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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...
"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
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?
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.
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.
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 :)
The anti-American whining is making you look stupid. Stop it.
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
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.
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?
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.
The site now reads:
I haven't included linkage... I think we've all seen gotse.cx.
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Never been known to fail..."