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MPAA Goes After More Bittorrent Site Operators
Just another Coward writes "DSL Reports grabbed a copy of the lawsuit threat letters sent by the MPAA to the bittorrent website owners. This latest document was sent to a Torrent site called 'demonoid.com', which is now offline."
...because I'm a stickler for quality and don't feel like monopolizing my connection for so long to get it.
The more I read about this, though, the more it pisses me off...so there's little seed in the back of my head that tells me not to waste my time with movies...and I don't. Gouging for a ticket is bad enough, but the additional gouging for food and beverage just adds insult to injury anyway.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
to use google to search for torrents directly.
-=fshalor
Posting links = Ok
Or else google is in deep shit...
Running tracker = Bad
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Shareaza does it, kinda, but it's basically eDonkey and a couple other things mixed into one. It has a BT client built-in, and you can use eDonkey/Mule/Dingo/Fox to search for the torrent files (usually they were torrents from SuprNova), then run the torrents (don't think there's a way to automatically do it though).
Granted, this was 2.0. 2.1 may be different. I stopped using Shareaza because it felt pretty slow. I suppose a similar way to do this would be to use eMule to download the torrents and then run them in whatever torrent client you use.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Piracy ? Funny, until the tracker went down, Demonoid was where I generally downloaded the latest .ISOs of Mandrake. I wasn't aware Free Software was piracy. .
Last I checked piracy was still piracy.
Last I checked, pirates used cannons and cutlasses, had beards and a bad accent.
"unauthorized distribution" is the proper term, and I'm not nitpicking for the heck of it. A chinese proverb says "Calling things by their proper name is the first step of wisdom." I think they got that right. As long as you don't see it for what it is, but instead mix it up with images of bloodshed and destruction, your judgement is clouded.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They're trying for a decapitation attack. It's not going to work long term (any more than shutting Napster down did), but I can see how they'd feel they had to do something.
Of course, the problem with doing this is a lot like the problem with antibiotics. If you use them too much, the target adapts.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I think its becoming very clear that centralised torrent distribution isn't going to work.
If you are going to host a popular torrent site then you are going to need bandwidth (for the site alone, no mention of trackers yet). Most bandwidth providers (a.k.a ISPs) are getting very paranoid about letters like these arriving. In fact I'm guessing that most ISPs have terms and conditions stating that they can switch you off faster than a light-bulb if they get such a letter.
The problem with these ISPs is that they need things like credit card details for payment, etc. etc. etc. This trail will eventually lead to a physical person who paid for the hosting - and thus someone the MPAA can put the rap on.
Lets just rewind here a sec. First there was FTP/HTTP for downloading "stuff". This worked while demand was average, and no one was paying much attention. The head came on, people (read: lawyers) took notice. Letters were sent, people abandoned FTP/HTTP for P2P networks.
Everything was good so far until it came to delivering large content (read: Movies, Apps, whatever). The P2P networks simply scale well to delivering this content well. But they still provided a reasonable amount of privacy.
Next (roughly speaking) came BitTorrent - it fixed the P2P bottle necks of gnutella & co. But it now depended on a centralised infrastructure for informing people on where to find the Trackers.
More experienced hands at BitTorrent and Gnutella might be able to help out here:
What if the
This could be taken to the next level then - if the content is coming from multipe sources, and if individually the "copyright" material does not arrive from a single source - what can you prosecute the individual sources for - serving up a fragment ? If the data is interleaved between 10 hosts and every 10th byte is stored on one host, it would be very difficult to prove that the host contains the material.
Just my $0.02
[ Monday is a terrible way to spend one seventh of your life. ]
They're trying for a decapitation attack
...not really. They're trying to remove the single-most userfriendly and simply way to get pirated content. They have no illusions that this will stop most filesharing. Remember, that to a common user, it went like this.
1. Install BitTorrent
2. Click on link
They don't really care how it works. There's no ratios, no shares, no slots, no configuration, nothing. And it was fast, at least with popular content (which is, by definiton, what the common user wants). Many of these will find other P2P apps too complex.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You make an interesting point.
.torrent files on it copywright infringment?
Makes me think about this: How is having a page with a bunch of
The site is linking to a file, that has the location of a server. That server distrubutes copywrighted material illegally, but not the website. It is not giving the user anything that belongs to the MPAA/RIAA.
Now I know in this case that the site was also running a tracker, and that was violating the MPAA's copywright. But what about sites that down run their own tracker? Could they not win protection this way?
The problem isn't where to host the .torrent files, its how to host the trackers.
Now if every client was a tracker, that might be different.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Actually it's even funnier. Piratbyrån actually means The Pirate Bureau and i believe it was created as a response to Anti-pirat Byrån (the Anti-pirate Bureau), which seems to be the swedish equivalent of a very watered-down fusion between MPAA and RIAA.
Your average soccer mom buys her Dell with Windows installed and is good to go for the next three to five years, at a cost of about $45, or roughly the price of a single pair of ink jet cartridges.
It is not worth her time to spend hours or days retrieving a blocky, artifact-ridden, low-res DiVX rip of a movie she'll be able to buy for $20 or rent for $5 in all it's wide-screen, surround-sound DVD glory next spring.
Does something like affect search engines like Google or sites with BitTorrent links? I don't know, maybe. I guess we'll see. Personally, I would consider it analagous on a book describing how to break the law. Telling people where to go to get copyrighted material illegally doesn't seem to be copyright infringement in itself to me, but then there are strange aspects to laws and theories of violation that crop up from time to time (contributory and vicarious liability) and some explicit inclusions for some acts that are not directly the violation (accessory to ..., attempt to commit ...).
So then, what if my dvd gets stepped on? Then I can't watch my movie anymore. I could then go onto one of these sites and download the movie, which I already own the rights to watch, and then make a personal use copy with a dvd-r.
It seems to me that this is legal. If, therefore, the content of the site (torrents) can be used legally, how can the site be held responsible for illegal use?
Isn't that like holding a rental place responsible for people copying their movies, a gun store for armed robbery, or a car dealership for illegal drag racing?