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."

Comments

check out lowkee's YAHOO profile

[SilveRo_kun]

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 =)

Re:check out lowkee's YAHOO profile

[XorNand]

They actually took in closer to $70k.

I long predicted this, for obvious reasons. Loki succeeded in getting a lot of naive idealists rallied around the call to "fight the Man". People donated thinking that they'd have ring-side seats to an exciting legal battle. It was all bullshit... Of course it was. There was absolutely zero change of them successfully defending themselves, based on mountains of preceding case law. If you were sitting on $70k in real cash (not just discussing a hypothetical situation on the semi-anonymous Intraweb), would you really flush it down the toliet? Even if you met with several lawyers who told you to expect the exact same outcome?

I'm sorry, but this outcome was obvious to any rational observer. It saddened me to see Loki take advantage of their users like that. But, it also enraged me to see them actually monetarily profit from distributing software that was not within their rights to sell.

What I want to know...

[Vann_v2]

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.

Death by Litigation

[slusich]

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.

Re:Death by Litigation

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

They had raides $45,000, which the site owner said should be enough for almost two months legal defence. As it turns out, he gave the MPAA the site, the server logs and $5-10k and walked away with a PROFIT.

I can see the site being shut down

[Anonymous Coward]

...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?

Oh that explains..

[StacyWebb]

"The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity"

Well I guess that expains all the crappy movies coming out of Hollywood.

This is why you need to "network"

[Dancin_Santa]

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.

Re:This is why you need to "network"

[Swamii]

Dear Kind Mr. Dancinsanta Sir

My name is Julian Gilby Mulahmulah, son of the late King Abwar Mulahmulah III of Ivory Coast.

As it happens, my country's underground torrent has been taken over by evil Movie Picture Association Rebels and have taken hostage my father, the former king, and other members of the royal palace. Praise be to Allah, before the takeover I was able to smuggle out the kings royal coffers, totalling in the amount $10,000,000 (ten million United States Dollars).

Sadly and with a broken heart, I cannot deposit this money in a local bank account, as every move made in the country is done under the watchful scrutiny of the MPAA rebels. I humbly and most abashadly ask that you help me in this matter. If you could provide me with the name and universal resource indicator of your underground torrent, I will gladly offer you 5% of the royal king's coffers in exchange for your assistance in this most urgent matter.

I most humbly and anxiously await your speedy reply.

Kindly,
Julian Gilby Mulahmulah

Not american.

[LiquidCoooled]

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?

Repulsive...

[LakeSolon]

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

Trite but trite

[L. VeGas]

"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."

Re:Whew...

[ElGuapoGolf]

That's good for you and all, but I think there's a larger point that needs to be made...

What, really, is the difference between downloading a TV show you missed of LokiTorrent and recording it with your VCR? I've done it a few times, I'm guilty. Did I really hurt anyone? My VCR skips commercials (mostly), so that can't be an argument. It's not like the stuff I'm downloading is even available for me to purchase (or in some cases, to even see again)... but I suppose to the MPAA, I'm still some sort of terrorist.

You're wrong.

[ShallowThroat]

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.

Re:You're wrong.

[arkanes]

If you buy a Coke instead of a Pepsi, you just deprived Pepsi of a sale. That doesn't make it theft. Loss of a sale, for whatever reason, isn't theft. That's aside from the usual (often self-serving) arguments that very few sales are actually lost to P2P (although I'm certain the number is greater than zero).

Many people do use theft in this way, ie "That store down the street is stealing my customers". It's a common, emotional way of reacting when you feel like you're owed something. It's also wrong, because nobody owes you anything, least of all thier money or patronage.

Re:QUIT LYING!

[Frymaster]

Copyright infringement is a form of theft since the rightful owners of the copyrighted material aren't being compensated.

well, that's a pretty broad definition.

is someone parks in my driveway without giving me five bucks, is that theft? no. it's trespass which is a totally different crime, even though it meets your definition of theft.

they key component of theft is that the owner is denied the use of the property. if someone boosts my car i am denied the use of it. that's theft. if someone violates copyright, the original holders still have property.

bottom line: loss of alleged, potential, future revenue is not theft of a tangible, existing asset. copyright infringement is not theft.

Only in the USA

[lipi]

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.

Re:Only in the USA

[doctomoe]

This is not entirely true.

It is true that there are several exceptions to copyright in EU laws, the most important ones being "private copy" and "private use".

The "private copy" exception only applies if the source of the copy is legal. Making a copy of a bought or borrowed DVD is legal. Making a copy of a copy is illegal if one never had access to the original, unless the original was not protected by copyright or had a licence attached to it that allows for copies to be made. Files distributed on p2p networks are always copies of an original and never an original per se.

The "private use" exception allows me to use a copyrighted content at home or within my family. I can show a DVD I bought to my family or a group of my friends. However I can't invite a group of 50 random people from the street to watch it with me. In the same way, I can't invite 50 people on the net (p2p) to watch it with me.

In short, both exceptions fail in the case of p2p networks. There are others, but they don't apply to p2p networks either (for instance copying items for educational purposes).

Library analogy

[IgD]

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.

That funny smell round LokiTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

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]

Re:Minor correction to the story:

[Znork]

"Copyright infringement is a type of theft."

No, it isnt. It is a violation of government granted temporary exclusive rights. You're not taking any property, you're violating their exclusive right to make copies.

If copyright was 'actual property', then the expiration of copyright would mean the state was confiscating that property. Not even the RIAA/MPAA's propaganda machines tries to claim that yet. I'll bet you it's coming tho, and that it's the reason they want to anchor the belief that physical and intellectual property are in any way similar - wait for the campaign where they'll try to convince us that the state is trying to steal their property, and that copyright and patents should be extended to forever.

Beware what ideas the propaganda machines try to place in your head, for their agenda is not always what they claim it to be.

Re:Wow - that was fast!

[drgonzo59]

Why doesn't he move his website to some other country (except Christmas Island of course, although lokitorrent.cx would be a good url ;) where nobody gives a crap about MPAA? Then he can accept donations to keep the website running and have extra to buy candy and ice-cream instead of paying for legal fees, which is a lot more expensive.

MPAA is fighting a loosing battle and are wasting their money. If a significat ammount of people don't think trading media is wrong then they'll find a way to do that. It is just like police and society, if everyone decided all of the sudden to go out to kill and pillage, there just won't be enough policemen around to stop them. But most people don't think that killing and pillaging is not right, that keeps the order not the fear or force of the police.

And I like MPAA's little adds in the movie theatres how they show this poor set designer who claims the pimply-faced hackers stole his money. Why don't they show the billionaire owners and executives of the studios? I can almost see the add:

[Sad marimba music in the background...]
"Because of the wide-spread piracy the poor CEO of [insert name] studio won't be able to afford a Ferrari for his 16 year old daughter. Look what piracy has done! His daughter will be forced to drive a BMW now. How does that make you feel?"

Parent is flamebait and trollish. Mod down

[pluke]

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.

Re:Parent is flamebait and trollish. Mod down

[Warped1]

I was reading this book (Stiff by Mary Roach) and it mentioned how airline companies determined if they should deploy certain saftey devices on airplanes. The formula was like the one rattled off in Fight Club, based on the cost of the settlement payouts for those who died or were injured.

I think it was something like 2 or 4 million USD a human life was worth in a settlement. And the number shown on the FBI warning screen says something like $250k for violating the copyright. So basically, in monetary value, a human life lost due to neglegence or whatever is worth about 8 to 16 video pirating charges. Kind of sad.

This is all based on my memory of the book quote of the settlement price, so I may ... will ... be off a bit, but the concept holds I think. I googled a bit to try and find the numbers, but didn't net anything. If someone wants to correct the numbers, feel free. ;)

Re:Parent is flamebait and trollish. Mod down.

[LakeSolon]

The popularity of sites like Lokitorrent are an expression of the will of the people. The fact that something illegal (but not clearly immoral) is so popular is a demonstration of how disconnected our political/legislative system is from the will of the people.

~Lake

Re:Parent is flamebait and trollish. Mod down.

[Jane_Dozey]

Yes, it was distributing copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holders, but it was also useful for finding perfectly legel content. I'm sorry to see it go, I'm just not sorry to see copyrighted content taken down.

"I'm not sorry to see this site go, we need to concentrate more on having LEGAL torrent sites."

The MPAA needs to concentrate on setting these up themselves. People want the content and will most probably pay (a reduced) fee to download it. If the MPAA set up an iTunes type service they'd probably make a lot of money without p***ing everybody off. Their current behaviour makes me want to go download a mass of stuff just to spite them.

Stifles creativity?

[Spy der Mann]

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!

Re:Minor correction to the story:

[poot_rootbeer]

LokiTorrent, a popular torrent bootlegger site

I'm a torrent bootlegger.

I download .torrent files from popular trackers, make copies of them, and then post those .torrent copies on Usenet!

Re:Wow - that was fast!

[superstick58]

" And I like MPAA's little adds in the movie theatres how they show this poor set designer who claims the pimply-faced hackers stole his money"

I was in the theater with my friend when we first saw this commercial. During the silence immediately after the commercial my friend burst out "Cool! I should download that when I get home." Everyone started laughing.

Re:Wow - that was fast!

[tolan-b]

Just btw... Here's a note from Websters on the definition of theft...

----

Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.

Re:Minor correction to the story:

[Bloomy]

Copyright infringement is a type of theft.

The US Supreme Court came to a different conclusion in Dowling vs. United States.

From the decision :

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.

Re:Wow - that was fast!

[drgonzo59]

I like to think there are three broad categories of people that we are talking about here.

1- People who will never buy the movie or go see it. These people can download all they want (or not) they will simply not pay the money for it.

2- People that would go buy the movie or go to the theatre unless they found a copy of it they could download, then they will be less likely to pay for it.

3- People who will go buy and see movies very often regardless if they have access to the downloads or are even offered free copies of them from their friends.

MPAA has nothing to worry about category 1, since they shouldn't expect any profit from them anyway. I am in that category. Same for software. Sure, I use Photoshop, but I could never afford to pay for it, even if I had the money I wouldn't buy it.

Some people fall in category 3. My brother, a film enthusiast is in that category. He will go buy the DVD to have it in his collection. This is the category what MPAA also doesn't have to worry about.

Now category 2 is what they raise all the fuss about. They represent the expected loss from piracy, and I don't think this category is that large compared to the other two categories.

Of course, this is an oversimplification, but it gives a general idea. Over time individuals will move between categories and change their behavior.

So I agree it is not theft, but because these studios expect such and such ammount from the movie and if they don't get it they say the pirates came and 'stole' it from them. If a director or producer did a lousy job and movie is a flop - blame the pirates. If people are sick of the same boring stuff and don't want to pay for it - blame the pirates. In other words they are an easy scape-goat. And they will get the law (makers/enforcers) to be on their side since they have all the money.

Re:Wow - that was fast!

[Mr_Silver]

No, theft is when you take something away from someone.

Actually that isn't true.

The definition of theft is what the laws of your country define, not what US law states.

In the UK for example, the act of theft does not have to be the removal of a physical object.

I appreciate the majority of Slashdotters come from the USA and therefore, for them, theft != copyright infringement but don't assume that holds for everywhere in the world.

ps. Interestingly enough, there is no concept of "fair use" in the UK either - so if you haven't bought your iPod music off iTunes, you're technically breaking the law. Strange, but true!