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Following up on Torrent Shutdowns
dantheman82 and others have submitted a number of links about the recent closure of torrent mega sites like suprnova and torrentbits.
The
Unofficial Suprnova Closure FAQ comments that some torrent site maintainers have been arrested and that Suprnova was closed over fear of similiar fate.
DeHavilland notes that the finnish police raided an unnamed torrent site. There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.
Someone should put up some stats about the change in internet traffic due to these sites being down. I'm sure somebody is in charge of a university network or something?
If BT was accounting for 35% of traffic, what's it at now? Still declining?
You call it excessive, I call it ambitious.
As much fun as American bashing is ... let us not forget that these companies are international and hold copyrights in Finland and most of the rest of the world.
I doubt anyone was arrested in Finland for breaking solely US law. I am sure the Finnish police had a Finnish law to justify the arrests.
With their constant outsourcing (to AU & CN, to name two popular movie studio outsource winners), these "American copyright holders" don't seem too interested in actually doing the US any favours.
Freenet is probably too slow to recreate a site like Suprnova, but how about this. Instead of using Freenet to distribute each individual torrent, could you publish on Freenet a torrent that contains other torrents? For instance, a torrent for each category of files, like what was on Suprnova - a "Movies-Drama" torrent that contained a zipped file of all torrents in that category? This way, you wouldn't be relying on Freenet to distribute every torrent file, just a much smaller index of torrents.
If somebody wanted to take ownership of this, they could create a Freenet page with an anonymous feedback form. When somebody has a torrent to publish, they could submit the info to the anonymous form, and then the publisher would compile all the new torrents into the next version of the index.
Sound feasible?
I've seen a lot of comments on this around "the internets" (yep, all of them ;), and most of them seem to be of the "noooooo... not my warez! Come back!" variety. To me, though, the better question is where the line is drawn. When the sites that -link- to trackers that -allow- people to download -possibly illegal- files from -each other- get shut down, I get worried. How long will it be until any technology that is used for illegal deeds is at risk?
I agree. If this sort of thing curbs piracy, then maybe the four-letter organizations will calm down about DRM.
Shutting down a torrent sites which feature copyrighted movies and music annoys those who just want something for nothing. DRM hurts everybody, and especially every geek.
It is a given that the MPAA, RIAA, etc. are going to do SOMETHING. I would rather have them do this than add copy protection to every A/D converter made.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I wholeheartedly agree. This is a very good thing for Developing Nations. But these sites are not in Developing nations.
But, you might also be forgetting that the majority of the traffic to these torrent sites is coming from the US, and one of the main reasons these sites are in other countries is to escape US copyright laws. IF these sites WHERE in developing nations and only catering to those developing nations, I wouldn't see much of a problem problem with that at all.
under American law (yes the dreaded DMCA) suprnova was safe from lawsuits because it just acted like google as a clearing house for information and didn't actually run the trackers with infringing material.
Are you sure a judge wouldn't call it contributory infringement, relying on A&M v. Napster?
A quick Google turned up this explanation (as opposed to writing my own).
Contributory infringement and vicarious liability are court-created theories (i.e., not specified in the Copyright Act) designed to hold a company liable for its participation in unlawful copying. The theory is analogous to the getaway driver in a robbery; everyone knows that the person who drives the getaway car will be in trouble, even if he does not rob the store. The imposition of secondary or indirect liability [1] is common throughout the law. Those who aid or abet the commission of wrongs, or who benefit from them, are frequently held liable.
Secondary liability is an especially important tool in copyright enforcement. Often, alleged contributory infringers may be in the best position to prevent or police violations. And suing many individual direct infringers may be impractical or expensive. However, secondary liability can create disincentives to innovation and entrepreneurship. Generally products have legitimate uses as well as infringing ones, and liability may inhibit firms from serving beneficial purposes. The Supreme Court's decision in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios limited the circumstances in which liability for contributory infringement may be imposed on a technology company simply because it provided a product that was used for infringement.
The copyright laws do not expressly provide for secondary liability for copyright infringement. But the courts, in a long series of cases, have imposed liability on those who facilitate or profit from copyright infringement. Thus there are two main strands of secondary liability for copyright infringement: contributory infringement and vicarious liability.
CONTRIBUTORY INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY
The standard definition for contributory copyright infringement is when the defendant, "with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another." [2] In other words, the record labels must not only show ownership of a valid copyright and unlawful copying but must show that the P2P company 1) had knowledge of the infringing activity and 2) materially contributed to the infringing conduct. Again, this is for the purpose of holding someone other than the infringer liable for copyright infringement.
VICARIOUS INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY
Vicarious liability is another means of holding someone liable for copyright infringement even when that person or party is not the one who did the infringing. In order to find a defendant liable under the theory of vicarious liability for the actions of an infringer, it must be shown that the defendant 1) has the right and ability to control the infringer's acts, and 2) receives a direct financial benefit from the infringement.[3] Unlike contributory infringement, knowledge is not an element of vicarious liability. However, courts have determined that the combination of the right and ability to control the infringer's acts and the receipt of a direct financial benefit from the infringement suffices to hold a defendant vicariously liable for copyright infringement, even if the defendant had no knowledge of the particular infringement.[4]
I don't know anything about Finnish law, but it's a criminal matter if Finnish law says it is.
In the US, you are exposing yourself to civil *and* criminal penalties depending on the infringement.
Look, mommy, I can Google! Here's a page at the US DOJ about it.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
the main reason for Finnish police acting was donate button on their page,
which made under finnish law, the copyright infrigment into copyright crime, since they were making money with piracy.
True that the money was spent on paying their expenses running the dedicated server abroad, but it was still income from distributing copyrighted material.
Point being you're not allowed to receive any income or donations from illegal material or byproducts of such, no matter what your expenses are while getting the material.
You're allowed to download such material under current fair use laws for personal use, as long there's no intention for profit.
The line of intention was crossed on this occasion because of the donate button.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.