Slashdot Mirror
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.
> There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is? tid=153&tid=219
This may or may not be the case with suprnova.
> that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.
This would be scary, if you think that taking sites down was not just and legitimate. I don't know the facts about finish rights, but under german right suprnova could have been shut down.
It's not always the US pushing and picking on people and maybe it is not in this case. At least I believe, that the finnish police made it's own independent decision.
With Indymedia It actually seemed to be some tougher mobilizing:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/10/07/204217.shtml
please note that if you are viewing this faq at any other location than http://www.silentdragz.net/suprfaq then it is not authorised. please report it to this address, thank you.
Isn't it slightly ironic a site, outlining the demise of a site to enable IP violations, is worried about someone stealing their IP?
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.
I mean, c'mon. They were ostentatiously peddling links to illegal stuff. It was only a matter of time until the MPAA got its act together to scare these sites into shutting down, with little more than a threat. The submission of these sites (pun unintended) is what's scary.
A blog like any other.
So this is the "unofficial" one... but it's authorized? Or rather, they want you to report any other ones as not being authorized? Authorized by who? The same people who say it's unofficial?
I'm confused...
I find this one a good substitute:
http://www.donvitorrent.com/
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
"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."
Well, I'm not sure how it's scary. If I'm the owner of some digital item that has a copyright on it and some other country where copyrights are valid has people breaking it I hope the police would do something about it.
What did you think they were paid to do, pull over and beat minorities?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
the "unnamed site" that was raided was FinReactor, there was a video (of something) about it on thepiratebay a few days ago
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.
MPAA & friends have offices in these countries and they use the laws that are available to them.
Boohooohoo American Corporations can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.
What kind of fairy land do you live in? These sites were CLEARLY offering illegal content. Was it wrong now for the corporations to shut them down? OMG The corporations are out to get us! They don't want us to get their intellectual property for free anymore, whaat?? we have to pay?!!?! ONOS!!!!
Seriously people, Im pretty sure most people here aren't that naive to think that shutting down these sites was "the wrong thing to do", so why come up with these doomsday saying articles?
Media in 2014, you see the news you want to see I guess. I guess everyone here just wants to here about how evil M$ are, and horrible EA is, and woohooo go Open Source and whatnot.
The truth hurts.
>>but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding.
all of your police are belonged to U.S.!!!!
To me, what is most scary is that people think they flaunt copyright laws on such a massive scale and get away with it.
Furthermore, this is exactly what should be happening: the government attacks those who break the law, rather than those who create the tools. Bit torrent and p2p applications have legal, useful purposes; by seeking those who use them in illegal ways rather than banning them altogther is appropriate, rather than trying to ban them.
I wonder why you didn't use your real name to put forth this information ...
Actually it has been reported that MPAA had NOTHING to do with the finnish raids.
The KRP (Keskusrikospoliisi = FBI?) has publicly said that the MPAA has not been in contact with the finnish authorities. Here is a site (in finnish) that says it all.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
At least I believe, that the finnish police made it's own independent decision.
That's what the Finnish police themselves say. What's interesting is that MPAA has been attempting to take the "credit" for the raid. Sure, everyone knows they are lying bastards, but one would expect them to pick lies that are not so easy to check...
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
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.
I think many of the European countries wouldn't allow RIAA/MPAA/etc to go after individual downloaders, but would after the centralized tracker servers. However, what about re-locating to places like Russia, Eastern Europe, south america, etc? Not physically of course but the servers. Alternatively is anyone working on a more transparent P2P system? The advantages of BT (fast speeds, built in incentives to share upload speed) with higher levels of anonymity and a more distributed tracker? Its ironic that the movie, TV, and recording industry have this vast opportunity here (lots and lots of people worldwide want to see your stuff!) but cannot capitalize on it. I'd pay a few bucks a month if I could download whatever I wanted and see it whenever I wanted without going to crappy movie theaters or sitting in front of the couch when the TV execs want me to, but I guess thats heresy. (yes, I have a mythTV box)
It sucks that they shutdown the web sites... but IRC will forever remain the unstoppable force when it comes to obtaining illegal files... whether it's FTP, or torrents... IRC will always have the info available... Perhaps it's a good thing that the websites are being shutdown... Napster became too popular, killed the free MP3 system... The same thing happend to DirecTV and DISHNET... too easy for joe q. public to obtain pirated signals, again too popular... If we keep the methods of obtaining illegal things difficult, it keeps the popularity down, and more or less off the radar screen... Now I personally stopped pirating a while back... but my reasoning for it in the first place was the challenge... Now a days it's just a click here and a click there, and presto... what's the fun in that? I enjoyed the challenge more than the results... besides... 99% of the illegal stuff out there is GARBAGE anyways... and the stuff that isn't you need to purchase to actually use it...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
So that makes two of us who are opposed to a unified world government. [un.org]
Don't you mean unified world government [halliburton.com]?
IANAL, but it seems odd that these sites which distribute the torrents can be held liable for the torrent's contents. The sites never actually host the copyrighted material, same goes for the trackers of the torrents. It would seem to me that the seeds of torrents would be the ones who are violating copyright law. But it is a shady practice, I dont know if I would really want the EFF to get involved with this one.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Generally, those "American copyright owners" are also the German copyright owners, and the French copyright owners, and the Japanese copyright owners, and the Russian copyright owners. About the only place they aren't the copyright owners is Gilligan's Island.
Now, THAT is information I can trust.
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?
Everyone remember when anon.funet.fi was raided at the request of scientology?
With enough money to fund attorneys you can apparently get other countries, especially the Finnish, to comply.
What makes you think MPAA didn't already know of the existence of these sites before this list was posted?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
You can criticize the law all you want, I'm not about to debate the pros and cons of IP law on /. (hey, my karma has to be worth something), but the fact is copying protected works is illegal. Thus it is the job of the cops to enforce that law.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
(rolls eyes) If you've seen a recordedmovie through legitimate channels in the past 2 decades, you've seen the copyright warning. This warning invariably says something about how the members of some mysterious fascist organization called "Interpol" voted unanimously to enforce copyrights. It may also mention the Berne convention as reason or impetus to do this.
Hint 1: The "inter" in "Interpol" stands for "international".
Hint 2: Berne isn't even remotely in the US.
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.
No, that's not the most scary thing. Many here will critisize the current incarnation of near perpetual copyright and many will critisize how the Big Media have treated that right--as well as their customers.
But to say that I -- as an American -- should not be able to protect a work of art/media across a foreign boundry is a pretty extremest view. And in my view, it would be quite harmful.
Remember the ability to create your own terms of an open source project is made possible only because the creator is GRANTING those rights to add, change and distribute source code. It's copyright that protects that code from just being taken by Microsoft without the company agreeing to contribute back to the project.
Copyright is also what protects some huge media corp from stealing a young artist's song without even "signing" him. They just take it and give it to Pop Artist #122b.
What scares ME is that this is an attack on the freedom of speech and information. SuprNova was linking to illegal media, but it wasn't hosting it. It should not be illegal to say where the red light district is and it shouldn't be illegal to point someone to one of the prostitutes.
It should only be illegal when one actually gets into the act.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
The BBC has an interesting article on the suject of SuprNova going down, as well as some general information on BitTorrent and the MPAA.
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
"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."
Perhaps dantheman82 needs to understand the concept of international copyright law. Many countries, including those in the story, have agreements to enforce each other's copyrights.
The sites being shut down were rampantly violating the copyrights of an organization big enough to fight back.
What's scary is that the submitter thinks shutting these sites down is somehow wrong and unjust. There are a lot of things wrong with the big music companies, but this is not one of them.
If there's something to be angry about, be angry that these governments wouldn't take the time and effort to protect your small time products in the same manner they protect the big big time products.
This would be scary, if you think that taking sites down was not just and legitimate.
No, it's scary full-stop. The problem isn't that the sites were shut down, it's that police have been arrseting people. This should be a civil matter, not a criminal one. I was under the impression that copyright infringement was only a criminal matter in the USA - what are local police doing getting involved? It should be lawyer letters to their ISP, not people with guns coming to take you away.
Yet, more people then ever before have no health insurance, more children then ever are starving, AIDS is running rampant all over Africa, American kids are dying every day in Iraq because the govt. can't provide the proper armored vehicles, more Americans are homeless then ever before, people are having heart attacks from Aleve, gas and heating oil is almost twice what it was a year ago, and on and on.
What is America's response to this? To ignore all of the above and concentrate on such "important" things as busting movie and song 'pirates', drugs, and Janet Jackson's nipple.Something is wrong and really, really fucked up in America
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.
Did you miss out on the CIA campaigns of assassination in the 1960's and 1970's? If the US government can mobilize foreign coups d'etat to snuff the democratically-elected leftist leaders of nascent democracies, then taking down a bunch of pimply-faced warez monkeys is neither surprising nor newsworthy.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
They weren't digitally signed.
Why is this anymore scary than American oil interests setting policy in places like Nigeria or Iraq or many other number of countries. Or America killing it's own people in brutal and often unnecessary standoffs.
I have said it before and I will say it again, and I will get labeled a troll. Over the entire history the USA has proven it willingness to acquire military force and use the overwhelming advantage to destroy anyone who opposes it. This is no different from the superpowers that preceded it. Therefore, anyone that pisses off the US, or cuts a special deal with the US, and then is surprised when the US acts with overwhelming force, is in a dreamland. It is probably not right, it is probably not a healthy way to exist, but it is not surprising.
When the FBI comes in and annihilates a group of people that has been taunting the US government, this is not surprising. When the military comes in and bombs a a city back to the dark ages, killing untold number of civilians, this is not surprising. When the US policy makers create a system that will allow a retail chain to create a class of indentured servants, this is not surprising.
Many of us believe this is wrong, and are trying to change it. But this is the way it is right now. If you want change, use your wallet and your feet. The system only works because consumers buy the products of the people who want to oppress us. Stealing *AA products is not going to help. Buying non-*AA might. Complaining that an illegal warehouse has been raiding is not going to help. Help creating a competing counter culture might.
Complaining about this when international humanitarian rights are being violated on a daily basis is just narcissistic beyond belief. Corporate music and video is not a basic human right. Try to make you won jam.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It sure is convenient that American law enforcment can mobilize foreign law enforcement to do their bidding with the situation benefits large corperations, but refused to do ANYTHING when I lost a laptop to escrow fraud. The FBI wouldn't do anything withou FIVE HUNDRED complaints first.
Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
When people are stealing my stuff, I would do everything in my power to stop them whether I was a large company or a single individual. The law exist to protect us from people stealing our stuff. If you establish a site that essential does nothing but facilitate the stealing of stuff then you should be arrested. If people do not like the current market arrangements, prices, etc, then they should not buy the product, not steal the product and self-riteously say the theft was justified. This behavior harms me as a huge user of leagal bit torrent sites, which will now be under unjustified scrutiny.
Depends on your definition of criminal... go down to your public library, and pick up a copy of 1984, please.
What? people involved in the Hollywood taking a factual story and twisting it around to make it more exciting but factually incorrect? Wow, that's heavy :)
Check out boxofficemojo. It is not the US release alone that makes money. Most of the movies esp. big hits and even some abysmal failures such as Troy or King Arthur are making good money abroad. Forget MPAA; these movies are big revenue generators for the local economy abroad. Foreign govt/police will be happy to shut down for two reasons -
make sure local theater owners are happy
take advantage of any opp. to brown nose MPAA
Freedom of speech - screw it - it didnt work for the Americans - it will never work here.
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?
It's probably somewhere in between. The MPAA tries to get everyone to take action when possible. If anyone does take action, regardless of whether they even read what the MPAA sends them, the MPAA takes credit and feels good about itself.
ever hear of legal torrents? http://legaltorrents.com/ check it out. lots o good LEGAL stuff!
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
It depends what you think government is there to do and what its goal is.
Is it to facilitate leaps in humankind (eg: NASA, the Internet, modern avionics) all started out as federal projects. If these were brought down to the local level, their simply wouldn't be enough resources to arrange the Apollo project for example.
If, however, you think it is to arrange healthcare, education, waste collection and similar, then your approach is probably better.
In my opinion, a strong federal government is probably best. Otherwise you get nowhere - local government by its nature will not provide huge sums of cash for big projects that make the big differences to humankind.
As for the UN, all it is basically a meeting house for others - it's a bit like blaming eBay because you got ripped off. eBay is partly responsible, but really the fault lies with the governments behind it.
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
I don't know where Linus wrote his code, but let's say most of it was in Finland. Now, if somebody was breaking his copyright (by e.g. not complying with the holy GPL) in the US, would US police react? Would it be "scary that [Finnish] copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding."?
The day companies manage to prosecute people for violating foreign laws, I'm worried. But this is local law enforcement acting according to local law, and is exactly how the judicial process is supposed to work (that those laws might be bad, is a problem with the legislators, not the police).
As for suprnova not violating copyright law, feel free to go there and take over. I'm sure they'll let you run it on your liability. Test your faith in slashdot pseudo-lawyering and take a stand.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
>>At least I believe, that the finnish police made it's own independent decision.
>That's what the Finnish police themselves say.
IIRC the Finnish police said they acted because copyright holders (Microsoft) had filed some kind of complaint against the site (FinReactor) back in 2002...
"The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand", or so I have read.
The anti-American whining is making you look stupid. Stop it.
I was the turkey all along
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]
There is absolutely no evidence that Kofi Annan has personally profited from the oil-for-food program.
Remember, this program was set up at the behest of the US, with support from the UK and was, according to UNICEF, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=15&ItemID=6861
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
Oh, for God's sake, not this tired old tripe again.
,00.html
/inus_iju dgment/inus_ijudgment_toc.htm (world court judgement against the US)
Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna, *In Nigeria*, and left before Cotecna had the Iraq contract. He had deferred comp (like Cheney has from Haliburton), but has done no work for them since.
How did Cotectna get the contract - string pulling, right? WRONG. The previous contract holder was Lloyd's Register. Lloyds left on almost no notice, leaving all inspections of goods held up until a new company could be found. An incredibly short bidding period was consequently given, and whatever companies bidded had to be able to start work immediately. As a result, and due to the very limited number of inspection companies, only one company offered a bid; Cotecna. When you have only one bid and all good shipments into a country of over 20 million people are held up until a contract is granted, the choice is obvious.
Furthermore, OFF did not benefit Saddam to the tune of 23 billion dollars. Kickbacks through OFF contractors are estimated at around 5 billion dollars; the rest (of which the amount is controversial; some US investigations have said only 5 billion) are from oil smuggling, which is outside the scope of OFF.
FURTHERMORE, OFF's 661 committee, which was in charge of blocking contracts, had absolutely no authority to either investigate companies for giving kickbacks to the Iraqi government, or to block them even if it knew about this. Their charter authority was only to block banned items from getting to Iraq. There was a body that could block contracts, but it wasn't an OFF body: it was the UN security council. I.e., *our government* could have investigated and blocked contracts (it only took one government). It didn't. The 661 committee actually complained about suspected kickbacks to the security council; it didn't act.
Also, you seem unaware of how kickbacks work. The kickbacks aren't kickbacks to the company; they're kickbacks to the Iraqi government. In order to get the contracts, the company would have to raise their prices. On paper, the company would have been making a much larger profit as a consequence, but in reality they were only paid for what they initially would have charged, and the Iraqi government would get the extra money. Kickbacks are almost standard in many 3rd world countries, but Iraq was just a particuly sensitive case.
Next: Your claim that Kofi is ineffective, and that you think the world will cheer when he's gone. Well, lets just do a quick search:
"Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul Top the List of Most Popular World Leaders in Five Largest European Countries"
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/ allnewsbydat e.asp?NewsID=821
"Person of the Week: Kofi Annan
For turning the fight against AIDS into a world war and for his popular reelection as U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan is our Person of the Week" (many more details about his tenure follow)
http://www.time.com/time/pow/article/0,85 99,165905
Whole bunch of links related to him, his policy platforms, and why he's so popular in the world (outside America)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/secgen/
Kofi's win of the Nobel Peace Prize:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/200 1/10/12/ un_nobel011012.html
I could easily keep on going.
Lastly, for Reagan. You claim:
"... used the proceeds to fund essentially anti-Communists during the Cold War"
Go read a summary of what the contra war was like, for starters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras (general summary)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_t he_America s (used to train the contras, among others)
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/icases/inus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte (covered up abuses in Honduras so that we could train Contras there)
http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/cia5.
South Park pokes fun at sacred cows to make a point. Family guy pokes cows to hear them moo.
Under the DMCA, specifically the section 512(d), sets out the criteria under which the 'search engine ' examption applies. The following key points are worthy of note:
Thus, this can only apply if the site owners are never aware that the material they are indexing is infringing.
A simple look at the front page of Suprnova.org is enough to belie that.
If a site wished to claim 512(d) as a defense, they would have to demonstrate to the court that they did not know any of the material they indexed was infringing.
Now, there might be a defense, under the multiple layers of abstraction, in that Suprnova indexed
Simple rule of thumb: If it's common knowledge that a site is were to look to find infringing materials, and is of little other use, 512(d) won't apply (on the grounds that it beggers belief that a site owner would have no grasp on _why_ so many people were using thier site).
Disclaimer: You're not paying for this, this is not legal advice. If you want legal advice, contact a lawyer in your juristriction.
Originally there was Napster and people shared music. The music industry put a stop to that, so then we got all the Gnutella clients (Bearshare, Kazza, Limewire, etc.) which broadcast searches and requests all around the Internet wasting insane amounts of bandwidth. Although new versions of the gnutella protocol minimize the wasted bandwidth, it's still pretty bad and now the industries are going after individual users who share media.
Bittorrent was never designed as a file sharing protocol, but websites like supronova.org helped pave the way for it. Bittorrent is efficient and semi-anonymous (you can never tell who the original uploaded is and you'd have to design systems to keep extensive logs in order to prosecute one person for sharing massive amounts of stuff).
Now with bittorrent sites being shut down, we're likely to see a combination of the two (i.e. distributing torrents and trackers via a gnutella style P2P network). In other words, the MPAA and RIAA are going to be responsible for people making more inefficient, bandwidth wasting protocols.
In light of all of this, think about where the money is going. Why the fuck should the movie industry care? Their actors get paid in the millions for a year or two of work. Acting is not work and to be honest, many of the actors at the playhouse at my university can do just as good a job as some of these big names. It's ridiculous how much they get paid for Acting!.
The movie industry are a bunch of money grubbing whores. We measure a movie's success in how much money it makes, however ticket prices keep going up! There's no way a modern movie can compete with the classics when movies were a dollar for new releases. I truly wish movie success rates were based on ticket sales and not on how much money they make.
Instead of shutting down sharing sites for poor college students who love movies, how about paying the actors a reasonable amount, distributing more money to the pre-production effects crews and camera-men and then reducing ticket prices back to $3 ~ $5.
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.
Where a 'busness' has more power than a government.. And exerts its will with out any concern for the law, knowing it can sue anyone into oblivion if they overstep the boundries.
It will only get worse until the people stand up and say 'enough'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Suprnova can claim that it didn't have the time to download every torrent file that was posted and check the material for copyright violations. Which they obviously didn't because of the sheer number of torrents.
No more then google can check every website for infringing material.
The fact that there was a wide verity of torrents, including many legal ones really helps their case. Linux distros for example.
It's not an open and shut case but a good lawyer should be able to keep them safe.
Because on the most basic level they were a search engine; one that happened to specialize in torrents, and is no different then if you went to google and search for torrents.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
...is that governments (ineffective and beurocratic) is being shafted by multi-national corporations (insensitive and protective). You might not notice it as much in the US, which is a fairly large country, but smaller countries do. You think Wal-Mart is screwing US companies around? Try being a small country, who gets essentially blackmailed "Hmmm should we place this in your country, or your neighbour? What's your offer?"
All the trade organizations are against world government because it would rival their own world-wide economic power. Want to dodge emissions standards? "Sorry, all global" Want to employ child labour? "Sorry, forbidden globally" Want to employ (wage) slave labour? "Sorry, minimum standards on worker's rights" The list goes on.
Yes, you have the problem of who watches the watchers. Since ultimately you have no "bigger" to watch over you, on top you place a system of checks and balances. This is nothing new and is essientially what exists at the top of every democratic organization, including national (USA) and supernational (EU) governments.
None of them work perfectly. But I don't see any reason why a world government should have to be worse at it. In fact, a world government would have a lot more power to actually raise standards without affecting competition. Take a look at how many proposals are rejected because it would put them at a disadvantage to the rest of the industry. A level playing field is a good one.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The online equivalent of stealing should be a crime. But copyright infringment is not stealing. It's reproducing duplicates.
1.61803398
The job of cops is ultimately to act in the best interests of our society - that's what we have laws for in the first place. If we see our government acting as hired guns for whichever lobby group has the most cash, I would say we have a good reason to get pissed off.
I consider this to be a decent example of said phenomenon. As far as independent (non-RIAA-funded) studies can find, filesharing hasn't harmed the music industry at all. On a personal level, I can vouch for filesharing promoting quality - the "free demo" theory. This is a good thing for society as a whole, but not for the RIAA.
Hence, when the police and judiciary start to stamp heavily on people whose actions are not (IMO) particularly immoral, I consider it to be acceptable to protest loudly and often.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Sorry, but like it was said before, the library is now closed due to budget cuts! Lawers cost alot of money these days.
I'm sure this will get mod'd a troll or flamebait, but let's face it. These torrent sites may of not of been hosting copyrighted information, but they were definately providing people the means to download copyrighted content without paying for it; often against their local laws.
I have hard time pittying them trying to make money by selling ads while trying to help others to break the law. Note that "helping someone break the law" is generally considered an "accomplice" which is illegal in many countries. Not to mention trying to profit from such assitance often incurs additional penalties.
The reality is that they knew they were helping people break the law and they tried to rub the noses of the RIAA/MPAA/etc in it and their bluff was called.
Honestly, if these sites contained a significant percentage of torrents for works which could be freely shared (freeware, BSD, GPL'd, software, etc) then I'd be upset at their closure. But at least 95% of the torrents were for porn, games, movies, music, etc for which the creater wishes to be paid for.
I agree with most people's opinion though, all this means is that someone will come up with some new P2P technology that either decentralizes the indexes or allows them to hide (freenet or tor anyone?)
Why do not use FreeNet? Isn't it secure and free of censorship? http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ They could post the torrent files in FreeNet without that fear. Even eDonkey's links could be on the net. I know it's kind of crapy search and go thru this net, but maybe it can work and we all be a little bit out of MPAA reach.
> 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. If the (American) copyright owners can mobilize Finnish shops to sell the music and Finnish consumers to buy the music, why is it suprising that Finnish police cannot be mobilized too? Incidentally: Sony Music - Owned by Sony - Japanese BMG - Owned by Bertlesman - German
How convenient for you to ignore the immorality of copyright, prohibition, or Jim Crow laws. Some of those laws were repealed(we're working on the rest) due to the "immorality" of the people who had the guts to tell the lawmakers and police to go to hell and to ignore or openly violate bad law. As one that's dependant on the status quo, you could hardly know or care who the bad guys really are. You just believe what the authorities tell you.
What?
That's exactly the rationale the drug companies use to deny AIDS treatment to poor people. Would you argue against helping humanity as well?
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
but the fact is copying protected works is illegal
No, its not.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
"Fair use," in and of itself, is nowhere clearly defined in the copyright law, and its interpretation is largely left up to judges in individual cases. Whether or not a given case of suspected infringement constitutes Fair Use is determined on the basis of several factors, including the nature of the work infringed and the purpose for which it was copied.
I can assure you that several of the examples you cite are most certainly not Fair Use; checking a book out from the library does not give you the right to give a copy to a relative. ("Unquestionably"? Are you so naive you actually believe that?) And I certainly hope you don't teach any classes, because if you do, you might want to do a little bit of research before you find yourself in a mess of trouble with your boss.
Breakfast served all day!
Referencing something completely unrelated doesn't prove your point. Jim Crow laws are somehow related to basic copyright protection? Am I violating your civil rights because I want to be protected in selling my music? Give me a break.
I note that you don't actually explain your position on what makes copyright immoral. Emotively mentioning prohibition and Jim Crow laws without actually explaining the relation just makes your argument nothing more than emotion-based piracy justification because you don't want the free ride to get taken away and get bitter at the suggestion.
You just believe what the authorities tell you.
Sure. I'm the one parroting the groupthink.
So how come we don't see torrent search engines popping up in safer locations, like Havenco? The MPAA would literally have to hire mercenaries to take down the server, and there's a pretty good chance that Havenco has spent a little money on defending Sealand from attacks like this.
Oh, how humanitarian of you. Its quite easy for you to sit back and proclaim how the lives of innocents are being overshadowed by those nasty greedy american corporations. Its not your property!!!!
Without a profit incentive, no drugs for anyone rich or poor PERIOD
A great example of government price fixing adversely impacting public health is the US fixing the price of flu shots. After the price fix, manufacturers left the market (because the price was set too low compared to current cost structures, for new companies to enter the market or to incent risk taking to develop new technologies), leaving just a handful of makers of the vacine. Fast forward to this year and one of those makers (in the UK) has a Quality issue. Ooops, no one else to make it. But that is something you don't consider. Its too easy to be the humanitarian with money that isn't yours.
B O R I N G
I note that you don't actually explain your position on what makes copyright immoral.
I actually agree with limited forms of copyright, but you seem to think that copyright could not possibly be immoral. I can't see why. You need to justify laws against their absence; i.e. the state of nature. Copyright is the act of taking away people's right to copy. That alone is an immoral nasty act. To justify copyright laws, you need to explain how it is adequately compensated for.
I am happy with the justification that it helps promote the public domain, however more recent revisions to copyright law and their poor application to computer software have sent them out of balance and I can't justify such extreme measures.However, I can easily see that people who value the public domain less, or believe that promotion of its growth is unnecessary would disagree with copyright laws.
I guess the court case will show if the donate-button was crossing the line, but I bet it also helped that they had user registration and quotas. From the user stats the police could easily pick out the people who shared the most stuff, and aren't these probably the same 30 or so people, who's homes were invaded and computers confiscated (and some of whom were maybe also responsible for running the torrent-webpage)? So they CAN pin these people with actually illegally sharing copyrighted stuff, and not just "providing links to some kind of content"...
"The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand", or so I have read.
In the US, you are exposing yourself to civil *and* criminal penalties depending on the infringement.
That's right, and you dont want us exposing ourselves.
-Valiss
Also note the full definition of criminal enfringement as outlined in the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997:
The full text of the act can be found here
I know this is listed in the faq but for those who didn't check it: http://www.bi-torrent.com/ is pretty much a complete mirror of suprnova :) bit of a different gui. no pop-ups.
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...
Believe it or not, some things are illegal while others aren't. Recording a show off television for personal use was always legal and is still legal. This is why you can legally own a Tivo. Distributing copies of movies on a massive scale and getting moeny for it (as these advertising- and donation-driven sites are doing) was always illegal and still is. In the 1980's if you were selling pirated video cassettes or tapes on the streets of New York, you were doing something illegal and could be arrested. Today, if you are offering pirated movies or music online, that is a crime and you can be arrested. The fact that it is happening online does not magically change things. It would appear that it is you who can't remember the past. What these sites were doing has never been permitted.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
He's talking about the Finnish Law, which allows the downloading, but not the distribution.
"fair use" does not cover distributing OR downloading 'The Life Aquatic' without permission from the author--regardless of circumstances.
Yet I can borrow 'The Life Aquatic' (once it's on DVD, that is) from a friend for no charge and it is perfectly legal and the same effect has been achieved (one person, who was not me, paid for access to IP which I then viewed for free).
Obviously the principle is not what scares MPAA/RIAA, because the principle cannot be reasonably argued against without constraining liberty. The problem is copies that do not generationally degrade, not the principle of sharing. At least, that was the *AA's stance in the 90s.
If you truly believe that the problem isn't generational degradation, but that information, once disseminated, should remain under the control of its originator, then from that principle you can posit a society where merely relating a remembrance of an IP work to another unauthorized individual (e.g. via casual chat) could be construed as piracy. If you think the problem is that digital media is 'too good' and lasts too long, you're in the buggy whip camp...
Stealing can have many definitions. Rather than dealing with those definitions, lets examine the possible harm to the "victim" to see if any crime was committed.
1 - Did the vicitm actualy loose possession of the item in question? No, online piracy involves making a copy, not removing or destroying the origional. As a consequence, the copyright holder has not been deprived of any property.
2 - Did the victim loose some future benefit? While many would argue that piracy cuts into sales, the argument is flawed. Pirated copies are free. At zero cost demand can be assumed to be at its maximum. Maximum demand is well above equilibrium unless you're selling air. Further, authorized copies are typicaly at a higher bit rate and exhibit superior characteristics in nearly ever respect. As a consqeuence few if any sales of authorized copies will be lost to the inferior pirate copy.
3 - The ability to control the distribution of a peice of information is the primary purpose of copyright and the primary benefit lost when piracy occurs. As a consequence pirates are liable for the monitary value of this loss. The question then is what is the monitary value of this loss. Moreover, once piracy has occured once the copyright holder has lost the monopoly on this distribution chain. Further copies beyond the first do not do further damage to this monopoly. In this case we could perhaps ascribe blame and liability to the first individual to break the copyright monopoly for each individual work. Of course, determining exactly what civil and criminal penalties were in order would involve placing a dollar value, not on the distribution of the work, but on the difference between a monopoly as the state of nature.
As no real values exist for this descrepancy, appropriate penality seems impossible.
At present, however, we must deal with what the law says as opposed to what the law ought to say.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
well the faq is gone, replaced by:
OWNED BY YOGI! MOUAHAHAHAHAH
You fucker steal artists !
REAL FAQs ARE HERE AND HERE
Greetz to : b, th*m*r[ChezLeCoiffeur], Croc-La-Pute
FREE TORRENTS HERE
----------------------
with links to riaa and mpaa documents.. anyone want to post what the faq originally contained?
going to http://www.silentdragz.net/ now lets you browse all the directorys... joy
Let's assume that you have just developed some fancy new piece of closed-source software that everyone really wants and you are intending to sell it online for a hefty price. Then someone manages to make a copy of the source and starts distributing it for free, thus removing commercial market for the product. However you still have the original copy. Now I'd love to see you try and convince me how you wouldn't be royally pissed off at this act of piracy, even though you still retain the originals.
I find this logic just as flawed as the BSA's version of the same. IMO piracy does lead to significant lost sales but not every pirated copy equates a lost sale.
First example: a friend of mine used to rent lots and lots of movies. Now he doesn't anymore because he can download high-quality copies of those movies via P2P-networks. That's lost sales right there.
Another example: I used to copy lots of games when I was younger. Some of those games I would have bought if a pirated copy would not have been available. So clearly piracy lead to some lost sales, but not in 1:1 ratio.
Basically the question comes down to reasonable profit margins, or how much money can copyright owners expect to make with their intellectual property. Now the problem is that copyright owners are making more money than ever but still want more while lots of consumers want everything for free. Also, consumers are not yet used to the idea of licensing a creative work for a certain amount of time instead of buying a physical copy that becomes their property for ever. I believe it just takes a while for the demands of consumers and producers to converge.
What are we going to do tomorrow night? The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!
I thought this urban myth was dead. Unless you're talking about finnish law (which I don't know)
You gotta love Americans. Even in a discussion of matters happening in another country, they can't believe that the discussion might actually be about their laws, and not those of the US.
After all these takedowns we can rename it to BitTrickle.
What about legit uses like getting Linux distros?
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
there *is* someone else to make it. And they can do it cheaper.
Not really - unless you just call making a drug pressing out pills. There wouldn't be a flu shot shortage if people were falling over themselves to make it.
Ironically people were getting arrested for selling flu shots on the black market. The fact that a black market exists demonstrates that people are willing to pay more for the shots. Now, black markets for drugs aren't good due to quality issues, but if the legitimate market were allowed to raise prices, there would be incentives to make more shots, and there wouldn't be a shortage.
For the most part, drug sales aren't a monopoly. Take statins, for example - there are three major products on the market, and that forces prices down. Sure, you pay more for them than Tylenol, but if you want to save money you can choose a generic cholesterol medication (which isn't as effective, but is better than anything even the richest people in the world had available 20 years ago).
The current model is that the rich get drugs first, and then in 10 years everybody else can have them. It raises the standard of living for everyone, while letting the rich pay drug development costs.
It is a shame that people die, but that is just nature. Everybody reading this one day will die one day. Blame God or your parents - I didn't make you mortal. Some people invest in prolonging life, and merely ask for some money in exchange. Are they morally bound to save lives?
The fact of the matter is that everybody reading this post could sponsor a child in another country and save a life. If you already sponsor one, you could sponsor two more. Or 10. Is it morally wrong to buy a DVD when that money could go to feed the poor? Most people accept that there is a balance. Especially when talking about their own money. On the other hand, when somebody else's money is at stake, it is easy to suggest that they be more generous...
The site now reads:
I haven't included linkage... I think we've all seen gotse.cx.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Ah, the NET Act! Good cite!
But you got it wrong.
But the way it is now, if I burn a copyrighted CD and just plain give it to you, the FBI could make a federal case out of that.
NET Act, Section 2, Criminal Infringement, sub a:
"(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $ 1,000 shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.'"
So unless that's a really valuable CD, you're in the clear. Same goes for computer software. Your warez copy of Doom 3 isn't a criminal offense, but if you're stealing Enterprise licenses for Photoshop or Windows 2003, you might be in trouble.
PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU ARE VIEWING THIS FAQ AT ANY OTHER LOCATION THAN HTTP://WWW.SILENTDRAGZ.NET/SUPRFAQ THEN IT IS NOT AUTHORISED. PLEASE REPORT IT TO THIS ADDRESS, THANK YOU.
Forums Link Contents:
1. Has SuprNova.org really closed? top Yes, it has. 2. When will SuprNova.org be back? top Never as it was. If it eventually does come back up, it won't feature ANY links to torrents at all. 3. What about the torrents I'm currently downloading/have queued, will they still download? top Maybe, probably. However if they don't, it has nothing to do with SuprNova.org's closure. If the tracker for that particular torrent is still online and there are seeds, your file will still download. 4. Will joining the IRC channel and spamming about some random nonsense and/or "BRING SUPRNOVA BACK UP" help at all or bring SuprNova.org back? top NO. So don't. Really, don't. 5. Where can I download torrents from now? top http://www.tvtorrents.tv
http://www.btefnet.net
http://www.fulldls.com
http://www.tv-swarm.com
http://www.bi-torrent.com
http://isohunt.com
http://torrentspy.com
http://thepiratebay.org
http://uk-torrents.com
http://torrentreactor.net
http://filelist.org
http://newtorrents.info
http://demonoid.com
http://elitetorrents.org
http://lokitorrent.com
http://www.lickmytaint.com/bt.html
http://www.420joint.com/bt/
http://www.torrentsearch.com
http://www.bitconsole.com/
http://www.uknova.com/
#BT-GM on EFnet
6. Who is the owner of SuprNova.org? top Sloncek is the owner. I advise you leave off mailing/PMing him for now, he will be flooded with t
If you're duplicating money, that's called counterfeiting. Actually now that you mention it, counterfeiting is a better term for copying music/games/movies than piracy.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
The Finnish copyright law allows making personal copies of published works. Computer programs are an exception, covered by a later addition to the law. This makes downloading movies and music legal, since it is considered equal to copying library CDs or taping radio broadcasts.
However, providing copies of copyrighted works is generally prohibited without permission from the owner of copyright. This makes sharing music and movies illegal. It it admitted that using BitTorrent to download material is in the gray zone, since you are (most probably) also uploading material at the same time. As far as I know, no court has taken a stand concerning BitTorrent downloads, but I guess we'll have one soon.
The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
-Bertolt Brecht
Someone who goes into McDonalds and gets a hamburger is not distributing hamburgers. Someone who clicks a link and views(downloads) a webpage is not distributing that webpage.
The person distributing that hambuger is responsible for complying with healthcodes and other laws. The person receiving that hamburger has no way of knowing, and no responsibility for, whether that hambuger was was made and sold in compliance with the law.
The person distributing a webpage is responsible for complying with copyright and other laws. A person who clicks a link and views (downloads) that webpage has no way of knowing, and no responsibility for, whether that webpage was made and distributed in compliance with copyright and any other law.
By your logic you are guilty of countless copyright violations merely by your normal websurfing. You are guilty every time you read slashdot and you view a post where pasted in the text of a New York Times story, and your guilty every time you come across a page containing a copied icon or anything else.
It's not really possible to distribute something unless you have a party who's willing to receive it.
(A) That's a pretty serious brainfart. Have you ever received a flyer on your cvar windshield? Have you ever received spam? Have you ever received junk mail? Have you ever clicked on a link and had goatse or some random file type pop up? I can't believe you even suggested that it's not possible to distribute something without a party who's willing to receive it.
(B) Even if you have a "willing receiver", only the giver knows what he's giving and it's source and whether he needs and has the rights to distribute it. If you go into WalMart and buy a novel, you are not a copyright infringer if it turns out the author of that book copied dialog from someone else's book. You were a willing receiver of that book, and even if you spotted that there was copied dialog from another source your legal presumption is that the author licenced that dialog. You are not expected to hunt down the author/publisher of that book and attempt to verify that he had the proper licence for that dialog. And it is that author that copied that dialog that is liable for copyright infringment damages, not you.
It's the exact same thing with trademark infringment. If someone sells you a Rollex watch *you* are not guilty of trademark infringment if they weren't licenced to make and sell Rollexes.
Case after case your claim that receiving something makes you guilty is absurd. The law places the responsibility and liability on the person making and distributing copies, only that person knows the source of the material and whether he obtained any required rights. And if he didn't have the required rights then he is the one who owes damages to the copyright holder to compensate for those copies.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.