Australian P2P Sites Disappear Overnight

An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of a raid on an Australian ISP, local P2P site operators are shutting down operations in droves, according to community site Whirlpool. The raid was the result of an investigation by Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), who claim they have a number of targets lined up for future raids. Overnight, a number of sites have shut down or been shut down, and ISPs are reporting major drops in bandwidth usage."

Comments

Anti-piracy may hurt ISP business?

[DeepDarkSky]

Well, if they shut down the P2P sites which were demanding most of the bandwidth requirements of the ISP, then it eliminates the need for broadband for a lot of people (at least for the time being). If people don't need broadband anymore, wouldn't ISPs lose broadband business? Are the anti-piracy groups willing to pay the ISPs for their "losses"?

Re:Anti-piracy may hurt ISP business?

[IEEEMonkey]

See post above about p0rn. There is no way that people who have had an opportunity to use the boardband providers could possibly go back to dial-up or anything else for that matter. Bandwidth is a drug and we are all addicted to speed. Besides, it might just push folks to look to legal sites to get their music and movies, you just never know.

Re:Anti-piracy may hurt ISP business?

[jmcmunn]

I would say you're completely backwards here. Most users discover the ability to pirate large movies/music/files AFTER they get broadband. They don't usually buy broadband just to start pirating, it's just a side effect. So based on that theory, they will still keep their broadband to surf the web or whatever their original intent was. Perhaps the ISP's will be able to increase each user's "available" bandwidth if the select few stop sucking it all up with PSP crap?

I for one, have vowed never to give up my high speed internet ever since the first day I had it 6 years ago. A lot of things have changed since then, but it sure hasn't gotten easier to surf the web on a dial up connection. There are so many pointless graphics on most sites these days, that a dial up connection is becoming useless.

Re:Dang It!

[smudge8]

I live in Australia, and I woke up this morning to find that my connection speed was shocking. About 1000ms ping to local sites. Roughly 1 out of 2 packets dropping.

Amazingly enough, I quit aMule and everything came good again instantly. Equally amazingly enough, all the downloads which I had queued and were going fine last night had disappeared.

I don't actually think it's really linked (especially since we're not exactly talking about emule networks, are we?), but it's certainly odd.

Am I a pirate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use P2P, in the form of bitorrent, for one purpose...

I have a very busy work schedule with a lot of travel. There are 2 or 3 broadcast TV shows that I like so I download episodes when I miss them. Is there any real difference between that and just programming my VCR to do the same?

Frankly, if they make this impossible, it won't make me watch more TV. It will just mean I'll miss the episode(s) in question. With the exception of the times I am home for "my shows," I simply refuse to watch TV anymore due to the 15+ minutes of commercials to watch a one hour show. Hell, I don't even keep the file after I've watched it since I don't want to fill up the hard drive on my computer.

So I'm not really sure what the broadcasters hope to gain, other than trying to protect their advertising revenue as they lose eyeballs to people who are tired of the noise level on broadcast TV.

So I just hope they don't shut down my favorite tracker site and keep my fingers crossed.

Re:Good ridence

[Maestro4k]

I am sure I will get modded down for saying this, but I hope they shut them all down. I don't understand how people think that downloading cracked copies of software isn't stealing.

• I agree, but I think what the music industry's doing is wrong. They're quite effective though, look at your own post, you've already assumed all those sites had nothing but warez and illegal stuff on them. We don't know if that's the case or not, as the cases have not gone before a court. It doesn't matter though as MIPI has won the war, even the article thinks so:
• • However, MIPI has shown that it might win its war on piracy through publicity alone: by doing high profile raids on well known businesses, then making audacious claims to the press about what it has found, it is sending shockwaves throughout the internet community. One user suggested that "Australia's isolation, which has protected it in the past, may no longer be a deterrent to law-enforcement authorities."

  This is just wrong, it essentially allows MIPI to be judge, jury and executioner. They don't need to bother to PROVE anything, they just cause everyone to stop using BitTorrent and P2P out of fear, even in cases where they were going to share something legal.

I pay higher prices for software and music because of the rampant theft.

• You pay more for your music because the music industry can charge more while waving the piracy flag in your face. You're partially correct, other than sheer greed the main causes for higher prices are outright theft (shoplifting) and large scale piracy operations that duplicate and sell illegal copies. The downloading online has not been shown conclusively to be a major impactor at all. The various studies done come back with opposite results, generally what result you get depends on who's funding the study.

Contrary to what the prevailing attitude seems to be here, the vast majority of the public does pay for their software and music.

• You haven't paid much attention have you? We agree, but with a few qualifications, namely:
• 1. People won't pay a price they perceive as unfairly high, CD prices are hitting this now as people realize that CD blanks are insanely cheap and CD prices haven't come down much since their introduction
  2. People will go download what they want if the music industry refuses to offer it to them in a format they can buy. The music industry killed off CD singles, and many people refuse to buy whole albums for one or two songs (Online music stores like iTunes are not a complete solution to this, many people want a physical CD so they'll copy a friends instead of buying a digital music download)
  3. People like to know what they're buying is worth buying. When the majority of the songs on a CD haven't been played much, if at all, on the radio and in-store listening kiosks playing snippets of a few choice tracks along with the propensity for CDs to have only a few good tracks and the rest garbage many people will download an album to listen to before they decide to buy Do note that the music industry brought all the above problems on themselves.

There is however a large minority that feels otherwise and continues their criminal practices. They are the ones driving software companies to add more and more layers of security to our software. They are the ones that are causing the honest amongst us to have to jump through increasingly more difficult hoops to install, register and maintain our software.

• Right, and you really think the current actions of the music industry will stop this group of determined pirates? The real pirates, the ones costing the music industry real money, are still out there making thousands and thousands of copies of CDs and selling them on the black market. They don't bother with BitTorrent and P2P because it won't make them any money.

• And don't be fooled by the music industry and BSA's ravings,

Now, usually I would have no problem with this....

[gt_swagger]

But seeing has how the RIAA and its many incarnations worldwide have been deaf [dum dum TISHHH] to the demands of those they depend on for SO LONG, I say pirate on my friend. It's quite simple really... the RIAA can quit living in the mid-to-late 20th century and get with the program, or alternatives will find their way into market and force the RIAA to change to survive. A brief rundown of the MANY shortcomings of the RIAA: - They DO NOT do justice to your average artist [Steve Albini, producer of Nirvana's "In Utero" album, explaining how the artist is screwed: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html ] - Convicted of breaking federal anti-trust laws for price fixing et al multiple times - They keep pushing forward this one-hit-wonder crap assembly line style, making you pay the $12 (use to be $20 before anti-trust suit) for one or two songs. They don't want you to download online per-song [see the older Slashdot article about them wanting to raise the rate for an online download], because that threats this model of forcing you to pay for extra music that sucks. - They have NO concept of fair use. They've made it pretty evident they don't want you to rip your CDs into your own mix... or *gasp* put your mix on an mp3 player. How pirate of you. iTunes? Hope you don't like burning your mixes too often to change them around. We wouldn't you to get fair use of that piece of "intellectual property" you just PURCHASED THE RIGHTS TO now would we? For extra credit class, please view KoRn's music video "Ya'll Want A Single" --> it is bootlegged online in many places, and the video even requests you download it. "Film makers can offer their audience a choice of ways to see movies -- they can view them in the theater, rent them, or buy them. Music companies are much less flexible. It's hard to buy one song. You're forced to buy the CD." - Peter Chernin, CEO Fox Entertainment Group Quite frankly, the RIAA has shown it doesn't care if it craps on me, so I don't mind seeing everybody crap on them. Karma is a b**** aint it?