate criminal activity. Possession of lock picking devices can get you in trouble in some places if you don't have permits to use them. Even though lock picking devices have legitimate purposes, for instance when someone gets locked out a locksmith uses them to open the door, their possession is still restricted.
Your BBS analogy is flawed. The administrator of a BBS isn't liable because they weren't the ones to post the illegal material. They are providing a service that can be used for any number of purposes. Running a bittorrent tracker is different. A tracker for a copywritten work can only be used to facilitate distribution of said work. If the person running the tracker doesn't have the rights to distribute that work, they would be liable for infringement.
We all need to drive to the houses of these guys, use their open wifi networks to download a few songs that we've copyrighted and then countersue. It'd make for a great rebuttal. I'm kidding of course, that'd be horribly unethical.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
This is something I never understood. If I download a 600 MB movie I steal $10, at most $20. If I download 600MB warez I can steal thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. Yet BSA never sued individual downloaders while RIAA/MPAA sue people for a few bucks. Even though the software industry loses much more from piracy they never pushed for changing the laws or outlaw of P2P applications.
I'd say you are missing half the point.
The idea the something like PG is some 100% successful bastion of solitude is clearly bull.
On the other hand, as such systems move into use they will tend to increase in efficacy.
PG is orthoginal to a spam filter. But unlike spam, the Internet Address space is reasonably constrained.
So Peer Guyardian like systems, as they develop, tend to partition off known "problematic" peers.
The real problem will be with cross contamination. If an offender switches IP addresses, their previous actions on the old address leave the _next_ guy to get that address stuck out in the gulag.
So addresses that cannot be changed easily (like _some_ government sites and larger corporate assets) can be rather effectively told to "stuff it" and left to play in their abreviated version of the internet. This could be quite effective over time.
Copntrapositively, one should expect the poisioners to eventually have to adopt the tactics of the spammers. That is, the P2P track-and-poision outfits really need bot-nets of compromised machines to "borrow unused bandwidth" from widely distributed machines to use for the probing and poisioning.
[Tinfoil-Hat]
Consider for a moment a network of something like set-top internet enabled boxes (say X-Boxes, Tivos, Web-TVs, or DRM-infested Windoze) contolled by large companies. Suppose these boxes had idling deamons that did things like online updates, and were spread all over the country/world. It wouldn't take much to patch-in a bot to allow any consumer point-of-entry into the internet to be used for all-but-one-time check of a P2P server or a local machine.
Consider also, those media-server boxes that let you play media files from your computer into your TV or sterio. How hard would it be for such a box to send out a single UDP datagram to the internet if it "felt like it" after it saw a "questionable media file"?
If that box was _also_ online-updatable, how hard would it be to updiate-in a bit of local spyware to check up on a client, and then update it back out once a decision had been made.
[/Tinfoil-Hat]
Technologically speaking, we are in an easy-to-proliferate arms race. To some extent, failure to play the MAD game (using tools like PG etc.) is just rolling over for a good nuking.
but like any good arms race, the tools of today are always flawed and will always need to be teamed up as an ongoing strategy. And lots of them will get very dated very quickly.
So PG (etc) could/will reach a critical density, effectively increasing ones safety to a non-trivial degree. At which point the attack will have to change.
That the enforcers will eventually need to play on the same level field as the least-legal denominator (spammers) is a foregone conclusion.
Except that the enforcers will play the EULA card when the tiny portion of their customers who care, notice that their "private" systems are being used as weapons platforms (often directly against their owners).
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
Here are some questions I wish the author of this article and some of the people he interviewed would address.
Why can't "Hollywood" adapt to technological change instead of fighting it ? Why can an unemployed programmer sitting in his apartment out-inovate a handful of multi-billion dollar corporations ?
Why do these wealthy CEO and entertainer types think they're immune from change ? I used to be a high paid COBOL guy, I had to adapt. Do any of these people expect me to feel any sympathy or support for them ?
Why would people want to download in the first place ? Is it because ticket prices are too high, and the cost of soda and popcorn is almost offensive ? Do people in one country want to see the movie as soon as people in another country ?
Is the loss of revenue real or imaginary ? Is their existence really threatened ? Are movie industry profits really sliding ? Are American high school kids really going to start staying home instead of going to the theatre ?
Sorry if this sounds like a bit of a rant. I'm really tired of the pro-CEO slant in the mainstream media. If any journalists are reading this I hope you address these questions in your future articles. It would really make me alot more interested in what you do for a living.
It is really in the BitTorrent communities best interest to try and police itself. BitTorrent is not anonymous and is in fact easier for authorities to track down abusers than certian other P2P programs. Maybe a disclaimer or notice needs to be added to the installer and GUI saying this. If the P2P crowd realized there are better alternatives to BitTorrent for the downloading of Copy Protected materials (which will never be stopped) then BitTorrent can go back to being a great way of distributing legal content.
"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Not if the tracker is a general "file swapping tracker", and the users of the tracker puts the torrent files there. Especially if the tracker says "do not put up stuff you dont have the right to distribute" :)
Nice try, but that's essentially the same as what Napster was doing. Providing a central "database" where the material was linked.
The only defense here for such a website is that DMCA-style laws and even old copyright laws provide a safe haven clause. This means that the copyright holder must inform them that the content is copyrighted and unauthorized for sharing.
Umm.. IANAL, but I am a law student. While this certainly isn't legal advice:
1) If you read the Napster decision the problem wasn't only that they hosted the central index, but that they actually profited from people using the software (via advertising). hosting a torrent doesn't mean you profit.
2) Traditional copyright law has no "safe harbor" exception other than fair use. If you are distributing copyrighted material they can certainly sue you even if they have not asked you to remove the material. (Of course if they do ask and you refuse I can assure you that the judge will take that into account).
I apologize on behalf of the asshat grandparent. It's safe to say that your English is a lot better than his Swedish.
"Some sites offer digitized broadcasts of 'The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,' computer games like "Star Trek: Klingon Academy . . ."
Well I'll be damned. Bittorent has apparently done something Microprose couldn't do: distribute Star Trek: Klingon Academy.
They couldn't give that game away free.
"If history has shown anything, it has shown that DRM will never stop those that want to circumvent paying. What DRM will do is impose restrictions on legitimate paying customers. That is bad business. Although it may take time, market forces will eventually correct and weed out those bad apples.
"
This will also weed out the most popular "apples", and eventually destroy any remaining quality.
"I see no reason that DRM would be especially beneficial to marketing content. Why not just release free downloads with the first 5 or 10 minutes of a show? Much like some artists offer free/non-DRM downloads on their websites offering high quality snips or very low quality full versions of their songs to entice you to pay to get the real deal."
This assumes that your solution is more desirable than the present full digital copy circulating.
"While I understand what you are saying, I think the fundamental assumptions behind this line of thinking is just plain flawed. If you give people an easy and inexpensive way to get their fix without limitations, they will gladly pay for it."
This assumes that "inexpensive" isn't percieved as a "limitation".
"The key is cheap, easy and universal access. In my opinion, the first content provider that provides content matching these criteria will win."
The fact that P2P networks persist in spite of the online presence of legitimate media content says otherwise.
Hmm.... that's an interesting argument you have there. I've actually never heard someone make that statement before, that a hash is a "derived work" of the original software.
He probably works for SCO!
Mis-name torrents for the latest hollyweird films by giving them the names of files that are perfectly legal to download...like some Linux iso or out of copyright films. Then someone puts up a web page that lists the phoney names of the torrents and also what films they actually do contain. Then everyone could download the torrents and if the MPAA takes them to court they would need to prove to a jury that the downloader was aware that the Linux iso torrent s/he was grabbing and serving was actually their copyrighted movie. How could they convince a jury the user knew it was the illegal file and not the file the torrent said it contained??
The people who extend copyright laws are not just cheating.
They're stealing. They are _stealing_ works from the public, by preventing them from entering the public domain.
They are more thieves than those who are _copying_. People who make copies don't really reduce access to the work. Whereas copyright extensions and similar stuff do.
People who make copies could reduce the copyright holder's access to money that is not the copyright holder's. But that is quite a different thing. After all that money is not automatically the copyright holder's.
How do they own something that is merely a duplicate of something they own? That is what is messed about copyright, patents, and any sort of IP.
* The claim of financial losses or damage is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copyist would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
* The claim of loss or damage is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
* The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" got paid. That is based on the assumption that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.
* Originally written by Rolloffle (British Douchebag)
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby
I won't be happy until they have a stroke!
there are good movies, but spiderman is just bad...
mainstream shit for kids
Morally? The morality here is pretty complicated but I don't see how uploading could be imoral but downloading not. The real question to me (and the courts) is the legality. In a simple electronic upload/download transfer, where and when does the illegal copy happen?
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
"No, not the MPAA, the illegal file-swappers."
...you are not allowed to copy music, films, etc"
;).
I got an idea then, change the law so that personal noncommerical use of copyrighted material is allowed to be coppied and the 'il' will drop out of illegal. It is the peoples' law, and it will be changed if the majority of people are 'criminals' under it.
"they will simply push for still more draconian legislation"
What is your arguement, that we give in to the harm done by the idea monopolists because they might do something worse in the future? Well, Neville, I have no doubt they are heading there anyway since their goal is nothing but the total control of information and ideas, so I suggest we not roll over but fight them instead.
"Copyright law is there for a reason..."
Yes, the reason was to promote the creation of new ideas. Now copyright has been perverted to stifile new ideas, and it appears to be getting more draconian every day.
The law tells you we are 'not allowed' to copy and share information, and then the law must be changed to reflect our new digital age.
"The more arrogant you become the harder you will get slapped in the end"
You try the being meek and subserviant method while idea monopolists create a world in which information is despensed like gasoline, and you pay by the letter. I think i'll try fighting for the right to information
- Recovery of costs has to be weighed against the huge expense if they lose the case. Unless (spoils of victory * victory probability) - (cost of loss * loss probability) is positive, suing is a bad gamble.
- The whack-a-mole problem: if you target small fry, you could be winning cases wholesale and yet be losing the war to sheer numbers. Bittorrent allows everybody to be small fry.
"I got an idea then, change the law so that personal noncommerical use of copyrighted material is allowed to be coppied and the 'il' will drop out of illegal. It is the peoples' law, and it will be changed if the majority of people are 'criminals' under it."
Just like in Canada, a country where a good majority of the population at some point of time smoked/will smoke marijuana, marijuana is legal (/sarcasm)
You're so full of shit. It is small lobbying groups with money and influence that can make this kind of change(making anything on the internet illegal), and if it's in their best interest to do so you bet they will.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
you mean like xp sp 2 does?
...it only gets harder for the corporations to put the virtual, and legal, smackdown on file sharing.
d ity movie companies who are to blame.
Just for the record, the makers of Kazaa, Morpheus, eDonkey, LimeWire and numerous other P2P services are also corporations. To repeat a lousy capitalist cliché, don't blame the entire corporate system when it's really just a few soon-to-be-out-of-business-due-to-their-own-stupi
"PeerGuardian 2 will be open source, and will update automatically."
;) ) but like looking at what other people did and modifying it to do what I want.
I've always wanted to know individual's reasons why they release their software under an open source license. Shareaza also was released under open source, probably because it simply could not keep up with the pace of open source p2p applications.
As well, esp with P2P, there is a trust factor people, especially myself, need to use it that closed source doesnt have. Same reason why I don't use closed source encryption programs, need trust to ensure nothing sly is going on.
Myself, I like open source because I have no illusions of making money off anything I make (since I am not that great of a programmer
I also like the idea of sharing code, so I can get tools I need and the only thing I have to do is share as well.
How do they own something that is merely a duplicate of something they own?
They don't per se.
Rather, they are granted the right to prevent other people from making those duplicates. When you go ahead and make a duplicate anyway, you're infringing on their exclusive right (i.e. right to exclude).
One of the forms of relief for the copyright holder is to have you enjoined from doing it again. Another is to destroy the unlawfully made copies. Another is for you to pay damages for having done it.
But ultimately, it's the act that's illegal.
But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover?
Which is a legislative queston. Courts don't know and don't care. They'll just take this law as it comes. You have a problem with the scope of copyright? Write your Congressman, they'll say.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I had this idea a while ago, it brings back the BBS community style.
... the downside is if the clients are in close proximity to the host, then license plates and physical busts could ruin the joy of having the latest crappy Eminim album. (Having seen Oceanse 12 yesterday, I was horrified to see Ice Cube in some new kids movie. WTF? From gats and crack to the next kids movie star, sheesh. I can see the two pack of DVDs in the bargain bin now, "A kiddie christmas comedy" and "Friday").
Hardware is cheap, people could build a box with a 200gb disk and 802.11g card and hide it on top of a large building or structure. Maybe a pay phone booth, or in an attic of a house. A high gain antenna could be used. These "nodes" could communicate host to host using internet (or another open wireless link, highly throttled).
The clients would be anyone with a notebook computer and a directional antenna. Depending on the city, all one would have to do is point their directional at the site, and wala, warezsite! Think of it as pirate radio with a studiotransmitter link.
Granted the nodes could be DOS attacked, or stolen, but people used to rm the stashes on the FTP servers in the golden days.
In an office park, you could end up wtih "drive in warez"
Tune in next time for "slow bitrate warez trading via Shortwave radio"
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
I just have to point out, that on the PeerGuardian website, it quotes: "... have never seen it's CPU usage raise over 00%".
Please can someone correct the "it's"!. It doesn't boast well if they are incapable of simple grammar.
What's to stop MPAA members from signing up with these "private trackers?"
(Note: I've signed up with a few. All they wanted was my email address and a password.)
We can start by breaking down the original essay, to wit:
"Man, you're so wrong."
In my classroom this contraction would be inappropriate, but in an informal letter, it is acceptable.
"The tracker only hosts the .torrent files, if that!"
This is acceptable, since the suggested usage, "tracker hosts only..." implies that nothing else is on the server at all, whereas the original more correctly implies that the tracker does not host any other part of the specific transaction that interests us.
"It's primary roll is to just keep a database of..."
This is actually a mistake; "it's," is always a contraction for, "it is." What was meant here is ownership, so "its" is correct.
The use of primary is admittedly confusing, since it implies secondary roles. Perhaps our author includes maintaining DNS position and such in the server's secondary roles. Certainly, the actual error in this sentence is the incorrect use of, "roll," where, "role," was intended. Perhaps our self appointed grammar expert could expand to definitions of common words as well?
"...The information the bittorrent client's request from it"
Similar to another mistake made previously. The use of, "client's," is incorrect since it implies ownership. Perhaps if we reworded the sentence this way: "the bittorrent client's request is only for the database of who is sharing, so that is the tracker's role."
" ...Any copyright.."
As was pointed out, this ought to be in the past tense, since the copyright in question would have already been issued.
"...material, it just tracks those"
A travesty of modern education is the use of commas where semicolons are more desirable. This is a typical example, and is common worldwide. Even the highly educated tend not to use semicolons where such items technically ought to be used.
But again, our young grammar nazi^H^H^H^H expert failed to point out the most critical error here, which is the ending of the sentence.
Overall, the English usage here was excellent although obviously informal.
I am drawn to conclude that the original author's grasp of English is acceptable for a native speaker, whilst quite impressive in any other case. Whilst the individual writing the critique, in contrast, is simply an ignoramus with a giant lump of coal wedged up his sorry little ass.
Thank you for your time and consideration, I hope we have all learned something here today.
Changa hates change.
Your point would have merit, if it weren't completely one-sided and conveniently ignoring vast amounts of the big picture that happen to disagree with your argument. For one thing, I defy you to conduct a genuine survey that shows the majority of people rip music/movies on the net, or even feel it is fair to do so, without sampling only, say, Kazaa users or the 16-21 age group.
Next up, on the perversion of copyright: copyright does exist to secure rights for the creators of new works, and it does do that so that there is an incentive to create and circulate those works for the benefit of society. I'm not for an instant claiming that no-one has ever abused copyright; the protection of Disney's works for the apparently indefinite period is taking the ****. But not all recording companies and film-makers are like that, nor all authors of books, software developers, semi-pro musicians, etc. Ignoring the underlying principle of copyright, or just removing the law entirely without thought for the consequences, will damage these people a lot more than it will damage the RIAA/MPAA.
Ultimately, the distribution problems will take care of themselves without any help from selfish law-breakers. If there is a market for on-line distribution, as clearly there is, then in time the providers will fill that market. It may take a little longer, but it's hardly copyright law that's stopping it.
Basically, you are one of those people who think everything should be free, because. You give little or no thought to why these laws exist in the first place, nor the long-term implications of removing them. You buy the "information wants to be free" tag-line as though willing it to be true will make it so. You presumably don't have even a basic understanding of the economic implications of mass file sharing, and I imagine you also bitch when people use the term "theft" to describe copyright infringement. You place no value on the work of others, and want everything without having to make any sort of contribution yourself.
As someone who pays for every CD he buys, only downloads tracks from legal sources, buys DVDs of good movies and rents from the video shop if he wants to preview before buying, and incidentally writes software for a living and his seen his (small, privately owned, good-to-its-staff) employer hurt as a result of gratuitous copyright infringement, I know where my vote will going, and people like you will be first at the cash machine to pay the fines.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Please read a basic book on economics. The implications of a technology that could distribute a new recording from a single source to every desktop PC in the world within a matter of hours are rather different from the implications of a copying technology that requires a significant amount of time to copy a whole album/movie and requires physical distribution on media that costs money. The standard "it's not theft, it doesn't harm the copyright holder" argument is mostly waste paper at this point, in case you missed it.
While you're reading that book on economics, please do the case study on generating income as a practising musician. I know quite a few semi-pros (playing regular gigs with established local bands in their spare time) and a couple of full-time pros. I guarantee you that most of these guys don't make anything out of the gigs; sure, they'll get enough from the bars/pubs/hotels/whatever to cover their expenses and buy a few drinks after the show, but they'd never make a living from it, nor even pay for all the equipment and rehearsal time.
In fact, the guys who gig for more than pure enjoyment all produce CDs that they sell at their shows, and rely on income from those for a significant amount of their profits. The high street price for CDs actually helps these guys stay afloat, because theirs go for a similar rate, making way more profit than the relatively expensive to produce merchandise. At a good gig with say 150 people in a large bar, they might sell as many as 50 CDs in a night, which makes them several times what they'd get for the gig itself from the bar management.
I know at least one local group who played a short season of very popular gigs at local bars, sold loads of CDs after the first one, but hardly any at the next four. Was that because they had exactly the same audience five times? Doubtful, because the gigs were 30+ miles apart. So why do you think the drop happened? (Clue: their stuff showed up on P2P within 48 hours of the first gig.)
Now, you'd like to go up to these guys, and suggest to them that they stop making CDs and just rely on concerts for income. Do I have to do it with a straight face and in a sincere tone of voice as well?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"Guns are legally required to be registered to their owners, unlike copiers or computers, for starters."
Actually, no. In most places in the US (outside of some major cities and a few east-coast states) there's no mandatory licensing of firearms. Even in those limited places with mandatory licensing, it's usually only handguns. Long rifles and shotguns, by and large, are unregulated. B/c I've inherited or purchased the firearms I do have long before background checking, there is absolutely squat-all record of them by any government agency.
Not that that invalidates the rest of your arguement, but blasting somebody else for making straw man arguements while makeing unfounded (and incorrect) assertions isn't exactlty convincing.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
Man, that is some good shit. If you're not a lawyer, you should consider a career change.
Transistors and Beer!!
Kano-
You are a ridiculous fucktard. Every issue always comes back to Clinton with you. Who gives a shit if he got a blowjob from some chick?!?! I certainly don't.
Tell your hero to shut up with his "Bring them on" bravado while our National Guard troops are getting their asses blown up in unarmored Humvees. Reference.
There are times that single-stream downloads can be faster - if you're downloading from a fast lightly loaded server that has more bandwidth per user than your Internet connection, that's as fast as it gets, while if you're running BitTorrent on an asymmetric connection like ADSL or cable modem and the community of people who want the same file is still mostly downloading, then your download speed ends up limited by your upstream bandwidth until lots more people have the file. But it's pretty common for BitTorrent users to leave their clients uploading after they've finished downloading, particularly for big downloads that run overnight (because if it finishes before you get up in the morning, it keeps running.) There are exceptions - not just greedy leeching downloaders, but also people who download when the community has a lot of spare capacity and low demand, but that's when it's really not a problem.
Because BitTorrent doesn't need a fast server to support a lot of downloaders, there's also more material that can be published. If you're running your own tracker for the material you're publishing, that does take some bandwidth, but it's a lot less than actually downloading the file to lots of people.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Bittorrent is fast as hell because it spreads big data like a virus. If one person were to offer a DVD rip of Spiderman2 on Kazaa or Limewire, how many people are going to really be able to download a 1.5 gig file before the original person decides their bandwidth would be better used by gaming or some other activity? Of those people who successfully got the original file, how many are going to also allow uploads of it and so on? Probably not a lot. In the Bittorrent model, the original host for the file only needs to send the 1.5 gigs of data out a single time. If several other people download it at the same time, then they take the place of the original host and provide peices of it for download. And so on. It's a pyramid scheme that actually works.
At least it works when people aren't throttling their upload speeds, which is what you are seeking to do. In fact, if you examine your logic, you'll recognize that you are self-defeating in your quest to suppress your upload transmissions. If everyone does that, then your original complaint of slow download speeds will only be exacerbated.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
How long till Apple releases iVid?
Downloadable feature-length (or shorter?) movies.
If I could buy those movies online and download them with BitTorrent I probably would. They'd better be cheaper than the DVDs though.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Does anyone else finding it somewhat odd that we have threads like this that are basically bitching about how hard it is to steal IP?
You have a couple of people who have their own views that IP should be free, but I'm willing to bet that it's
I know that it's often mentioned that the ethics behind how the parties find users who are downloading material are often questionable but does anyone else find it just as ethically questionable that you can have open and frank discussions on one of the webs more popular sites about how unfair it is that you can't just steal that parties material?
I realise this probably won't be modded up and that there will be plenty of people who can come up with a million reasons why I'm wrong (fair use if you already own the content but it's protected etc) but seriously, I doubt that's more than a couple of people per thousand that is pirating material.
- traskjd
My blog [.net, rants, general IT]
Their just holding a 'cache', is you ISP,phone company, work etc.. breaking copyright laws whenever you view a web page, eveything on the internet is copyright, not just the things that end up in p2p networks.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
AISI, there are essentially two kinds of DRM: one that allows you to do specific things, preventing everything else, and one that prevents you from doing specific things, allowing everything else. Now, the specific things are arguable in each case, but it's that 'everything else' which ends up causing the biggest problems.
'Everything else' includes all the changes in technology which will occur in future, the great new killer apps and uses that haven't been invented yet, along with progressive improvements to existing apps uses. But it also includes all the tricks and loopholes that we, er, sorry, naughty evil hackers can use to bypass the DRM. So you can't allow free access to 'everything else' for future-proofing without also allowing it for evil hackers.
The upshot of this is that DRM will only allow specific things and prevent everything else, and in doing so, ensures that even if it's not a huge nuisance now, it will be in the future. All DRM ends up being heavy eventually.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
copyright aside, they really need to get rid out the outdated distribution laws. As it stands If I download something of p2p even if I'm not in breack of copyright I'm breacking distribution laws. The kind of laws that prevent shops from buying stright from the sweat shop instead of Nike.
This law allows the copyright holder the ability to price fix and control how their product enters the market place, it's what makes those $100 trainers $100 even though they only cost $1 to make.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Wrong, you can switch off upload in BT, or at least hack the client so your freeloading.
It will take a while to downlaod though.
Also, their allowed to distribute the file but you are not. So even if they participate you will still be distributing without the conscent of the copyright holder.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The command-line client (at least under linux) has lots of options - no need to hack it. Just run the client w/o a response file.
Now, they will know that I've obtained a copy from them (albeit in this case it is now a legit copy). The next problem is for them to prove that I've distributed it to someone else. Kind of difficult, since they can't even watermark the file they've given me without it being different from the file everyone else is getting - so I wouldn't be able to distribute it to an existing torrent even if I wanted to. And neither would they.
So what are they going to do? The only thing they can do is a "honeypot". But then, they're distributing their own copyrighted material, so they can't say I'm violating their copyright in making a copy of something they've offered me a copy of.
my journal: scripts for leaching porn baked fresh daily
(note, j/k)
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
Pish and Tosh
Since when did Hollywood make a film worth looking at?
Yeah sure, drain my bandwidth for 2 weeks to download your placement ad slops
See the BLACKACTORS wear JVC trainers and **AUDI** BATHCAPS
I would rather put my VIRIN MEGASTORE purchaed CD on my BANG & OLDFART stereo than look at that tripe on my 501" SONY PLASMA SCREEN
Oh its not like they scan your IP traffic or anything.........
It's called entrapment, the police may not be able to do it but I think it's ok for the RIAA to do it.
Setup two clients, one distributing copyighted material and the other just downloading.
As soon as someone connects to download the material get their ip and use the other client to try and download material from the person who's just connected to the first client.
If the person who's connected to the first client is offering up the material you've just sent them then their in breack of distribution laws (not copyright though)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Millions of people are downloading, for free. That price is hard to beat you know. And it's not only free as in beer. DRM is a PITA no matter how you look at it. It's an ad-hoc constraint on something never intended to be constrained.
The way the Internet works today, free P2P downloads will always be cheaper, in terms of convenience as well as price.
Millions of people have already tasted the forbidden fruit; don't expect them to turn back.
Rather than trying to change reality to fit the law, how about changing the law to fit reality? Copyright obviously doesn't give a dime to pirated artist. we need something better. Piracy is the symptom, not the disease.
As a sidenote to the whole copyright discussion, what will we do when we can reproduce food etc as cheaply as information today? Ban that as well, because it will change our world?
"yeah, joe teen burgerflipper in europe should stop downloading the daily show and instead gather a business plan and invest in distribution channels, good thinking."
Former "Joe Teen Burgerflipper" is quite capable of implimenting the Non-"Obsolete Business Model" being suggested to the current "obsolete business model" holders.
Now if he can't, why should the current "obsolete business model" holders even try?
Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
when you often download 1 second of video on certain formats you get nothing at all as far as viewable content... It just won't play because it just flakes out because you need the whole frigging file (yes some formats work fine, but ever try to download a file for a few minutes and try to watch it? it may not even play) . It's like breaking a dvd into peices and melting it and then making copies of the plastic parts and the copy right owner gets pissy even though they only proof that they have that it is there work is that you labeled it as such.
The main problem for them is that Bittorrent downloaders are leachers mostly and just download the movie and immediatley disconnect. They aren't going to be online permantly so that movie companies can just poll one a week for something and see if it's still out there. (except the seeders).
Then again if people were smart they'd name the files being downloaded something else and just have some key to figure out what the file name was.
Just say NO to DRM! Do not weaken!
It sounds like PeerGuardian blacklists a huge portion of the IPv4 address space under the guise of providing protection from the RIAA/MPAA.
Can someone please explain why that is useful, and not harmful?
Given that PeerGuardian is freely availible, its address list is freely availible. What prevents the RIAA/MPAA from just obtaining addresses that are NOT on the list (I'm pretty sure they can afford a new cable modem each day)? How do you compensate for the false blocking of "legitimate" high performance peers which use one of the >1e9 blacklisted IPs (1/4 of the IPv4 space)?
It sounds like PeerGuardian is just another troll security app, possibly designed to bundle spyware and/or whore itself out for attention, ad revenue, etc.
Sigh. I guess self-delusion is as popular as ever.
Be suspicious of all security software, especially if it lacks OpenBSD support
peerguardian blocks that site.
This space available.
...what if, instead of trading movie data in which algorithms are used to play, you trade complicated(large!) algorithms which then "play" data that already exists on your computer.
Would this be copyright infringement? You're not trading the work, you're trading a tool to create a simulation of the work. Just like a tool like Windows or BitTorrent can be used to commit copyright infringement, so can this.
Perhaps a better example...
Say in the future when the internet has grown much larger: it has just taken on such a massive proportion. Say there's a billion fansites for the movie Pulp Fiction, each one with a still from the movie, certainly fairuse: a single still from a movie on a fansite. (For the sake of this argument, let's just assume they're fair use). That if you traded an algorithm(MUCH less complicated than the first one!) that could collect all the stills from these sites? Again, would distributing this algorithm be copyright infringement?
Say you had a very large computer with much storage space. You then develop some algorithm which can generate a long string of random data forever. Constantly, and at some amazing speed, creating new data. The algorithm can also allow a user to select a beginning and ending position in the string to extract whatever string of bits as a seperate "work" and then apply whichever DivX and mpeg and jpeg codecs they have. This algorithm can effectively create movies, images, songs that seem intelligble. And, at such a rate that when people create works, they have already been creating in a way not significantly distinguishable to be a different work, by this machine. I could already create this algorithm/program, wouldn't be too hard, although I couldn't use it to create such an amount of data considering resources. But I could create the algorithm. Considering such a situation, it doesn't look like an algorithm for creating a work is sufficient to achieve a copyright on the work it can create. If it was I'm sure someone would do this and gather a monopoly on all possible future works.
From this I link to my original question: are algorithms like the ones described in the first two questions copyright infringing? If they are, then, considering the inverse, how is the algorithm in the third example not copyright creating?
But, let's say the largest copyrighted work is some movie that's 10 hours long for argument. It can be stored with significant semblance in some avi file that is 10GB big, say. I think the current suits have shown that avi files of movies with significant semblance are copyright infringing. Say, though, that you had a file of just 10GB of totally random data. This theoretical, largest copyrighted work can be played from this file with some algorithm and all other copyrighted works can too, with various algorithms. Is trading this file copyright infringment? It's just random data.
If the conclusion of the first three examples and questions is that trading an algorithm that can play from "random" data works with significant semblance to copyrighted works is not copyright infringement, and the conclusion of the last example is that trading random data is not copyright infringment, then...what the hell is copyright infringement?
Actually, there is no "fair use", period. If you copy anything, no matter what the source, unless you're the copyright holder, you're breaking copyright law. The common excuse is "well, I need a backup in case the original is ruined". Well, if you buy a car, you can't just "Steal" another car for backup. If something happens to the car that you own, or if you want one for backup, you have to purchase a new one. If you don't like those restrictions, write your own damned music, otherwise shut up. Music is not essential to live.
It's called entrapment, the police may not be able to do it but I think it's ok for the RIAA to do it.
By legal definitions, this is not "entrapment", although by natural English-language meanings.
Police officers cannot commit entrapment, but they can for example buy cocaine from someone and then arrest him for it, which is not much different from downloading P2P files to find out who's sharing them. To be a legal defense, entrapment must be much more involved than just quickly asking someone to do a crime.must be more in
Number of peers/seeders/leechers 961824/216876/745265
Number of torrents 59577
Yeah, the admins sure are the ones who've uploaded all those torrents...
When you upload in Bit Torrent its highly unlikely that you would upload the entire file to someone (unless seeding) most of the time you would only send small chunks of files... could this potentially allow you to claim fair use? As you are only really sending other people "samples"...
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
Entrapment would be giving someone a kilo of coke.
Then getting someone else to try and buy it off of them.
And then arresting them for dealing coke.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Those are a lot of good questions. I wish that people within the industry itself would answer them, but here's some best-guesses.
The technological changes threaten their business model, and they can't/won't accept this.
The various distribution industries (print, music, movies) sprung up and thrived because they could do what no-one else could. The reasons they could thrive, however, are increasingly obsolete. There's no way they could embrace modern technology and maintain their current prices and control - and they seem rather reluctant to give those up.
Simple difference in focus. A programmer trying to make data transfer more efficient makes sense. To people in the entertainment industry, however, something like BT runs totally against their way of thinking so they'd probably not even consider anything like it happening.
It's not as bad now, but they still seem to think that people don't mind waiting. They also tend to advertise films months in advance, and then wonder why people download a copy when the American release happens a month before the UK one.
There are also one or two factors that they don't think about. Like what if people don't want to actually go to a cinema.
...then ended up in a crowded cinema full of noisy kids and little available space. At one point I wondered if staying ethical had been worth it.
I have social anxiety issues. I loath crowds, and tend to panic in the presence of too many people. Obviously this makes popular films a bit of a trial. I did wait to see the Incredibles when it came out officially, even though I could have probably downloaded it instead. I'd been ready to see it weeks earlier. I chose to stay legal...
I'd say these questions are less straightforward. There probably is a loss of revenue and profits are probably. And of course their existance is threatened. Even if there was a legal internet-based alternative it would threaten the current model - which probably explains why they haven't embraced it.
If I'm honest I'd have to admit that such filesharing is probably one of the contributing factors to any difficulties "Hollywood" may be having. However I'd say that Hollywood itself is probably source to some of the other factors. Expensive stars, huge SFX budgets, and advertising... Yes, spend huge amounts of money on full-cinema-screen trailers before the film's even finished production and that's going to eat into your profits somewhat. Plus if you hype it too early the people are goi
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
............ and they will be replaced by other companies with lower overheads.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Reducing ideas to real property - no you can't, but you can pretend. If you believe in property rights at all, it's important to act as if intellecutal inventions that aren't physical objects are real for the purposes of justice. That's the concept of "IP" - of course it's not a physical object that you can touch, see, etc..., but that characteristic in and of itself should have no bearing on whether or not it is treated as property, and whether it can be "owned" by someone.
Look at some tribal societies across the world and throughout history, where there was (is) no concept for ownership of land. These societies might argue something along the lines of "No one can ever own a mountain, a valley, or a prairie. The notion that you can own a piece of mother nature is absurd". See? Drawing the line at the real vs the not real isn't the right thing to do.
The right thing to do is to look at your societies' laws concerning property rights of physical objects, whater those might be, and then apply those property rights to intangible objects. That's the logic, and it's quite simple, really. Doing the right thing with regards to property rights sometimes goes against the types of self-interested instincts that we naturally have as human beings - if these self-interested tendencies are to somehow be tapped and turned into something beneficial to society in the realm of the intangible, it follows that they might as well be tapped and turned into something beneficial to society in the realm of the physical, as well - that is, if it's such a good idea that there be no property rights for intangible objects, then that very same "good" idea would also need to apply to physical objects, like it does (has) applied in some societies throughout history.
Seeing as how many cultures have held the view that it is impossible to own land and other physical objects, it is not a question of physical vs intangible as much as it is a question of what property rights the culture that you live in finds are appropriate in general, across the board. It's not exactly something that people want to hear, but sometimes that's the way life goes.
IANAL, but my read on this issue is:
1. The legality of -downloading- is still indeterminate, as thus far no one's been sued. (In fact, no one's -actually- been found against for uploading, they've all settled. However, chances are, if anyone tried to defend it in court the **AA in question would almost certainly win, which is likely why all the lawyers have advised settlement.)
2. If they just want to bust people for uploading, they could probably do that by logging into a torrent and getting you to send bits of the file to them. However, they would have to GET data, and a program like Peerguardian/Protowall would likely keep them from being able to do so, since it blocks all known "bad" IP's. Seeing your IP address wouldn't be enough, that doesn't prove distribution, only that you're connected. They would have to get data from you that they could identify as infringing. The size of that data, however, likely wouldn't matter-distributing a few KB of the file still shows you're involved in distribution.
3. If they wanted to go after people for DOWNLOADING, however, they're probably screwed so far as Bittorrent is concerned. The posts saying that they are the legal copyright holders and have the only right to distribute are correct, at least so far as US law is concerned. HOWEVER, if they log onto a tracker and distribute them, that distribution is lawful, and therefore you have every right to have every bit they send you, since it's being sent either by the copyright holder or a licensee thereof. Effectively, this would be similar to the MPAA putting a link on its website saying "Download the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy here for free!" and then suing everyone who clicked it and made the download. That would be laughed out of court. Since they or anyone they authorize to distribute (whether just for tracking purposes or anything else) is, by definition, a licensed distributor, then they are choosing to distribute the file to you via that medium if they log into a torrent and begin to upload it. (Or if they make it available on Kazaa, for that matter.) I suspect this is why there have been no lawsuits so far over downloading-I'm not sure if entrapment comes into play here, but it's easy to say "They're the authorized distributor, and if they know I downloaded it, they distributed it to me, therefore I have it legally!"
4. It wasn't in parent, but I saw somewhere about the "police breaking down your door and finding the evidence on your hard drive." Police do not break down your door to discover evidence of a civil offense, and thus far, have been largely unwilling to criminally pursue anyone but large pirate syndicates who are making and SELLING pirated copies. Quite frankly, they're right in this, the police and FBI have better things to do with their time. (Of course, the argument could be made that the RIAA and MPAA could also make better use of their time and money to make and market products that people would WANT to buy, instead of every tenth movie being halfway worthwhile and 40-45 minute CD's on discs we all well know can hold about 80 with one or two radio songs and the rest "filler." They might also consider lowering the price of their products. You know-making better products, lowering price, the stuff non-monopolies have to deal with every day.)
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
They seem to assume every pirate copy is a lost sale, it's not the case. Plus cinema "pirate" copies are a symptom of how weak some blockbusters are, people would rather watch poor quality camcorder recordings than spend their money to watch the latest dross.
The fight of the home cinema vs the multiscreen cinema has also begun. TV affected cinema visitor numbers and so widescreen was born as a gimmic to attract more visitors. DVD, widescreen TVs, projectors and 5.1/6.1 sound at home has shifted the balance again.
Lets face it, cinemas can be noisy and for real film ethusiasts it's annoying to have some kid sluping on a drink when you're trying to listen to the dialog.
If for some reason you were cheap enough to NOT want to upload said file, you can get a firewall (I use the free ZoneAlarm). When it says btdownloadgui.exe is trying to act as a server, deny it permission. The one time I did try this, there was no upload, so barring strange coincidences, this is how to stay legal.
That said, don't do it. Don't ruin BitTorrent.
In the apartment complex where I live, there are atleast 5 OPEN access points available to me.
If I connected to those, and then ran P2P software, how could they trace it to me ?
I myself don't know where these access points are, so it'll be impossible for them to know where I am, especially since they'll not even know to look till they get sued by the RIAA.
I'm not saying I do this, I'm saying it's the perfect decoy.
2. 'all known "bad" IP's'
Dial up, or just use a new IP, the ip had to be 'known' first.
Also you have to get at least 15 seconds of a file (i think?), your allowed to distribute clips and quotes without breaking copyright.
3. I don't think they can go after anyone for downloading, since the server is sending me a copy it is breaking the law, but they can go after you if you try and redistrubite.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Touring however is not their job.
Their job is making music.
And touring really is a 24hour a day experience, and again, seeing as this is supposed to be the way small indie bands make their money, they don't usually have very much of a road crew.
To give an example, Explosions in the Sky, who toured Europe for 4 months solid, played their shows every night for those 4 months, gave so much energy in the performance that they would collapse on stage by the end (including the drummer), then after a 5 minute breather were back on stage to dismantle the equipment and pack up...
If that is the only way for a musician to make a living, then something is sick and wrong.
Unawesome, I hate how people can currupt anything. Bittorrent was a brilliant and beautiful idea and product however certain unamed places use it for evil and such. I hope no one blames Bittorrent that would make me have to decapitate someone with a spoon
Oh, so it is examples you want? A relative, a civilian worker in kuwait is currently doing a 4 month stint on 12 hour days, 7 days a week and it is 120 F in the shade (if any). Over 100 straight days before you can even ask for a day off.
Ok so nobody forced him into it, the point being that musicians don't have the worst of it by a long chalk and stand a chance of making some real money if they are lucky. The ordinary working stiff, if he is really good at his job, will be able to do his job until he drops dead.
Your job is whatever you can get people to pay you to do.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.