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LokiTorrent Shut Down
wan-fu writes "LokiTorrent, a popular torrent site, has officially been shut down. After asking for donations from users for the past couple of months to fight the MPAA's lawsuit. LokiTorrent succumbed today and the MPAA took over the website with a stern warning, stating, "You can click, but you can't hide." A variety of outlets are carrying the story."
I love his favourite quote... it seems an MPAA statement reguarding lokitorrent's defeat.
From his profile:
http://profiles.yahoo.com/edwebber
Favorite Quote
"Then there will be running and screaming - Jurassic Park"
Thank god my ip address is not in the logs that he gave the MPAA.
I don't think he will answer, but from his profile you can see when he is online, and you can send him a message asking him what's going to happen to that donation you made for the lawsuit. A normal e-mail address is supplied, too.
P.S, for some reason, sometimes YAHOO says the page doesn't exist... if this is the case, try google's cache =)
From the site:"Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous. Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop."
I'm tired reading this sort of stuff again and again. They always forget to mention that it is illegal only in the USA. For example it is perfectly legal to download music or video for personal use in the EU, even with file sharing application where you make it avaliable for 3rd party temporarily. I found even those living in the EU are not aware of this situation, probably due to the continuous MPAA/RIAA threathenings.
Distributing copyrighted content is a different issue even in the EU, but I'm not familiar with the legal side of that. All I know my movie downloads fall in the "fair use" category according to the current EU copyright law.
From dictionary.com:
Main Entry: theft
Function: noun
Etymology: Old English thiefth
: LARCENY; broadly : a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent
Hmm... Sounds like your definition of theft differs from the accepted one.
Theft does not have to mean depriving somebody of their property. When you copy a movie which you did not pay for, you are consuming the service (about 90 minutes of entertainment) without the consent of the service provider. That is theft, plain and simple.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
On several BitTorrent and P2P forums we have noticed reports that LokiTorrent actually has been holding out hoping that the MPAA will make an offer to shut them down rather then wage on with the expensive pending lawsuit. We have decided to research this rumor ourselves to see what this popular torrent site is up to. Original this was posted on p2pforum but has vanished... We are posting this story for the public awareness.
Some things we have noticed about the popular bit torrent site Lokitorrent that have raised some red flags is that they started collecting a US$30,000 legal fund to defend their site before they even were being sued! Even more odd was once they were sued they raised this amount to US$30,000 per month in legal fees plus US$4000 per month in site costs. To us this all sounds kind of fishy. Our question is why?
After several failed attempts to reach Lokitorrent site admins looking for answers we went and contacted the MPAA which was more than happy to state that yes Lokitorrent and the MPAA were in negotiations and that the current offer could not be disclosed nor could the terms if the deal were to be reached.
We all know bit torrent site admins take pride in their grassroots, non-profit image however most sites make huge amounts of money. Suprnova which claims to have shutdown due to MPAA pressure and to finish working on their Exeem project for their client is completely just lies. Suprnova was making alot of money. Figure if they had 2,000,000 visitors per day (which is what lokitorrent claims to have, suprnova many estimate had closer to 5,000,000) they would have made close to US$90,000 per month just from per-click ads. Do the math, (all you blog site admins will be kicking yourself because you know this is true) if even only 1.5% (my blog site even gets about 6%, so 1.5% is really low estimate) click an ad, even if by mistake they get an average of $.10 per click so they would be making US$3000 per day times 30 days, not to mention those annoying high paying popups. So now you are asking why would Suprnova shutdown if they were making so much? Well the answer is simple, with Exeem they have much lower costs as their whole system can run on 2 or 3 servers and their effort to maintain those 2 or 3 servers is alot lower as well when you consider they had more then 25 servers going at their peak. Exeem also will make them a ton of money through Cydoor. Some estimate they can easily make $1 per user per day which would put them at close to US$300,000 per day with their current user base. Cydoor is a information harvesting company. They harvest the users info to either sell to marketing companies and spammers or to use your info to hit you with ads directly for their clients. By using Exeem these companies know everything about you just by monitoring your online actions. You go to your email, they now know your email address, you fill in a form they have your name and home address, the information they can harvest is limitless and it is totally legal because when you install Exeem the user license informs you of this if you were to actually read it. If you dont believe us click here and read the part about Cydoor carefully.
So why do Lokitorrent and Suprnova care so much about the public knowing about all this? They care because if you knew about it their image as being modern day Robinhoods would be tarnished and they would not be able to sucker you their user into donating Thousands of dollars to them.
Our prediction is this Lokitorrent will sign a deal with the MPAA to shutdown, they will claim to shutdown saying that do to lack of donations they ca not afford to fight the case. The Lokitorrent admins save face with the BitTorrent community and continue their mufftorrent porn site and everyone goes on thinking they were just underdogs that could not afford to fight.
We would actually like to hear a reply from lokitorrent or suprnova on this actually and we welcome their reply. Again this is all just still brain food and speculation at this point.
[BitTorrent News, 30 jan]
"Copyright infringement is a type of theft."
No, it isnt. It is a violation of government granted temporary exclusive rights. You're not taking any property, you're violating their exclusive right to make copies.
If copyright was 'actual property', then the expiration of copyright would mean the state was confiscating that property. Not even the RIAA/MPAA's propaganda machines tries to claim that yet. I'll bet you it's coming tho, and that it's the reason they want to anchor the belief that physical and intellectual property are in any way similar - wait for the campaign where they'll try to convince us that the state is trying to steal their property, and that copyright and patents should be extended to forever.
Beware what ideas the propaganda machines try to place in your head, for their agenda is not always what they claim it to be.
The day has come for Anonymous P2P.
Why not use technologies like Tor (funded by the US government for FBI and CIA intelligence gathering anonymously), ANTS, Entropy, and Mnet?
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html
506. Criminal offenses5
(a) Criminal Infringement. - Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either -
(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
According to the google cache he was putting the site up for sale.
No, theft is when you take something away from someone. Get a dictionary. If I download a film then the studio is no worse off after I download it than they were before I downloaded it. Therefore it is not theft.
Now you can argue that they are not getting money that they *would* get were I not to download the film, but you're making assumptions there.
Before things like bittorrent I never bought a DVD or video. I maybe rented 2 or 3 films a year on average, which I still do.
Now I'm not saying that what I'm doing is legal or right, but no one is worse off than they would be if I didn't download films.
Just btw... Here's a note from Websters on the definition of theft...
----
Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.
From the Ohio Revised Code:
2913.02. Theft.
(A) No person, with purpose to deprive the owner of property or services, shall knowingly obtain or exert control over either the property or services in any of the following ways:
(1) Without the consent of the owner or person authorized to give consent;
(2) Beyond the scope of the express or implied consent of the owner or person authorized to give consent;
(3) By deception;
(4) By threat;
(5) By intimidation.