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BitTorrent Community After SuprNova Shutdown

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the community-is-a-strong-word dept.

prostoalex writes "Folks from MonkeyMethods.org have researched the BitTorrent world after many popular destinations (SuprNova among others) have been shut down. Since BitTorrent always relied on the presence of trackers and servers hosting them, MonkeyMethods decided to see whether the shutdown impacted the BitTorrent community. So has the shutdown of centralized SuprNova had any impact? "In this case, centralization is a feature, not a necessity. Just look at del.icio.us most popular and you'll see BitTorrent sites every couple days, as people uncover new places to find the files they're looking for.""

6 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. Sure, it made an impact. by Seumas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Instead of everyone focusing on SuprNova, people have found new places that they otherwise never would have bothered with. There are a number of smaller quality sites out there now. Most of them seem to be hosted in Sweden, Netherlands, Brazil, Russia and elsewhere.

    1. Re:Sure, it made an impact. by Inda · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'll say it then because no one seems to have the bottle around here.

      SuprNova was nothing special. It was not the best thing since sliced bread. It was a below-par site.

      There, said it.

      SuprNova was the Kazaa of websites. It was full of broken trackers, passworded files, membership only trackers and your crappy re-encodes. People from other sites used it to advertise their own trackers; stick a few torrents up for a week and watch the traffic flow to your site. SuprNova was a site that was too busy and only served the average masses who wanted The Incredibles in Real video format.

      That was my opinion of SuprNova.

      --
      This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
  2. SUPPLY AND DEMAND by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Supply and demand, dammit. People just never understand this. The laws of capitalism don't refer to things that are necessary to create a capitalist economy, or things that are a good idea. They are natural laws. You can't escape them. There is no way out of the iron cage.

    And the laws of supply and demand don't go away just because you try to put laws in their path. You barely even slow them down. The old Soviet Union found that out when black markets sprung up to provide the things the Soviet Union's system couldn't. And the ??AAs of America, much as they try to ignore it, are currently finding that out with the things that are springing up to provide the copyright cartels won't.

    1. Re:SUPPLY AND DEMAND by hadronzoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Economics also says that marginal cost of production equals price in the long run. If the marginal cost to produce (i.e. copy) media is only the cost of moving bits, the price will tend towards zero.

      Any attempt to artificially prop-up prices will be defeated by the black market (ergo BitTorrent).

  3. BitTorrent was never designed for Piracy. by ABeowulfCluster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bittorrent was designed to just host large files to a large number of people using a distributed system. It's the 'large number of people' thing which makes it bad for illegal file swapping. If 100 file sharers can find illegal content easily, then so can the copyright holders of the illegally copied content. If they want *privacy* with their fileswapping, then fileswappers should put a proxy function into a separate 'file swapper' client to allow you do download 'thru' another computer which would make tracking down the original user impossible... but a proxy function just increases the total sum of bandwidth used, which isn't what Bittorrent was designed to do.

  4. Re:first by gwoodrow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm with you on this one. Just like the parent's completely nonsensical statement "the fact that it's illegal is completely irrelevant," chronic pirates do tend to be hypocrites. Of course the fact that it's illegal is relevant. That's the whole reason the fight is going on.

    I hate that all the mods are sympathetic to the so called "fight" as well. Why is it that those of us who are against piracy are considered flamers and trolls? That's pathetic.

    Yeah, I hate the fact that legal music downloads have the restrictive DRM on it. So I don't buy music online - I buy used CDs and just rip'em onto my computer.

    Aw - you can't see a TV show in your area? Have to wait a whole extra month to see that movie you wanna see? Tough shit - that still doesn't make it yours. It's someone else's property and they can distribute it however they please.

    I've been saving up for a new car - but my childish impatience doesn't give me the right to come steal yours in the meantime.

    I've downloaded quite a few songs illegally in my day, but I have no illusions that what I'm doing is "the right thing." I know it's illegal and I'm not proud of it. I don't think I mind people downloading stuff illegally so much as I mind the people trying to make excuses for it. There is no excuse - what you're doing is immoral and dishonest. We're stealing - not leading a revolution. Get over yourself, folks.

    Now go ahead and mod this post down - I know most of my fellow pirates don't want to hear it anyway. See no evil, do no evil - or at least not admit to it.