Inside the Shadow Internet

Paladin144 writes "Wired has a report about the mysterious 'pirate networks' that obtain new movies, music & games before they are released and spread them throughout the net. It's not as simple as putting a movie on LimeWire. These people are highly organized and very paranoid about secrecy. They maintain a hidden network of top-level FTP sites that get the best files first and allow them to trickle down the pyramid and into many a slashdotter's sweaty little fingers."

Comments

Thank goodness for these people

[Anonymous Coward]

Without the threat of piracy, its a good bet that CD's and DVD prices would be 50-100% higher than they are today.

If economics and history teach us anything, its that producers of any product, whether its widgets or music, or movies, will raise the price as high as they can in the absence of any competition.

Since Government sponsered "Intellectual Property" is a defacto monopoly supported by the government, the only relief we have is to just grab the stuff if they charge too much.

Re:Thank goodness for these people

[anon*127.0.0.1]

Or you could just not buy the product. I realize in that case you'd have to actually make a sacrifice and deprive yourself of something, but at least you'd have a clean conscience.

The people who produce music and movies and whatever do have competition. They're all in the "entertainment industry". Most people have a certain portion of their income which the allot to entertainment. If people feel that one form of entertainment is too expensive, they'll start spending their money elsewhere. Movies, concerts, sporting events, travel, hobbies.... entertainment is a wide field. If the pirate networks were shut down tomorrow, we wouldn't see CD prices move a dime. There's still too much competition for the entertainment dollar.

I'm not saying I never grabbed an MP3 or copied a floppy, but I never tried to justify it with some half-assed argument about fighting an evil tyrannical government conspiracy. I just stole it because I didn't want to pay for it.

Valve is not your friend

[Anonymous Coward]

" so many problems for our friends at Valve"

Valve is a business. They're not your pal, they're not your relative, they're not the cool people next door.

They're a business that is out to make money. Never forget that about any company. Even Apple.

Re:Valve is not your friend

[number11]

God forbid a business should make money.

That's ok. They're in business to make money. By the same token, they don't deserve your loyalty or respect unless they've paid you for it.

My loyalty and respect aren't for sale.

Re:Valve is not your friend

[incom]

Funny, I didn't see anything in the post saying that it was a bad thing to conduct a profitable business, or anything even close. It seemed like it was pointing out the irationality of harboring friendly emotions towards such an entity, with your relationship being merely a consumer.

Umm, 'scuse me mr. reporter, its "VPN" ..

[torpor]

.. not 'shadow internet'.

Virtual Private Network.

The oh-so subtle difference between positions (shadow internet vs. VPN) is that if someone does a google for VPN, they'll realize just how damn easy it is.

"Shadow Internet"-way just sounds comic-book super-hero, and as we all know thats as literary as most peoples thoughts go, it won't be obvious that 'any joe can build their own private and secret Internet on top of the Internet'.

(Not just 'elite techno-psycho-fascist' types hell-bent on destroying 'systems'. *Anyone*.)

Obscure, eh?

Re:I thought it was generally known

[Sheetrock]

I've read that mega-pirates don't even enjoy the majority of what they crack and distribute. It's all about the process for them -- some like to defeat copy protection, most like the social circles and ego they've got from being first to release or having the best stuff to offer.

Menace to society, indeed. Maybe they'd do better to pick up programming and write free software rather than cracking someone else's, but I think you've hit the nail on the head; it's not even about the software or movies or music being pirated, in my opinion, when one gets in to the degree these folks have. They get nothing out of what they do but they get nailed harder than spammers or spyware purveyors.

Re:Well..

[gad_zuki!]

What's the motivation? Is is just self-importance?

Reading this article kinda made me feel sick, as if all these people were so addicted to all these horrible hollywood releases (Hellboy?!) and RIAA crap, they were compelled to share it like tape traders of old.

Seems like a huge waste of time and talent to bust your butt and possibly face jail time for the new Good Charlotte or Linkin Park.

I'm hoping the scene does this "because its there and it can be done" for this 99% or so terrible content. But the piece on the people making a "Netflicks content" server implies otherwise.

HL2: "almost a year of reprogramming"

[Admiral Burrito]

Did anyone else's bullshit detector get pegged by this?...

Within minutes of appearing on Anathema, Half-Life 2 spread. One file became 30 files became 3,000 files became 300,000 files as Valve stood helplessly by watching its big Christmas blockbuster turn into a lump of coal. The damage was irreversible - the horse was out of the barn, the county, and the state. The original Half-Life has sold more than 10 million games and expansion packs since its late 1998 release. Half-Life 2's official release finally happened in November, after almost a year of reprogramming.

...Specificly, the "almost a year of reprogramming" part.

It seems that when people hear that the HL2 code was "stolen", they interpret that in the literal sense. It was "taken" from Valve so they had to "reprogram" it because they didn't have it anymore. This bogon seems to appear even among people who should know better (like Wired reporters).

I guess Orwell was right: Control language, control thought.

Imagine how productive OSS developers would be if they didn't "give away" all of their source code with every new version.

"Pirate," eh?

[JeffTL]

As Stallman (Free Software, Free Society; pp. 190-191) said, calling it piracy implies that unauthorized copying is tantamount to armed robbery, kidnap, and murder on the high seas. They both involve theft of a sort -- but are vastly different. Copyright infringement generally involves cheating someone out of their rightful royalties; piracy involves depriving sailors and their employers of life, liberty, or property (maybe all three!) without due process of law. I'd say that copyright infringement is not morally tantamount to this.

Re:Well..

[paganizer]

Did anyone read the article?
Think about how they are slanting things; the article gives the impression that the vast majority of new material is being initially provided by these shadow networks.
Back in the day when I was dodging sundevils (a cookie if you get the reference), that was essentially true.
In the current picture, it's a vast overstatement; yes, there are "elite top level" groups, but they are mainly kiddies; the majority of app and game files circulating on the 'net are either done by 1 person who figured out the crack from standard deprotection tools, or from the established cracking houses like paradox, class, etc.
The wording and, um, flavor? of the article is to create a scary thing on the internet that even the relatively well informed have heard of remotely or even been a peripheral member of, much the same way the Bush administration manufactured links between 911 and Iraq, and for essentially the same reason.
It IS obvious right? if you stop and think about it? This is just a step down the path of making us accept fewer online freedoms, as a necessary aspect of the war on cyber-terrorism.