Legal Torrent Sites Help Legitimize BitTorrent

Jeff writes "In today's Seattle Times, technology columnist Paul Andrews highlights how legal torrent sites such as CommonBits may lead to wider adoption and acceptance of BitTorrent. With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic, sites like LegalTorrents, Torrentocracy, Prodigem and bt.etree may offer a compelling defense to future legal attacks while simultaneously promoting fair use rights. Andrews goes on to argue that the future of television may be no further away than integration of podcasting, RSS, tagging and BlogTorrent."

Comments

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot Editors Help Legitimize Dupes

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

you, are a moron.

Legal torrent sites?

[bigtallmofo]

Doesn't that imply that the mere (former) existence of sites like Lokitorrent and Suprnova was illegal?

I'm not sure if that was ever decided by a court - rather it appears that scare tactics caused them to be shut down. For that reason, I personally don't feel comfortable declaring linking to content hosted on other systems illegal.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[LiquidCoooled]

Saying that these sites are legal or illegal is like opening a legal knife shop.

The torrent protocol isn't illegal, the sites running them aren't illegal, the content distributed from different places however can be illegal in most countries.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[huge colin]

I think the point is that these sites are unquestionably legal, even to boneheaded organizations like the MPAA. (It's necessary to make things very, very simple such that they can understand.)

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[kf6auf]

I think the phrase "legal torrent sites" could be interpreted to mean "sites that host legal torrents" in addition to "legal...sites" and until someone tells me otherwise, lokitorrent and suprnova were not illegal in my opinion*, though they may have assisted in illegal activities such as copyright infringement.

*One should note that this is my opinion only so far at it is meaningless. If I thought my opinion were actually important, I would do more thinking and less /. posting.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[myc_lykaon]

I think it is a matter of semantics. A 'legal torrent site' is a site that 'hosts links to torrents of provably legal data'; and 'illegal torrent site' is a site that 'hosts links to torrents of provably illegal (in many jurisdictions) data'. It doesn't really say much regarding the legality or otherwise of the hub itself.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Haeleth]

Saying that these sites are legal or illegal is like opening a legal knife shop.

Er... no, it isn't.

You can take any knife and commit a crime with it, and likewise you can take any knife and use it in a perfectly legal manner. However, you can't make downloading FreeBSD into copyright infringement whatever you do, and you can't stop downloading a cam of a Hollywood movie being copyright infringement whatever you do.

Therefore, a single knife can be used both legally and illegally, but downloading from a single torrent can only be legal or illegal. Therefore, your analogy does not work.

The sites running [illegal torrents] aren't illegal...

Regardless of whether hosting links to illegal torrents, or running trackers for illegal torrents, is legal or not (given that the people who run these sites inevitably settle when sued, the implication is that THEY don't believe it's legal!), the concept of a "legal torrent site" - being one which hosts only torrents which it is legal for anyone to join - is a useful one.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until a file called "Episode 3" is listed. MPAA's sueing robots will tear them up to tiny bits before their masterminds even realize it's not what the bot thought it is.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Tim C]

It's not that they're boneheaded - quite the opposite. Bittorrent and similar apps are (they believe) a real thorn in their side at the moment. They believe that if they can show that these apps have no significant non-infringing use, then they can have them outlawed. That would make their jobs much easier - rather than having to be able to prove that a user was violating their copyrights, they'd just have to prove that they were using the apps at all.

Let me put it this way - why should they care that people like us use these things for perfectly legal file trading, if enough people use them in ways that do infringe? We're not their concern - preventing you or I from getting the latest Linux ISO isn't going to impact their profits at all. Hell, *personally* they may care, but *professionally*, it's not even a consideration, as long as they (believe that they) stand to lose more money by doing nothing, than by seeking to outlaw p2p apps.

They're not boneheaded, they just have a different set of priorities, and you're never going to be able to effectively work against them by dismissing them and their actions in this way.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[LiquidCoooled]

Thank you for putting words into my mouth.

My statement of "The sites running them aren't illegal" is absolutely correct.
Sites running bittorrent file downloads are not illegal.

Downloading copyright material without consent is illegal no matter what the protocol.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[trawg]

Hmm, I must have missed the point where BitTorrent was declared illegitimate.

Do items like this help? This basically says to me, "BT is somewhat illegitimate, but with the right direction, it could be made ok!"

BitTorrent, itself, is already 100% legitimate. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, its one of best things that has happened for content distributors.

I personally like the gun analogy (from my relative safety in .au) - if guns are made, and people use them illegally, do the gun manufacturers get sued? If P2P software is declared illegitimate because people use it for illegal purposes, I'd hope to see gun manufacturers getting screwed by the same legislation.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Heisenbug]

Therefore, a single knife can be used both legally and illegally, but downloading from a single torrent can only be legal or illegal. Therefore, your analogy does not work.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that's not true. Depending on the jurisdiction, there are knives that are legal to possess, and knives that are illegal to possess -- switchblades, pocket knives over a certain length, etc. The act of acquiring the knife, like the act of acquiring the file, is itself illegal.

I don't have the patience to figure out whether either of you is making sense otherwise. Please continue.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[araemo]

Well, actually...

There are very narrow circumstances where downloading a torrent of a movie is indeed 'legal'(If you can't copy the DVD you bought, but want a backup copy anyways.. damn css. ;P).

Likewise, it is possible for a torrent to be 'legal' to download sometimes/by some people, but 'illegal' for other times/people.

Also, running a torrent site is not legal or illegal. Providing torrents(Or, perhaps more accurately, running a tracker) for copyrighted materials is quite likely contributory infringement, and therefor 'illegal'.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[xiando]

"personally don't feel comfortable declaring linking to content hosted on other systems illegal." Idiots like the Microsoft "investigator" James Young do not understand the difference between linking, hosting a file or running a tracker, if James Young (or RIAA/MPAA for that matter) finds something he does like he will send http://static.thepiratebay.org/ms-loveletter.txt a takedown demand regardless of who is tracking the file or where they are actually hosted - even if it is perfectly clear they have grownds for their demand. And Internet Service Providers tend to get scared when they get letters like this, some will take down your server regardless of the lack of legal grounds for their demands -- very few ISPs have the balls to politely say no http://static.thepiratebay.org/dreamworks_response .txt to such requests.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[huge colin]

Granted, if the strategy of the MPAA is simply to deceive lawmakers and the public to further their own goals, then they're not boneheaded. Because I believe people are stupid enough for them to get away with it.

And I think they know this.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[oliverthered]

'Downloading copyright material without consent is illegal no matter what the protocol.'

I run an ISDN line for my remote backup, if your telling me that this is illegal then I'd seek better legal advise.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're parsing that wrong. It's not about legal (torrent sites), but about (legal torrent) sites.

That is, you're thinking that the site itself is or not legal, and that leads to your complaint. I'm thinking of a site with links to torrents of files that are legal to download, as oposed to lokitorrent et al.

And besides, it's not like any judge would actually care about what the IANAL population of slashdot calls it anyway, so any question about suggested legality is moot.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Deliveranc3]

Some countries have fair Use?

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[coachvince]

Here in the US, gun makers have faced the threat of lawsuits, and many have drastically changed their marketing, sometimes in very paranoid ways. One manufacturer has essentially stopped selling modern handguns to civilians.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[cpt kangarooski]

I'm not sure if that was ever decided by a court - rather it appears that scare tactics caused them to be shut down. For that reason, I personally don't feel comfortable declaring linking to content hosted on other systems illegal.

It can be illegal. A significant part of what Napster did was to provide links for downloaders to information that was hosted by uploaders. They didn't host mp3s themselves, but could still be held responsible for their users.

First, there must be a direct infringement. For example, uploading or downloading a video in an infringing manner.

Then there can either be contributory or vicarious infringement by a different party. Contributory infringement is where a party materially contributes to the direct infringement of another, while knowing of the infringing activity. Vicarious infringement is having the right and ability to control the direct infringements of others, and receives a sufficiently direct financial benefit from the infringement. Where a party is either a contributory or vicarious infringer, they can be held liable for the direct infringements that underlie their liability.

It's entirely possible for the providers of a torrent file, or even for people providing an index or search of torrent files, to be infringers. There are some steps that can be taken to protect oneself to a degree (see 17 USC 512, or Sony v Universal, for example) but there's a very real risk.

You might want to read the Napster case to see how it can shake out.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

"For backup purposes only" has been a myth of the warezmonkey world since the 80s. Please don't perpetuate it.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that these sites are legal or illegal is like opening a legal knife shop.

Retarded Slashdot analogy alert!

+ There is one set of laws in your country which apply to knives and guns.

+ There is an entirely different set of laws that applies to distributing copyrighted material online.

Since these laws were written with different intents, you can't make some blanket analogy. They are not "like" each other at all.

At least in the US, the *intent* of the copyright laws was very clearly designed to outlaw link collector sites. The best you can hope for is legal on a technicality (for example Grokster).

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Stonehand]

I suspect that this doctrine is questionable with regards to common practice. A true backup copy would be an -exact- replica, whereas unless both client and server have incredible bandwidth, any movie download would seem likely to have been recompressed or otherwise modified. Likewise if it has been de-CSSed -- it's no longer a true archival backup, but a different version and possibly a derivative work.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's actually good reason for that, considering that *anyone* in the US can become a "registered gun dealer" just by filling out a card -- Even if they are some ganster operating out of the trunk of their car. So you get into the situation where the gun company "should have known" they were selling guns to an irresponsible party, which could be considered criminal conspiracy.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[koreth]

given that the people who run these sites inevitably settle when sued, the implication is that THEY don't believe it's legal!

Or that they don't have the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to defend themselves in a lengthy court battle with an inevitable series of appeals, or that they don't have the time to do so even if they have access to a pro bono defense team. Getting sued is a big pain in the ass.

I have personally fought back against a bogus claim of intellectual property law infringement -- trademark, in my case, not copyright -- and it cost me about 15 grand out of pocket without ever even making it to court. Not everyone is stubborn enough, or well-off enough, to dig that deep even if they're certain they're in the right. (Happily, I was; we reached a settlement that involved the other party writing me a big check.)

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[shark72]

" I think the point is that these sites are unquestionably legal, even to boneheaded organizations like the MPAA. (It's necessary to make things very, very simple such that they can understand.)"

I don't think this explanation is necessary to the MPAA or anybody else. The MPAA has taken down the Torrent sites that trafficked largely in pirated material, but they are ignoring the legal sites.

The confusion might lie in some of the responses to the takedowns of the pirate sites. Remember how Lokitorrent was wrapping themselves in the "defend P2P!" cloak? That was utter nonsense; the MPAA was going after Lokitorrent; not BitTorrent or P2P. Likewise, "MPAA v. Grokster" is the MPAA's attempt to put Grokster out of business, but many Slashdotters liked to take the position that the MPAA was trying to shut down P2P itself. This is what is known as a straw man fallacy.

I think that this position will ultimately hurt P2P's chances of survival. As long as Slashdotters and others continue to equate Lokitorrent and other pirate sites with P2P itself, P2P will continue to be stained by folks like Loki who were using it to make money off of piracy. This is fighting for a short-term goal (getting sympathy for Lokitorrent) at the expense of the long-term goal (making the public at large understand that P2P is a great technology that can be used in a responsible manner that respects creators' rights).

This is the time to promote and use Torrent sites that provide only material distributed with the creators' permission. It isn't the time to act like martyrs and proclaim the death of P2P each time a pirate gets nailed.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[LiquidCoooled]

Theres a problem with your reasoning about owning the DVD in question.

Whilst it may be possible to argue that you do infact own the DVD, and you are making your fair use rights, how exactly do you explain allowing the DVD to be uploaded to 50 or so other users who DON'T have the required rights.

Remember, the MPAA/RIAA are more interested in sharing than obtaining dodgy individual copies.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[dotwaffle]

Ok, why do i seem to be the ONLY person in the world that does back up my media??? How many times have we had damaged products because of misuse or lending? I backup my media, so should you!

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[bbuR_bbuB]

You're an idiot, and your comparison is moronic. Switchblades et al are illegal due to the fact that the state found that there is no legitimate use for these items. This article shows that there IS a legitimate use for BT. Once again, you are an idiot.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:Legal torrent sites? (Score:5, Insightful)
by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Tuesday March 08, @07:49AM (#11875861)
Saying that these sites are legal or illegal is like opening a legal knife shop.

The torrent protocol isn't illegal, the sites running them aren't illegal, the content distributed from different places however can be illegal in most countries.

Oh yeah? Well, my semantics can beat up your semantics!

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[ChuyMatt]

Note the "without consent" bit. The copyrighted material is licensed to you and you are backing it up to your own property (or leased property, I donknow)

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Heisenbug]

You use words that are too strong to give me a hard time for making a comparison I never made, and should think more carefully before using your keyboard in the future. Have a nice day.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[oliverthered]

I'm using an offsite company, I suppose I lease the storage space, but I don't get allocated sectors 10-1000 on the HDD it just gets mixed up with everyone else's I assume.

My offsite company was called www.lokitorrent.com, I used it to backup and restore most of my applications.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[iminplaya]

We're not their concern...

No, but real independant artists are. P2P enables the artist by bypass distributing middle men. That whole part of the business will go under(good riddance to 'em). The artists will do fine. Obviously the industry will do whatever it can to keep all this to themselves. They don't care whether we're using it for legal or illegal purposes. They simply don't want competition. And P2P is competition of the worse kind to them. So they will vilify it...put all the spin on it to get the public to go along.

They're not boneheaded, they just have a different set of priorities, and you're never going to be able to effectively work against them by dismissing them and their actions in this way.

You're absolutley right, but when laws are made from FUD, and no longer protect the interests of the public, in the end we must simply dismiss them, and make the law unenforcable in any way that WE can. These issues will not be debated for a long time during any election campaign. The fact that the electorate will believe the FUD is making matters worse. This is just another arms race. Besides, most of the P2P is going on unnoticed, because those people aren't blabbing it all around.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[Trejkaz]

Some countries don't just ban switchblades though, but have other conditions on buying any kind of knife (e.g. age restrictions.)

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[trawg]

Ah, that is interesting. Have any of the lawsuits been successful?

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[VAXcat]

Umm...ectually, in some places, switchblades are legal for people who only have the use of one hand. Thus, it's another example of something that legal or illegalm depending...

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[huge colin]

many Slashdotters liked to take the position that the MPAA was trying to shut down P2P itself. This is what is known as a straw man fallacy.

I hope you're not suggesting that the MPAA wouldn't very much like to totally eliminate P2P. They would. They're merely going after specific sites because it's legally a more complex process to prohibit use of a particular protocol on the internet than it is to attack one particular web site.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[sik0fewl]

However, you can't make downloading FreeBSD into copyright infringement whatever you do...

Unless you put SCO code into it first.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[stinerman]

I backup my media, so should you!

<pedantic>
You backup the data, not the media.
</pedantic>

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[coachvince]

Successful in court? I'm not suure; you'd have to Google for yourself. However, at least as far as the intent of the plaintiffs, there has been success:

circa January, 2000 (from http://www.saveourguns.com/litigation.0001.htm

Such lawsuits threaten the viability of gun stores in Texas and across the nation. Colt Manufacturing has already announced that because of the lawsuits they will no longer sell handguns to the civilian public. In addition, Colt is in the process of buying H & K manufacturing and has said that once the purchase is complete, H & K will no longer sell handguns to the public. Most recently, Smith & Wesson has announced it is up for sale. The events that have transpired as a direct result of the lawsuits against the gun industry do not bode well for gun dealers or gun owners.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[trawg]

Cool, thanks for the reply.

I'm fascinated by American gun culture so always find this sort of stuff interesting. I think one of the best things Australia has done was effectively blanket ban gun sales (in the wake of a mass shooting in Tasmania). My relatives in the US are strong gun control supporters and have told me some hair curling tales, which is all the more scary as most of them are tales from my aunt, who is a primary school teacher.

Re:Legal torrent sites?

[coachvince]

Glad to reply. I'm actually a computer teacher at a (very) small private school in the eastern USA. I'm personally pro-gun in general, but think our (American-USA) society is a long way from where it should be, for guns to be available easily.

The "American Dream" has gone from blazing through new territories (OK, we weren't doing that well even then, if you ask the buffalo and the Sioux), to working hard and maybe running your own business. I think that was our peak, when being your own boss was everbody's dream.

Now, we've moved on. For the past few decades, investing wisely and reaping rewards was "the dream" (no actual work involved, though, just monetary risk). Now, everybody seems to dream of cheating the system, winning some huge lawsuit, or hitting the lottery. Nobody looks forward to working and earning an honest income it seems.

I know this generalization isn't directly related to gun-control, but it illustrates why the gunissuue, and P2P are problematic; if something can be used for an illegal or downright dumb purpose, we will use it that way here in the US.

Not Really

[Anonymous Coward]

It only takes 1 illegal site to put BitTorrent in the crosshairs of the *AA groups. In fact, the fact that we are celebrating some legal sites speaks volumes to where BitTorrent currently stands.

Re:Not Really

[Anonymous Coward]

Usualy you only get only a few torrents from sites that respect copyright, there are tons of these, but you don't hear of them, because they don't run trackers, just offer big fails with bittorrent. Yes, tracker sites have a less then stellar record, but you could download GNU/Linux distribution isos before all that started.

Re:Not Really

[Anonymous Coward]

It only takes 1 illegal site to put BitTorrent in the crosshairs of the *AA groups. In fact, the fact that we are celebrating some legal sites speaks volumes to where BitTorrent currently stands.

So I guess it follows for these groups:
FAA - (They must hate all those MS flight sims getting around)
AAA - (I thought they liked free stuff, like maps and travel guides)
NOAA - (People must stop looking at forecasts if they only sit inside and watch/listen to their
illegal files) ;)

Sure...

[Fyz]

But is be legal to download anything that I'm ever going to have any interest in?
I somehow doubt that the content of these sites, and by extension the sites themselves, are going to be popular in the long run.

Just to state the bleeding obvious, of course.

Re:Sure...

[carpe_noctem]

Maybe you should check out the sites before passing judgment about them. Actually, I was about to reply to your comment with another snarky jab, but I decided to check out some of the sites and I actually found a bunch of movies that I can't wait to watch once I get home from work.

Granted, I'll still probably go to other torrent sites too, but don't knock it until you try it. =)

Re:Sure...

[cowsandmilk]

etree.org has been popular for a long time as it holds concert footage of a number of bands that are well liked by a portion of America. While they may not have the popularity of pop music, noone is going to argue with downloading legal Dave Matthews, Grateful Dead, Phish, and other bands. The bands on that site are quite akin to the ones that one sees at Bonaroo each year, which has been a bigger success than many people imagined. I don't know much about the others, but as a long-time etree user, I can attest to its popularity.

Re:Sure...

[WarmBoota]

Download the torrent from the South by Southwest music festival at CitizenPod . 2.6 gigs of musicians who want their music to be heard by the widest audience possible.

I'm listening to it now and it's incredibly diverse with everything from punk to hiphop, country, singer-songwriter, etc

Fighting this same battle now.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

TPTB at my school have unilaterally blocked BitTorrent, characterizing it as a rogue protocol. The argument the admins make is that any legitimate product will have plenty of bandwidth to be downloadable via http. The administration supports the sysadmins, because they don't like getting C&D's from the *AA, so the power of the technical folks is unchecked--the faculty, traditionally the guardians of freedom on campus, don't even have the issue on their radar.

Examples like this can only help the cause, though I'm not sure by how much.

Re:Fighting this same battle now.

[Anonymous Coward]

so tunnel it through port 80.

big whoop. we do it here at the corperate level all the time.

no I will NOt tell you how. get off your LAZY ass and search google for it.

Re:Fighting this same battle now.

[meadowsp]

So use your own connection than and do what you like with it.

Re:Fighting this same battle now.

[Lord of the Wazz]

Given that it was reported fairly recently that BitTorrent makes up 35% of all total internet traffic, I'm guessing that allowing it to be used unchecked on campus would increase bandwidth costs by a fairly significant amount too...

Re:Fighting this same battle now.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

I pay for that connection, thank you very much.

Re:Fighting this same battle now.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

That could be addressed by throttling, rather than banning--or by at least being up front and saying that the bandwidth costs are unaffordable, rather than using the rhetoric of the e-e-e-vil pirates. You know, that whole "communicating honestly" thing.

Defense

[Anonymous Coward]

With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic, sites like LegalTorrents, Torrentocracy, Prodigem and bt.etree may offer a compelling defense to future legal attacks

MPAA: I'm suing you for you website with links to Torrents of all our movies.

Pirate: Look, that other site over there offers torrents of non-infringing material.

Court: Because other people are using torrents lawfully, this guy can pirate all he likes. Case dismissed.

Re:Defense

[lachlan76]

It's not about attacks against pirates, it's against legal attacks against the program creators (ie. holding the owners of a p2p network responsible for its users).

Re:Defense

[SithGod]

These sites aren't a defense against people who run pirate sites, but against outlawing the actual bittorrent protocal

Re:Defense

[Anonymous Coward]

These sites aren't a defense against people who run pirate sites, but against outlawing the actual bittorrent protocal

Which is something that nobody wanted to do anyway.

Re:Defense

[PyWiz]

I don't think anyone is talking about the people who do the actual pirating of the software (i.e. serve it via bittorrent). We're talking about the future of the bittorrent protocol itself.

While it may seem silly to believe that a protocol for file transfer could be in trouble because a few people used it for illegal file sharing, think about what happened to Kazaa. Sharman Networks wasn't necessarily distributing any copyrighted material on their own, they were merely providing a method of hooking up with other people who have copyrighted material (ala suprnova).

While this may not be technically _illegal_, they are still propogating criminal activities and as such _someone_ is always going to be after them. Folks like the *AA have managed to harass Sharman networks to the point that it's questionable whether they'll be able to carry on, in spite of the fact that they weren't doing anything technically "illegal". People seem to think you can always hide behind the actual law, but in this day and age, blatantly exploiting loopholes such as this will surely result in some retaliation.

-py

Re:Defense

[-brazil-]

You're wrong. The MPAA almost certainly would like to, and I've seen people honestly argue in favor of it.

Re:Defense

[DaHat]

You are half right, and this doesn't really apply to Bram Cohen the way it does Kazaa and the old Napster which both of the latter are networks were the principal purpose is copyright infringement, such is not the case with Bit Torrent. BT was designed from the beginning with other purposes in mind and has effectively been hijacked by illicit users. The technology is not to blame, just the network owners, and this is why the makers of Kazaa and other 'piracy' networks have been hauled into court repeatedly and why Bram Cohen has been left alone.

Re:Defense

[Ath]

Sorry, but that defense sucks. The best defense is, of course, the Chewbacca defense:

Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!

Why would a Wookiee -- an eight foot tall Wookiee -- want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!

But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!

Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.

And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.

If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

Re:Defense

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone quoted the MPAA in this story disagreeing.

Their concern is distributed p2p networks like Grokster -- where some shysters encourage piracy, push out all sorts of ads and spyware, but survive on a legal technicality.

The lack of any sort of privacy in the BitTorrent protocol makes it the MPAA's best friend. If it was up to them, they'd love to all illegal filesharing take place over BT instead of 'better' protocols.

Re:Defense

[Anonymous Coward]

The horseshit paranoid political whackjob garbage that Torrentocracy is hosting is not going to help BitTorrent's legitimacy one bit.

Re:Defense

[shark72]

"It's not about attacks against pirates, it's against legal attacks against the program creators (ie. holding the owners of a p2p network responsible for its users)."

Huh? The MPAA has gone after the pirate sites like Lokitorrent and Suprnova. They are not going after the sites that take the care to provide only torrents of material released with the creators' permission. They are not going after Bram. They are not trying to stop BitTorrent from being distributed.

You may be thinking of MGM v. Grokster, in which MGM is trying to shut down Grokster -- not the concept of P2P. MGM's argument is that Grokster's business model is to make money by providing access to pirated material. On this point, they're correct.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic

The reports state that BitTorrent use may be more than a third of Internet traffic. They don't state that illegal BitTorrent use may be more than a third of Internet traffic.

You've just gone and assumed that BitTorrent is exclusively illegal, while moaning about the fact that others do it too. Way to go, dickhead.

Re:What?

[A beautiful mind]

Actually i don't believe this is correct.

I heard numbers around 2-5% (total bittorrent traffic / internet global trafic)

Re:What?

[zootm]

I think the report most frequently cited is CacheLogic's one (news article). They give a figure of 53% of P2P traffic, and their graphs show BitTorrent overwhelming many other forms of traffic, compared to the wider internet. I can't find the actual "one third" figure, but I did see 35% in a couple of places while looking for this.

Re:What?

[A beautiful mind]

Yeah and i also would note that CacheLogic is something to p2p as antivirus companies to virus writers - not an independent source.

Re:What?

[zootm]

Yeah, I should've actually mentioned that, the report reads like (and is) and ad for their software. It's been reported enough places to be given at least some credence, although whether that's due to the sensationalist figures I wouldn't like to comment.

Like the open source

[nbharatvarma]

Internet provides a very powerful way to reach a lot of people. Like how companies should embrace opensource, TV and Movie companies should learn to embrace the internet.

When the article says the intent is to provide otherwise inaccessible content to Internet "viewers", it only applies to the novice users and those who don't read /. But I must say this is a start. If the companies can support this actively, it would be better.

Re:Like the open source

[plasticmillion]

I totally agree with this view, in fact I recently wrote a whole essay on the topic of what media companies can learn from the open source movement (see my sig if you're interested).

The biggest lesson, in my view, is that people will take matters into their own hands if corporations don't play fair. This is what happened with open source: programmers got so sick of companies like Microsoft bullying them that they banded together and created a whole new IT infrastructure of their own.

What's to stop artists in the film, music, photography and print industries doing the same? Absolutely nothing, which is why sites like Commonbits are now springing up to facilite consumer-to-consumer-style interactions that cut corporations out of the loop. All that's missing is a payment system to finance more professional production and the media industry is going to be facing a very similar threat to what established software vendors have experienced as a result of the open source movement.

BitTorrent 4.0.0 Released

[theoddbot]

BitTorrent 4.0.0 was released today.

Get it from http://www.bittorrent.com.

The license has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License

Release Notes:

All new queue-based user interface

Many options are now modifiable from the interface

Lots of other interface improvements

Extra stats are visible, for those who like it

Remembers what it was doing across restarts

New .torrent maker "btmaketorrentgui" replaces "btcompletedir"

Better performance, as always

License has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License

Torrent fields are correctly created and interpreted as utf8

Too many little things to list

Single port: launchmany can seed and client can download many files from a single port and thread

Interface now uses GTK instead of wxWidgets

BitTorrent packets are marked as bulk data to make traffic shaping easier

Re:BitTorrent 4.0.0 Released

[LiquidCoooled]

Additional features in the slashdot edition:

Increase penis size by at least 20%

Makes you irresistable to the opposite sex*

Automatic emailing to RIAA/MPAA/CIA and FBI when illegal content seeded.

Dynamic updating of your DNS, making your banking and ebay experience better.

Full software testing

Dupe removal

*No guarantee they will be the same species however.

Re:BitTorrent 4.0.0 Released

[Jugalator]

All new queue-based user interface

I wonder if he never fixed that one to let users download in parallel. In the beta, it downloaded those in sequence. How about a big "doh" for that one. :-(

Re:BitTorrent 4.0.0 Released

[Anonymous Coward]

The site seems slow. Got a torrent for that? :-)

(Hey, it's not as stupid as it sounds, lots of people are upgrading anyway)

Re:BitTorrent 4.0.0 Released

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it still spew popups of that ugly fucker begging for money?

Re:BitTorrent 4.0.0 Released

[Pxtl]

You do know you could just lie to it and say "yeah, I've paid". At any rate, I use ABC and like it.

In other slightly related news

[chrisbeatty]

The BBC are reporting that a Russian website offering MP3's is not in breach of Russian copyright laws.

I guess people outside Russia dowloading from the site are still in breach of copyright in their own country?

Re:In other slightly related news

[Jon Peterson]

Yes, they are. Torrent sites are also legal in Sweden, for what it's worth.

illegal usage legitimate usage

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

The only problem with "legitimizing" bittorrent's image is that, as a protocol, it's still the most popular one for illega filesharing. We admins quite frankly don't give one hoot about its benign uses: we KNOW that the second we stop filtering BT traffic, our bandwidth usage is gonna go up.

Pay Per View business model needed

[spoonyfork]

I missed last week's episode of Lost. None of my friends had recorded it so I found the torrent and downloaded it. Hurley's crazy. Anyway, I would rather have gone to the ABC site, paid like a $1 or something, and downloaded it from them. I want to support stuff I find interesting but there is no way to do that with TV episodes. What do I do, wait for the DVD next year? Please. ABC and the like could use BitTorrent to distribute Pay Per View content. I'd like that very much.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hurley's crazy"

Huh? Are we watching the same show?

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[uq1]

Or you could have waited for a rerun I guess?

Although, me being in Australia, I also download the latest Losts and 24s :)

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[BridgeBum]

As would many on Slashdot. I even think the studios want this too...so long as it can be done their way. What's the point of DRM if not to be able to offer content for a fee with the 'comfort' of knowing that the content can't be then shared with 100,000 of your closest friends.

I'm not a fan of DRM by any stretch, but I think DRM is the missing ingredient to see the *AA embrace new media.

Of course, if you can come up with a way to avoid all the DRM nonsense and still make the *AA execs comfortable that they will still roll in the dough...

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[Jugalator]

Or you could have waited for a rerun I guess?

Which more often than not, even the TV company that will eventually broadcast it, don't actually know when they'll do it. :-/

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[Cat_Byte]

Or you could have waited for a rerun I guess?

Yeah but in the case of Lost or Battlestar Galactica, if you miss an episode in order, you miss quite a bit. I can always catch battlestar again on Monday nights but I can't find a rebroadcast of Lost on my ABC lineup.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[Anonymous Coward]

What ABC wants you to do is drop what you're doing and rush home to catch the show on time, and watch it along with all the commercials. You should also watch whatever they're showing afterwards too. I hope you've learned your lesson.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[override11]

The only reason I would donwload off BT network than off the TV studio web site: They will charge far too much for the video, cripple it somehow (DRM), or include commercials. Just charge a reasonable fee, dont screw over the file, and people will not have a problem paying for it.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[jacoplane]

Well pretty much every single show gets ripped into HDTV quality anyway, so they wouldn't be losing anything by selling DRM-free shows. They're not having any success in stopping DRM free content being out there, so... why not make some money selling this content. They can always try and switch to DRM at a later stage, though I suspect consumers would find that a bitter pill to swallow (which I suppose is why they're not doing it).

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[spoonyfork]

As would many on Slashdot. I even think the studios want this too...so long as it can be done their way. What's the point of DRM if not to be able to offer content for a fee with the 'comfort' of knowing that the content can't be then shared with 100,000 of your closest friends.

Good point. I guess I don't see video files any different than music files from a consumption point of view. Through iTunes one can buy a la cart mp3s acceptably encumbered. Why couldn't the same be applied to videos, e.g. unlimited consumption but limited devices consumed on. The distribution would have to be different based on bandwidth which is where bittorrent comes in.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[Jurph]

I also grab episodes of LOST when I miss the broadcast. Since I watch Smallville with friends in a different town, I can't watch both at once. I stopped downloading episodes once I had a Hauppauge card (PVR-250) and DVD burner. Since I'm recording the TV show from my own cable feed, burning it to DVD, and watching it in my own home, I am pretty sure I'm within my legal rights.

And if my machine is down, or there's a power failure, well... then I'm not opposed to grabbing the HDTV torrent. And, dude? Hurley's completely sane now. Dude.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Something akin to file registration perhaps? They could even offer seasons this way. Sure cracks would come but that'll happen with any protection model.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[junkcannibal]

If I had the choice of going to a copyright infringing site to download that TV show I missed last night, without any commercials, or going to the network's site to download it with commercials or some other kind of forced advertisement, I would go the networks own site. I probably wouldn't even bother fast forwarding through commercial breaks if they weren't more than four minutes long. I only go to copyright infringing sites because the networks don't give me another choice. Hell, for most shows that I would download, I wouldn't even care if I couldn't watch the file six months later due to some sort of DRM. It's just TV.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[iminplaya]

I'm not a fan of DRM by any stretch, but I think DRM is the missing ingredient to see the *AA embrace new media.

A change in copyright law in the publics favor for a change will bring them around. It's time to tell them, "Adapt or die." I'm not interested in making the ??AA confortable. Another, more open minded organization can take over. We shouldn't allow these people to write our laws. We, the public, have been very generous in granting them any monopoly at all, and the greedy bastards just keep wanting more. It's time to take our power back.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[evilviper]

or include commercials.

You know, if TV shows were downloadable, I wouldn't give a damn if they were 90% commercials... Tap a button a couple times, and those 10 minutes of commercials are over in 2 seconds. I know, because I do it all the time.

I'm very tired of seeing the same commercial about yeast infections 20 times every day. I don't hate commercials in general, but I do hate what we've got to put-up with now.

Re:Pay Per View business model needed

[DarkZero]

Anyway, I would rather have gone to the ABC site, paid like a $1 or something, and downloaded it from them. I want to support stuff I find interesting but there is no way to do that with TV episodes.

The problem is, it's highly unlikely that any TV company is going to let you download a copy of the show that's just like what you get with a pirate copy. When you download a show from BitTorrent, you get a small, high quality file that can transferred, burned, and shared at your leisure, and looks almost, but not quite, as good as an actual HDTV feed on my HDTV. Chances are that whatever they eventually decide to give you, you'll find that you would've just been better off dusting off your VCR and setting it to record in good old totally-crap VHS quality.

oh great... "lefty" politics ahead...

[advocate_one]

"We want to be a resource for politically left people and community-based organizations," said Jeff Reifman, a former Microsoft manager who works at Groundspring.org, a Web-tools builder for nonprofits. He helped put together CommonBits.

Any legal or fair-use content, including Seattle-based events and gatherings, is appropriate for CommonBits, Reifman says. But it needs to fit CommonBits' philosophy and will be screened to meet the service's goals.

so any legal material that doesn't fit their leftist worldview will be censored... how nice...

What I want to see is for this to have no biases except possibly to comply with hate crime legislation and to suitably screen access to some items for over 18s only. I want no political slanting of what gets in, I would far rather it be noted for the fairness of their coverage.

Re:oh great... "lefty" politics ahead...

[Anonymous Coward]

so any legal material that doesn't fit their leftist worldview will be censored... how nice...

Look you moron, if they select what they distribute, it's not censorship, even if the selection process has an agenda behind it. They aren't stopping you from viewing material, they are just choosing not to distribute it themselves.

Re:oh great... "lefty" politics ahead...

[Baal Sebub]

It's not censorship. They specifically say that it's a "resource for politically left people". So you know what to expect when downloading their content. If you want no political slanting, don't use their service, that's all there is to say.
Again: not censorship

Re:oh great... "lefty" politics ahead...

[Anonymous Coward]

"What I want to see is for this to have no biases except possibly to comply with hate crime legislation and to suitably screen access to some items for over 18s only."

Then start your own site and stop whining.

Re:oh great... "lefty" politics ahead...

[shark72]

"What I want to see is for this to have no biases except possibly to comply with hate crime legislation and to suitably screen access to some items for over 18s only. I want no political slanting of what gets in, I would far rather it be noted for the fairness of their coverage."

Huh? It's their site; they can do what they like. It's trivially easy to set up a web page nowadays. The most productive solution to your dilemma is not to try to tell them what to do, but instead to set up your own site. Want a right-wing site featuring Torrents of content released with the creators' permission? Start your own!

got a torrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

they got slashdotted already :/ anybody got a torrent?

Fighting Windmills?

[Baal Sebub]

Why exactly is there a need to "legitimize" the Bittorrent protocol?
AFAIK there never was an initiative to outlaw the protocol itself.
Talk about paranoia.

Re:Fighting Windmills?

[Baal Sebub]

Where is this "push" you're talking about? Your link to tinyP2P just isn't relevant in this context. Nice little piece of Software, though.

Re:Fighting Windmills?

[WarmBoota]

That's incorrent. Orrin Hatch and those like him have attempted to outlaw peer-to-peer technology repeatedly. First they tried to stigmatize it by saying that it is only used by pedophiles and that it transfers viruses and then they attempted to push through the INDUCE ACT. I would've put a google link, but I seem to be having touble connecting to google today.

When the non-infringing uses are brought to the forefront, most sane people would agree that it's absurd to outlaw technology. Unfortunately, the MPAA and RIAA are better funded and have nothing better to do.

This is the same tactic that they used to push the DMCA through. Claiming that individuals copying DVDs cause them to lose a godzillion dollars, when in reality bulk stamping of DVDs is the problem. DRM technology only affects the consumer who wants to create a legitimate backup of a purchased DVD to prevent his kids from smearing it with jelly and feeding it to the dog.

Re:Fighting Windmills?

[Baal Sebub]

sheesh!
if you really want to mod me offtopic you could at least choose one of my posts that truely deserve it.

Re:Fighting Windmills?

[WarmBoota]

err.....I mean't incorrect (and that was previewed - just not well).

Bittorrent traffic makeup...

[WIAKywbfatw]

With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic...

Sorry, but how the hell are the people who come up with the numbers able to differentiate between legal and illegal torrents?

First of all, how do you tell between traffic that's due to Linux ISOs and traffic that's due to the latest movie release? Secondly, how do you differentiate between copying of material that may be legal in one country and copying of the same material that may be illegal in another one?

I'm not saying that legal torrent usage is greater than illegal torrent usage (any more than I would say that more drivers stick to speed limits than break them) but it seems to me that there's no real way of differentiating between the two, so all those reports are arguably just speculation.

Re:Bittorrent traffic makeup...

[PigleT]

Well, you could plant a fake site and use their stats to see what people go for.

I find it quite weird to think that people will actually write to me and ask if I "still have a torrent for [movie] lying around". Who in their right mind would advertise the fact they're looking for something which to download would be a violation of copyright?? And yet I've actually seen exactly this happening... (Background: I run a small tarpit to trap illegal seekers, idiots, the MPAA and spammers - with success on all counts.)

Re:Bittorrent traffic makeup...

[tkw954]

Who in their right mind would advertise the fact they're looking for something which to download would be a violation of copyright??

You're assuming the copyright laws of your country apply everywhere. For example, it is generally legal to download copyrighted works in Canada.

Re:Bittorrent traffic makeup...

[PigleT]

True, I suppose: I just thought of that possibility after posting.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[Anonymous Coward]

as a protocol, it's still the most popular one for illega filesharing.

Really? NNTP, FTP, DCC and HTTP are quite popular.

We admins quite frankly don't give one hoot about its benign uses: we KNOW that the second we stop filtering BT traffic, our bandwidth usage is gonna go up.

Hint: you can lower your bandwidth usage by filtering NNTP, FTP, DCC and HTTP too.

If the problem is with bandwidth use, why are you bringing the law into this? Filter it because it soaks up all your bandwidth, don't make up stupid excuses like "it's illegal" when it's not true.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Lefty-bashing

[StrawberryFrog]

So any legal material that doesn't fit their leftist worldview will be censored... how nice...

No, you idiot, it will just fail to be promoted by this site. There is a big difference. You can do the same kind of thing with your right-wing attack site if you so wish. At the least you can agree that there is a market for news for leftists (whatever "leftist" means - in the USA it apparently means anyone who is not a rabid neocon)

What I want to see is for this to have no biases

So make your own. The existence of this site doesn't stop you doing that, and good luck; you'll need it in heaps. Unbiased news is very difficult, arguably impossible.

I want no political slanting of what gets in, I would far rather it be noted for the fairness of their coverage.

Try the BBC, it comes close.

Re:Lefty-bashing

[Overzeetop]

I'm guessing this guy (GP) watches only FOX. He's knows it's unbiased, because they tell him it is :-)

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[xtracto]

If the problem is with bandwidth use, why are you bringing the law into this? Filter it because it soaks up all your bandwidth, don't make up stupid excuses like "it's illegal" when it's not true.

Or he could only limit the bandwith of the default ports...

Thank you Leeds University...

[David Horn]

For looking the other way while I use my residence internet connection to catch up on missed TV shows.

Similar to any protocol

[sckeener]

I find it hard to think of torrent as anything other than another transmission protocol.

I know it isn't since it is acting at another layer, but for all purposes how is it different from tcpip?

I think if it was bundled with a browser websites would start using this for load balancing. People that love /. Would start torrent/mirroring it.....

I know it wouldn't work like that, but I can see a lot of potential in bittorrent for legal purposes

Re:Similar to any protocol

[-brazil-]

I know it isn't since it is acting at another layer, but for all purposes how is it different from tcpip?

It is specifically designed to faciliate the distribution of very large files to a large number of people. And nearly all the very large files that a lot of people are interested in are copyrighted commercial movies or games.

I think if it was bundled with a browser websites would start using this for load balancing. People that love /. Would start torrent/mirroring it.....

No, they wouldn't because the protocol is useless for distributing files smaller than about 1 MB.

Re:Similar to any protocol

[Anonymous Coward]

There are really only two differences.

- It's more efficient in terms of bandwidth usage than other protocols such as HTTP, so an ordinary user with an ordinary internet connection can use it to share information with thousands of others;

- More importantly, enough clients are out there that any idiot can figure out how to use it.

Slackware...

[Sierpinski]

Slackware has been using BitTorrent for a while now. You have the option of using that, or the normal download methods. You can visit them here.

I've seen many other legitimate uses for BitTorrent, since there are a lot of things to download that are of considerable size.

Guns are sometimes used to commit crimes, yet we do not outlaw them. Bongs are being sold at the local Waterbeds N Stuff. Knives that aren't practical for neither hunting or home protection can be purchased in lots of places. Why should software be any different?

Re:Slackware...

[CockblockTheVote]

Guns are sometimes used to commit crimes, yet we do not outlaw them. Bongs are being sold at the local Waterbeds N Stuff. Knives that aren't practical for neither hunting or home protection can be purchased in lots of places. Why should software be any different?

because the crimes committed with guns and knives don't result in the percieved loss of product by major lobbying groups of congress. the can only end in the loss of a human life. and we know how much that is worth.

Re:Slackware...

[ray-auch]

Bad analogies.

Guns _are_ banned, to varying degrees, in lots of places - in the UK people are now talking about banning airguns.

Bongs may get you into trouble as "Drug Paraphernalia" - varies by country.

Knives also sometimes have restrictions, eg. here in the UK: no sales of anything sharp to kids, flick-knives / switchblades, balisongs and a few other types banned, carrying any fixed (or lockable) blade in public without specific reason is also illegal.

Re:Slackware...

[kyojin the clown]

Who in the crap uses a *knife* for 'home protection'? thats absolutely psychotic.

Re:Slackware...

[chgros]

Knives that aren't practical for neither hunting or home protection can be purchased in lots of places
Should we ban cooking knives?

Re:Slackware...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who in the crap uses a *knife* for 'home protection'? thats absolutely psychotic.

A scared parent with no gun, because maybe their government banned them.

Re:BitTorrent 4.0.0 Released (who cares!)

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this is a troll: on my 450MHz computer, the standard client elegantly handle 10 simultaneous downloads while Azureus uses more than 100MB of RAM for one download only!

iwell then

[Mach5]

i got all 4 slackware 10.1 CDs last night while i slept over my DSL, using torrent. fantastic! torrents should be used for anything over 10megs.

Re:iwell then

[Dr.Opveter]

I get the same 4 cds over cable while i sleep too. But i get them from ftp. This way i use some 2.5 gb bandwidth, but when it's done at 1am the connection will shut.

I've used bittorrent before but being on a montly data limit i prefer ftps, especially for larger files...

My legal bittorrent experience from yesterday

[A beautiful mind]

Everyone remembers that article about privateer 1.0 remake?

My university sits on 2.5gbyte/s pipe, i have control over around 500mbyte/s.

I decided it would be cool to help share the wealth and let around --max_upload_rate 20000 for a few hours. It was maxed out ;)

Re:My legal bittorrent experience from yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, I take it you realise that unless the Privateer remake has explicit written permission to use EA's trademarks and copyrighted material, it is in fact infringing both copyright and trademark law, and distributing it is illegal?

I tried to find anywhere on their site where it says "used with permission", and I failed. Maybe you can show me what I missed?

Re:slashdot effect

[A beautiful mind]

That's called coral (the nyud stuff) ;)

The Internet is now useless for legal purposes...

[ip_freely_2000]

"With reports that illegal torrent usage may be more than a third of Internet traffic"

I wish I had a link, but I have also heard that spam accounted for two thirds of Internet traffic.

So, the entire bandwidth of the Internet is taken up by illegal traffic?

3D Gamers use .torrents too

[Jugalator]

I downloaded the fairly recent Unreal Tournament patch yesterday from 3D Gamers here and their "World" download is a .torrent. When download sites like these start using BitTorrent, I really think it has become a mainstream technology.

I also downloaded the Linux version of the same patch.

Needless to say, the Windows version downloaded at 200+ KB / sec, and the Linux version was restricted by their slightly loaded server at ~80 KB / sec.

Re:3D Gamers use .torrents too

[jacoplane]

Eurogamer uses torrent technology too for their download section. I go there to get my game demos.

Re:3D Gamers use .torrents too

[Rycross]

World of Warcraft also uses Bittorrent for their patching system.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[Jugalator]

we KNOW that the second we stop filtering BT traffic, our bandwidth usage is gonna go up.

Put differently: "we KNOW that the second we stop filtering BT traffic, people will use our network less".

It's a tough world we're living in huh? ;-)

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[fr0dicus]

You might be surprised, all the people who want to use bittorrent have probably left and gone elsewhere.

Slashdotted

[isotpist]

All those links in the summary are not loading for me right now. I wish there was a torrent...

I don't understand...

[Singletoned]

"Legal BitTorrent"? No, I'm sorry, I don't understand...

And this changes things how exactly ?

[RedK]

Ok, so some sites offer torrents with a proper license so as to remove doubt about their legality vis-a-vis copyright regulations... And ?

This won't change the fact that the MPAA and RIAA are going against sites like Suprnova or Lokitorrents, and rightly so. I don't think no one ever questionned the protocol itself. Why this sudden urge to "legitimize" it. It's already legitimate, big corps use it themselves (see Blizzard and their modified version).

Re:And this changes things how exactly ?

[shark72]

"This won't change the fact that the MPAA and RIAA are going against sites like Suprnova or Lokitorrents, and rightly so. I don't think no one ever questionned the protocol itself. Why this sudden urge to "legitimize" it. It's already legitimate, big corps use it themselves (see Blizzard and their modified version)."

Very well put. The MPAA, through its actions so far with regard to its approach toward BitTorrent, shows that they understand the difference between BitTorrent itself, the concept of P2P itself, and the use of BitTorrent for piracy. Interestingly enough, this time it's many Slashdotters who don't seem to understand the difference. The MPAA is finally being sensible in its approach, but as long as Slashdotters continue to confuse takedowns of pirate sites with an attack on P2P itself, we are hurting our own efforts to make the general public understand that P2P can be used responsibly.

To draw an analogy, when the government goes after a child pornographer, I think most Slashdotters would understand that this is an attack on the child pornographer, and not an attack on Nikon, the art of photography, or the technology of photons hitting a CCD sensor.

It's a shame....

[Anonymous Coward]

that Bit torrent has been given such a bad name by the MPAA and RIAA. Bit torrent is an amazning technology that deserves acceptance by the mainstream media.

I still remember how cool I thought it was that Blizzard used Bit Torrent to distribute the beta for World of Warcraft. At least one company understands its potential...

Re:It's a shame....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just the beta, they also curretly distribute patches for the game through BT. The only disadvantage of this is that it complicates setup a bit, because you have to open/forward ports on your firewall/router just to download the patches at a decent speed.. but I'm still glad they're using it. If it means they keep costs down and can spend more money on adding game content rather than paying for bandwith, I'm all for it!

News Flash

[ZehFernando]

In a shocker announcement, Common Sense LLC announced today that HTTP, FTP, TELNET, email and other protocols can also be used for piracy.

MPAA has already announced it plans to sue the creators and maintainers of such protocols and its clients. Other associations are expected to follow suit shortly.

Re:News Flash

[zerkon]

Why not add TCP on the list, at least then microsoft can be named as the defendent... again...

Re:News Flash

[shark72]

"In a shocker announcement, Common Sense LLC announced today that HTTP, FTP, TELNET, email and other protocols can also be used for piracy. MPAA has already announced it plans to sue the creators and maintainers of such protocols and its clients. Other associations are expected to follow suit shortly."

The MPAA has taken down Torrent sites that specialize in pirated material. They are not going after BitTorrent itself, or sites like the ones mentioned in TFA that provide only Torrents to content released with the creator's permission. In other words, they're finally using some sense.

A more fitting analogy would be the MPAA going after a site that offers pirated material using the HTTP, FTP or telnet protocols. This != an attack on the HTTP/FTP/telnet protocols themselves.

Likewise, when the cops bust child pornographers, this should not be misrepresented as an attack on photography itself, or an attack on the technology of photons hitting CCD sensors.

This is a fundamental point to understand if you want to fight for your rights to use P2P.

Re:News Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

correction, a better analogy would be the MPAA going after a site that offered links to OTHER sites offering pirated material using the said protocols. or a site that lists irc rooms you can download at.

hrm i remember reading an article not too long ago about child pornographers using flash drives to store their photos. k off topic sorry.

When I first installed Worlds of Warcraft...

[Mysticalfruit]

And it proceeded to patch itself by downloading the patch executable using bittorrent, I thought to myself, "Finally, something that isn't illegal that bittorrent is perfectly suited to!"

I have to give Blizzard credit, it's an amazingly great use of the technology.

Maybe Google will buy it

[hooded1]

I know this is a bit far off but it would be interesting ot see google run a tracker for legal files. If anyone they make bit torrent legit. Two years ago i never would have considered it, but given google's expansionist policies recently it sounds plausible if still unlikely

Lots of uses

[ZehFernando]

I think that the thing is, there are lots of legal uses that torrent is suitable to, but people don't use it simply because it's still seen as something only pirates use. Companies like to stay away from P2P without even considering it.

There are already several good uses for torrent. Linux and other open source/free software project distributions is the most obvious; game videos/trailers/patches/demos is another, I use filerush.com for that all the time. Also, take id Software's SDK release: they had an official torrent for it and it helped a lot (their ftp/htt[ server usually gets slashdotteded just a few minutes after they release any file, but that didn't happen this time).

You don't have to be slave to bloat subscription monsters like fileplanet anymore. Just download a torrent from a server with lesser bandwidth and let other downloaders help you while you also help other people. It's also great for people who doesn't live in the US and doesn't have nearby http/ftp servers for huge downloads (like me). Torrent clients will end up downloading from other clients that are near me and the whole interweb traffic gains with my shortened download hops.

I can't wait for people to realize that torrent is a great way to distribute huge files and that whole "p2p == piracy" crap ends.

Re:Lots of uses

[Mysticalfruit]

If Mozilla organization was smart, what they'd do is just include Bittorent with the browser.

The biggest hurdle I see for bittorrent is that people like my wife would want it to work just like a regular download. They don't want to download any additional software they just want it to work "out of the box"

I Love Bees DVD helped legitimize BitTorrent!

[celerityfm]

Don't forget that the authors of the I Love Bees Anthology DVD chose BitTorrent to distribute their DVD online! AFAIK this was the first commercially produced DVD to be legitimately distributed via BitTorrent-- an important first that I think didn't get enough attention.

If that's not legitimizing BitTorrent then I don't know what is!

Details of copyright infringement

[Anonymous Coward]

Alot of replies have mentioned that people may be "infringing copyright by downloading blah" .. This is completely wrong.

Copyright is exactly what it sounds like .. The right to copy something. If you download a file, you are not making a copy of it. The uploader is. It's a fine line of course, but essentially they have the object in question and their software is reading the contents of that object and sending copies to you.

Downloading _anything_ cannot possibly be a violation of copyright. It is a physical impossibility.

Nobody has ever been prosecuted, sued, or legally harrassed in any way, in any of the countries that most english-speakers would consider worth mentioning, for only downloading copyrighted material. The infringment occurs in providing it to others.

Bittorrent as both a program and a protocol is no more illegal than Apache or HTTP. .. or a blank betamax tape.

Re:Details of copyright infringement

[cpt kangarooski]

I'm afraid that the above post is almost completely misinformative.

Copyright is exactly what it sounds like .. The right to copy something.

Actually, copyright is not a right to do anything. It is a right to prohibit other people from doing things. There's no guarantee provided by copyright that one will be able to do anything with one's own works.

Furthermore, it is not limited to the right to prohibit others from mere reproduction. It also encompasses preparation of derivative works, distribution, some public displays and performances, etc. The main exclusive rights of copyright in the US are listed at 17 USC 106. There are some others, scattered about in the law.

If you download a file, you are not making a copy of it. The uploader is. It's a fine line of course, but essentially they have the object in question and their software is reading the contents of that object and sending copies to you.

This is wrong.

The law defines a copy as being a material object in which a work is fixed. Thus, a file is not a copy. The medium on which the file resides, be it RAM, a hard drive, a CD, etc. is the copy.

Fixing an intangible work into a material object constitutes reproduction, which is infringing.

Obviously, it's impossible to send a material object through the net. I cannot download a glass of water. Rather, when one downloads, information comes down the wire and is fixed into one, perhaps many, material objects within the receiving computer. Yet more reproduction may have occurred on the server as a part of the download process as well. Computers as we know them necessarily reproduce information in order to function.

So having established that it is possible for downloading to be infringing, the question remains who to hold liable for it. The answer is that the person who factually and proximately causes the download to occur is to blame. Typically, this will be the downloader. It's not as though information is being forced into his computer against his will, or without his direction. The downloader started the process by hitting the appropriate button. All the wheels were set in motion by him. The courts don't have a problem holding downloaders responsible for downloading, and uploaders responsible for uploading. Google for Marobie-FL v. NAFED, or the Napster case, to see examples of this.

Nobody has ever been prosecuted, sued, or legally harrassed in any way, in any of the countries that most english-speakers would consider worth mentioning, for only downloading copyrighted material.

This too, is untrue. Napster was destroyed because it helped its users infringe with every upload and every download. Had the users not infringed, Napster could not have been liable for anything. The Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry case discusses how people looking at web pages can be held liable for infringement since computers, as a necessary step in the process of displaying the page, download it and reproduce it.

Since the law permits, in general terms, people who help others infringe to be held liable for it in addition to the actual infringer, the issue of downloading as infringement has been explored and settled. Just because there may not have been suits against downloaders, it doesn't mean that there is a question of their liability. It's settled.

Re:Details of copyright infringement

[llefler]

And with BT, you are helping feed other downloaders as you acquire the file. At the very least, wouldn't that put you in a gray area of facilitating the crime?

Re:Details of copyright infringement

[Eccles]

The Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry case discusses how people looking at web pages can be held liable for infringement

It said such people infringed, but they didn't specifically discuss liability as far as I can tell. Is that necessarily implied? The defendants here were the web page providers, not people browsing the site. Granted, the law can be an ass, but it seems a bit dodgy if I can be held liable for copyright infringement even if I had no reason to believe the materials I was copying were not being provided legitimately.

Re:Details of copyright infringement

[cpt kangarooski]

The defendants in the suit were people who were encouraging people browsing on the web to go to a third party site to view web pages that had been posted illegally.

The defendants were therefore sued on a theory of contributory liability, and this requires that they have knowingly contributed to someone else's direct infringement. The direct infringement was committed by the people browsing on the web who viewed the web pages on the third party site and in so doing reproduced the works.

The mere fact that the defendants weren't the direct infringers doesn't mean that the court didn't look at the direct infringement closely.

Granted, the law can be an ass, but it seems a bit dodgy if I can be held liable for copyright infringement even if I had no reason to believe the materials I was copying were not being provided legitimately.

And the court noted that, if you read the opinion, but since the law holds people liable for infringement even if they do not believe and have no reason to believe they're infringing, the best that the people browsing the site could hope for would be minimal damages, e.g. $200 per work infringed.

Copyright is a strict liability statute; it absolutely does not matter what you intend, or know, or should've known. Just doing it, regardless of your state of mind, is enough.

Re:Details of copyright infringement

[Eccles]

And the court noted that, if you read the opinion

I do see the footnote. Is there a practical limitation, if not a legal one, on recovering such small damages? After all, even in this case, it looks like the copyright owners only got an injunction, not damages.

Also, does U.S. law actually allow CD owners to transfer their music to hard drives and other media?

Re:Details of copyright infringement

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, an award of damages is just a piece of paper. It takes a little work to enforce if the defendant won't pay up willingly, but not much. At worst the plaintiff ends up having to have US Marshals take the defendant's car, personal property, etc. and auction it off until it fetches enough. Surplus money from the auction goes back to the defendant (who is often the one bidding to get his stuff back).

That opinion was actually for a preliminary injunction so that the infringement would stop during the course of the case. Not a permanent injunction afterwards. And injunctive relief is a popular remedy in infringement suits along with damages.

Also, does U.S. law actually allow CD owners to transfer their music to hard drives and other media?

Not really. 17 USC 1008 works for some music to some media (e.g. DAT, minidisc, audio CDR, casette) but not all media (e.g. hard drives). Generally it's hoped that such reproduction, or space shifting, is a fair use, but that's actually not the sturdiest thing around. It's only been considered by the courts in dicta a couple of times, IIRC. At any rate, each time would have to be a fair use anew, since there are no blanket fair uses.

Of course, minor infringements like this generally don't get noticed anyway. The cases where I recall seeing it were Diamond (where RIAA was suing mp3 player manufacturers) and Napster.

Re:Details of copyright infringement

[Eccles]

17 USC 1008 works for some music to some media

Ah yes, the digital audio devices section.

Is there any reason video games wouldn't be considered computer programs, particularly with respect to the archiving provisions?

Re:Details of copyright infringement

[cpt kangarooski]

I would expect them to be computer programs, though wierdly enough they've been known to be classified as other things before (possibly for reasons relating to CO registration).

But that helps with making your own archives; it might not help for getting rom files from others.

Anyway, re: 1008, just remember that 101 and 1001 are important for that; it's more limited than people seem to believe when they don't read all the relevant parts of the law.

Linux ISOs??

[acomj]

Popular doesn't always = good.

Lots of isos available, slackware even distributes via torrent now.

checkout
http://www.slackware.com/getslack/torr ents.php

its an inexpensive way to distribute the project and a great idea.

You don't always have to get just movies and mp3 from torrent. People downloading that stuff are the reason the RIAA/MPAA are even paying attention to torrent

Re:Linux ISOs??

[Curtman]

Bittorrent is also the fastest way to download Knoppix. I can never find a mirror that provides over 100kB/s, but through Bittorrent I get 650kB/s (My ISP's limit, not Bittorrent's) within seconds of adding.

Re:Linux ISOs??

[elgaard]

Indeed, see:
http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/

34 TeraByte just for Knoppix 3.7

About 90 TeraBytes in total.

Why don't you ask the MPAA?

[oliverthered]

Instead of saying , the MPAA this, the MPAA that have you ever tried sending them an email and actually asking them what their position is? Jesus it takes someone as stupid as me to make an informed post.

Dear Oliver,

Thanks for your e-mail.

While Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks allow for a great deal of opportunity
for distribution of entertainment, P2P networks unfortunately enable
massive amounts of pirate activity.

When people upload or download others' copyrighted works, that is, in
fact, illegal. There is nothing illegal about P2P technologies, if
you're sharing work that you have the rights to share. But, most
commercial works you find available on P2P networks (e.g., albums you
find in stores, movies you find in theatres or stores) were not posted
there legally.

It is only this illegal activity that the MPAA is fighting against. We
will continue to embrace technology and the opportunities it offers
responsible citizens using it legally.

Thanks again for writing, and please let me know if you have additional
questions.

Anne

Re:Why don't you ask the MPAA?

[Skye16]

If only it were that easy. Last I checked, human beings were quite capable (nay, proficient!) at lying. However, there are times when they tell the truth also. So which is it? Is Anne lying, or telling the truth? Or is it some mixture of the two?

I guess in those instances you have to look at the actions, not the words. The MPAA hasn't done a whole lot, but they are very similar to the RIAA, and the RIAA, at the least, has shown NO respect to P2P networks. They've done everything they could to shut down as many P2P networks as they could, and only when that didn't work, did they finally actually attack the actual problem (the users).

But the MPAA is essentially getting a bad wrap for the DVD Jon situation (which showed them to be a bunch of jerks (imo)), but also because of their recording industry counter part, the RIAA. Is guilt by association fair? No, but you can't blame people for being extraordinarily wary. Maybe the MPAA will be different, but do you really want to rest on your laurels and wait for them to roll over you, your rights, or something you deeply care about before you try to fight? In those situations, it's usually too late to do anything.

But I ramble. My apologies :]

Re:Why don't you ask the MPAA?

[oliverthered]

Ok, I'm going to ask the RIAA too.

If any one ends up in court then send me an email (you can get my real one from my homepage) and I'll send you a copy of the emails I sent to the RIAA and MPAA and their replies.

You can also send them to you local representative when making you argument for P2P networks, you are all faxing and writing to you representatives right?

Oh, and please don't send email to the nice people at www.riaa.com.au

Re:Why don't you ask the MPAA?

[yetanotherluser]

When people upload or download others' copyrighted works, that is, in fact, illegal.

Ha! Even aside from legal paid services (which /. has reported the record labels are planning to screw over by raising prices), this statement is still fraudulent.

Material downloaded from bt.etree.org *is* copyrighted and *is* legal. It is uploaded and downloaded with the artists' permission under specific restrictions, and no copyrights are relinquished. Granted, this response is from the MPAA, not the RIAA, but they made the statement universal themselves. Check their wording.

Misleading FUD, plain and simple.

Re:Why don't you ask the MPAA?

[oliverthered]

I know it's such a bad email it can't be a stock response.

Anne corrects her self later on with 'if
you're sharing work that you have the rights to share.'

If only I were in the US and that was legal advice (which it seems to be) I'd have a case.

FFS a protocol != an application

[tod_miller]

Bittorrent is a protocol.

OK. You cannot sue http is someone downloads something illegal on a website, and good websites do not legitimise http.

If slashdot was around all-those-years-ago:

"Legal ftp sites may defend/legitimise ftp protocol!!11"

Of course, the world is a much different palce, but it would be crazier than a female to try and block a protocol...

Perhaps I am just to scared to admit the truth of the situation... but please, saying legal torrent sites are legal, and then asking if this means the illegal ones were illegal (which has nothing to do with the underlying protocol) is silly.

Especially if you do so in the context of the protocol.

Bittorrent is a technology that is good regardless os legality or not.

A well made gun is a well made gun if it is used legally or not.

A Ferrari is a pretty nifty car if you drive it legally, or if you kill an entire small country with your drunk driving.

I think that covers it in the 'far reaching and barely parallelis^Hzable metaphor' department.

My spacebar sticks.

The future

[dotc]

Doesn't this concept seem like it would be a great weapon for Verizon/SBC against Comcast. Last I heard, V/SBC are

1) Racing to roll-out TV services to compete against Comcast&friends.
2) Owners/sellers of lots of moderately-high-speed Internet connections via DSL.
3) Big enough to negotiate with television studios for distribution rights.
4) Use some kind of BT/Tivo-type end-device to ultimately distribute the content to the end-user.

It could be like Comcast's On-Demand, but with thousands of shows. I'd probably pay money for that type of thing, if it were well-executed.

Mandrake ...

[phoxix]

Mandrake was the first distro to use BitTorrent on a mass scale for distributing its distro ...

Can't get any more legal than that

Sunny Dubey

Slash-torrent?

[justthisdude]

So much has been said about the "slashdot effect" taking down sites. Has anyone looked at using bit-torrent to distribute referenced websites or images that are referenced on slashdot.org? Not only would it help our community and stop punnishing publishers of interesting stories, it would be a great expample of an important legal use of the technology.

Only goes to prove the MPAA's case...

[TalMaximus]

The MPAA and other instiutions campaigning for the downfall of some BitTorrent sites could only gain strength from sites such as those shown in the article today. To have BitTorrent sites out there showing that the moderators can...and do...actively control the type of content that is distributed on their TorrentSites only strengthens arguments against illegal Torrent sites. While those sites may claim they are not the root of the problem that they are only a passive medium through which questionable (read...illegal) content may (read...most often the case) be distributed. Now the music and movie businesses of the world can go to Torrentacracy and say,"See, if they can do it right, why can't you?"

Re:Only goes to prove the MPAA's case...

[shark72]

"Now the music and movie businesses of the world can go to Torrentacracy and say,"See, if they can do it right, why can't you?""

Exactly. They've shown that it's really not hard at all to operate a Torrent site in a responsible manner. The operators of these sites showed personal responsibility and respect for creators' rights.

Personal responsibility and respect for others are qualities which I think are underrated, particularly on Slashdot.

As long as we continue to equate P2P and piracy, then the attacks on P2P will go on. The MPAA understands the difference between legitimate Torrent sites (those that post Torrents to content released with the creators' permission) and sites set up primarily for piracy. Once we understand this difference as well, then we can choose our battle. What are we really fighting for -- the survival of P2P, or the legitimacy of piracy? I think the first one is much easier to win, and embracing P2P technology that respects creators' rights is the way to do that.

Re:Only goes to prove the MPAA's case...

[tepples]

They've shown that it's really not hard at all to operate a Torrent site in a responsible manner.

Yeah, until you can't find a good tracker. A lot of trackers show no respect for works released by their author, instead requiring that the warez scene has recognized the work.

The operators of these sites showed personal responsibility and respect for creators' rights.

The only P2P technology that respects the rights of the creator is the one used to distribute religious texts. You must be thinking of authors, not the creator. Besides, if an author creates a work, especially a musical work, how can he or she be sure that the work is original enough not to be considered a derivative of an existing work?

Don't Knock it 'till You've Tried It!

[willfe]

Sure, the stuff linked here may well be of great interest to you! There's lots of music, released both by independent labels and artists, and by "bootleg-friendly" labels and bands. There's public-domain (or otherwise legally/freely distributable) videos, books, photos, music, and text strewn about all over the place if you know where to look, and this article links to plenty of great places to start. Download some music and have a listen. You may like it. I was stunned by how much good stuff is out there that I not only don't have to pay for but don't have to break any laws to legally obtain!

The Creative Commons Directory is a great place to find other stuff licensed under a free/open license (maybe not BitTorrent-distributed, but of course you can fix that by seeding and posting to any of these sites linked in the article!).

Re:The Internet is now useless for legal purposes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Parent Up!!!! :)

Win the battle, don't just fight it

[willfe]

Make sure you tell your school this! It may never go anywhere, but mail your school's administration, your district administration (I'm assuming this is a high school-type place), and your student-run media (newspaper, A/V club) and student council (class president, etc.). Show as many people as you can in that school (and those who support and help run it) that BitTorrent isn't a "rogue protocol," and make them look foolish (they're stifling creativity and even committing censorship by preventing the distribution of legally licensed, public materials -- sure, it's spin, but that's what they're already doing anyway!). Note that when I say "write," I really mean write -- send letters printed on real paper, not just e-mails or IMs. It has more impact that way. If your school district's superintendent gets a letter from a student about perceived censorship, s/he'll start to notice something's going on and might well step in to do something about it. That will put it on the radar. Post your results here :) It'll be fun.

Doing this kind of thing helps get rid of the "stigma" BitTorrent is acquiring, and relieving someone of his ignorance is always such a satisfying process >:)

Re:Win the battle, don't just fight it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they aren't blocking BT because they think it's a "rogue protocol", they're blocking it for pragmatic reasons because students abuse it and eat all their bandwidth with warez.

Re:Win the battle, don't just fight it

[willfe]

Well, I go with what the poster said :)

I don't doubt it's being used for warez, but at the same time, we don't ban the sale of hammers just because they can bash skulls in; instead, we jail people who bash skulls in with hammers (or so I would hope :P).

However, I can easily see a "knee-jerk" reaction from the administrators/powers-that-be in this situation: "uh-oh, I've heard of this 'Linux' thing; isn't that the communist business killer application all those hackers are running these days? Ban it!" It's not hard to imagine PHB's making decisions like that without actually investigating further. Same could easily apply with BitTorrent too, sadly.

Re:Win the battle, don't just fight it

[Sigma 7]

Make sure you tell your school this! It may never go anywhere, but mail your school's administration, your district administration (I'm assuming this is a high school-type place), and your student-run media (newspaper, A/V club) and student council (class president, etc.). Show as many people as you can in that school (and those who support and help run it) that BitTorrent isn't a "rogue protocol,"

There are two definitions of rogue available for use:

1. It is only used for illegal activities(e.g. underground network). This is the definition that is implied by the statement.
2. "Out-of-Control." It is taking up much more bandwidth than what it should be using. In this case, BitTorrent is sighted as a protocol that takes up too much bandwidth, since it is constantly transferring data 24/7 as users connect and also try to download. (Generally, twice the bandwidth - users are expected to upload at least what they download, making it twice the amount transferred through FTP or HTTP.) Even if the IT department isn't using this definition, they could easily fall back to it if necessairy.

Of course, BitTorrent is slow behind a college-level firewall - you can't receive any form of inbound connection, thus crippling your download rate.

FYI, some internet connection plans are based around a $/GB plan - thus the college may be paying more money to support BitTorrent when they could instead provide local download mirrors to the students for academic materials. And as you know, money can talk louder than letters.

So what is the harm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are EA producing the game any more? Nope, so they are losing nothing.
Are the creative talent being paid by EA. See above. No. They are losing nothing.
Are the team remaking privateer going to make money off this? Yes.
Should that money go to EA? Why, if they wanted money from Privateer, then why not *sell* it.

Jeez, is the point of copyright that only ONE person is allowed to make money of it *ever*?!?!

Re:So what is the harm?

[John Allsup]

On the other hand, EA are not yet receiving the money that they could make by suing the authors of the privateer remake. So in this case, they are 'losing money'.

Personally I don't like that sort of accounting, but it's what seems to go on these days.

Re:The Internet is now useless for legal purposes.

[Sexy m00]

No, spam account for two thirds of EMAIL traffic.

Legitimate?

[nurb432]

Since when was a *technology* illegitimate? Since when was a site that posts nothing infringing illegitimate?

Talk about a biased statement... Helping to perpetuate the public's perception of all the 'evil pirates and their tools'.

Must be a laywer.

Re:Legitimate?

[Stonehand]

If a technology is judged to have insignificant legal use, it's much more vulnerable to being regulated or prohibited outright with regards to possession or distribution, let alone use.

Quite a few jurisdictions prohibit such things as tinted windows that prevent LEOs from seeing into your car; the possession of any automatic firearms without specific permits, or perhaps at all; or so forth. It's currently illegal in the US to distribute software that's positioned as a tool for bypassing various electronic copy protection methods, c/o DMCA.

In some jurisdictions private citizens (not pharmacies) can even be barred from having large quantities of pseudophedrine and certain other ingredients on the grounds that while not illegal individually in small quantities, collecting them indicates that you're into drug manufacture even in the absence of proof that you've actually made any or intend to.

Re:Legitimate?

[nurb432]

Its wrong, regardless of any bogus vague law.

porn torrents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any good sites for porn torrents now that mufftorrents is gone?

Buzzword overload!

[Morris Thorpe]

Well, the submission hits all the buzzwords. Perhaps "wiki" is missing.
Torrent...Podcasting...RSS...Blog...

Which of these will we use consistently in, say, three years?

Completely off topic, but...

[IANAAC]

Please don't mod "under/overrated" if a post hasn't yet been rated by anyone.

I actually don't have a problem with under/overrating anyone before anyone else has rated them.

There are a few users that are exdtremely low rated, due to past behaviour. Doesn't mean they don't have anything worthwhile to say now. Or, the reverse can be true. Some come in rated higher than what I would currently rate them.

It's all about the mod's opinion. Thinking differently is only kidding yourself.

Re:Completely off topic, but...

[zootm]

I just feel relative terms to "rating" seem redundant when rating has not yet occurred. I've felt cheated when modded "underrated" with a score of 1 before, and it seems horrid.

I'll change my sig, and hope for mercy in any case. Cheers for input.

Re:Completely off topic, but...

[tepples]

The point was that for accountability's sake, you're supposed to use an "In" mod rather than "Underrated".

Bonus unchecked.

Re:BitTorrent 4.0.0 Released (who cares!)

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this is a troll

Remember, if it sounds like a troll it probably is. Don't feed the trolls.

Rubbish!

[yetanotherluser]

In fact, the fact that we are celebrating some legal sites speaks volumes to where BitTorrent currently stands.

As an avid fan (and failed evangelist) of bt.etree.org, I have to point out that some of us are more inclined to celebrate *awareness* of legal uses of networks such as BitTorrent. I don't think this speaks volumes of where *BitTorrent* stands so much as where the general *perception* of BitTorrent (and P2P in general) stands.

I've been worried about BitTorrent being squashed by the ??AA, not because I download illegal material, but because the *legal* material I download is still a threat to the ??AA. After all, the possibility of artists distributing superior quality material without relying on the ??AA still endangers the stranglehold the bureaucracies have on the "art" world. They're going to get away with outlawing independent distribution if the public is not aware of legal media exchange before the laws eventually pass.

Nobody really seems to care, but it's still very refreshing to see that the point has at least been made in the media.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[kz45]

Put differently: "we KNOW that the second we stop filtering BT traffic, people will use our network less".

that's actually a good thing. 99% of users need the standard ports (http,ftp,pop3,smtp..maybe a few more). If you block the 1% of your network's users that are taking up 40% of your bandwidth (the p2p/bittorrent/dcc users), it's better for everybody.

At my school, it's great that the sysadmins have blocked all except the standard ports. When everything was open, the Internet was slower than a 56K modem. I can recall going into the computer lab one time and seeing a kazaa p2p client open with at least 100 transferring downloads..and even more uploads.

Also, if I really want to download something from bittorrent, I remote desktop into my computer at home and get it.

Jamendo ...

[lkratz]

*** Disclaimer : I'm one of the founder of Jamendo ***

Reading this /. thread, sorry about this, I can't resist explaining what we're doing here in Luxembourg.

We started jamendo beginning of 2005. The aim of Jamendo is to help artists use P2P technologies and particulary BitTorrent to get to a larger audience. We combine Creative Commons Licence with BitTorrent to have artists publish their work, and promote a legal use of BitTorrent or eMule or Shareaza or ...

Thanks to our jamloader , artists put their demo CD in their PC/Mac/Linux and automagically their work get published as a torrent on jamendo and accessible with eMule. The software rips the CD to FLAC, ask to choose one of the 6 creative commons licenses and uploads the datas to our servers. On our servers we do the rip in other various formats, Ogg, MP3, AAC, and do the creative commons watermarking. We also do some kind of community moderation, in order to avoid the ones that upload the latest Britney Spears or the ones that upload the latest neo-nazy band. Bands have to link back to our website from their official website as a control ( see godon for exemple )

Finally we use iRate as our core technology to do the rating of the music, and do intelligent propositions to our audience. Our XMLRPC-iRate server ( http://irate.jamendo.com/ ) supports the latest features of the iRate protocol but today, there's not enough client software, but we have the project to write our jamplayer that will combine iRate and BitTorrent and foxytunes.

What about the money ? Our business model differs from the one of magnatune for instance ( I quote magnatune because John Buckman made a very nice and cool entry in his blog, thanks again to him). We have a more ad-centric model were the service is free for the artists, is free for the audience, but the web pages are ad supported (no popup), the streamed music may be ad-supported up to 1 audio ad every 3 songs, the published archive in P2P networks are high quality archives with no ads. The idea is : bandwidth heavy is ad-supported, bandwidth friendly (i.e. BitTorrent) is ad-free ! We are not a label but rather a "community driven music hosting company" , we allow the bands to put their paypal button to receive donation on their jamendo page, jamendo takes no margin.

Sorry again /. crowd to present our project in this thread, but I really felt it was on topic ! So if you want to listen to indy music coming from Luxembourg, Belgium and North of France point your favorite BitTorrent client to jamendo.

Laurent.

Exactly

[Cap'n Steve]

Did it strike anyone else as odd that the only apparent value of these sites is as a legal defense?

legal music bittorrent website !

[sla291]

there's one more... CC music + BitTorrent + iRATE + Ogg Vorbis : jamendo

Re:as stupid as me

[oliverthered]

DirectX 9 is easy, don't ever overestimate someones abilities by the marketing hype driven by companies such as **cough** Transgaming **cough** Microsoft **cough**

There are illegal stores.

[Anonymous Coward]

One cannot just build a store and start selling. You must get PERMISSION from the local government to sell. And it must be in the correct location (zoning). To not do otherwise would indeed make your store .

It's a defense against an illogical arguement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird as it might seem to you, some people want to ban all P2P. Yes, the technologies themselves and not merely the files on them.

Granted, I don't think they realize that the Internet itself is such a medium, but they don't really care because the Internet is useful to them and BitTorrent (hereafter: BT) and such aren't (yet) useful to them.

So the only way to protect a useful protocol from being stigmatized as something "bad" simply because many use it for illicit ends. FWIW, BT is a *terrible* way to host copyrighted files--connecting to a tracker gives you a list of people copying the damn file, which ought to make it quite easy to find the infringers--but I guess those **AAs don't have a clue to spare, so they'd rather sue new technologies out of existence before they're made even less relevant. Even though there are tons of harmless, *good* uses of BT and it doesn't make sense to punish all of them for the ends BT might be put to, any more than it makes sense to ban copy machines or the Internet itself. After all, the Internet itself can be used for many more sorts of copyright infringement than BT alone can be.

Meanwhile, those who wish to infringe upon copyrights will go back to IRC, usenet and all the old hangouts everyone has apparently already forgotten.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, you *could* use traffic shaping, you know.
You know, throttle it.

What network are you running, again?

An interesting side note

[meheler]

As a Shaw customer, I'm used to seeing my bit torrent downloads throttled lately.. However, when connecting up with torrents from one of these sites, the speed was back up to where it should be. Is Shaw perhaps filtering out specific good torrent sites from their bandwidth limiter?

What's most upsetting is that downloading a release of Ubuntu is still intolerably slow.

I really don't like where this is going. Is my only choice for a decent high-speed ISP (Rogers, why did you leave us to these east-coast animals?) is deciding what websites I can use effectively?

legal torrent sites...

[Anonymous Coward]

oxymoron?

please don't mark as insightful....

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[evilviper]

If you block the 1% of your network's users that are taking up 40% of your bandwidth (the p2p/bittorrent/dcc users), it's better for everybody.

No, it's not better for everybody, and it's rather stupid to make that claim. It might be better for 99% of people, but that leaves 1% of the people extremely angry at being screwed over.

I bet blocking SSH traffic would affect less than 1% of your users as well, why don't you block that? In fact, why don't you block every port but HTTP? After all, that makes up the majority of uses from the majority of users.

Screwing people over is never a good thing, and I've left ISPs just because they blocked a port I didn't actually need. Last time I checked, network users use bandwidth... The fact that 1% use more than most, doesn't mean it's reasonable to block those 1%.

What's the use?

[jseale]

Except for the podcasts (which you can also access using iPodder http://www.ipodder.com/, Doppler http://www.dopplerradio.net/, Primetime http://www.primetimepodcast.com/, etc.), most of the stuff on these sites is crap IMHO. Besides, these ain't gonna' have any effect on what the RIAA/MPAA thinks of the tech.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[kz45]

I bet blocking SSH traffic would affect less than 1% of your users as well, why don't you block that? In fact, why don't you block every port but HTTP? After all, that makes up the majority of uses from the majority of users.

because those other ports are mostly used for legitimate transfers. Kids at a university shouldn't be wasting the school's bandwidth sharing music and downloading the latest dvd.

Screwing people over is never a good thing, and I've left ISPs just because they blocked a port I didn't actually need. Last time I checked, network users use bandwidth... The fact that 1% use more than most, doesn't mean it's reasonable to block those 1%.

it's not screwing people over. It's making the system usable. I would rather have those extra ports blocked and actually be able to get out on the internet at a reasonable speed. It would actually be better to have a firewall that blocked at a higher level. Maybe inspect each packet and only block p2p/bittorrent/dcc traffic. This way there is no conflict with legitimate use.

some other ideas might be to charge those users extra per month to use those ports/services or limit the bandwith on those services to around 1 or 2K per second.

Provable legality?

[tepples]

A 'legal torrent site' is a site that 'hosts links to torrents of provably legal data'

Is it possible for data to be "provably legal"? Say you have an independent band whose members write the band's songs, and they release recordings through BitTorrent. How can they prove in a court of law that the songs they wrote are in fact original musical works?

Performers != songwriters

[tepples]

Material downloaded from bt.etree.org *is* copyrighted and *is* legal. It is uploaded and downloaded with the artists' permission under specific restrictions

It may have been uploaded with the performers' permission, but was it uploaded with the songwriters' permission? In fact, even if you think you wrote a song yourself, you may have infringed a copyright.

Songwriters?

[tepples]

noone is going to argue with downloading legal Dave Matthews, Grateful Dead, Phish, and other bands.

Except possibly the songwriters. Even if you write your own songs, you may not be the lawful author, as George Harrison found out the hard way.

Existence of drivers keeps me on Windows

[tepples]

Lots of isos available, slackware even distributes via torrent now.

Slackware, Knoppix, and the like are useless to me if nobody knows enough about detailed operation of the Microtek Scanmaker 4850 scanner to have written a driver. So other than complete operating systems with second-class driver support, what legal ISOs distributed on BT should I look into?

Singer-songwriter or singer-plagiarist?

[tepples]

2.6 gigs of musicians who want their music to be heard by the widest audience possible.

2.6 gigs of lawsuits from songwriters and music publishers claiming that your musicians ripped off their songs.

singer-songwriter

"More like singer-plagiarist." -- Bright Tunes Music legal representative

Re:Singer-songwriter or singer-plagiarist?

[WarmBoota]

Are you going for the insightful mod or for the funny mod?

Francis Scott Key: "I need some music for this little ditty I wrote. Let me just sample this old drinking song"

It happens all the time and it's not going to stop anytime soon. Everything becomes a derivative work in some part. Like software patents, it will soon be impossible to create anything without infringing on someone else's "intellectual property"

Commercial ISPs in on-campus housing?

[tepples]

University residence halls' telephone systems tend not to be DSL-friendly. I'm not so sure that one can get a cable Internet connection on campus either.

Legislative lobbying

[tepples]

They are not going after the sites that take the care to provide only torrents of material released with the creators' permission. They are not going after Bram. They are not trying to stop BitTorrent from being distributed.

That's not how I interpreted some provisions of the CBDTPA, PIRATE, or INDUCE bills, which made allegedly over-reaching attempts to restrict P2P file-sharing technologies.

Original?

[tepples]

There's lots of music, released both by independent labels and artists, and by "bootleg-friendly" labels and bands ... The Creative Commons Directory is a great place to find other stuff licensed under a free/open license

OK, so the purported authors have announced intent to license the works in question under a Creative Commons license, but how can I tell whether the works are provably original to the point where the purported authors have standing to grant such a license?

Functional vs. aesthetic works

[tepples]

What's to stop artists in the film, music, photography and print industries doing the same? Absolutely nothing

Difference is that unlike a computer program, where function is built on top of function in layers (like an onion or an ogre), a feature film or other aesthetic work is usually intended to be perceived as a finished product.

GPL compatible, or forkbait?

[tepples]

The license has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License

After a quick read, I doubt that this new license is compatible with the GNU General Public License version 2, though it hasn't showed up on the FSF's license list yet. Will this cause a fork in BitTorrent?

Feasibility of BitTorrent for web sites

[tepples]

No, they wouldn't [use BitTorrent for web sites] because the protocol is useless for distributing files smaller than about 1 MB.

And most static HTML sites are how big? A site could, say, put all its images and static pages in a folder, put that folder in a torrent, and then have the dynamic pages reference those somehow.

Competing with yourself

[tepples]

Are EA producing the game any more? Nope, so they are losing nothing.

Bringing an out-of-print game back into print would compete with EA's newer products.

License incompatibility

[tepples]

World of Warcraft also uses Bittorrent for their patching system.

That may change. While BitTorrent 3.x was under a proprietary-game-business-friendly permissive license similar to that of X11, BitTorrent 4.x is under an apparently GPL-incompatible copyleft license. On the other hand, Blizzard could stick with a fork of BT 3.x.

INDUCE: enact it for the CHILL-drunn!

[tepples]

he MPAA, through its actions so far with regard to its approach toward BitTorrent, shows that they understand the difference between BitTorrent itself, the concept of P2P itself, and the use of BitTorrent for piracy ... The MPAA is finally being sensible in its approach

Are you counting the INDUCE bill in your positive assessment of the MPAA studios' collective behavior, or do you consider it ancient history?

I think most Slashdotters would understand that this is an attack on the child pornographer

Incidentally, the MPAA studios once tried to use child pornography prevention ("they're our competition; ban them!") as an excuse to put one of the INDUCE drafts on the fast track.

DVD-ROM?

[tepples]

AFAIK this was the first commercially produced DVD to be legitimately distributed via BitTorrent

What about the DVD-ROM/DVD-R/DVD+R editions of GNU/Linux distributions? Or do you refer only to DVD Video?

Re:DVD-ROM?

[celerityfm]

This is a good point, but I indeed only referring to DVD Video, referencing MPAA's stance towards Bittorrent and how basically despite that a sortof movie was actually distributed over bittorrent legally.

Liability insurance?

[tepples]

Copyright is a strict liability statute; it absolutely does not matter what you intend, or know, or should've known. Just doing it, regardless of your state of mind, is enough.

Does there exist some sort of insurance against liability from unintentional violations of copyright such as accidental plagiarism of music?

Re:Liability insurance?

[cpt kangarooski]

You can get insured for a great many things. The trick is finding someone to insure you, and providing them with enough information and money so that they will.

In copyright licensing, indemnifications between licensee and licensor are common, but only deal with the works licensed. For something more general, you'd need to find a real insurance provider.

I can't think of anyone that does this. Perhaps it could be done via Lloyd's?

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[evilviper]

because those other ports are mostly used for legitimate transfers.

That's a completely arbitrary determination, not a fact.

Let's use FTP as an example... FTP is used EXTENSIVELY for illegal activities, and quite likely outstrips the legal uses. So why not ban it too?

it's not screwing people over. It's making the system usable.

No, be definition, blocking ports/protocols is making the system less usable. By blocking a port, you are screwing all the users who might have a legitimate (legal) need for it.

some other ideas might be to charge those users extra per month to use those ports/services or limit the bandwith on those services to around 1 or 2K per second.

It really is scary to me that you can't see the problem with just blocking whatever you feel like blocking.

Can you really not see the problem with deciding that one protocol is used for something you don't like, and therefore should get completely block, cost extra, or be throttled down to uselessness?

If you want to SOLVE the problem, rather than just attacking a symptom, the obvious solution is to impose a bandwidth quota on ALL traffic, not just traffic for certain protocols. Maybe you can start slowing down their connections after a certain usage limit has been reached, or perhaps you might just want to charge them extra... Either way, that is the only real solution, and the one fair way to do things.

You really harm the internet as a whole, by making it necessary for all new protocols to pretend to be something else, just to get through completely arbitrary and draconian firewall rules. Pretty soon, bittorrent will just appear to be HTTP traffic on port 80, and Kazaa will look like HTTP traffic on port 80, and SSH will also mascarade as HTTP traffic on port 80. They will be forced to do this, to counter the anti-social kick in the teeth they get from overzelous self-rightous people like yourself, who turn their standard-adherence against them.

My sweet lord...

[tepples]

We also do some kind of community moderation, in order to avoid the ones that upload the latest Britney Spears or the ones that upload the latest neo-nazy band.

Does this involve any formal procedures, in order to avoid another Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music (Google it if you're not familiar)?

Re:My sweet lord...

[lkratz]

You mean this case for instance ?

Thanks for the reference, but uuh no, there's nothing formal, no strict guarantee that for instance a polish band that uploads its CD on jamendo hasn't copied the music from the latest bresilian hit. How could we guarantee ? Moderation is a mean to reduce this kind of problem, to avoid obvious cases. Like other website (eBay) we may always exclude bands when there is a problem.

Tracker?

[tepples]

Want a right-wing site featuring Torrents of content released with the creators' permission? Start your own!

What tracker would take them? A lot of the semi-public trackers, especially those based on old Bytemonsoon code, are shooting themselves in the foot by accepting only releases that have been announced through NForce Entertainment, which accepts only releases that have been announced through the so-called "scene" through some obscure ritual called "preing".

Found it, but it might be too expensive

[tepples]

In copyright licensing, indemnifications between licensee and licensor are common, but only deal with the works licensed. For something more general, you'd need to find a real insurance provider. I can't think of anyone that does this.

There does exist "errors and omissions insurance" in film production. A bit more Google searching along those lines turned up composer liability insurance offered by MusicPro Insurance. They provide a quote request form but no examples of policies and how much they cost. It appears that if you have to ask, you can't afford it; in that case, I can see the chilling effect on composing continuing even with this insurance, just as the rising cost of medical malpractice insurance has forced physicians into early retirement.

Re:Found it, but it might be too expensive

[cpt kangarooski]

I wouldn't be so quick to judge the expense of the policies just because the insurer wants people to request quotes. It may just be part of their business practice to only provide quotes based on significant amounts of information, or it might be required by the laws of the state they're in.

I suggest you actually talk to them. You might be surprised, though of course I don't know what they charge.

A different legislative climate

[tepples]

Are you going for the insightful mod or for the funny mod?

I don't go for Funny anymore, as a moderation fight between a faction that thinks a given comment is Funny and one that prefers Troll is enough to take away all of a Slashdot user's karma on one comment.

Francis Scott Key: "I need some music for this little ditty I wrote. Let me just sample this old drinking song"

Nit: Wikipedia claims that Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics, and Judge Joseph H. Nicholson connected it to John Stafford Smith's drinking song. Such actions may have worked in the 1810s, but national legislatures have since made the 2000s a much more hostile climate to samplers:

1. Copyright terms are several times longer on paper, if not perpetual in practice.
2. Copyright in a published work is automatic.
3. Copyright is automatically recognized internationally.
4. Courts interpret non-literal copying much more broadly.
5. The presence of commercial FM radio in motor vehicles and grocery stores ensures that everybody has "access" under copyright law to every song, eradicating any "independent creation" defense and making the climate much more like that of the patents you mention.

Everything becomes a derivative work in some part. Like software patents, it will soon be impossible to create anything without infringing on someone else's "intellectual property"

Of course, the conspiracy theory here is that like the MPEG LA in patents, the major music publishers have signed a copyright license pooling deal so that they won't sue each other over subconscious infringement but will sue anybody outside the cartel.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[kz45]

Let's use FTP as an example... FTP is used EXTENSIVELY for illegal activities, and quite likely outstrips the legal uses. So why not ban it too?

FTP is like a knife. It can be used for illegal activity, but most of the time..it isn't...so it shouldn't be banned. FTP also doesn't involve mass amounts of people connecting to you and sucking bandwidth down to nothing. Even if there were tons of people downloading files from an ftp site, it is still taking up far less bandwidth.

p2p is like an automatic machine gun with armor-piercing bullets. It has some legitimate uses, but for the most part, is used for illegal activity.

see the difference?

Can you really not see the problem with deciding that one protocol is used for something you don't like, and therefore should get completely block, cost extra, or be throttled down to uselessness?

I see no legitimate use for emule,DCC, or kazaa.

If you want to SOLVE the problem, rather than just attacking a symptom, the obvious solution is to impose a bandwidth quota on ALL traffic, not just traffic for certain protocols. Maybe you can start slowing down their connections after a certain usage limit has been reached, or perhaps you might just want to charge them extra... Either way, that is the only real solution, and the one fair way to do things.

if you read my post above, I said charging would be an option. You say it won't actually solve the problem, but there hasn't been any issues with bandwidth for at least 2 years now. Problem = Solved.

You really harm the internet as a whole, by making it necessary for all new protocols to pretend to be something else, just to get through completely arbitrary and draconian firewall rules. Pretty soon, bittorrent will just appear to be HTTP traffic on port 80, and Kazaa will look like HTTP traffic on port 80, and SSH will also mascarade as HTTP traffic on port 80. They will be forced to do this, to counter the anti-social kick in the teeth they get from overzelous self-rightous people like yourself, who turn their standard-adherence against them

blah,blah,blah. I see you got your daily use of the word draconian. It's actually people like you that are destroying the internet for the rest of us.

when this happens, firewalls will just start inspecting each packet at the protocol level (which happens already, but it will be in much wider use) rather than just blocking ports based on IP addresses.

If you don't like certain rules that are imposed by sysadmins, go elsewhere and stop bitching.

For a university, only allowing certain protocol works well. For an ISP, standard bandwidth limitations are fine.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[evilviper]

p2p is like an automatic machine gun with armor-piercing bullets. It has some legitimate uses, but for the most part, is used for illegal activity.

see the difference?

I see the difference in your description of the two, but you are extensively biased, and those differences do not exist in reality.

I see no legitimate use for emule,DCC, or kazaa.

That's not true, but it's not at issue anyhow. The question is, why should your opinions be forced upon everyone else, just because you fail to see all the legitimate and legal uses for those programs?

if you read my post above, I said charging would be an option.

You are the one who is not paying attention. You are talking about paying for access to PORTS, not directly to cover the costs of bandwidth. There's a huge difference there.

You say it won't actually solve the problem, but there hasn't been any issues with bandwidth for at least 2 years now. Problem = Solved.

Next time you want to get a new car, but can't afford it, steal someone else's. Problem = Solved.

I see you got your daily use of the word draconian.

If you have a problem with the word, remove it, and address what I've said, minus that one word which bothers you oh-so-much.

It's actually people like you that are destroying the internet for the rest of us.

You don't even bother to justify this accusation at all. Good job.

when this happens, firewalls will just start inspecting each packet at the protocol level

You obviously weren't reading close enough. I didn't say it would just be on port 80, I said it would also appear to be normal HTTP traffic. Protocol-level filtering works right now, only because people like you aren't abusing it yet. Once it starts happening, every protocol will look like perfectly valid HTTP data, and be completely indistinguishable, and unfilterable once again.

If you don't like certain rules that are imposed by sysadmins, go elsewhere and stop bitching.

I have gone somewhere else, genius. I am not your customer, and am signed-up with one of the numerous ISPs which performs practically no filtering at all.

For a university, only allowing certain protocol works well.

No, it doesn't work well. It's just that there's no competition for you, and you don't have to live in the real world. Try something similar with any commercial (non-monopolized) service, and see how long you stay in business.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[kz45]

That's not true, but it's not at issue anyhow. The question is, why should your opinions be forced upon everyone else, just because you fail to see all the legitimate and legal uses for those programs?

I would like to start stealing money from the bank, but the U.S government is forcing their opinions on what I should and shouldn't do, so I can't. Limiting someone's bandwidth is also forcing and opinion..and so is charging money for high amounts of traffic usage. You have the freedom to leave, so if you do not like it, go.

Next time you want to get a new car, but can't afford it, steal someone else's. Problem = Solved

not sure where this is going, but it has nothing to do with my post.

No, it doesn't work well. It's just that there's no competition for you, and you don't have to live in the real world. Try something similar with any commercial (non-monopolized) service, and see how long you stay in business

if 99% of my customers don't need those ports, a long time. The people using p2p are cheap fuckers that never pay for anything anyway (yes, im generalizing, but when a person would rather download music and software for free rather than paying an artist or programmer, they are cheap).

if all the traffic was soaked up from people using, other services would suffer, and more people would end up leaving.

If you have a problem with the word, remove it, and address what I've said, minus that one word which bothers you oh-so-much.

I find that the only people using the word draconian are kiddies who don't understand the real-world.

It's funny, a person like you would complain that certain ports are blocked and then complain that access was too slow (if they were un-blocked).

I have gone somewhere else, genius. I am not your customer, and am signed-up with one of the numerous ISPs which performs practically no filtering at all.

good. someone who is as much as a pain-in-the-ass as you are deserves to be a customer of my competition. The word high-maintenance comes to mind.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[evilviper]

I would like to start stealing money from the bank,

That's the worst analogy I've ever heard. "Stealing money" does not even potentially have any legitimate 'uses'.

Limiting someone's bandwidth is also forcing and opinion..and so is charging money for high amounts of traffic usage.

No, it isn't. Not at all. It is literally and directly charging more for those people who cost you more, and/or limiting someone to what they have payed for.

I'm not sure if this is your attempt at trolling, or if you really have such a low IQ that you can't see the obvious difference.

not sure where this is going, but it has nothing to do with my post.

On the contrary. You said blocking a few ports solves your bandwidth problem... I said stealing a car would solve your (hypothetical) money problem... Calling either problem solved with those solution is so incredibly short-sighted as to be stupid.

if all the traffic was soaked up from people using, other services would suffer, and more people would end up leaving.

No, for two reasons.

1) If you are advertising a certain ammount of bandwidth, you had better have enough capacity to serve all your users, and not be operating on the margins.

2) Bandwidth is not some commodity that is uncontrollable. You can very easily allocate a certain level of throughput to an address, and then it doesn't matter what services they are using. Your approach leaves you completely open to people using a huge ammount of bandwidth over HTTP/FTP (or just those ports). You are needlessly harming legitimate users of those services (which may be 1% of the p2p bandwidth, but likely 15% of your users).

a person like you would complain that certain ports are blocked and then complain that access was too slow (if they were un-blocked).

First of all, you don't know anything at all about me, so it's pretty moronic of you to start talking about how I would act. But... if you were advertising a certain throughput rate (which I presume you don't), and you didn't usually meet it, yeah, I'd complain.

someone who is as much as a pain-in-the-ass as you are deserves to be a customer of my competition. The word high-maintenance comes to mind.

Wrong again. I actually don't use up much bandwidth, and unless the ISP fucks something up, I never need to contact support.

I've had enough of talking to a brick wall. Let someone else try to bring your IQ up so you can start to understand the points and analogies I'm making. Unless you stop playing the idiot routine, and post some reasonably intelligent responses, I'm done with this.

Re:illegal usage legitimate usage

[kz45]

That's the worst analogy I've ever heard. "Stealing money" does not even potentially have any legitimate 'uses'

hmm, and stealing a car does?

On the contrary. You said blocking a few ports solves your bandwidth problem... I said stealing a car would solve your (hypothetical) money problem... Calling either problem solved with those solution is so incredibly short-sighted as to be stupid.

only to those wanting to use p2p programs, like yourself.

1) If you are advertising a certain ammount of bandwidth, you had better have enough capacity to serve all your users, and not be operating on the margins.

it's a university, so there is no advertising of any bandwidth (or have you forgotten that im not talking about a major ISP).

ISPs do it all the time. They advertise "unlimited bandwidth", but in the fine print it states you are limited to a certain amount and can be charge for going over. Many ISPs also sell T1s to customers when it is actually a fractional T1.

2) Bandwidth is not some commodity that is uncontrollable. You can very easily allocate a certain level of throughput to an address, and then it doesn't matter what services they are using. Your approach leaves you completely open to people using a huge ammount of bandwidth over HTTP/FTP (or just those ports). You are needlessly harming legitimate users of those services (which may be 1% of the p2p bandwidth, but likely 15% of your users).

limiting bandwidth on those ports would solve the problem quite nicely.

First of all, you don't know anything at all about me, so it's pretty moronic of you to start talking about how I would act

I recall you telling me things you seemed to know about me. Who's the moron now?

First of all, you don't know anything at all about me, so it's pretty moronic of you to start talking about how I would act. But... if you were advertising a certain throughput rate (which I presume you don't), and you didn't usually meet it, yeah, I'd complain.

Universities have a limited amount of bandwidth that everyone needs to share. When you allow p2p to be accessed, it will be abused by large amounts of students. This prevents nearly anyone on the network from getting actual work done.

It is also an issue with liability. School's don't want the MPAA,RIAA, or BSA going after them for something the students have done.

I've had enough of talking to a brick wall. Let someone else try to bring your IQ up so you can start to understand the points and analogies I'm making. Unless you stop playing the idiot routine, and post some reasonably intelligent responses, I'm done with this.

You keep talking about how it's wrong to block certain ports. It's not like im talking about a country wide proxy that you are forced to go through. You have the freedom to go somewhere else. I think you would rather just continue bitching about it because you have nothing better to do with your time.

btw, insulting the person you are arguing with does not make you look more intelligent. Especially when it is quite clear that you have not read the fact that I was talking about a university (which I am not the sysadmin of btw). But this was clearly lost in translation somewhere (from english to warez-monkey speak).