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
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.
... if they were Germans, they were right.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
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?
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
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???