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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.
> 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
>>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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Last time I checked, US law doesn't apply everywhere.
So they are not CLEARLY offering illegal content, as...
Wait a minute. Let me actually look this up. I'm applying patent law thinking to this...
*looks it up*
Oh fuck. Okay, so copyright protection usually DOES apply in foreign countries, assuming they signed the Berne Convention, are members of the WTO or signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
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 :)
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?
The anti-American whining is making you look stupid. Stop it.
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.
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.
Not exactly - the U.S. Constitution says that the U.S. Congress can allow you to temporarily restrict other people's use of the expression of ideas, for the purpose of promoting the progress of Science & the Arts.
It _doesn't_ say that you actually "own" the expression of those ideas - that's just the meme which has been encoded into laws by the special interests pushing for the corporate control of what should be a free-flowing exchange of ideas.
The online equivalent of stealing should be a crime. But copyright infringment is not stealing. It's reproducing duplicates.
1.61803398
Sorry, but like it was said before, the library is now closed due to budget cuts! Lawers cost alot of money these days.
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.
"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.
You gotta wonder with all of the people dieing of cancer, why are peopel wasting time and money curing the common cold or alergies to cats? Don't they know that people are falling over dead?
Law enforcement is not about just concentrating on the worst offenders any more than medical research is restricted to just curing the most horrible of illnesses. ALL laws need to be enforced just as all illnesses need to be cured.
None of your other arguments have anything to do with enforcement of any laws and are irrelevant in this discussion.
Please try and pull your head out of your ass and take a realistic look at the world around you.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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
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.
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.
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..."
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