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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."
Didn't this just happen? How in the world did they get a $1 million judgement against LokiTorrent already!?
Is it just me or do the wheels of injustice move far swifter than the wheels of justice?
I'm a big tall mofo.
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 =)
It's copyright infringement, not theft for fuck's sake!
Quit trying to make people confuse them.
That's like saying amputation is "partial murder".
Hmm, I take that back...I don't want to give them any more ideas!
You're all bastards!
What I want to know is, if I were to work for the MPAA, would I get a cute proto-fascist uniform? You know, maybe black or a rich tan color, with a little armband and small hat. Because if I did then I'd definitely work for them.
Regardless of the legality of the site, it is down now simply because they didn't have the money to fight a lawsuit. This is a dangerous trend which has been going on for far too long.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWWhat are they going to do with all the money that was donated? I belive that someone was speculating that this is EXACTLY what was going to happen. 1) Do something illegal 2) Get sued 3) ....*
4) Profit!
* Make a plea to the community and then run away anyways.
...by a court order or something, but how can the MPAA take it over and put their own blurb on it short of an actual court decision in their favor?
Pop go the Weasel(s)! Did they take the approval of the site owners to do what they did? or is 'ownz0ring' - will they get paid back in their own coin?
Why don't they provide links to these supposed sites that provide legal downloads of movies? Seems like they're missing an easy opportunity here.
sure glad I never joined...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
- quote from their site.
So does that mean if you have downloaded stuff, and you stop, they can't catch you? Does it imply an amnesty? Or is it just sloppy wording on their part?
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
I just checked out the hijacked site and saw their warning. It claims that downloading copyrighted files leaves a trail and the only way not to get caught is to stop. I wonder if this is the same trail that led them to the 80 year old woman that didn't own a computer that they sued (repealing the suit only after she died). I heard as she died she exclaimed, "Run, run as fast as you can (MPAA) you can't catch me I am the gingerbread man!!!!"
My
This site is blocked by WebBlocker. It does not meet the standards set by the XXXX XX XXXXXXXXXXXX Internet Use Policy. If you have any questions please contact the IT Helpdesk at XXX-XXXX.
Good thing I never signed up for lokitorrent.
chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
a) back to the people who donated
b) be channeled to a fund for tsunami victims in Asia
c) get LokiTorrent owner that bitchin new plasma tv at Futureshop
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Something to worry about:
What's really alarming the swapperati, though, is that Lokitorrent has agreed to turn over the server's user logs.
In a normal situation, you could make the case that agreeing to turn those over is a violation of users' privacy. In this situation, even if you could show that the site's terms and conditions promised never to disclose its users' information, you would almost certainly lose: a court that has just shut down a site for illegal activity is hardly likely to agree to protect its users. Especially not since the Supreme Court decision in Illinois v. Cabbales, which held that sending a sniffer dog to find drugs through a car stopped for speeding does not violate the Fourth Amendment (the one that prohibits search and seizure without probable cause). Around now, the MPAA is probably gleefully poring over the logs, going through IP numbers, and compiling a list of the "hundreds of thousands" of individuals it might sue next. Fun!
From http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21216
A bunch of Tech Stuff
Since exeem claims to be completely decentralized, would this be the time to switch torrent sites over to there?
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
I think it is a good thing that the site has shut down. The only problem that I have with them and suprnova.org shutting down is that it can make it very difficult to fing legal torrent files. That being said I thing it is good for all!
It looks to me like they got hacked. I don't think they would put up such a message. Even if they did, I guess the MPAA made them put up their generic "gay mesasge".
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
They always tell you, when you are jumping into the job search fray, to Network, Network, Network. For the flip among us, it is taken to mean that one needs to get greasy and slimy and be generally fake with a bunch of people. These are typically network engineers, which is pretty ironic.
But the same holds true here. You need to be able to get onto networks that are private and trustworthy. The last thing anyone needs is to join a torrent network and have the RIAA or MPAA come in and seize personal hardware. You want to find the torrents that use GUIDs for URIs. You want to find the torrents that are so underground that only the people who are on it know of it. The way to do that is to Network Network Network.
Posting at Slashdot is one good way of Networking. Getting to know people, learning the habits of some posters, and generally being attentive and friendly and discrete is the way to become trustworthy yourself. Once you are seen as someone who can be trusted, you can then approach people about joining their underground torrents.
Hold on, the MPAA can tell me what to do when I'm not even American?
I know what they are trying to do is proper, and cutting the supply off at the central source is tonnes better than the underhanded suing kids and grannies, but I'm not even American.
We need copyright to protect Linux and Open Source in general, but surely only where laws are in place?
side note, can American filesharers use proxies in remote countries to protect themselves from **AA lawsuits?
liqbase
If ever you need a definition of "pathetic" then this page fits 100%. 'nuff said.
torrent reactor
pirate bay
This website has been permanently shut down by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures. The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity. 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.
Am I the only one who is absolutely repulsed by that message? A friend just said, after reading it, "wow... how come I feel that i was just glared at by the SS?". This kind of brainwashing is the same bullshit that got Bush re-elected. Our society requires an informed populace to function properly. All the powers that be are manipulating public perception to suite their own needs and it really, really, needs to stop.
~Lake
Looking at that 'MPAA NOTICE', I see lies, unfounded claims, threats and in general, bullying. Is that legal?
"You can click, but you can't hide"?
This is a wonderful illustration of the creative genius of the entertainment industry. I have a few more suggestions along the same lines.
"Guys don't make passes at girls who click torrents."
"You can lead a horse to water, but you better not click that torrent!"
"Click on a torrent, break your mama's back."
"What would Jesus Do? Not click on torrents, you betcha!"
"I wouldn't click on a torrent if it were the last torrent on earth."
Best Windows Freeware
But of course they can hide, as MPAA actions force torrent swarms to decentralize and truly anonymize. To the MPAA: you can sue, but you can't catch!
--
make install -not war
It's an interesting attempt at scaring people into not using file sharing applications. It's pretty pointless, though, when you look at what technologies like freenet allow you to do. I yearn and fear for the day when what I choose to do when online will be as anonymous as my thoughts. It will be a whole new world of possibilities, some good, some bad.
They knew copyrighted material was being downloaded illegally, and they were more than happy to help facilitate that -- hell, that was pretty much the raison d'etre of their site.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Nice, lots of sites carrying the news and a link to Google news with the title put in. For a news sites, isn't it a bit too easy to just do this? I read /. to have a bit more of an insight into whats going on, and having links to actual sites carrying the news isn't expecting too much I think. If I wanted to see EVERYTHING related to the news, I'd be quiet capable of doing the search myself. What next, every news item with a link to GNews for more info? If that continues too much, I may as well set my home-page to;e rds /.
http://news.google.com/news?q=news%20for%20n
myself and never have to worry abour checking
. Bit too lazy guys, at least do a teeny weeny bit of effort, eh?
Waiting for an amusing sig.
You got one brown eye closed tight.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Yes, he's certainly a jerk for not wanting to be dragged through excessive litigation, bankrupted by lawyer fees, and probably having to pay a settlement anyway. He's a jerk for not wanting to be subject to more gestapo tactics from the MPAA. Yeah, okay.
And I suppose all those people who settle out of court against the RIAA are jerks for paying a few thousand dollars instead of risking a multi-million dollar settlement.
Ordinary people don't have the money to fight these things. It doesn't make them jerks.
You are a troll and need to get some sense of reality.
Since so many media outlets are covering this, now would be the perfect time for some ambitious person to change the lokitorrent.com website to display this image and with this quote:
"The more you tighten you grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
.. that no one submitted this earlier.
LokiTorrent, down for the count?
Rejected
LokiTorrent owned by the MPAA?
Rejected
LokiTorrent... Gone for real?
Rejected
Each one having links to the Netcraft and Register stories. And some even asking what the site owner did with the $45,000 raised for his defence.
But, you know, I'm not bitter about not getting accepted.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Who in their freaking right mind perceives the movie industry as "honest"???
I just got done reading "Fatal Subtraction" by Art Buchwald, about how he came up with the idea for the movie "Coming to America", and how it got stolen and made millions without any recognition to him. He sued to get paid. Paramount fought for months, and finally Buchwald won the right to a percentage of the profits.
After he won, Paramount argued this major hit movie had NO profits! They cook the books so that the studio ALWAYS gets back its investment, the top stars ALWAYS get paid, and everyone else gets whatever is left, which usually ends up being comparatively nothing.
Luckily Buchwald came out on top, but these people are crooks, and have been for decades.
Sure I may have signed up for lokitorrent, but what if I never downloaded any movies. How are they going to know who to sue? Are the logs really that verbose?
LokiTorrent, a popular torrent bootlegger site, has officially been shutdown.
... But what I won't do is support data piracy. I'm not at all sad to hear that LokiTorrent is gone. They were ripping people off, and those people were perfectly within their rights to unleash the lawyers.
Copyright infringement is a type of theft.
When you take something without securing permission to take it, even if you are just taking a copy of intellectual property, that is theft.
If you ask me to sign a petition to revise copyright law to be more favorable to consumers, I'll gladly sign it. If somebody rus for office saying he wants to make copyright more fair, I'll listen to his ideas.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
As usual, the ones with the most money and lawyers win.
It is not always the case, but it is so common, that in cases the little guy wins...
They make a movie about it!
( and in this case, the MPAA would get a piece too!)
Shit! where did I put that sig again!
When you take something from someone else, and they no longer have it, that's stealing.
When you go over to someones house (after they invite you in, of course) examine an object of theirs, and go home and make your own... That's copyright infringement. Assuming, of course, that object was in fact under copyright and not public domain or anything.
Quit buying into their shit.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
Does it really help a torrent or ED2k site if you send money to help with legal fees? I would think this would only complicate the defense - having to prove that the money was only used for the benefit of the website.
It looks like the P2P world is going to go through a bit of a shuffle until it can find the "sweet spot" country that will not prosecute, just like what happened with online bookies and casinos.
This story is getting pretty tired. Pirates figure out a smart way to distribute media, old fashioned companies too lazy to change their business model start suing the pants off of everybody, nothing changes in the long run, and in the end the company adopts the new methodologies or dies.
How many times must history repeat itself before companies learn to listen to their consumers? They know what they want better than any marketing department.
Oh yeah, and screw the proprietor of Lokitorrent for being a spineless jellyfish. He did a real disservice to his visitors by ratting them out. There needs to be a P2P code of conduct with a corresponding logo on list sites to tell users that their privacy will be protected if the site comes under legal fire.
you really think that the MPAA put that page up ?
...other sites are continuing, like mininova and The Pirate Bay :)
After asking for donations from users for the past couple of months to fight the MPAA's lawsuit.
Step 1: Ask people doing illegal things for money to keep site that supports illegal activity alive.
Step 2: Post on how great the money swindl- er, earning is going, and how you're going to fight back that bastard, Corporate America.
Step 3: Give in to the MPAA, and make off with $30K or so of donations.
Step 4: Profit!
http://www.torrentspy.com/
Th
The only way not to get caught is to stop.
if (stop)
then (!caught)
Therefore,
if (!stop)
then (caught)
Well, that settles it! I'm stopping.
Please excuse the languageless code.
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.
This is really troubling. What ever happened to the first amendment? LokiTorrent didn't host any of the illegal contact. How is this different from...?
- Hosting a list of banned books
- A library that contains books on how to pick locks
It seems like the courts often times are fast food restaurants for big corporations. I thought the courts were supposed to be object and ensure the rights of the little guy weren't trampled on??
The real troubling thing is now from new stories the movie mafia wants to "review log files" and go after people who viewed the site. That's rediculous.
Another aspect of this is hiring 3rd party companies to collect evidence. For example all these P2P so called monitoring services. Of course they are going to find evidence in favor of the movie mafia since that is what they are being paid to do. Can you imagine Microsoft doing an objective Linux story and revealing that Linux is in fact better? The government needs to collect the evidence and everything else needs to be thrown out.
Even if a court order had the site shut down, the question I want to ask is how did the MPAA get control of the domain?
I bet they went to the host provider showed them the court order and asked for the domain, if that is the case then LokiTorrent should sue the hosting company...
Just askin', that's all.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Aah, I'm proud to be an American ... land of the free where the lives of innocent people can be ruined at the whim of a corporation if they feel that their profits are being threatened. ...
I'm all for exporting freedom and democracy to other countries, but maybe we ought to work on freedom here at home first
Why isn't the function performed by the central server simply decentralized as well?
Lokitorrent was put up for sale recently, maybe the MPAA bought it for the "settlement" they were looking for from the owner. Could explain the quick turn around in the site to the MPAA banner.
That way they could still claim he settled with them, and he wouldn't be really paying a large fine they might not have gotten anyway. Smells like a settlement/swap with the logs as the prize for the MPAA.
Intellectual property is only some kind of knowledge and can therefore never be stolen but only be propagated.
Church tried to stand in the way of knowledge a long time ago, when they held all of the legislative, executive and judicial powers. They still failed when there came the age of enlightenment
Even if the MAFIA paid the lawmakers to make BLACKMAILING legal, it is still IMMORAL. The same remains true in the other direction regarding copyright legislation.
It will only take a bit more brains, that's all. The pure pressure of the demand is going to drive the innovation in this "field". Already the trackers go underground, and with a bit of imagination you could see how easily the sites of today could be replaced by (invite-only) IRC channels. Not to mention that the actual distribution network, from rip to release, was NOT touched by MPAA so far, so instead of going after the cause, they try to destroy the effects.
The day where zombie XP machines will be used in tracker networks is not as far as you think. The chances of stopping that are practically nil. And after a few Joe (Clueless) User types are brought to "justice" (and aquitted),the whole system will fail.
Meanwhile, MPAA can bust their heads trying to find ways to stop networks like Freenet.
Just
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]
If they REALLY wanted to scare people this would have been better: D1Z S1Te was PWN3d Bi Da R1AA Cr3W!!! K33p Stealing Our Sh33t n U B3 n3Xt!!!
The MPAA's efforts to date have resulted in a 40 percent reduction in the number of servers that continue to operate.
this is from their press release. how can they possibly claim to have shut down 40% of the servers, when it is near impossible to gauge how many other bittorrent hubs are out there? One of the most incorrect claims i've ever seen.
**Prove** they have lost compensation . You cant.
You can only make assumptions that its a lost sale.. you can not prove intent of another person just because you "feel its that way".
If I say I wouldn't possess the media if it wasn't free, I mean it.. its not some excuse. And you are calling me a liar, which you have no facts to base that on. None. Zero. Zip.
So shut your face, moron.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
of those lame trophy pages that used to accompany hacked sites?? This site hacked by "C00l D00Dz" or as it seems we are approaching This site seized by "the MP44 G4NGST4Z"
Where are these BitTorrent servers located? The Internet is "virtual", but the MPAA raids are physical, in one country or another. Loki, SuprNova, others - in which countries are the MPAA moviecops raiding offices? MPAA claims to operate police in at least "Austria, Hong Kong, Finland, France and the Netherlands as movie industry cops". Which countries now retain their jurisdiction sovereignty, and which are now just muscle for the US adfotainment hegemony?
--
make install -not war
And the MPAA used HTML 4 TRANSITIONAL (LOOSE!) for the repl. scare page.
Hypocrites!!
BTW, is it obvious to anyone else that the person who dreamt up that page is a former hall monitor?
In other news, M.A.D.D. has successfully removed beer bottles and cans from store shelves in the Southeast US leaving the beer in place. They state that the containers "facilitate the illegal consumption of alcohol by minors".
Curiously, wine, and its containers, were left untouched...
lokitorrent's sister site for pr0n, http://www.mufftorrent.com/, has been displaying an SQL maintenance message since last night. I think this is somehow rleated to lokitorrent going offline (perhpas they shared an SQL database?) I wonder why the MPAA didn't claim a major victory for shutting down a porn torrent site? That said, is the porn industry, which makes billions of dollars a year, up in arms about file sharing?
Please ... think of the Godwins.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
the site gets defaced ;-)
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
It is also interesting to note that in France, a "delit", tort/offense/misdemeanour is not a crime. The notion of crime is limited to "Armed robbery, rape, murder, assassination and organisation of evil/wrong-doers (association de malfaiteurs).
Maybe one day, the music majors will try to attack p2p networks on the basis that all the participants is an association of wrong-doers and constitute a crime even though copyright violation itself isn't a crime...
Copyright violation doesn't even quality as theft. Next time, you see an advert or hear someone saying that "leeching MP3 is theft" or "Computer piracy is a crime", if you're in France or in a country with similar laws you should sue for "false advertising" and/or "slanderous/libellous accusations". (article 29 de la Loi de 1881).
Slanderous accusations can be punished with 45000 euros and 5 years of detention :) and moral
persons (corporations) may be banned to exercise the activity in which
the infraction occurred.
Again in France and probably all over Europe, if morons send you an e-mail saying you're a thief because you copied their stuff, they fall under non-public defamation and insult (R. 621-1 et R. 621-2 du Nouveau Code Pénal.)
You might have done something wrong but that doesn't give anyone the right to break the law (using a mantrap to catch a robber is punishable. )
gaius
These are the same suits who claim that movies with $300 million gross box office actually lost money, and then tried to defraud Stan Lee out the royalties for Spiderman, X-Men, etc. If I could I would bypass Hollywood altogether and put the royalties directly into the bank accounts of the people who deserve it.
If they'd just replaced the website with this, it would have been much funnier.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Get I2P. It is a totally anonymous network, but unlike Freenet, it supports the client-server model; and unlike Tor, it also anonymizes the servers! Everything is referred to by its cryptographic key, yet it supports any existing TCP service. People have already set up BitTorrent trackers on it (a modified version of the standard BT client is available for download within the network).
It won't be as fast as normal BT, of course, but it's still better than risking a lawsuit, eh?
(Keep in mind that one should NOT try to use regular Internet BitTorrent over a Tor proxy; it'll anonymize you, but they don't want people to use Tor for file-sharing because it requires too much bandwidth. So play nice.)
Signature.
... that in the previous week or two before Loki shut down, the donations has pretty much dried up (according to their counter)? That seems highly suspicious. It seems to me that the guy just held out until he wasn't getting any more money, then sold out.
Until we hear otherwise, that's what I'll believe.
-- Jinsaku
It appears their sister site is down as well. :(
Wake up.
the MPAA have got court orders giving them access to all of LokiTorrent's server logs and records...
One thing those logs will be good for is estimating which movies/music pieces are the most popular in the wild. It's one of the best surveys the movie and music industry could hope for. Raw popularity statistics, in enough numbers to be relevant, not tainted by any interests.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
I've started to just steal DVDs right from the store!
..is that WHY, oh why do these sites keep logs like this about their users? Basic anonymous statistics and logging of unusual activities like port scans are fine for me, but why did they log up/downloads that they knew to be illegal in many (most?) countries?
6 .html
What really bothers me is that even when they knew that the MPAA was coming to them and they started raising money to defend themselves why didn't they securely delete all the logs they had? Smells like a plea bargain or even something more rotten to me.. I hope I'm just too paranoid.
This wasn't the first time though, remember how Suprnova's logs were turned to MPAA too.
Also remember how Sharereactor also wanted donations and after raising $15k+ (and considerable ad revenue) it's owner simply vanished, the site was still shut down and nobody has heard from their donations since.
The only reasonable explanation that I've heard is that it's simply illegal to host a site without any logging in some countries. Similar sites in Sweden and Switzerland at least claim to have no logging whatsoever. Anyone know where Lokitorrent was physically hosted?
As a side note, here's a free tool to search for log files from EFF and an article at Ars Technica:
http://www.eff.org/osp/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050210-460
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"
Do people really not understand the point of view of the MPAA or even the RIAA when it comes to copyright infringement? I love that the ability exists for me to download movies or music for free, but in doing that I know that I am basically getting something free that I should have paid for. The plain and simple fact is that actors, artists, labels, producers, film studios and etc create and sell a product. Someone then takes that product and redistributes it for free so others do not have to pay the makers for it. This causes an impact to the makers profit (and yes I know that in most cases they severely buff up the impact and it is nowhere near a one to one ratio but it still is an impact). Just admit that what is happening is wrong and move on. If you get caught then you get caught and if the laws in your country are applicable then you may or may not get in trouble. Comparing what is going on here to fascism or the nazi's is ridiculous. If you wrote a book and started selling that book for X amount of money and then another person made an exact copy of that book and started giving it away for free you would pursue action as well. Simple fact: Copying and redistributing copyrighted material is illegal so don't whine about it when you get caught.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
In fact, that should be part of any web-site's privacy statement. What web-logs they keep, and how long they keep them.
IANAL, but I wonder about the legal theory of illegal logs. Consider the following:
1: Site says they don't keep logs after, say, 24-hours.
2: Site is eventually taken over by big company who doesn't like what they, or their visitors, have done.
3: Logs are "found".
4: User's are sued based on these "illegal" logs.
5: Who profits? If you are a user, can you have these logs destroyed as illegal? Thrown out for similar reasons? Can you sue for breach of contract?
Remember Direct TV. They've been extorting users of legal products because the got sales records of sites they didn't like.
The Internet will not be anonymous until no logs are kept.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This kind of attitude will eventually come back to haunt them.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Does it matter who uploaded the images? Maybe it was, say, lowkee. Who cares? What matters is who're speaking, and I'm pretty sure MPAA is the messenger here.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-piracy11feb1 1,1,1373904.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
(Registration required)
Apparently he got a $1 million fine from the MPAA according to the LA Times. But if he had a million bucks, he would have fought so like any figure above say $40,000 would just be there so the MPAA can beat their 800 pound gorilla chest and say "Who else wants a $1mill fine?"
I'm sure all the donators to the legal defence fund will like the comment by the lawyer.
Erhm, by the way, if any of you plan on running or are running bittorrent sites, please clear out your logs. Or better yet, don't have any.
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?
Don't post links to copyrighted media on your website.
Is it really that hard to understand?
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Hit the movie industry where it really hurts them--by picketing these big multiple theater cineplexes....
If it costs them money, they will stop it. Every bog city has a couple dozen of these huge cineplexes. They rake in HUGE dollars on the weekend. If you can somehow make a dent in that revenue stream, they will stop this.
I think you need a permit to picket in most cities, but it is doable.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Their HTML doesn't validate! What a bunch of amateurs.
Every big city has at least a dozen big cineplexes that take in MEGA dollars for the movie industry on weekends. Just get a permit to picket these cineplexes on weekends, walking out in front, carrying around signs about these hamfisted tactics, and if you can make a big enough dent, and get some PR, you can make them back off.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
-from "The World is Full of Crashing Bores," on the album You are the Quarry, brought to you by our good friends at RIAA.
A tracker site is easy to moderate to check for illegal content. It's hard to argue that the main purpose of Lokitorrent wasn't to distribute copyrighted material. How many of the torrents were for free files? 5, maybe 10%. The site was facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials without making efforts to stop it, when they could have easily been made (it's much less easy for decentralised P2P systems).
The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity.
Christ! "stifles creativity"? I didn't realize people have been downloading movies since the 50's. I mean how many rehashes of the same plot lines are there? not to mention remakes.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
As a community we have the power to stop the lawsuits. We have the power to stop the RIAA and the MPAA and other organizations using similar tactics.
The way we stop them is very simple. We, as a community, stop voilating their copyrights. You can make all the arguments about why it is ok for you to violate their copyrights (I wouldn't have bought it anyway, the quality of the movie sucks so why should I pay for it) but it is not ok.
It is not ok just like it is not ok to violate the LGPL because you happen to not like the terms of the agreement.
If it was a product that you had spent long hours and passion creating and you were trying to make a living off of it, how would you feel if people just ignored the fair price that you attached to your work and just started getting it for free? I know it bothers me when I see serial numbers for the game I worked long and hard on just posted on mailing lists. I feel like I have been stolen from.
You can download music for 99 cents a song these days or you can go out and buy the CD for $15. You can buy most movies for $5 to $20 on DVD. Those prices seem pretty fair in today's economy.
There may be injustice in the recording industry but the artists on those labels have signed agreemtns to be on those labels. The record companies didn't point guns at the artists and say: sign or else! Some artists even post free downloads of their music. Use your downloading power to support those artists. Download free music and short films, but just stop downloading things that the copyright holders do not want you to download.
I doubt my post will change anyone's mind about this but I couldn't sit and read any more of this without saying something.
The actions of the RIAA and the MPAA are the community's fault for not respecting the copyright holders wishes. The DMCA goes too far and may other laws do as well, but those laws would not be there had the community not forced them to try drastic measures to stop the rampant copyright infringement.
There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them.
Bittorrent link please?
Had I not read it from some reputable news sources, I would have just assumed that someone had taken over lokitorrent and was screwing with everyone.
If they want to put the fear of god into everyone, putting up a page that looks like the work of a 10 year old using Frontpage isn't the way to do it.
Chris Knight is my hero.
You want to find the torrents that are so underground that only the people who are on it know of it. The way to do that is to Network Network Network.
Underground=technical obscurity. The harder it is to logistically download something, the more underground it is. So, go with the solution that has been working for 30+ years: just use newsgroups or IRC.
<?php
$you = $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'];
$now = date('r');
mail("legal@mpaa.org","Got another one","$you - $now");
`echo $you - $now >> shitlist.txt`;
include("scarymessage.inc");
?>
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
The piece checksums in the .torrent file are derived from the content of the file(s) being shared.
.torrent file contains a derivative of an unauthorised derivative of a coyrighted work, and is therefore fair game.
The files being shared are in this case unauthorised derivative works of copyrighted material.
So the
Or at least, that's how I would read the law. I'm not a lawyer.
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
i shouldn't really reply to this but
"...C'mon, grow up! It's not a speeding ticket or a parking fine, it's copyright violation."
are you suggesting that file sharing is worse than speeding or parking in dangerous places, both which can be strongly argued as a risk to peoples lives? Compared to these, screwing major corporations out of a few dollars is absolutely meaningless, sort your analogies out. And from what i believe is having a more objective view than most americans of their political system, the government is heavily influenced by the corporations, you can't have a go at people for trying to stand up against them.
"all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
OK, MPAA blaa blaaa RIAA blaa blaa blaa...
Where can I go besides the Almighty Google to find new torrent sites?
The more perceptive readers will notice the opening I've created to argue about where true guilt lies. Is it the downloader who learned about the illegal torrent from their favorite search engine or is it the search engine itself?
Who's guilty? The man who bought a gun from a pawnshop or the pawnshop itself? How about the company that made the gun? What about the mining company that dug up the metal ore to make the metal that made the gun? Etc., etc., etc.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Pity the WASTE project was abandoned, BTW.
I know most of you don't use them but the news groups have everything you want.
I'm just wondering. Does /. keep log files of everyone's activity? What happens if the site gets busted one day for subversive, anti-corporate, anti-government thoughts? Will they go through all the log files and lock us all up?
Hmm.. Maybe I'll just post as an AC from now on through an anonomizier...
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Stealing movies leaves a trail. So does bribing Senators. One matters, one doesn't.
His fine is a horrifying $1,000,000.
1 fe b11,1,4749664.story?coll=la-headlines-technology
LAT:
>>The major Hollywood studios have drawn their first blood in court against a popular new type of online piracy, obtaining a $1-million judgment against a website that steered people to downloadable copies of bootlegged movies.>>
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-piracy1
Is that why all the fucking movies coming out now are remakes of old movies or crappy 70's TV shows? Damn you, file swappers! Damn you to Hell!
This is a meaningless post, but I have to say it anyways. This RIAA/MPAA bullshit is really making me angry.
For all of you that want a torrent tracker that will never go down due to legal pressure, visit piratebay (www.piratebay.org).
Ok, so I'm sure you have all.. or at least MOST of you have seen Braveheart. Just think, every time you download something that the MPAA says is illegal, you are doing what the scots did to the British. Turning around and mooning them, rubbing in the fact that what they hate the most, can and will never come to any sort of end.
now.. with no further adue, let the freedom of information proceed.
And as for the MPAA?
The harder you fight it, the faster it spreads.
Let's say you own a store that sells widgets. You've spent a lot of money developing these widgets, and people really like the widgets you sell. But somewhere along the way, Mr. BadGuy starts stealing your widgets on the way to the store.
Now let's say Mr. BadGuy sets up shop down the street from you, giving away your widgets (the stolen widgets) and most of the people who go into the store either know or should know the widgets are stolen.
What would you do? Would you want them shut down? Would you want a warning posted to Mr. BadGuy's customers letting them know they were buying stolen goods?
From TFW:
"The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity."
Oh boy. I can't wait 'til the MPAA go after the patent offices!
LokiTorrent listed itself for sale on the domain auction site Sedo back in January, so there's no shock that the site has had a "transition." They were down for eight hours yesterday, which was a sign that something was afoot. Curiously, the Sedo listing is still online. Is it still for sale? If it sells, who gets the money - the MPAA? Hmmmmm ....
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
I notice that this new MPAA run Lokitorrent site doesn't meet statutory minimum accessibility standards. Would any blind Americans over there care to do the honours, and take them to the cleaners?
if you want entertainment media, buy it, or acquire it through other means sanctioned by the copyright holder.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
In European countries there may be concepts that replicate part of the idea of "fair use" but not its totality.
I know here in Britain, what you can do with copyrighted material you do not own falls far short of what you can do in the U.S. under fair use exemptions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, in this case, I'm guessing even a true communist would be okay with torrents. I mean, they are the People's movies, no?
The same people who go to movie cineplexes are the same people who are on the Internet a lot. How about we organize a one-weekend boycott of movies: no going to the cineplex, no rentals, no pay per view for that weekend. Also picket that weekend.
If you can make a big enough dent in their revenue for that weekend, it will make them pay attention
eat shiat and bark at the moon
For you to call filesharing 'theft' is absurd and here is why: it would be the same as me getting fired and accusing my former employer of 'stealing' my potential future earnings from his company. You cannot steal potential things - only actual things. Bin Laden orchestrated a terror attack on Sept 11 that caused the stock markets to crash as well. He has been accused of many things, but has not been accused of 'theft' for the potential earnings people lost in the stock market during the aftermath.
Please think through your responses before posting.
According to the google cache he was putting the site up for sale.
whether you should obey laws that are obviously and blatantly stupid and wrong.I say break the law, and try to change it.If you horse dies stop beating it to get moving,instead get another horse In Tyler we trust...
With Havenco pretty much abandoning their "host what you want except kiddie porn" policy post-9/11, whos to say that they won't roll over if the **AAs come knocking?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
They can be easily spoofed and never 100% accurate. It's like saying a guy in a blue car robbed a store and arresting a guy driving the first blue car you see on the road. You just can't do it. You need to be completely specific of who the person was who robbed the store and also have the proof they did it. So unless they're busting down your doors and taking your movie collection while you're torrenting a movie I dont see how ANY of these lawsuits can ever win. IP Addresses are simply NOT ACCURATE to accuse people of crimes.
If you buy a Coke instead of a Pepsi, you just deprived Pepsi of a sale.
Bull. I didn't deprive them of anything. I made a choice favoring their competitor. They can't "lose" a sale they never made. They may be unhappy, but they should get over it.
I agree with your conclusions 100% in principle, but the example is no good as an analogy. I will give you one that is more applicable:
Buck Rogers builds a duplicative liquid synthesizing machine. Whenever you pour in a sample of any liquid, it can produce an unlimited quantity of that liquid for very low expense per unit of liquid.
Now I legally purchase an ounce of Pepsi, pour it into the machine, and cause the machine to produce 1000 gallons of a liquid which is indistinguishable from Pepsi. I drink some of the produced liquid, and sell the rest.
The question is, does Pepsi have a case against me? Obviously they do in US law, but I submit that they do not have a case in natural law. To tell me I cannot do what I just did is restraint of free human activity. I did not steal any physical material which they own, and if the law attempts to criminalize me for stealing some fiction in the form of "intellectual property", the law should be rethought.
My message to intellectual property law is "get over it". You have been overtaken by technology. Adapt or disappear.
new?
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
MPAA Agent: "What the hell? Looks like most of this traffic came from our network!"
Redundancy is good And also good.
I know, it's about something else.. but the meaning still applies..
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Sadly, it is perishing.. *shrug*
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Russia is the answer!
We need copyright to protect Linux and Open Source in general
Maybe we do if copyright is the law of the land, but we wouldn't if it wasn't. Some of us believe copyright laws are a bullying abomination, and not in accord with natural law.
I love the "Big Brother Is Watching You" feel to the page now. In fact, they should make that their new marketing campaign:
"Buy Our Products- Or Else"
Ok, had they just shut the site down, that's one thing.
But is the smart ass web page they put up *really* necessary? Do they really have to resort to the intimidation factors? All that seems to say is "Ha ha, we got one!"
I think that the "you can click but you can't hide" crap is really childish of them, but I guess we should expect no less.
Wait, if a film's being downloaded, then it's already been made... so surely all these thousands of people have already been paid?
and stifles creativity.
Hollywood's managed that all by itself without any help from downloaders!
You must think in Russian.
The problem with your suggestion is of course that putting the trackers and website in a safe haven is hardly any protection for those that decide to download the copyrighted material. In the end, although the distribution medium can be held liable, the same certainly holds true for the people that use the medium to violate copyright laws.
So, yes that would protect the trackers, but you certainly would still be open to lawsuits if you used that system to download copyrighted materials.
For many years Hollywood has taught us that stealing is okay just as long as you steal from bad guys.
In Ocean's Eleven, just like lots of Hollywood films, the moral of the story is that it's okay to commit armed robbery as long as you're stealing from a bigger crook than you. A crook like a casino or a mobster.
So how is a movie studio different from a mobster?
While I agree that the odds are high in some cases, my point was that you cant prove that any sales were lose.. You can only assume..
And assumption doesnt work well in the courts when its put to the test..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I need to start proof reading after spell check..
.. that's an improvement..
But at least I'm spell checking now
Lose=Lost
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That was incredibly stupid on Loki's part. So basically what they did was ask for a large amount of money from it's users who for some reason or another gave them some, then Loki turns around and rats on them and walks away with the money. Most likely since they "agreed" to turn over the logs (as opposed to being forced) they probably used them as part of a plea deal to get a lesser fine.
So who's going to donate to the next BitTorrent site that asks?
Work Safe Porn
Porn producers aren't members of the MPAA, so most people should be safe from prosecution.
I'm betting they can't.
What justifies the belief that because someone makes a lot of money they eventually reach a point where you (your defintion) consider them too wealthy, and so whatever they've worked hard on should become free?
What justifies the belief that because someone creates a work, nobody else should ever be allowed to build on it?
... because there are still other alternatives.
If the copyright owner says that you must pay a fee to own a copy of the work, but you don't pay the fee and make a copy anyway, then not only have you violated the copyright by making an unauthorized copy, but you have also deprived the copyright owner of his compensation for that copy.
So why is the scope of "that work" so large to the point where the copyright owner deserves a monopoly even on distantly derivative works, even subconsciously derivative works?
Try hooking up to cable without paying for it and try telling them that you're not stealing anything.
Difference is that with cable TV signal theft, you are actually changing the impedance of the signal and adding noise through generally substandard connectors.
Then you can make a lot of money!
* BDLC JD Certificate is for entertainment purposes only.
Yeah, right.
Your exactly right, copyright infringement is exactly what it is: copyright infringement; nothing more nothing less.
And for fucks sake, its not theft, get it though your heads you tossers!
If you want to sue us for IP theft under current law, fine. But don't sue us with this brave-new-world-potentially-lost-profits bullshit.
Copyright is dependent upon technology, it changes and molds around it (not visa versa as with DRM systems). Thus new technology is making old copyright law obsolete and in need of reform. However this bites the current **AA business model and Heaven forbid a business model having to change around technology. So instead, why not redefine IP infringement as a cultural-moral absolute wrong? Call it theft? Theft doesn't change with technology; theft is always theft and always wrong. And presto your monopoly is now static, and technology is now bending around copyright law (because its now theft). Our computers are now DRM laden. And little Susy is now a multi-national terrorist for committing potential economic terrorism against major United States corporate entities by potentially detriment of lost sales.
Clever bastards.
Just curious...the MPAA sued the guy, but their "takeover" page implies that there was a court order ordering the shutdown. Had things progressed that far or is the MPAA just stretching the truth to make themsevles look good?
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
The EU does not represent the "rest of the world", and "Only in the USA" isn't true anyway. Australia for example doesn't even have "fair use" rights at all. Read this article about how copying CDs you own to an iPod you own is not even legal there:
5 .s html
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/08/03.1
emailing all MPAA members until they have so many complaints they cannot use there email properly. Don't hide like the MPAA want you to, let them know how pissed off you are. you could even walk around with a 2' by 3' sheet of yellow card with anti-MPAA info on it for a day, I collected 300 signitures against my local starbucks this way.
I for one used Loki as a 'backup' system, my Ultima 9 cd is scratched and the torrent for it was incredible useful.
Don't forget that the MPAA are upto something far worse than shutting down deeplinking sites, DRM. DRM has the power to replace copyright laws with something even more draconian, a system where nothing ever gets into the public domain, if nothing else DRM is in breack of existing copyright laws if it doesn't implement a time-release escro system.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
[root@descartes /]# whois lokitorrent.com
...
.com, .org, .net, .biz,. us, and .info registrations, please visit:
[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.007names.com]
[Querying whois.007names.com]
[whois.007names.com]
WHOIS Server Release 1.0
Searching for lokitorrent.com
The Data in 007Names, Inc.'s WHOIS database is provided by 007Names, Inc. for
information purposes, and to assist persons in obtaining information about or
related to a domain name registration record. 007Names, Inc. does not guarantee
its accuracy. By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this Data
only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this Data to:
(1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited,
commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail (spam); or
(2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to 007Names, Inc.
(or its systems).
007Names, Inc. reserves the right to modify these terms at any time. By submitting
this query, you agree to abide by this policy.
For
http://www.007names.com
Registrant:
We bbSense
PO Box 7662
Portland, ME 04112
US
Domain Name: lokitorrent.com
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact, Technical Contact:
Webber, E admin@webbsense.com
WebbSense
PO Box 7662
Portland, ME 04112
US
Phone: +1.2077523481
Record expires on: 24-feb-2006
Record created on: 24-feb-2004
Record last updated on: 04-feb-2005
Domain Servers in listed order:
ns1.007names.net
ns2.007names.net
Do you like German cars?
To my knowledge the BPI have not taken much action on the basic downloader, it has/is currently taking on the newly growing business of pirated dvds (most of which are simply downloaded and converted). I think we are to media driven over here for the BPI to be as ruthless as the RIAA and MPAA, they couldn't stand the bad press as much, because the uk loves its piracy it seems. As for the fall of torrent sites and P2P in general, music and movies were being distributed before alot of these were popular and people got what they needed, assuming they knew how, prehaps thats the way it should stay, those with a basic knowledge rather than any tom dick and harry that can use a computer, jesus even 80 year old dead women can get their warez it seems ;)
N.B. I'm not 100% sure on the BPI situation, prehaps the media hasn't latched on as much as they have with the RIAA, hence why I haven't seen much.
I actually used that site to get a lot of stuff - but not stuff that was protected by law. Unfortunately people kept DLing music and movies, ruining another good source of arcana and public tv episodes.
Here's my beta 1.0email
To: matthew_grossman@mpaa.org
subject: Thankyou.
Thank-you for shutting down one of my most frequently used online backup sites www.lokitorrent.com.
You and your members have now permanently lost at least 2 paying customers with a collection of over 500DVDs to our name who used to frequently visit the cinima.
Well done, give yourself a pat on the back.
And yes I do have more than 500DvD's a few hundres computer games and an untold number of CD's.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft
But I HAVE legal authorization, I was doing it for time shifting!! How did fair use just drop out of the equation?
Bastards.
For the interested readers I would like to point at the EU Copyright Directive. Should have done it in the parent comment.
I based my conclusions on the Article 5, 2.(b) (fair use, for fair compensation consider the "copyright tax" built into the price of blank CDs) and Article 5, 1.(a) (word-for-word: "a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary").
I may agree with the latter one (1.(a)) being somewhat fuzzy about the implementation. Indeed, you can interpret the description as cache or proxy, but p2p as well. Bittorent leeching matches this description perfectly.
...temporary exclusive rights...
Thank you. I haven't laughed like that in days.
The thing other people forget (not the parent methinks) is that copyright isn't granted for the sole purpose of making the author money. Copyright is granted to promote the useful arts and sciences. Monetary gains are supposed to be an impetus for content creation, not the exclusive result of it. More importantly, making millions of dollars off a single work such an album only serves to undermine the perpetuation of the useful arts and sciences as the author loses some incentive to create more in order to achieve a reasonable standard of living.
Bottom line: when copyright ceases to serve creative purposes and begins to act solely as a tool of wealth generation (as many would argue it does in the case of the MPAA and RIAA), it ceases to be meaningful and should be ignored.
Fix the problems with copyright and you'll fix the problems with copyright infringement.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
How do we know that Ed Webber intended to take the donations and run with them? Just because he decided to give up instead of fighting a legal battle with the MPAA? Regardless of the legality or illegality of Loki Torrent, the MPAA has deep pockets and would have easily won a court case against him. It sounds to me that Webber just wised up and realized that.
But even if the call for donations was a fraud, I think he deserves that money. He provided an extremely valuable service to the entire internet. Millions of people downloaded free movies, commercial software, and cool games because Webber stuck his neck out. He knew what happened to other file sharing sites, yet he did it anyway. Whether he uses that money to pay off the RIAA or for a vacation in the Bahamas, I say more power to him.
"Why has the MPAA gone after them when they're not actually distributing any illegal content?"
Because when they go after uploaders everyone screams bloody murder that they're suing poor school girls and grannies. Even when they sue the right people it looks like some big corporation suing the little guy.
The only way the MPAA and RIAA can win is when they give consumers what they want, but they havn't realized this yet. For now I'd rather they go after the sites than individuals.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
if i had say an apple airport with my computer behind it, which mac address does the ISP see?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Those ass-gas-guzzling, cock-gobbling, goose-stepping Nazis!!! I was using loki to share my albums! MY albums - the work of my own brain - not someone else's "copyrighted work"... So, it seems when they say:
"There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them."...they are FULL OF SHIT! Being that I AM THE LEGAL OWNER OF THE WORK, DISTRIBUTION OF WHICH THEY HAVE JUST INTERRUPTED!!!!
Yes, allcaps, because I am SICK of these jackasses.
Feeling a little Cornholio right now. Furious!IT coming from within the industry. Mysterious forces on the interent are not creating movies before they're released into theatres, they're getting them from industry sources.
Perhaps the industry needs to take a good look inwards at it's greedy underbelly before simply demanding consumers fall into line?
Mr. Cheney is that you?
I would say you didn't get much facts correct, if any in your post.
>Ya see, many countries actually charge money in
>order to register a copyright. Yep, that's
>right --it's not automatic or free everywhere
>just because it is in the US. In fact, it wasn't
>alwasy the case in the US either.
Actually this is not the case. Most countries in the world (and that really IS most) have signed the Bern convention that recognises copyright automatically and do NOT require registration. It used to be that USA was in the minority before signing it when they required registration, not the other way arround.
>Besides which, the US is the only country in the
>world with a 70 year copyright. Most countries
>pass all works into the public domain after
>thirty years.
Typically copyright is not 70 years at all, it is lifetime plus X years (some countries have copyright from companies being just X years though. There is really not many countries (if any) that has just 30 years. I think the Bern convention, which most countries have signed up to, requires a minimum of life plus 50 for example.
>The US is clearly an extremist minority country
>when it comes to copyright, they're not even
>close to the norm.
They might be it in some cases, but most definately not when it comes to requiring registration or not and the length of copyright.
1) Maybe "Lowkee" had a secret deal with the MPAA to do this from the start -- as a way of harvesting torrent users' IP's, and to give a very public scare to the entire P2P community. 2) Exactly how many minutes/seconds/frames of a movie does the MPAA consider as a violation? I've never downloaded a movie, but I'm worried that the bit patterns in my college thesis text from 1989 may co-incidentally match part of a frame from "Dude Where's My Car?". I guess I'd better wipe my hard drive just to be on the safe side.
(a) a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or
(b) a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made, and which have no independent economic significance, shall be exempted from the reproduction right provided for in Article 2."
You are cutting away the first part of the article... This exception does not include p2p networks. It only applies to a temporary reproduction part of a global technological process. p2p is a mean by itself and not part of another mean of transmission. I understand that this may seem confusion or ambiguous to someone only reading the text, but you have to consider national laws existing before the directive (which only tends to unify national laws, not to replace them with something completely new!) as well as the interpretation made of texts by national jurisdictions.
As for Art. 5,2.(b), it's one of the cases (private use) I described before and the limitations I set apply. The directive is even more restrictive and adds the fair compensation aspect (which was unknown to some national laws before, like French law for instance).
Downloading in Canada is legal*... at least it is for music, so I would assume movies would fall under the same category.
* Well, it's not legal per say, but it isn't illegal either... it's sort of in some gray nether region at the moment.
infringement.
stealing is when some jerk steals one of your Xbox games.
copyright infringement is when you download that same game, burn it and play it on your modded Xbox.
oh btw those who are whining about the "poor artists"... poor artists are skinny white punk girls who go to art school and draw cats for a living. i'm sure ripping Ashlee Simpsons cd doesn't prevent her from buying whatever she wants.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
This is exactly the kind of thing I love.
The RIAA/MPAA have worked so hard to master the art of "The Fad", now their cumulative work over the past 50-odd years is biting them in the ass.
Think about it; Anyone remember the BackStreet Boys? How about the posters, toys, clothes, and the rest of that flood of crap that swallowed every retail outlet? All RIAA's doing.
Now, people have found a "Bigger, Better Deal" in P2P networks. "No more CD Exchange for me, it's all on P2P, and blank CD-Rs are less than a nickel a pop!"
The **IA cannot control the horde of consumers they've created, and all their billions cannot curb the tsunami-like tide.
When Lars of Metallica raised a shitfit over Napster, what happened? Napster died, others rose to fill its place. Some were born out of hate for Lars' hypocrisy, other for the hell of it.
The point is; It will not stop, it will not collapse. The **IA will either go broke fighting this, or they'll turn a SCO and use it as a business model (which I fear is what has already happened).
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
Obviously they do in US law, but I submit that they do not have a case in natural law.
Natural law?
Natural law goes like this: If you can get away with it without repercussions you find unacceptable, its legal.
Everthing else is just rules we make up so that we can stand to put up with having each other in close proximity.
Someone must be bitter that they got sold out.
Well, actually, in a way I agree with the statement that this is an expression of the will of the people. However, what that says to me is that the will of most people is that if something that they should have paid for can be had conveniently, for free, they will have it, and the law be damned.
That's sad but true and I am certainly not going to exempt myself from that group, but it is not something noble you should be striving to protect - saving your ability to obtain things without paying is NOT the cause you want to devote your energy to.
Why doesn't anyone around here see this?
.... the wise one, Batman incarnate, explain why in practically all legal systems theft and copyright infringment are punished by different laws?
If what you say was true, oh iluminted one, all the body of law regarding copyright infringement would not exist.
I want to remind you, oh Dear Leader, than when somebody commits copyright infringement by electronic means there is no taking of money as you portray since you can't probe that somebody that downloads something from the Internet would have bought the same thing, if the medium to get it illegaly did not exist. That is a bizarre idea of lost income that perpetuates the lie that an item not sold is an item stolen from you.
If you can't see beyond that falacy, you may be more than the Joker and less like Batman, dear Neo.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Theft is based in the legal principle of property, whereas copyright infringement is based on the legal principle of limited monopoly. The Constitution makes it very clear that this is not property, and that eventually the copyright holder will relinquish their monopoly for the good of the people. This muddling between theft and infringement on the part of the RIAA/MPAA is intentional.
For excellent further reading/listening on this subject, read Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture (ISBN: 1594200068), or listen to the oral arguments in Elred v. Ashcroft (audio link on the left side). I think Lessig makes some brilliant points, but he ultimate lost the battle because of the unfortunate shortsightedness of our founding fathers.
These payment systems exist. Or at least the infrastructure is there, and the sites are coming online. The issue is that you probably haven't run across much of the content, yet.
I know because for the past couple of years I've been working on distribution of a documentary about the culture of hardcore online PC gamers titled "Fraglimit Hit" (old trailer here).
I wasted the better part of this time trying to sell it through film festivals, online movie download sites, etc. For various reasons these channels just weren't a good fit. Then I started developing my own iTunes-like site.
Thankfully, I came across a P2P service that will handle payments for films downloaded by torrents. So I for one will miss the fact that these sites would help distribute my torrent, when it comes available later this month. Yeah, the sites enable unlawful copying, but my plan was to have these sites help distribution of my film.
It should be obvious, but I guess I have to tell you that most of the shit I download I would not pay to see. So no, nobody would be getting shit from me to watch something I wouldn't pay for, I would simply go without and nobody would get anything. Why these cabals don't simply study download data and try to figure out WHY a Trek fan won't pay $150 a season for Voyager is beyond me.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Think about this - some movie studio has the exclusive rights to publish and distribute a particular movie. Now, how do you suppose they would feel if I started my own publishing company, took a copy of their movie, and sold it to theaters in my area, undercutting their price. Or even GIVING IT AWAY for free.
That's pretty much what you're defending with your analogy, right? You're saying you have a RIGHT to DISTRIBUTE someone else's movie. Call me up the first time you publish a book. I'm going to undercut your publisher's sale price since I have the right to give everything away, after all.
But that does not mean you are correct.
I don't download anything illegaly, and go and buy religiously my CDs and DVDs second hand since I don't feel like feeding this beast that is the entertainmen industry, but I sustain that attacking people providing a tool is immoral.
If the rapacious entertainment industry were going for the scalps of the pople copying stuff (file sharere with farms of servers sharing thousend of illegal material) they would have my full support.
But they have gone against VCRs, MP3 players, DRM hackers, all whose yield legitimate technologies for legitimate (and illegal) purposes.
That is unnacceptable, no matter if you are a vulgar pirate or an outstanding citizen that crosses the streets always in the corners and help the old ladies to reach the other side.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Buck Rogers builds a duplicative liquid synthesizing machine. Whenever you pour in a sample of any liquid, it can produce an unlimited quantity of that liquid for very low expense per unit of liquid. Now I legally purchase an ounce of Pepsi, pour it into the machine, and cause the machine to produce 1000 gallons of a liquid which is indistinguishable from Pepsi. I drink some of the produced liquid, and sell the rest.
The difference between your analogy and p2p is that if you sell your liquid you are taking more sales away from Pepsi and probably making a profit. I believe a better analogy would be if you just bought the ounce from Pepsi and then just make your own whenever you are thirsty, or share it with your friends.
I do agree though, it is time for some serious changes to US Copyright law because the current model is getting ridiculous and screwing us comsumers. I cannot wait for these dinosaur organizations like the MPAA and RIAA to go extinct.
unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; find ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; fsck ; umount ; sleep
I just talked to SBC. After about 2 hours, I was able to get an answer: they do not log IP addys assigned to individuals. THey only keep subnet information. The SBC guy said that info is associated only with a large group of users (e.g., 100 users) that are assigned dynamic IPs for a particular subnet. He did not say how long they kept the subnet info.
I am not up on networking all that much, so what could RIAA/MPAA tell from that info if anything...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Is downloading shows illegal if you are not sharing them as well? Say for instance, I download a episode of South Park. I have cable, South Park comes on all the time, and say I missed a new episode and watched to watch it. Is that illegal?
Not that I care or anything, I'm just wondering how or why downloading something with your cable is not the same simply recording it off the TV. I mean, with the same wire, I cansstream South Park directly to my hard drive anyway using TV input.
The point is that you don't know if I would have paid for something if there were no means to obtaining it illegaly.
Given the amount of stuff some people copy it is an economic impossibility that they would have bougt all the same stuff otherwise.
This fallacy of depriving of earnings when commiting copyright infringement needs to be fought strongly. It is false, it is not true, it is propaganda ejaculated by the PR firms of companies that are taking away your most basic rights to benefiting from the creations of others.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Why don't the RIAA or MPAA just set up their own torrent site, and then capture information of people downloading from their site, and issue subpenas to them, and then say the RIAA or MPAA is trying to shut them down, ask for donations, and then put the threat on their torrent site that the only way not to get caught is to stop?
;)
That way they can collect $40,000 from the BT community, and then turn around and sue everyone who donated or downloaded from the site.
Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coaltrain couldn't have set a better trap!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
http://www.torrentstop.com/ also.
The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity. We make millions of dollars off of one movie alone, while you waste away trying to scrap up enough money for retirement. Actors get paid millions for any crappy movie that they star in. Yet, we want you to feel bad for us. We pay the actors exorbinent fees yet say downloading one movie, that you probably wouldn't buy anyway, keeps that key grip operator from feeding his family, while the star of the film bathes in caviar. Don't you feel bad now?
SIGFAULT
Take your pick. These may be the next targets of the MPAA or RIAA.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
If I was smart and I had some money I'd open a torrent site in one of these countries. Then again the MPAA might send their thugs to destroy my server.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I never once mentioned Hitler, and if you think that Naziism is equivalent to fascism you're just ignorant of history. Indeed, some brands explicitly repudiated Hitler's solution to the "Jewish Question." As an example, Carl Schmitt, who was considered the "crown jurist" of the Nazi party and fascist political theorist (See: The Concept of the Political or The Crisis in Parliamentary Democracy), became a pariah within the Nazi party because of his outspokenness on this issue.
Hitler may have been on the map in my original post, but by no means was I comparing the Holocaust to the MPAA shutting down some random torrent website. I just thought the image, you know, "YOU CAN CLICK BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE!" sounded fascist (not necessarily Nazi) to me.
In summary, chill out and maybe read a few books about fascism in the early 20th century.
I believe copyright infringment falls under the "taking of money" portion since you are, in effect, depriving the copyright holder of legitimate sales (money).
You cannot say that my failure to give something to them (money) is the same as taking money from them and then call it stealing. If you do use that rationale for calling copyright infringement "theft", then you have to cover your bases all around.
I mean, what if I decide that the movie probably sucks and then don't go see it at all. Is that stealing? Is that theft? I'm most certainly "depriving the copyright holder of legitimate sales" by not going to see his piece of shit movie.
The fact of the matter is that you cannot define "theft" or "steal" broad enough to cover copyright infringement. Even by your own definition, copyright infringement does not deprive the owner of the use or benefit of the thing being copied. They can continue to use and benefit from their movie all they please. I may not give them any money, but that's not the same thing as taking money from them. Hell, I may not see their movie and not give them any money that way either. Me not giving them money cannot possibly be construed as "theft" using any sane definition of the word.
Copyright is a TEMPORARY grant by the government to have exclusive use on a non-tangible item. You cannot "own" some series of words in a certain order, however the government will give you the exclusive, but TEMPORARY, right to be the only person allowed to make copies of those words in that order. They do this to promote more people putting words in a certain order. Now extend this book idea to other things, like music and movies and so forth. You cannot own the movie itself, you can only have a temporary right to copy it exclusively. Copyright infringement is a violation of that temporary right by somebody else. It is not theft, it is not stealing, it's a violation of the copyright holders temporary right that is granted to them by the government.
I grant you that copyright has been extended so many times that it's damn near equivalent to actual ownership at this point, but it's still not real ownership. It's not "property", no matter how you look at it. "Intellectual property" is a bullshit term with no basis in reality.
And what it really breaks down to is that I cannot possibly steal something from you when you don't actually own it. I can infinge upon your rights and copy it without your permission, but I can't steal it from you.
That's how it works. Calling it "theft" is a misunderstanding of fact, law, property, rights, and just general reality. It's only called "theft" in order to put that emotional bias into the phrasing. It's emotional manipulation and it should be rejected instantly as an attempt by the **AA's to influence you unduly.
It may not be right to commit copyright infringement, I grant you. But it's absolutely not right for copyright to extend for 95 years after the death of the author and so forth. The public domain exists for a reason, and copyright is limited for a reason. The sort of infringment you see is a backlash against that sort of insanity, I feel. Any given person may just want "free stuff", but at the same time they want that free stuff because they're getting screwed out of what is rightfully theirs too.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
How does this affect Muff Torrent?
Muff Torrent as of 1:44 pm EST:
Site is currently in Maintenance mode.
This is a temporary outage while we backup our SQL server, it will only last a few moments. Please check back then.
Thank you
(First comment by me lost, just said something like shame about lokitorrent)
1 1,1,1373904.story
(18:44:13) edwebber@yahoo.com: yeah, at least it brought it to peoples' attention, tho. i didn't get assraped for nothing
(18:44:29) edwebber@yahoo.com: well, let's hope..
(18:44:54) Finch: So how have you come out of this? Bad or as before with no torrent site?
(18:45:32) edwebber@yahoo.com: bad
(18:46:19) Finch: If you don't mind me asking how bad?
(18:46:40) edwebber@yahoo.com: gag order, can't say
(18:46:54) edwebber@yahoo.com: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-piracy11feb
nab a login from bugmenot.com
(18:46:57) edwebber@yahoo.com: that story says
(18:48:42) Finch: 1 mill? When is the next flight to russia then?
According to that article he's ordered to pay 1million dollars ti the mpaa, so i doubt he's come out better off like some have been suggesting.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
goddamn. now that is comedy!
Thanks to BitTorrent, I purchase more DVDs
Thanks to the MPAA, I buy them used...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
No . . . Copyright is a short term exclusive right to distribute
I know everybody here is saying this is semantic hair splitting but these legal distinctions are important.
Every big city has at least a dozen big cineplexes that take in MEGA dollars for the movie industry on weekends. Just get a permit to picket these cineplexes on weekends, walking out in front, carrying around signs about these hamfisted tactics, and if you can make a big enough dent, and get some PR, you can make them back off.
As for the timing of movie boycott weekend, we need a lead time of 1-3 months.
We CAN hurt their revenue, and we can prove that we can hurt them. The revenue for all movies are posted each day on the box office websites. We can start tracking weekend revenue, post those results on our movieboycott.com website, then choose a date for the movie boycott weekend, and start publicizing it.
Start posting all over the internet on boards and forums, with sigs like you have. And then start putting signs up on the freeways.
A big chunk of the movie industry revenue comes from about one dozen or so cineplexes in the largest cities in America.
On movieboycott.com, list the addresses of all these cineplexes. On movieboycott.com, ask people to post signs advertising movie boycott weekend near these cineplexes. Ask them to post on internet forums using the movie boycott weekend sig and link.
Then just before the movie boycott weekend, plan some sort of publicity stunt.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
America Wake up!! I know this could seem like a troll but its not.
Most European countries are free, free relative to the US. I'm from Ireland and it's seen as a backward developing country in other countries eyes. But I feel free there, which is more than I can say for when I'm in America. Our (Irish) governments gives us rights and stands up for them, not taking away rights and undermining other ones (like the American Gov.).
Rumour has it the Next step for the MPAA is to take the inventor of Bittorent "Bram Cohen" to court. This guy has never downloaded an illegal movie or piece of software.
They also have given notice to isohunt.com. This site acts like the Google for torrents searching. Do they have the right to shut that site down?
Can the MPAA outlaw a system that has legal application (ie. downloading a Linux Distro at 200kps +) and sue its inventor.
Just a quick word to the MPAA, Keep you dirty little hands away form Europe, we will fight you on the beaches!
You are cutting away the first part of the article... This exception does not include p2p networks. It only applies to a temporary reproduction part of a global technological process. p2p is a mean by itself and not part of another mean of transmission.
When using BitTorrent (the article was about the fate of LokiTorrent) to download a file, the sharing is essential for the process, but it is not the main purpose of it, at least not on the client's side. The client shares fragments of the file in order to obtain further fragments. The user's purpose is download not distribution, shares only as much as necessary. Once the entire file is received the client quits (more or less).
So the BT client's sharing is integral and essential part of a technological process. A BitTorrent client is about downloading, not sharing. To share a file using BitTorrent one has to do completely different actions than to download.
What impresses me is how eagerly the MPAA resorts to using fear and totalitarianism to dissuade potential movie downloaders. The MPAA's message is both a threat to the consumer and a warning that they are being watched. Furthermore, the threat is not that the US government will enforce the law and crack-down on the downloaders, but rather the Motion Picture Association itself intends to dispense vigilante justice to protect their business model. The use of the fascist red-white-and-black color scheme is also a nice touch.
Freedom Downtime was the only torrent I ever got from LokiTorrent, so I would like to see them send me a letter. (Freedom Downtime came with a note from 2600 encouraging free distribution of it)
Being a canuck, our courts have agreed that downloading stuff over the internet doesn't really violate any laws (sort of). What it means is that attempts by RIAA and the MPAA have failed due to Canada's strict privacy laws.
It also means that if you DL's stuff from Loki, and your a Canadian, MPAA will have 0.0000000% chance of coming after you. IP logs at our service providers are protected private information. Sucks to be MPAA - but then again, Canadian's aren't the biggest copyright violators on the planet, China is.
So as I sit back and download episode 12 of Battlestar Galactica from eXeem, I only wonder what is next for my American brothers down south.
I think MPAA is loosing this battle and better get on the bandwagon and offer their movies cheap like most music sites offer cheap quality songs.
It's 2005 MPAA, not 1955.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
From the site notice:
The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood
Dear MPAA,
I would like to meet one of the people you mention. Please provide name and address, or get in touch with me and I will provide my name and address, so that I can talk to this person who has been robbed of their livelyhood.
Someone really should sue these guys for libel.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The market decided that the latest Britney Spears album or whatever is worth $15. They offer something at a price AND PEOPLE BUY IT. How is that not a price which is determined by the market?
If I grew watermelons in my back yard and people were willing to shell out $100 for each one, then WHY IN THE LOVE OF FUCK would I sell them for $10 instead? That's like throwing money away. What's the point?
"The MPAA's efforts to date have resulted in a 40 percent reduction in the number of servers that continue to operate. One such site that will no longer exist is LokiTorrent--one of the largest BitTorrent host servers. The operator of that site, Edward Webber, agreed to not only pay a substantial settlement with even greater financial penalties for any further such actions, but by Court Order must provide the MPAA with access to and copies of all logs and server data related to his illegal BitTorrent activities, which will provide a roadmap to others who have used LokiTorrent to engage in illegal activities." So, there is a possibility that the MPAA will be going after people who used the website to download torrents. You can view the rest of the article here.
When they refilmed the Phantom Menace with a 'voiceover' ?
Really.
This is what I like about mininova, from their About:
Privacy statement Not that I can verify they actually do this, but it's at least nice to see they're thinking about it.I use torrents... but I don't deprive Hollywood of sales.
If I want to see a movie, and shell out the $25CDN to go see it with someone, then I go. Once I've seen it, I will almost never spend money on it again. I'm a movie buff, but not that much... I think I paid for all of the LotR:Extended, AniMatrix, and one other.
So is the MPAA losing money if I download, say, Catwoman, so I can stare at Halle's ass? [btw, don't bother, it's not worth the bandwidth]. I would never pay money to see it. Are they losing money if I download a movie I paid to see in theaters, but would never buy?
All of the above are questions for which everyone has a different answer.
However, Loki, and most others, link to something much more valuable for me.... TV shows. I don't have time to schedule my life around when Battlestar Galactica or Firefly is on. The TV stations get nothing from me, no eyeballs, nothing, because I'm never around to watch them. So if I download them so I can enjoy them, get hooked, perhaps even break down and buy the DVD set when it comes out... where is the harm there? Or if I download some BBC or Al-Jazeera programming that I can't get locally?
Yes, there are arguments on both sides as to whether downloading movies is right or not (although, strangely enough, no-one suggests that the Big Star give a bit of their 20M paycheque to that poor gaffer who will starve to death if you download his movie), but I feel perfectly justified in downloading TV shows that I can't see myself, and the fact that the MPAA can't see the difference gives me all the more reason to think they're a bunch of twats, and gives me more reason to not give them my money.
They want to talk about lost revenues? Ill-thought-out ideas like this, and silly stupid ads, and Gestapo-ish tactics, have taken me from going to the theater almost once a week, to, well, none since LotR:RotK. The only video rentals I've done have been on a bunch of freebies I got last year, and I don't have much intention of getting any more. I'm putting my money behind Bollywood, Indie films, or anything that doesn't have anything to do with the MPAA. The movie trade and production unions are stifling the industry, and I won't support it anymore.
So, I suppose the MPAA company car will have to drop from a Jag to a BMW. But that poor gaffer will still get the shaft.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
It's called 'opportunity cost'. There was the opportunity for them to make money, and it didn't happen... (from the buyers perspective it is at least)
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
> How about if people wantonly stole - yes, that's what it is, stealing - the products you or your employer made? Sure, your CEO would be out a Ferrari (or, more likely, Prius), but you would be out of a job. The same thing with the set designers, camera crew, studio IT people, etc... If the productions do not make enough money off either theatrical or home release, then studios scale back or shut down and people lose jobs.
The ethical arguments surrounding this issue stem from the definitions of the terms involved. There's a great deal of disagreement about your use of the word "stole", so saying "yes, that's what it is, stealing" doesn't make it so for those to whom "stealing" and "copyright infringement" do not equate. Also, your phrase "If the productions do not make enough money..." are up for grabs to those who think that studio executives skim intolerable amounts of cash off the profit margin, thereby making a movie that would turn a profit into a "losing proposition" because it doesn't earn enough to satisfy the executives.
Remember that your arguments base on assumptions that are not universal in this discussion, so you must address them or you might as well tell them that they mustn't pirate movies because the invisible pink unicorn disapproves.
Virg
Point 33 of the preliminary comments of the directive refers to browsing, caching and similiar technologies as implemented by intermediaries. I think this would be sufficient to conclude that the EU legislator did not intend to cover a technology like bittorrent to make any transfer of copyrighted material legal.
Loki never had a chance in court. What they do is illegal. What's ironic is all the posts on Slashdot saying that it's "copyright infringment" not "theft" when it comes to downloading movies they have no rights to have. Despite the fact that both are against the law so it's a pointless argument.
What Loki did wasn't theft either. Everybody willingly gave them money. It was a con. They didn't steal anybody's money.
So nobody has any real legal leg to stand on to demand the money that Loki is running off with, back. I wonder how many people gave large donations expecting it to be used to cover court costs and now the money is sitting in a personal bank account for use for whatever.
Chances are that the MPAA will never see a dime of the settlement. There are only certain things that can be seized to cover the settlement. OJ Simpson learned this after his conviction which is why he's able to play golf all day and live comfortably while not paying the settlement.
Work Safe Porn
Will someone please mod this up?
Thank you Nugget, for my new sig...
"The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity."
I would like to argue that stifling creativity is exactly what the MPAA are doing, as their recent behaviour has made me feel that there ought to be a mass boycotting of the very concept of Creativity if the proliferation into the minds of humanity of one's creations is going to be controlled in such a militant manner. (And if not a mass boycotting, I at the very least no longer wish to make anything for any MPAA affiliated houses)
The spirit of creation, I feel, is that something is created because it has to be (well, one part of it at least), not because the Creator expects some huge reward. Frequently praise is more than gratifying enough.
it's the taking apart that counts
> Nothing == NO THING
This is oversimplistic. Saying that a potential sale isn't a thing doesn't mean that it has no value. A share of stock isn't a thing, but it's still got worth. Companies sell sales leads all the time with no guarantee that they'll pan out, and people and companies buy them all the time, so someone considers potential sales to have value.
> Theft is taking something away from someone else without permission, depriving them of the use of it. They no longer have it.
The argument they make it that you've stolen a potential sale from them. Your statement does not invalidate the use of the word "theft" in this regard.
> Copyright violation is copying a protected work without permission. The original owner is not deprived of the use of said work, therefor, it is not theft.
Quite right. The force of law, however, is prepended on the idea that someone who infringes copyright like this is taking sales revenue. Whether that's right or not is a different case.
> If I had some magical device that allowed me to clone any physical object, and I used it to make a duplicate of your car for myself, have I stolen your car?
If you duplicated my car and gave it to someone I was trying to sell my car to, would they be as likely to buy my car? Now consider that "I" could be Ford Motor Company, and you came on to my factory lot and took copies of my cars. Are you implying that because I still have a bunch of cars, and there are a lot of possible car buyers that now don't need a car, that I haven't lost anything?
Virg
I was going to post your exact comment.
-ZA
So, just don't agree to such things that limit you. You don't HAVE to. If you don't, the copyright holder can't control it. Only in those cases the copyright give the copyright holder and exclusive right can they have control regardless of what you want to agree to or not.
> I'm sorry, what? Movies don't make money? Are you an idiot? Movies are making HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS!
Not to debate the profit margins on sales of DVDs, but he's not an idiot. There are many movies made each year that lose piles of money.
Carry on.
Virg
Boycott shitty CDs!
Boycott having your own DVDs!
Let these cocaine addicts find some other way to pamper their lewd lifestyle.
He should have charges filed for website defacement.
I'm not interesting in hearing the MPAA and RIAA's Mantra about what's ethical and what's not? 1.Is it ethical to deprive independant artists of a tool to share their work? 2.Is it ethical to DDoS File Sharing Networks? 3.Is it ethical to sue a 12 year old girl who lives in the projects? 4.Is it ethical to sue for $20,000 per song even though each song itself is only worth about a dollar? (And probably more per movie) 5.Is it ethical to pollute file sharing networks with bogus files and viri?
And yet you Americans seem to keep letting your bought off politicians pass bills like the DMCA. Don't represent your wishes? Then do something about it. What really worrys me, is that they truly do represent the misled views of most of your nation. It's just not that obvious on Slash, because, well... I think our educated, open-minded, tech bias is pretty obvious.
As I reported on isoHunt.com and from the sources, Lokitorrent has been shutdown by US court order. The scandal surrounding its owner "taking the community's donations and ran" aside, this sets a bad precedent as Loki should qualify for OSP Safe Harbor under the DMCA. I don't know what exactly was the settlement between Loki and the MPAA, but my question for you is: how many hoops of links (.torrent should be considered a link) you have to jump through the internet, before it's not considered contributory infringement? With the historic example of the Universal vs. Betamax case and the resulting profitable home video business, what are possible business models the MPAA/RIAA can use to harness P2P as the next generation distribution channel? As I run the largest BitTorrent search engine around and was hit by MPAA's letters, this is of some personal concern to me.
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
Nice try, but there is no such thing as "copyrighted worldwide" and there's a very good reason --$$$s.
Ya see, many countries actually charge money in order to register a copyright. Yep, that's right --it's not automatic or free everywhere just because it is in the US. In fact, it wasn't alwasy the case in the US either.
That, Mr. President, turns out not to be the case. Iff by "many" you mean "the countries other than Elbonia not appearing on this list" http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38a.pdf , then *maybe* you're right. No, not even then.
All signatories to the 1985 Berne Convention agree that copyrights are automatic. Any work authored in any of the signatory countries is *poof* copyrighted in *all* signatory countries.
Yes, even *CHINA* is on the list. Your argument doesn't fly.
Trolling AC.
it seems like a terrible hassle. Also, it gives anyone your IP. Also, you have to upload to download. Downloading is not what gets you in trouble--uploading is. THat is the main reason I never used bittorrent.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Australia has an annoying anti-piracy ad they play before movies aswell (available here). Apparently, because we wouldn't steal a car, or a television, we shouldn't be downloading movies :P
There must be a bittorent directory site project, which is all legal, and is packaged so that as one person gets shut down n more can open up their sites where n > 1.
Is there a limit to the number of bittorent directories. purely marketing I suppose but there will always be a top 5 sites to search, they cant sue everyone.
Actually just a web page with the current top bittorent directory sites would make the changeover as sites shut so much easier.
Just my 2 euro cent.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
You, my friend, know where it's at.
Here's what I've got to say about this: copyright infingement is bad. In most ways, it is as bad as theft because in most situations, you are not paying for something you would have paid for (as the grandparent said). I really can't see why someone would complain about the MPAA cracking down on a crime.
That being said, movies (and music) are being sold at annoyingly high prices, and, illegal or not, it's going to be difficult for MPAA and RIAA to catch up with new file-sharing technologies.
The upside to this is that most good musicians play music because they like music. So, say the music industry cumbled down. No disaster. People who actually enjoy making music will continue to create and distribute it, and surely at least some people who enjoy the music would donate to these people to encourage them to keep making music.
MPAA is a bit different. It's hard to make a good movie without a decent budget. But, there is an upside: all those celebrities (which I personally hate) would stop making millions, which I'd enjoy watching very much. I can't be sure how good movies would be without *ahem* forced payment, but keep in mind that some people will pay just for the sake of going to a theatre. Sustainable? We'll see. If the movie industry crumbles down, something good should follow.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
I thing a big part of the problem is apathy. No one cares what the government is doing so long as it's not stepping on them.
We invaded a country under the pretenses of self defense against a madman with WMD. A few months later it turns out he didn't have them. Did this hurt the president's reputation in anyway? Only to the people that already hated him. Most people didn't care. In fact, the majority thought he was good enough to relect...
The RIAA and MPAA are suing the hell out of people downloading their material even though they're content with letting people selling bootlegs of their product(which is actually stealing money from them). Do people make a big fuss about this waste of the court system? Only to the people who already have grudges against the MPAA/RIAA. The majority people don't care...
A substanial portion of americans (of all classes) use recreational drugs despite their illegality, especially Marijuana which is less harmful than the legal alternative of cigarettes or alcohol. Yet the people jailed for these crimes are mostly lower class. Furthermore, the "war on drugs" benefits both sides such that neither really would want it to end. The DEA people have nice government jobs and the drug cartels benefit from selling their product at black market prices. The only people that really get hurt are the small dealers or users who don't have the money to defend themselves in court. Do people care that a huge portion of their tax money is spent housing non-violent criminals? The only people who do are the same drug de-criminalization advocates who've been around for a while. The majority of people either don't take part in illegal recreational drugs enough(or at all) to care about this problem because it doesn't step on them.
People being jailed for insane amounts of time for dealing drugs? People getting killed by bombs we bought? People being sued for ludicrous amounts of money for "damages"? The majority of people in this country do not care about anything outside the scope of their own lives.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
Now the other two people who care about license garbage can through you a party!
The rest of us are just sick of Adobe's software patents and rediculously high prices.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Can anyone explain this. It makes NO sense at all. They are not entitled to control of his domain name and or the servers. Logs, maybe, fines maybe. But how can the MPAA assume control over the domain? Anyone?
The core problem we are dealing with here is quite simple. It is the erosion of something, though not of moral values (often claimed as such). What it's an erosion of, is respect for the law.
But unfortunately for the lawgivers and enforcers, it's an erosion that is completely understandable and predictable. In this new information society, it has become considerably more difficult, (read: virtually impossible) to hide government conflict-of-interest from the populace. The public has become more and more aware of corporate influence on government, agencies like the FDA, EPA and many others that are supposed to oversee industries that they are in fact, completely manipulated by, elections that give individuals the choice between two corporate shills that are only able to differentiate themselves to the people on how to deal with external threats, hoping it will distract us from the incessant internal abuses their parties are mostly responsible for.
Government and corporate abuse abounds, and except for a few cases is rewarded far more often than punished. You REALLY have to mess up big time to ever get caught doing something you shouldn't have in the corporate environment-- there's so many good places to hide the funny business-- and the Cayman Islands actually isn't a bad place to visit, too bad you never really even have to go there. Backed by corporate money, committing massive mistakes and abuses, governments are putting the squeeze on the people but are too greedy to care or too in denial to realize, that many of those people have become well aware of it.
So rather than face the real problem, corporations and government make it worse by attempting to deal with the disrespect for the laws by passing more laws which simply fosters even more disrespect.
Until a government pandering to corporations cleans up its act, it will never regain the lost respect of the populace. The more of them it tries to lock up or otherwise penalize, the less respect they garner. As usual, business entities like the MPAA and RIAA are being short-term smart and long-term foolish, making their stockholders feel they are working on the piracy problem, and using it as an excuse to further take advantage of their creative talent, while at the same time actually making it worse for all of them over the long term (someone else will be CEO/Chairman/Pres by that time, so what do I care...).
Given all that, why should someone feel even the slightest bit guilty about copying digital transmissions? Hasn't the line been now crossed well over selective prosecution and become selective persecution in the MPAA tirades? Well of course it has. Sure, generally two wrongs don't make a right, but when you keep being taken advantage of left and right even when you do the right things, it's pretty natural to lose faith in ideals such as that, and welcome the subtle ways to fight back.
You think it's an illegal copy?
bash$
not like you would want to use it though. http://www.lokiitorrent.com
Would be nice to let MPAA know that people can voice their opinions and still sign with their real names. Please, be gentle and reasonable.
(Sorry if redundant)
Here's what I want to know: Is downloading a torrent of a TV show off of a free network considered legal? Is this legally the same as if you had recorded to the show to your VCR/DVD?
It says very clearly, "Illegal Downloading. Inappropriate for all ages." and "There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them."
But damn it, I can't find any of this illegal content on there! Just to screw them over, I downloaded all the images from the page, several times. Take that!
There's a general fascist aesthetic just as there is a general communist aesthetic -- you know, workers toiling in simple clothes, or a fearless leader pointing off into the distance with a clenched jaw, stuff like that. Confusing a fascist aesthetic for a Nazi one is just endemic of the same issue, viz., people not understanding fascism and especially conflating fascism and Naziism. The fact the fascists in general focus on collective identity means they're going to share a similar aesthetic, e.g., Mussolini's "Black Shirts" and the black shirts of the SS, or the brown shirts of the SA. Yes, this general look-and-feel, so to speak, most people associate with Naziism because, well, most people who didn't live in the early 20th century aren't familiar with fascism beyond those pictures of SS troops they see in history books.
So, tra la la.
You left out group 4. Those of us who own hundreds or thousands of legal movies and who get very pissed off when somebody tries to tell us what we can or can't do with what we have purchased.
I'm tempted to burn off a few thousand copies and start walking up and down the street passing them out for free as part of my 'fuck the RIAA/MPAA' protest.
Anybody interested in joining in? We should organize a day. December 16 (Boston Tea Party) might be a good day. To bad it's so far away. Could do it twice a year. June 16th and December 16th. Each local group should copy 1,773 DVDs and CDs and pass them out for free on those dates.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Just so you don't think I'm crazy, here's a list of "shirts":
Blackshirts - Italian fascist paramilitary and Nazi SS, Oswald Mosley's "British Union of Fascists" in the UK
Brownshirts - Nazi SA
Blueshirts - Eoin O'Duffy's ACA (Irish fascists)
Silvershirts - William Pelley's SLA (American fascists)
Greenshirts - Plinio Salgado, a Brazilian fascist
Not all of these were actually called "blahshirts," but, in general, fascists seem to identify using distinctive colors and clothing (don't ask me why). But most people are only familiar with "Brownshirts" and "Blackshirts," so, you know, sue me if that's what I used.
The average human life can be worth as little as $50k in settlement.
$2-4 million is only for a primary breadwinner, and taking into account their future earnings and the fact that they have children.
$100k was a fair sum that would be settled at for a negligent death in an auto accident, for instance.
I'm not suggesting you die to test this out, but you can rest assured that if you have dollarsigns in your eyes over a death through negligence, you're incorrect. It's actually much more expensive for an insurer to settle with a brain damage case than a death.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Yes, progressive taxation should be used to limit incomes.
Also, we need to aggressively seek out rich and powerful people that have used their position to exploit less powerful people, and try and imprison them (or possibly even execute them).
I am serious. I am a human, not an animal. What is happening in human society is just animal behavior, where the powerful dominate the less powerful. I think the less powerful should rise up and persecute and even execute the powerful on a regular basis.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I mean, there is only so many tens of thousands of people you can sue and ruin their life for a petty crime like copyright infringement. When will we start seeing people physically attacking the large corporate structures that control us and own us?
Meh.
It's a brilliant remark you made about humans wanting something for free. You just haven't taken it to it's logical conclusion.
Why shouldn't it be free? I dare you to really offer free laptops on the street in real life. You won't, because laptops are expensive (since you can't copy them). However, mp3s are cheap, extremely cheap. You can offer free mp3s, no problem, just create a few copies! So why shouldn't you be allowed to?
The popularity of sites like Lokitorrent are an expression of the will of the people.
It is, and they want mp3s to be free. So what if it's an ancient human desire? Doesn't that just make it more justifiable? We can make mp3s free, we just for some reason won't. That's what his post was about.
See it why it was insightful now?
from what I heard the new tactic will be to introduce new laws, specifically joining WIPO. How those new laws will coexist with the levy is up for debate I guess...
Actually, the recipe for Pepsi (and many commercial food products) is a trade secret. That means it is not illegal for anyone to make Pepsi, it's just that no one except Pepsi actually knows how do it. If you somehow manage to make a liquid that tastes exactly like Pepsi, there is nothing Pepsi Co can do about it.
Not that I think Pepsi would really care. They have the name brand, the advertising budget, and the exclusive contracts. Even if you sold a beverage that was indistinguishable, you would still be a small third party that neither Pepsi or Coke would lose any sleep over.
Their are a few questions that arize out of this lawsuit, and site shutting down. I honestly, am a collector. I collect data. Most of which I have never used, seem, or done anything with. Call it something to do. I like to collect software that performs a specific task, try a few of them out, and if one is what I am looking for, I buy it. With sites like this closeing down, who do you trust? How do you find out about a product (or movie, or band)? Are you going to rely on somone else's opinion? Their experiances? Some big web sites review of a product that has been bought by that products owner/ dealer/ manufacturer and skewed in their favor against the competition?
Without sites like this you might never get a chance to try out xyz product that does exactly what you want it to do, you will have to buy zyx because it is the one some webmaster some place got sent to him from the vendor to try out, so he gave it a favorable review. Even if zyx isn't what you need, it is what you need only backwards.
If I go to the toy store, I get to play with ALL of the toys there. If their is a cool light up bouncy ball, I get to bounce it. And evntually find out, that the light up ball sucks, it doens't bounce nearly as well as the glow in the dark, which actually works better, and stays lit up, so after I throw the ball in the dark, I actually have a chance of finding it, and I can see it before it slame me in the face breaking my front few teeth.
Also, where will technology like this go? The distribution of movies on a digital medium over the net has driven technology into a new age. To the point that we have a wonderful balance of quality and size. Just imagine if Cable companies stoped using mpeg2 compressions for their cable feeds, and started using a more efficient meduim such as Xvid, DivX, or something similar. The bandwith requirements of cable broadcasts would be reduced significantly. And what does this mean to us? Cable only has a certain frequency range alotted to them. Which makes their technology limited, and very reliant upon technology. Which is where digital cable comes into play. Digital cables uses the same cable, sane frequincy's only modulates them differently, and uses a digital carrier instead of analog. Which in turn means that you don't get one channel every 6 mhz block, but you get up to 40, depending on the quality of broadcast. Now, imagine if they were able to move from mpeg 2 compression to something more efficient that was a byproduct of the "illegal" file shareing market. Now, we can fit 120 video feeds on this one 6mhz channel. Now the cable company is able ot offer more, they make more money, it is more cost efficient, and are able to offer more channels that make the Movie Industry more money. Not to mention freeing up more bandwith for cable modem use.
Good things tend to come out of the underground at times. Products are created, and new products are dicovered. If you are browsin the net, and come across a new compression scheme, that compresses to a density of 25% more than say WinZIP. And you decide you like this new format, you start distributeing files in this format. People looking at your downloads then are forced into looking at this new technology that you seem to like, and try it out. This this other little company is born, and sprouts into somthing bigger because they put forth the time and effort to make a new, and better product. They become known for their product, and build an empire out of offering a superior product.
This is getting long, so I will try and end it with this. I do not want to browse an internet that is nothing but a coporate empire. If I am looking for something that is Adobe, I don't want to have to go to Adobe's site to look for it. If I want to check reviews on a movie, I don't want to go to blockbuster, or the producers web site to check it out. Imagine if the internet was nothing more than a link to a manual on xyz product, and that is what you were limited to. This "tool" would be reduc
"I couldn't give him (Bill Gates) advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology." Linus Torvalds
You know I hate the RIAA and MPAA so much I just don't buy music or movies from them. Hell I don't even go to movie theaters! Besides the freakin 20-30 minutes of must see commercials, the movie quality these days suck. I still believe nothing beats a good book or a live performance on stage.
I have an imagination that no computer can compete with.
I hate watching a guy get blown' up, kicked around, and drown-just so he can come back in five minutes like nothing happened.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
for every site they take down 4 more pop up. not to metion you dont need a website to find a torrent. we will just move deeper underground. for every p2p app they destory 10 more show up. when will these dam companys get the idea they cant stop file sharing. you cant sue everyone in the world wile you can try it will not stop anyone they just make more poeple join the world of sharing.
I don't know if I'm out of line here - but it seems to me that it isn't a private entity that should be disseminating information on a site shut down by a court order... It's really sick to see private companies jamming this down our throats when its supported by our own government. If it's that important, they should be saying it themselves, otherwise, crap similar to what was on Lokitorrent.com should be STRICTLY prohibited if the courts are involved in any way.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134349&cid=112 15037/
lokitorrent source is:
mpaa.org pages don't have a doctype specified. Not a smoking gun, but more evidence that smothing smells fishy.
er, the DTD is specified (transitional). /. strips it out. Point is, the lokitorrent page format is very different from the kind of html on mpaa.org pages.
From Dowling vs. United States
"Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud."
That's the exact reason http://www.thepiratebay.com/ is still around
You might also check out http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/ for several legal threat against Pirate Bay and the responses... quite a good laugh.
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
"i'm sure ripping Ashlee Simpsons cd doesn't prevent her from buying whatever she wants."
Well, she still can't afford to spell her name properly, Mr. Smart Guy.
The MPAA and RIAA are claiming that they're losing billions of dollars on copyright infringement.
here's my response. Bollux.
Why do I say that?
This is just a guesstimate, but I would venture to say that 75-90% of the people who download files are downloading them for personal use. This is akin to taping a movie from television on your VCR, borrowing a record from a friend and taping it, (you guys *do* know what records are right?)...borrowing a book from a library...(and there are some libraries that lend software while we're on the subject.)
The point is, generally the people that download these things, (movies, music, software, etc. etc.) Weren't going to buy the media ANYWAY. The recording/movie/software industry are basing their figures on a fictition figure based on revenue that they would've gained had all those people that downloaded the media illegally actually purchased the product. In this case $19.99(X)(NOT=)Y for the reason I mentioned above.
Second, it's rediculous to expect Joe Blow to pay $259 for a software title he's going to use once or twice for personal use. Say Adobe Photoshop. (yes there are alternatives out there that are freely available, that's a dead horse, let's not beat it.) Generally these are people that wouldn't be exposed to this kind of software if they didn't download it for free and play with it. Then Joe Blow might discover, "Hey I'm pretty good at this stuff."...and buys a few books to learn about it. Next thing you know, Joe Blow has a graphic design company, and he actually BUYS his copies for the business.
Movies: This is a touchy subject. Fred buy most of his movies on DVD. However, there is one particular movie he *thinks* might be good, but as is popular with most movie advertising they only show you the highpoints in the trailers, and the rest of the movie might blow dog. Fred downloads the movie to see if it's worth owning, or even if it's worth experiencing the film in the theatre for the full effect. (some people are purists and would do that.)
Music: Jane likes a particular band's song on the radio. Is it fair to ask Jane to buy an entire album for one song? The rest of the songs might suck. Conversely, she might like all the songs and decide to go out and buy the album.I know, I've done it.
Look at Microsoft. Microsoft wouldn't be the OS powerhouse that it is today if it weren't for software piracy. Think back in the early 90's. Who actually went out and purchased a copy of DOS 3.2? Not many. Windows 3.1 same deal. Even 95, a lot of people just borrowed the CD from work, or from the IT guy in the office. This allowed Microsoft to become the defacto standard in the home and office desktop market. That's not to say they wouldn't have without piracy, but it sure as hell didn't hurt them one bit.
All I'm not saying that piracy isn't wrong. However what I am saying is that not all piracy is bad, and by organizations and companies tightning their grip, the more people will resist and slip thru their fingers if only to spite them.
discuss
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Would everyone changing ISPS screw their IP to user matching? At least it would make it that much more effort for them to find you.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The main point here is "facilitation". It's not so much that the torrent files themselves are infringing upon the copyrights, but rather the act of offering the torrents for download facilitates the act of copyright infringement - that is what's got the **AA's panties in a bunch.
I'm not saying that I condone the MPAA's actions nor do I believe that filesharers in any format are on the side of the law - though I will say that I am enraged that making a copy of something is a bigger offense than outright stealing it, and that I think that a lot of people who do this are to some degree engaging in civil disobedience.
My stepmother has had a sexual harassment suit going for about two years now. It has probably another year to go before she gets a judgement. This has cost a substantial ammount of money on her part to keep it going. Her former employer hired a known harasser who, surprise, surprise was up to the same old tricks when he got the job where she worked. And when I say known I mean there were several articles written in newspapers about this guy, articles the employer knew about before they hired him. Yet here we are two years later and the case is still snailing its way through the legal system. But stop the presses! Someone is helping people deprive a multi-gazillion dollar industry with more money then God and more profits then it's ever seen before of a few more bucks! Call out the national guard! ... wait, they're elsewhere. Uh... get them a judgement in a few weeks!
I'm am truely disgusted to be an American now days. Screw the people. Screw social responsibility. All bow down before the Gods of Profit, Greed, and Capitalism.
You guys need to Read this one!! http://www.torrent-news.com/archives/rumor_mill/00 0055.php/
If Ed Webber is guilty of committing fraud, knowingly taken donations for a legal battle he knew he was not going to undertake, then can't the MPAA be indicted as well for profiting from the illegal actions of Mr. Webber? This could be a HUGE legal backfire for the MPAA and could be a major step towards stopping their Nazi-like rampage against Bittorrent. Is there anyone out there who donated that is or knows a lawyer that could look into it??
DarkGeek
There's already a parody of the LokiTorrent shutdown.
www.shutdownthis.com
I can't but feel angry and profoundly disgusted about the menacing notice the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) left on the once lively and cooperative community website Lokitorrent.com. It isn't the oficial result the law brought for this case what matters, if they think "community site" is a deceptive definition for a file sharing hostsite, it is TO THE COMMUNITY THEY IGNORE that the ultimatum has been addressed. That is as clear as spectacular and sensational they wanted it to be.
It is not to discuss the nature of p2p file sharing but the methods of lobbies.
Not to just shutdown the site but to occupy it and spread paranoia. Isn't it a typical totalitarian modus operandi?
They even demonstrate ironic as well as authoritarian resources.
I see it as an extrajudicial abuse, offlimits and beyond responsibilities and factual legal rights.
I see this procedure as not surprisingly intimate related with the present USA "way of policy" and global decadence of representative democratic institutionalization.
Fear and menace isn't the language of justice, it can't be or else we are already admitting and agreeing on the actual violence serfdom modern society is. If force is an auxiliary mean, not the way, then justice must argue and rely primary on rationality and civilization, not raw or media propaganda coercion. We all know how the actual mechanics of Power are, but besides it, the rhetoric of legality should be educated at least not decisively prepotent. Because legality is supposed to be the basis of civilised behaviour, superior to basic despotism reasons.
I, netizen, citizen of the world, condemn totalitarian language, be it stalinist, fascist or freemarket. It is a shame and a danger for us all that corporate interests can act in such manner under the shadow of legality.
unanonymous user
> That's not being lost as a result of the copy.
If I built the car toward the idea of selling it to recoup the money spent and make a profit, and then had the market removed after I spent the money to build it, then I've sunk money into a product I can no longer sell, that I wouldn't have made in the first place if there was no market to sell it. The concept that I'm stuck with unsellable inventory (which represents a cost to me) doesn't seem to occur to you.
To extend this to a movie, if I make a movie and then release it on DVD with the idea that the sales of DVDs will help recoup the cost of the movie and earn profit, and then illegal copies cut into the number of DVDs I can sell, then I might not have sunk the cost of making the film in the first place. Having already spent the money, having the sales market saturated with illegal copies can make me lose money, in that I might have made the film more cheaply (or not at all) if I'd not had as big a market to sell to.
Virg
Um, the term "popular" is used to describe movies that turn a big profit due to ticket sales, so that's like saying "name a profitable movie that wasn't profitable". Still, that's not relevant to the point the OP made. He said:This simply isn't true. There are very, very few films that make "hundreds of millions", and movies don't "tend to break even" in the box office. They tend to do very well, or very badly, but rare is the film that lands very near its production costs in box office receipts.
> That's not to say that there aren't plenty of movies out there that do lose piles of money. Probably because those movies suck. Just because a movie studio invests millions in a movie does not mean they are entitled to a profit.
Whether the movie sucks or not isn't the issue here. His implication that movies break even in the box office is at issue. "Gigli" didn't break even at the box office, and it didn't sell well in the aftermarket either. "Titanic" did very well in both venues.
Remember, my original post was entitled "Point of Note" and was only intended to address the error in his assumptions about profits in movies. Don't overextend it.
Virg
> But following that logic, if tommorrow people stopped buying cars/dvds, they are taking money from you.
That's not a good analogy. The market disappearing due to a drop in demand across the market is not the same as someone deliberately saturating a market so that demand drops off. In the saturation case, if you didn't copy my cars, I'd be able to sell them. In the demand shift, if you didn't copy my cars, I still couldn't sell them. The wrong happens when your action directly and negatively impacts my ability to sell, where the absence of your copying would not result in negative impact (and remember that we're discussing replication, not direct competition, which is on an entirely different level of ethics).
Virg