Slashdot Mirror
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."
I was nearly finished downloading the complete works of Olivia Newton John and that new Men at Work greatest hits reissue. Now where will I turn to for my Australian pop song downloads?
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Not everyone is rolling over to MIPI, however. The administrator of one site has vowed to seek legal advice as a result of MIPI's enquiries into the legality of his operations.
I think I know the drill here. Set up a legal defense fund, collect tens of thousands of dollars and then disappear.
I'm a big tall mofo.
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"?
They will probally open back up. Its like a dealer the cops are comming so they swollow it and sell it later.
..we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the web and P2P, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the wireless networks, we shall defend our warez, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the bedrooms, we shall fight on the internet cafes, we shall fight in the universities and in the schools, we shall fight in the ISPs; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this filesharing or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our warez beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the Chinese hackers, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World.mp3, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the RIAA.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Fact: There's money to be made in P2P networks
Fact: If it's not legal in X it's legal in Y
Fact: If company is hassled in X, it goes to Y
You cannot stop P2P, you can only hassle it in the short term.
I'm appalled that the MAPI chose to take this action, but even more shocking is that the provincial government of the Republic of Australia, is willing to play the role of jack-booted enforcers.
Before you know it, other Australian territories like Fiji or New Zealand will be cracking down on P3P sites. I will no longer do business with Australian web sites.
At least there is hope in that the House of Commons in Melbourne is debating applying the CD levy towards the MAPI demands.
Which is nice.
Free the bandwidth from these Dr Who leak downloading bandwidth wasters and speed up my number of Slashdot homepage refreshes per second, while I wait for the next story to be posted!
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
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.
http://www.legaltorrents.com/k _oc_download.html/ download.htmlo wnloader.html
http://www.xandros.com/products/home/desktopoc/ds
http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/bittorrent
http://www.ferrago.com/
http://syd2.ausgamers.com:6969/
http://www.filerush.com/
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/faq/blizzardd
http://www.slackware.com/torrents/
Who is the one living in the bubble here? Personally, I love being able to download popular files quickly. I guess you'd prefer to pay fileplanet for the privilege, hmm?
It's been a long time.
As far as I know, all of the P2P networks which are being shut down are strictly local: they use IP filters to restrict to users within the same state (and on the same peering system) to take advantage of some ISP's free intra-state traffic.
So this really has little effect except on the uber-leechers who are in any case breaking the law (this is of course a gross generalization, but one I am quite confident making).
... if they were Germans, they were right.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If you had even bothered to read a few comments on that story, you would have known that lokitorrent did not indeed disappear and MPAA did in fact go against lokitorrent.
The MPAA issued a press release saying they went after Lokitorrent. How does that mean that Lokitorrent didn't disappear?
I was as big a fan of Lokitorrent and BitTorrent in general as anyone, but collecting tens of thousands of dollars as a legal defense fund and then mysteriously "settling" and effectively disappearing after the fact does not sit well with me. What were the terms of the settlement? Did Lokitorrent have to turn over all the money they collected from their legal defense fund? I find that unlikely.
Show me a press release with the terms of the settlement and my suspicion could be allayed. Until then, I think it stinks.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Why does everyone seem to think that?!? More traffic == more COSTS. People pay the same amount regardless of how much they use it, so the less they use, the better for ISPs. And how many people, do you think, are going to refrain themselves from getting broadband because the availability of warez has become less?
I pay higher prices for software and music because of the rampant theft.
That is weapons grade FUD and you know it. You pay "higher" prices for software and music because the companies know they can get away with charging those prices. If anyone questions it they can just claim that they were "forced" to raise prices because of piracy.
When was the last time you saw anything come down in price after yet another "successful crackdown on piracy"? In fact, with the exception of the recent drop in CD Album prices (Because they realised that people really aren't willing to pay £15 for one), when was the last time that the price of *any* media product went down instead of up?
ISPs are reporting major drops in bandwidth usage.
Wait until ISPs start getting accounts cancelled. It's simply not possible for people to receive less value from a service and be willing to pay the same price. The interests of ISPs and copyright holders are NOT aligned, and the ISPs that don't realize that they must oppose the copyright crackdown will go out of business.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The issue here is that software is not a "limited commodity" in that when I'm using a piece of software I am not preventing someone else from using that piece of software. This is different than, say, a hammer: if I'm using a hammer, you can't use the same hammer. The solution is to create a second hammer, which has an appreciable cost. The replication cost of software / music is almost zero though. A DVD, however, is a limited commodity, because if I'm watching a DVD at my house, the guy down the street can't be watching the same DVD at his house. That's why I'm willing to pay for a DVD; I like the quality and exclusivity of the thing.
Because software / music / etc. is not a type of thing where use is exclusive, the traditional models people use to set prices and make purchases breaks down.
This is like folks saying, "We lost $5M last year due to downloads"; that's not true, that's "we couldn't convice people to pay us for our product." That's not "lost sales" or anything, that's "poor marketing" (I include price setting in "marketing").
That's the real core of the matter though: ownership rules on software and such aren't the same as for automobiles. The old idea of copyrights and stuff isn't going to work any more and we're seeing the first sign of it. What "authors" and "performers" need to do is say, "I'll keep making stuff as long as I get enough people to pay me enough for me to keep doing this." This is a change of outlook from "I want to get as much money as I can from this". Put it this way, if I write a decent piece of software, and people want me to keep writing software, they will be willing to pay me for my programming services. If they don't pay me, I will do something else - supply and demand at its simplest. Under this new scheme, people will still pay musicians because a performance is an exclusive thing - you can only get the experience of being at the performance by, well, being at the performance.
The higher prices you pay for software are to pay for the enforcement of rules, not to protect the software! The other way to look at it is this: If I'm building cars and I need to sell 1,000,000 to pay for the people to make them, I better hope to get that many sales. With software, if I need to sell 1,000,000 to pay for the people to make them, I'd better set my price so that 1,000,000 people pay for it. If I get that sales volume at the price I set, I've done my job; if I want more profit I'd be better to adjust the price / features to get more people to pay me. If some people *don't* pay me, though, I should not care because it doesn't actually cost me anything if they don't pay me. Note that this only applies to downloads and copies, not purchased media (because of the exclusive nature of media)!
While I would advocate a massive reform of intellectual property law in general (including trademarks - what's up with the crazy trademarks I see on logos and stuff?), I also submit that there are currently laws on the books that should be honored. The appropriate course of action isn't to ignore or openly disobey the laws, but to put pressure on the appropriate channels to change the laws.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I don't understand how people think that downloading cracked copies of software isn't stealing.
Because it's not. It's illegal, it's just not stealing. Arson isn't stealing. Trespassing isn't stealing. Murder isn't stealing. If they're wrong, they need to be wrong for reasons that stand on their own, rather than by trying to stuff them into a category in which they don't belong.
Generally, I find that there are good reasons for copyright infringement to be illegal, but that most people who throw around loaded terms like 'stealing' don't know what they are, and can't actually make a good argument for their position. They're just appealing to emotion. Don't do that. Appeal to reason.
Simply make the people that are caught pay double the full retail price for each piece of stolen software.
Heh. You should take a look at 17 USC 504. The level of damages you suggest are tremendously low (and kind of vague) in comparison.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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.
Contrary to what the prevailing attitude seems to be here, the vast majority of the public does pay for their software and music.
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.
And don't be fooled by the music industry and BSA's ravings,
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?
The Peanut Gallery, Ubergeek, Biblically Sober
NCAAbbs.com: Thousands of fans, Hundreds of teams, Just one place
This is like folks saying, "We lost $5M last year due to downloads"; that's not true, that's "we couldn't convice people to pay us for our product." That's not "lost sales" or anything, that's "poor marketing" (I include price setting in "marketing").
I agree pirating isn't stealing in the traditional sense (someone else losing usage of the item), but the comment "We lost $n last year due to downloads" certainly can be true. It certainly could be lost sales. Imagine this scenario I suspect is not all that uncommon: There is a group of 10 people who all want to play a game together. All 10 are willing to buy the game, it is worth it to them. Instead, one of them discovers a cracked copy online and downloads it, and then distributes it to the other 9. Had that illegal download not been available, the company would have had 10 sales, now they have 0. Is that not "lost sales" vs. "poor marketing?" The marketing had worked, they had 10 willing customers that decided instead to infringe on the copyrights and not purchase the product. Do you honestly think this type of scenario doesn't occur? I agree (especially with the music folks) that their numbers are probably quite inflated and many of the those downloading/copying games wouldn't buy them otherwise (I have fallen in that catagory many times), but to say they don't "lose sales" to illegal downloads does not line up with my sense of reality.
First, he said he can (as in "is able to because either it is on network TV or he paid for the cable showing it") record the shows.
Second, at least this way someone gains: if he does not watch the shows, the benefit for the station/provider/advertisers is zero. If he downloads a file made elsewhere, that station/provider/advertiser combo benefits. The mean effect of people who paid for the content downloading it instead of watching directly is probably nil.
We have to collectively STOP buying music CDs.
It hasn't been shown that downloading music hurts the music companies, quite the opposite HAS been shown in fact.
So we have to send the industry a message by no longer buying their product.
If they don't have our money to use against us like they are now, they won't be able to pull these kind of totalitarian abuses.
OK, you argue it might force all the music companies out of business. So what? With the Internet, they are no longer necessary; artists can market their music to clients directly.
And in any case, the music companies no longer represent us, they are forcing horrible formulaic content down our throats.
Put an end to these abuses, boycott the music industry!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
...when I see that six of the "Top Downloads" on Sourceforge's front page are P2P clients.
I think the RIAA, MIAA and friends are fighting a battle that they'll inevitably lose, no matter how expertly they play the governmental and legal systems.
King Canute didn't have much luck either.
Pirate Party UK
Well, now that ISPs are losing all of their customers that won't bother using P2P anymore, they'll have to get RedHat to increase the frequency of Fedora releases to make up for it.. if that's even possible :)
If by chance the industries are ever successful in driving out the 'copyright infringing P2P networks', then they have just killed the consumer broadband market. ( and removed their source for free advertising in the process )
If you have nothing to download, then why have broadband? So you can get faster popus?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am all for the elimination of truly infringing content on the internet and punishing those who distribute it. I don't believe that all information should be free, though I disagree with the dumb tactics of the worldwide music industry groups and their ilk. Creators of intellectual property deserve to be paid for their work. And while there are substantial noninfringing uses of these networks, many sites are dedicated to promoting the distribution of infringing or substantial amounts of infringing content. And, generally, there are more reliable means of accessing legitimate content than through these networks (excluding BitTorrent)
As for the decrease in bandwidth usage, I'm all for that if it is able to lower the cost of consumer broadband to a more reasonable level. The exessive use of broadband for questionably legal activity slows down networks for people who need to legitimately download their ISOs (or have their Windows boxen be spam zombies.) With the lower nominal use of networks, maybe prices will drop (as opposed to killing of the broadband market like one poster suggested.)
"The higher prices you pay for software are to pay for the enforcement of rules, not to protect the software! The other way to look at it is this: If I'm building cars and I need to sell 1,000,000 to pay for the people to make them, I better hope to get that many sales. With software, if I need to sell 1,000,000 to pay for the people to make them, I'd better set my price so that 1,000,000 people pay for it. If I get that sales volume at the price I set, I've done my job; if I want more profit I'd be better to adjust the price / features to get more people to pay me."
Only problem with this analysis is that you don't need to sell 1mm copies to break in, you need to generate $xxx (call it $1 million) to break even. Be that 1 copy @ $1MM, 1k copies at $1k, or 1MM copies at $1. Assuming that there are a total of 1 million people out there who have any interest in your software (i.e. would use it if it were $1), then the ones who pirate do have an impact. If everybody pays up, then you can sell the product for $1 a copy, and things go along swimmingly. If 200k people pirate it, then you need to generate $1 million from only 800k users, not 1 million, so the price has to be at least $1.25. Your breakeven price has gone up.
That being said, it's certainly true that # of illegal copies * retail price/copy lost revenues, but some portion of those illegal copies are used by people who otherwise _would_ have bought the software, and those are real losses to software vendors.
This is like folks saying, "We lost $5M last year due to downloads"; that's not true, that's "we couldn't convice people to pay us for our product." That's not "lost sales" or anything, that's "poor marketing" (I include price setting in "marketing").
Brings up the notion of something like, I lost $1 billion last year because sales of my dryer lint were lower than anticipated due to people stealing their dryer lint from the laundromat. (Price per item: $500 million)
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
I love that scene from Pulp Fiction. Nice job.
...used to be a library...now it's just a mind-cemetary
Being an Australian I noticed several big mis-truths in your post.
1) Australia is NOT a republic. We are a constitutional monarchy. With the exception of people in the retired services league and the governor general (the Queens figure-head in Australia) this doesn't mean much. The only thing that would change if we did become a Republic would be the stripping of the Union Jack from our flag.
2) Fiji and New Zealand are NOT Australian territories. While we may claim many famous Kiwi's (New Zealanders) to be Australian (Russel Crowe, Mel Gibson), they are a completely independent country.
3) House of Commons??? There is no House of Commons, in Melbourne, or in the whole of Australia. You are thinking of the British system. While we are a monarchy we do not have the same system as them such has the House of Lords, House of Commons, etc.
4) What has cracking down on warez sites got to do with you doing business with Australian websites? Before you try to say these sites had legitimate downloads, they didn't. The vast majority of what was available was copyrighted material.
5) MAPI is not the acronym of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, that would be MIPI as stated several times in the article.
6) P3P?!?! WTF is P3P?
7) Why is a CD levy a good idea? How would you like a levy on screwdrivers and crowbars because a small minority of people use them to break into houses? Or a levy on tea spoons because junkies use them to cook up? The idea of CD levies is ridiculous!
How the hell did you get Score 1???