Feds Shut Down Elite Torrents

honkimon writes "Cnn Money reports, "Government agents said the onslaught included 10 search warrants and the shut down of a central Web site used to coordinate all file-sharing activity on the Elite Torrents network. That Web site, Elitetorrents.org, had a selection of copyrighted works that government officials described as virtually unlimited.""

Comments

Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[SoCalChris]

I take it those dirty terrorists were trading copies of Star Wars again?

I definately feel safer knowing that DHS is tackling major problems like downloading movies.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe they misread it as Elite Terrorists??

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[Quasar1999]

If we don't protect the few people at the very top of society so that they can continue to rip off the common folk to make billions upon billions of dollars in profits, then by God, the America I know no longer exists. ( disclaimer: I'm a Canadian so I'm biased. )

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[incom]

You joke, but most people don't even blink about this misuse of terrorist fighting powers. I swear lobotomies are being covertly administered VERY frequently or something.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[Morlark]

Yes, it's been said many times, both here and elsewhere, but US government agencies are getting uesd to having these 'anti-terrorist' powers, and they seem perfectly happy to apply them to situations where they really shouldn't be applied.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[gordon_schumway]

You missed the punchline, dude.

If we don't protect the few people at the very top of society so that they can continue to rip off the common folk to make billions upon billions of dollars in profits, then by God, the terrorists have already won!

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[SoCalChris]

Look at EliteTorrents.org. The big logos on the top of the page is the FBI & DHS. The article says Immigration & Customs, but the page itself has a big DHS logo on it. I doubt they would put their logo on there if they weren't involved.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[johnhennessy]

Not wanting to appear to side the RIAA and the MPAA but with the amounts of money involved its not surprising that the law is after these sites.

But you can be sure it's not because of terrorism.

How much of California's income comes from the film industry and the industry that services it.

At this stage, the movie studios are nearly nothing more than specialised banks (do I get credit for quoting Neal Stephenson !) - and with the vast sums of money involved, its not surprising that the law appears to re-act quicker.

But the law folks need a semi-genuine excuse to pursue these cases without alienating the public.

For example, if their line was "Yeah, well we need to help the movie industry backers get richer" - how many people would be taken to their cause. As a matter of spite, people would swing the other way - anything to go "get the system".

In Britain, before the motto for pursuing these sites and pirates was "to fight terrorism" it was "to fight organised crime".

In the end, it's all down to money, and in the movie business there's loads of it floating around.

Every wonder how dangerous driving in some countries can only incur a penalty of a few hundred dollars/euros (if you are really unlucky) while recording a film in a cinema (which I don't condone) can incur an _unlimited_ penalty where I come from.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorist fighting powers - funny! You didn't read the article, did you?

It was immigration and customs, by the way, and nobody but the magoo who started this thread made any connection to terrorism. What a bunch of lemmings.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[JustOK]

ICE is just the tip of the glacier that is DHS. Its like a business unit or something.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[iminplaya]

I swear lobotomies are being covertly administered VERY frequently or something.

It's not even covert. Most people are lobotomized within 10 seconds of turning on the TV. The job won't be finished until the same thing is done with the internet. This is a tiny peek into the new world order that 99% of you voted for.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[TrappedByMyself]

Yeah, more FUD.
I really think you people take pride in your ignorance.

I say this in another post, but Immigration and Customs, which handles copyright infrigement, is part of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security was created partly to battle terrorism and partly to combine the domestic agencies into one group. This issue has nothing to do with terrorism, even though it adding the word makes it all juicy and gets everyone all riled up.

Someone broke the law, and the government did its job by shutting them down.

Please get a grip and focus on the real issues of the day.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[aonaran]

Funny, Immigration and Customs must have different meanings in Canada. Here in the great white north they mean control of people coming into the country, and contol of goods coming into the country. Neither of those has anything to do with copyright law.

Re:Department of Homeland Security was involved?

[E Galois]

At the take-down, a DHS big-wig was heard to exclaim: "Commander, tear this server apart until you've found those copyrighted files! And bring me the infringing users, I want them alive!"

To which the sysadmin replied: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a server is insignificant next to the power of the BitTorrent."

"If you only knew the power of the Dark Side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father. .. He joined the Department of Homeland Security!" -- Apologies to Darth Vader

infinite?

[Travelsonic]

I wonder if it is possible to have a near infinite number of copyrighted works available. I think it isn't.

Re:infinite?

[chill]

I wonder if it is possible to have a near infinite number of copyrighted works available. I think it isn't.

What do you think those infinite number of monkeys are doing when not trying to bang out Shakespeare?

Curses!

[funny-jack]

Dangit guys, how come I only find out about these great torrent sources after they get shut down?

Re:Curses!

[Anonymous Coward]

What made it great was that people like you didn't know about it. :)

Possible

[excalibrax]

was it even completely possible to have 10,000 coppies downloaded in 6 hours, Id love to see that kinda speed from my seeds

Ugly site.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn.. the FBI needs some better web designer. The site looks like crap and could cause a seizure.

Re:Ugly site.

[grub]

Damn.. the FBI needs some better web designer. The site looks like crap and could cause a seizure.

It's probably the same person that designed slashdot's IT scheme.

Actually it was...

[Trikenstein]

one less than infinite.

Had copies?

[Luigi30]

How can a bittorrent tracker have copies of something?

Re:Had copies?

[LnxAddct]

It doesn't matter, this is a fake. They were DNS hacked and are trying to figure out what the hell is going on (according to their IRC channel). The Feds don't put up websites like that and they don't go around boasting about morals and copyright infringment on sites that they shut down. The feds also use style sheets on their sites and don't put 1337 sigs at the end of the page many line breaks past the end of the content. But the biggest offender is that that images don't have alt tags (as well as a few other things wrong) and thus the site doesn't comply with federal regulations for disabled people to be able to access all of the content of a federal page, if this were a government site, they'd be breaking their own laws. Not to mention that the feds just take a site offline when they shutdown a place (and they've never done it for copyright infringement), they don't dick around with new homepages for visitors to see like the MPAA did with lokitorrent.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Had copies?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

What about the press releases?

Re:Had copies?

[PseudononymousCoward]

If so, those guys are good. They even got the ICE homepage: http://www.ice.gov/graphics/

homeland security

[Kpt Kill]

Department of homeland security is now going after copyright infringment? What does RTJKJAS at the end of the page mean?

Re:homeland security

[TrappedByMyself]

Homeland Security isn't 100% terrorism. When the department was created there was a reorganization of existing agencies. Immigration and Customs, which handles stuff like copyright enforcement and counterfeit items, was put under Homeland Security.

Hydra

[1967mustangman]

Bittorrnt is a hydra-headed deal. THey will never be able to lop off enough heads to make a difference. Torrenters will just adapt.

Re:Hydra

[gosand]

Torrenters dealing in illegal wares should be shut down. If more and more sites use it for legitimate uses, then Bittorrent will survive. If it is only used for illegal stuff, then there are better chances that it will be attacked.

So they shut down a site that was trading in illegal stuff. What is the big deal? (other than the fact that the feds are concerned with THIS and not so much things that really hurt human beings)

Re:Hydra

[mr. methane]

Theoretically true of any criminal act, but by making an example of the ones you *do* happen to catch, you discourage others from doing the same thing.

Wonder how many people are going to be getting a little certified letter in the mail about 90-120 days from now.

Re:Hydra

[Fittysix]

There's no way to attack bittorrent as a whole, it's akin to attacking HTTP, FTP or any other application layer protocal.

Re:Hydra

[maxpublic]

So they shut down a site that was trading in illegal stuff. What is the big deal? (other than the fact that the feds are concerned with THIS and not so much things that really hurt human beings)

Torrents wouldn't be so bloody popular unless the current distribution model for media was a source of widespread dissatisfaction. Despite a plethora of laws passed to uphold aging business models, the number of Americans (just Americans) engaging in illegal downloading activity passed more than an estimated *70 million* last month. When a quarter of your citizens consistently and repeatedly break the law despite the imposition of relatively harsh (even ludicrous) prison sentences then there's something seriously wrong with the law - by definition. The citizens supposedly define the law, and if a good chunk of them ignore it (with the numbers rising every month) it's a fair bet that the law they're dismissing doesn't reflect their own interests or goals.

The RIAA and MPAA refuse to adapt to changing market conditions. Just plain, flat-out refuse. Probably because they know that in this case while adaption might very well preserve or even increase profits, it'll almost certainly strip them of the non-economic power they've acquired over the last fifty years - power that the tin-pots in the industries love more than money itself. So instead of adapting and avoiding this whole mess they buy laws and send Americans to jail over COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, which is just fucking stupid.

And yet despite this, the increasingly stiffer penalties, and the crackdowns, the number of Joes and Janes breaking these laws is climbing faster than at any other time in history since the Prohibition! That should tell you something right there about how well the law reflects the will of the people it supposedly serves.

Max

And this ended piracy for all time...

[Pacifix]

... The RIAA and MPAA heads can sleep easy tonight on their piles of money with their many beautiful women. Seriously, spend money on fixing the outdated media distribution channels and piracy will stop being worth it.

Re:And this ended piracy for all time...

[iminplaya]

Seriously, spend money on fixing the outdated media distribution channels and piracy will stop being worth it.

Please! This isn't about piracy! This is an industry trying to save itself from DIY publishing and distribution. This piracy thing is a really good distraction, apparently. It seems to have clouded almost everybody's vision of what's really at stake. If piracy is so rampant, why is the industry making record amounts of money every year?? The new Star Wars flick is in the Guiness Book, and yet these ninnies are crying about Bittorrent. Screw 'em. We just need to build more resistant systems. This should be our unified goal, and we need to resist frivilous diversions like this.

Re:And this ended piracy for all time...

[Doctor_Jest]

You are correct, and here's my $.02 on the issue:

It's never been about piracy ever, because we never hear about huge piracy rings in the Pacific Rim being "shut down" and thousands of bootleg DVDs taken off the streets. China and other places just give the US the finger when it comes to "tightening copyright provisions and intellectual property protections."

You see reporters walking up to vendors on the street corner in New York selling movies one week old on VHS or DVD, yet there's only one high profile bust for stuff like that in the last 5 years. (They were more interested in getting the P2P networks anyway.) Granted those vendors might not even have anything on those tapes, but the point is still there. Piracy has never been their concern. People like that and the bootleg DVD makers are what ACTUALLY rob them of their precious "revenue", yet trading online for no cash whatsoever is more important to them. Empowerment of the end user is their chief problem. Our computers are powerful enough to encode movies to watch whenever, wherever we want. So they nix the ability to copy them (or try to) with the DMCA. Our computers are connected to the internet via more than a 28.8 modem these days (some of us, I mean)... their idea is to subpoena names of users from ISPs who are "suspected" of pirating songs on Kazaa. Great strategy.. piss off the demographic most likely to buy your crap, RIAA. :)

When you can dictate to them when and how you want to view their content, it makes them nervous. When you have the ability to sidestep their dog and pony show for old TV shows or movies, they are pissed. (I hate to use this analogy, but here goes..) It is not unlike the illuminators decrying the invention of moveable type. The sunset on how the studios/labels do their business is rapidly approaching. This is their last gasp attempt to try and stifle progress.

ROTS was #2 all time box office leader (in terms of opening weekend gross), as well as making new records in day to day sales and ticket pre-sells, yet the only thing you hear is "Revenue is down year to year for the 3rd straight year..." We can't appear to be making MONEY after we tell them how bad piracy is to our business. :) The RIAA has been RAKING it in the last 3 years, and they are whining about piracy even louder than when they were supposedly documenting evidence their revenue was down to those nasty P2P fartknockers.

Why? Because "Monster in Law" and the 37 TV show remakes planned aren't interesting to the average movie goer? No. It's those damn P2P people. Yeah, right. Convenient scapegoat. :)

It's enough to make me wonder why I even go to the movies at all. (The last movie I saw in the theater was HHGTTG, but before that, I'd not been since LOTR:ROTK.) Nothing showing that I can't wait and rent for a lot less, and avoid the idiots that fill theaters. I saw HHGTTG in a theater with 3 other people. It was worth waiting until then to see it. :)

Sorry for the rant... it's just getting to me. The MPAA/RIAA are a bunch of whiny old crows who wish for the days long past. They wish technology wasn't leaving them behind, and if they have their way, they'll stomp it until it is leaving them behind. :)

Footage

[asadodetira]

Assuming there's video footage of the shutdown please someone post a torren... ...never mind

RTJKJAS?

[christose]

What on earth is the hidden "RTJKJAS" that appears on the bottom of http://elitetorrents.org/ ?

I guess somebody didn't like the FBI and HS insignias... Is this an indication of HS abusing the power it gained after 9/11 ?

Re:RTJKJAS?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude did you try clicking on it? i instantly got catapulled into a secret network of spy computers that had access to every mainframe all over the world!!!

then i had sex with sandra bullocks and my day was complete

Re:RTJKJAS?

[mpcooke3]

It's so sad. I saw those hidden chars and tried a few url variations before realising that in fact I wasn't sandra bullock.

Re:RTJKJAS?

[Ralph Yarro]

What on earth is the hidden "RTJKJAS"

Return of The Jedi King, Jar-Jar Against Spiderman.

It's the next epic hollywood blockbluster which was leaked early and led to the site being taken down.

Re:RTJKJAS?

[Kjuib]

it is probably a double Caesar Cipher then...

Re:RTJKJAS?

[str8]

I suspect the 'web developer' just put some garbage on the end of the word doc to prevent the fine Microsoft product (I'll tell you where you want to go today!) from deleting the blank lines.

Psst... Hey buddy, can you spare a .sig?

Re:RTJKJAS?

[sonoluminescence]

This site is saying it's a DNS attack and a hoax.

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=801

anyone confirm this?

We don't need no steenkeng warrants

[WillAffleckUW]

We're From Homeland Insecurity!

All Your Torrents Are Belong To Disney!

Terrorent

[EnronHaliburton2004]

I suggest a new word:

Terrorent: A terrorist who uses bittorrent to illegally distribute American Freedom ©.

Star Wars 3 Linked To?

[osewa77]

May be linked to the Release of Star Wars 3, any action against movie download sites at this time could be. Very great the financial impact of piracy on this particular film could be, therefore criticize the Feds for doing this now, we cannot. Open source principles on Open source movies should be applied. A commercial movie Star Wars is, and benefit from the Piracy is cannot, because knows about it everyone does already.

How long before

[ShatteredDream]

They bust hundreds or even thousands of users and take this to Congress to justify funding and manpower increases? This could be a big profile bust and they're going to exploit it to their advantage.

Title of the post should have been:

[pjammer]

OMFG! 5-0 PNWS L33T T0RRNTZ! LOL!!!

Perhaps they should have been using an artifical intelligence content-authoring program?

It seems unreal...

[jZnat]

Why the FUCK would the FBI (who's purpose is to prevent communism) even get involved in copyright infringement? This seems to be in the **AAs' field to send cease and desist letters, or even the FTC to step in and bitch at ET, but not the FBI...

Re:It seems unreal...

[jumbledInTheHead]

Because when you download movies and music, your downloading communism. A friendly reminder from the RIAA and MPAA.

Re:It seems unreal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, where the hell did you get any of that from? The FBI was founded in the very early 1900's as the first official Federal police force. It has nothing to do specifically with Communism, except as much as its jurisdiction includes domestic espionage.

The FBI's jurisdiction covers all Federal laws not primarily handled by another branch (for example, counterfeting is handled by the Secret Service). Copyright infringement has long since moved from a purely civil to a criminal matter and therefore falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI. The *IAAs can certainly send cerase and desist letters, and I believe are required to to maintain some of their rights under civil law, but being a private agency they have no say over the enforcement of the law in question (they can choose to cooperate in the prosecution or not, of course, but they don't have any control over what the DA decides).

Re:It seems unreal...

[TANK Ex Mortis]

You might have had a valid point if you hadn't compared copyright violations to genocide.

Re:It seems unreal...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

No, they don't. The tech industry uses stock options to avoid taxes.

Hollywood uses creative accounting (but not just for taxes, Winston Groom didn't earn any royalties on Forrest Gump, how much did it gross again?) to avoid them.

There are big companies that pay taxes, but you'll find out that they have little in the way of marketable intellectual property.

It is not because whoever's running Disney this week has naked photos of President Bush (at least, not that I know of) but because Disney profits help keep the government running.

You mean, they keep election campaigns running. That cash never touches the treasury. Can you really be this dense?

is when they state that this is a justification for violating others' rights.

Like my rights to not have to tolerate eternal copyright? I'll gladly trade files of steamboat willy all day, it's in the public domain, corrupt congressional acts notwithstanding.

Early home computer software becomes public domain in the next 2 years (and I make copies of it now, because it may not survive much longer if I don't). Want to sic the FBI on me?

seems to be fake

[ChoGGi]

from the irc channel

SithLord changes topic to 'Site Status : Down : ET Was DNS Hacked'
ET thanks everyone for there patience ... we are trying to get ionfo as fast as we can
info*

also at the bottom of the page it says RTJKJAS

Re:seems to be fake

[scsscs]

No, it is real. http://www.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel05/bittorre nt052505.htm

Re:seems to be fake

[anethema]

Actually thats totally wrong.
This is what the actual irc channel topic is:

* Topic for #elitetorrents is: Site is down forever. please part. > http://www.ice.gov/graphics/index.htm

* Topic for #elitetorrents set by SithLord- at Wed May 25 13:00:56 2005

Re:seems to be fake

[erik umenhofer]

IRC Channel says it's down for good:
http://www.ice.gov/graphics/index.htm

Re:seems to be fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust me, it's not a fake.

The site, for all purposes, was actually hacked. The ISP (LeaseWeb) was NOT in the turnouver.

We originally thought it was fake too - hence the "ET Was DNS Hacked" message. Nothing added up. The DNS didn't foward to the real dhs.gov, and the page was crappy (and written with MSWord!)

Then we got messages from some of our "high member staff" that said they got busted. That's when the door was slammed tight.

It is real, I can assure you.

Most people don't know any better...

[Marnhinn]

True - to most people this isn't a misuse of terrorist fighting powers, but then again most people don't know what a torrent even is.

Average Joe American, is not savvy / educated enough to understand the mechanics of torrents, Hollywood (for instance that - Star Wars was an insider leak) or that this is a misuse of the DoH's resources. To them, pirates, downloaders and terrorists are one and the same.

Why? Because somewhere along the last couple of decades, peoples' knowledge of their own laws, (especially laws involving quickly changing technology) took a significant downturn. Simply try asking people on the street about the USAPatriot Act or the DMCA. Most - know nothing. Some may have a different perception of the act due to propaganda and only a few will care about it.

Unless it is directly affecting the person, it's not important to them for the most part...

Democracies, in order to be effective, require active and INFORMED citizens - something that is slowly dissappearing (for a multitude of reasons).

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[Orgazmus]

Democracies, in order to be effective, require active and INFORMED citizens - something that is slowly dissappearing (for a multitude of reasons).

Maybe the old impulse cannon you target at your heads all day long has something to do with this?
Fair and balanced, my ass!

Dear Americans:
Stop letting TV control your view, and check things out for yourselves. It might be interesting to see what is going on outside of the living room.

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[Olix]

God, that patriot act of yours is darn scary. does anyone know if there is an equivilant in Britain? I hope not, I like to think that British norms are more informed than American norms (Though the results of our last election seem to suggest otherwise.)

It scares me that any body, even governments, can have such power. I like to think that in the modern age, people are protected by bodies like the UN. It pisses me off when the governing bodies of countries like America ignore UN rules because they think they are above the international law. In a perfect world, no one would have such extreme power over anyone else...

Screw it, maybe I'll just give up the real world. People are always saying that nerds like me have 'poor social skills'. What a load of crap! Sure, in their world I might be considered a bit strange, but in the world that is most important to me, the internet, I am a good member of society. But I am off topic, so I'll stop.

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[PseudononymousCoward]

that patriot act of yours is darn scary. does anyone know if there is an equivilant in Britain?

Are you kidding me? You guys don't even have a Constitution to provide an foundation to object to laws like PATRIOT. Have you ever checked out the UK's anti-terror laws? Check out the "Anti- Terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001" (which, BTW I'm unclear whether its anti terrorism, crime, and security, or only anti terrorism and crime; I would presume that it is pro-security, though the title is a bit ambiguous on that point.) Its chock full of fun bits.

Better yet, check out the laws in the UK in the 1970's and 80's to deal with the IRA--I'm not defending any group or act here, just pointing out that many of those laws make PATRIOT look benign. Just a hint: indefinite detention without any trial, and there's more where that came from.

Far from what the rhetoric of /. would lead one to believe, the civil liberties in the US are quite extensive, and quite well-protected. It is only because they are so extensive, that we notice when they are diminished.

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracies, in order to be effective, require active and INFORMED citizens - something that is slowly dissappearing (for a multitude of reasons).

it seems like a conflict of interest to have a government that relies on an educated populated to also be responsible for the education of that very same population.

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[maxpublic]

Dear Americans:

This should read 'dear humans', but I guess some europeans can't admit that their folks are just as fucking ignorant as our own.

Max

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[GMFTatsujin]

It's too bad the Brits didn't have a Slashdot-alike back in the day!

They'd probably have called it "Slashpoint" or "Slantdot" something, given the minor linguistic hurdles between the UK and America. But at least there'd be somewhere to gain karma by grousing.

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[syrion]

Slantfullstop: Information for Unsavvy Gents. Quintessence of quality.

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[TapeCutter]

google for "oil for food scandal" - You must be kidding, half of that money went to US companies, the US knowingly allowed some of the "stolen" oil to pass through thier Naval blockade. All of the "facts" in the scandal were passed on to the security council at the time they occured. The US had plenty of opportunity to stop it but like the other veto-wielding members of the security council they deliberately ignored the warnings. The real scandal of the UN was the Rawanda massacre, this is when all of the world's leaders saw the slaughter of one million people happening before thier eyes and did .... nothing!

As I see it there are a couple of loudmouth politicians pushing an adgenda in the US. They blatantly pick and choose, (or invent), facts in the oil-for-food scandal and use them to call the kettle black. The probem with the UN is not corruption it is ineffectual because it is undemocratic and controlled by the winners of WW2.

You are spot on when you say "power comes from the people". Every ruler rules by the "consent" of the people (even Hitler & Stalin), get rid of the rulers and there is anarchy until someone steps up to fill the power vacum (ref: Iraq). This is not the planet I would choose to live on either but we have nobody to blame except our collective selves. Since the thought of bearing collective responsibility for the planets woes is repugnant to most, we simply choose to blame "the great satan", "the terrorists", etc, and hope they will go away.

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[ScentCone]

I like to think that in the modern age, people are protected by bodies like the UN. It pisses me off when the governing bodies of countries like America ignore UN rules because they think they are above the international law. In a perfect world, no one would have such extreme power over anyone else...

Are you even listening to yourself? To translate: no one should have power over anyone else... except for the UN, which is made up of people, who would then have power over other people?

That would be the UN, which has done such a fabuluous job of protecting people in Africa? Or in preventing Iran for forging ahead with nukes? Or in helping the poor bastards living in North Korea? Or in stopping China from threatening Taiwan? Or which kept the Baltics all nice and tidy when the Serbs and the Croats blew up? Or the UN that did such a great job of making Saddam even richer as they put together a totally corrupt oil-for-food program? Ask the people living in Darfur how protected they're feeling.

Re:Most people don't know any better...

[TapeCutter]

"The UN is corrupt because it's ineffectual"

Ineffectuall does not mean corrupt, you are parroting the "UN is corrupt" mantra that comes only from the mouths of some of your own politicians. I have no idea who ordered the tankers to be allowed to pass through the blockade and on to Turkey, but I doubt it was a corrupt individual in the UN. Also I do not think the US is soley to blame, the security council is to blame and they know it. Some have backed Kofi calling for reform of the council. The US has gone the other way and is running a transparent smear campaing against the UN and European anti-war politicians in a lame attempt to avoid responsibility and push thier own anti-UN agenda.

"re-evaluate your knee-jerk anti-American attitude"

My bias is not "anti-american" and has nothing to do with my knees, it is bias against the corporate stand over men that pretend to be a government "for the people". Given thier stunningly two-faced record it is perfectly rational for me to think this way.

The Cost of Idiocy

[CristalShandaLear]

Movie Tickets in my area $9.50
Amount of downloads: Aprox 10,000
Amount Star Wars grossed in just the first weekend: $158.5 million

I suppose that somehow, somewhere that extra $95,000 that they may or may not have made anyway is worth all this.

I'd bet that 9K out of the 10K downloaders actually paid to see the movie anyway.

FBI Shot itslef?

[Chrish2]

Have any of you noticed the image thay have used a the top of the page? Now, im sure that is a copyrighted image. Remember FBI agents "It is unlawful to reproduce or distribute copyrighted material, such as images, without authorization - even when done for free over the Internet. Individuals who willfully distribute or download copyrighted material risk criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 2319. First-time offenders convicted of criminal felony copyright laws will face up to five years in federal prison, restitution, forfeiture and a fine." Now also according to this i have comited a crime by viewing the page on the net that has a copyrighted image on that page SUE THE FBI - SUE THE FBI (lol)

Re:Since when

[taustin]

Title 17 defines criminal violations of copyright. Title 17, Section 506 says that any infringement for more than $1,000, commercial or not, (and any commercial infringement, regardless of value) is a criminal offense.

So, whether you see it or not, what is alleged is clearly criminal in scope.

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome our JOB PRODUCING overloards.

Another One Bites The Dust

[donnacha]

Damn, I had a great ratio at ET!!

If they bust Empornium next, they'll completely ruin my sex life.

How difficult would it be to host these trackers in China or any other country that the neo-cons in Washington don't have against the wall?

Latency shouldn't be such a problem, all the tracker has to do is hook the users up.

Ripoff?

[jfengel]

I know you're just making a joke, but I'm curious: in what way was Revenge of the Sith ripping people off? They made a movie, and they were hoping to sell tickets to it, and eventually sell DVDs. Are you saying that the price for a ticket is too high?

George Lucas sure will make a profit off that, but is all profit-making a ripoff?

Re:Ripoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop making people think here! You can't think and jerk your knee at the same time!

Come on, get back into the /. groupthink:

corporations = evil
profits = evil
US government = evil
Microsoft = evil

Just keep saying it and pretty soon you'll feel a lot better!

Re:Ripoff?

[LordSnooty]

Maybe they think it stinks, like everyone else in the world over 16?

Re:Ripoff?

[Paradise Pete]

Try reading some Marx...

I did. He lost me when he said "How the proletariat got in my pajamas I'll never know."

Re:Ripoff?

[Dr. Evil]

Mass produced media has all but killed small theatres and live entertainment. Even the local jobs from Cinemas are near-minimum wage mcjobs, and even those are being replaced by machines. The Cinema operations are franchised so as to lock in who can operate the enterprise and how they operate it, and the distribution of film quality is even monitored to keep cinemas on their toes.

It's a vertical monopoly where studios own the cinemas and the distribution. Worse, the studios and cinemas collude to ensure minimum competition and maximum revenue from their films.

Blockbuster cinema houses starve out independent cinema houses, then for the mostpart refuse to air local content which might not fill the seats. It's a rape of our culture and funnels money out of the local economy and right into Hollywood.

The revenues are used to empower legal teams to change copyright legislation so as to artificially protect their intellectual property. The rights which copyright gave them to make their bililons of dollars is just not enough for them.

In a world of six billion people, we should see more films and creative content than ever in the history of the earth, but for some reason, all we care about is the production of a few films from these big corporations.

In other words, George Lucas is a role model for Americans to screw the little guy.

Re:Ripoff?

[KingSkippus]

...in what way was Revenge of the Sith ripping people off?

I actually liked Revenge of the Sith, so I let others argue over whether the ticket price was a ripoff to see that particular movie. :-)

However, I don't need to argue about that. I can think of a few other ways we're being ripped off pretty quickly:

• The studios diligently working to illegally take away my fair use rights of the movie.
• The studios screwing movie theaters by making unreasonable monetary demands of the theaters that show their movies during the opening weeks. (Thus forcing theaters to pass the cost on to us by making us finance popcorn if we actually want a snack.)
• The studios undermining my Constitutional freedom to copy the movie after a limited time.
• Imposing excessive fines and punishment on a minor crime when copyright violators are caught. (I can't dig up the link offhand that I saw comparing the punishment for downloading a movie vs. stealing it from a store. Can anyone else help?)
• The corporate executives at the studios screwing the vast majority of the people who worked on the film to keep most of the profit in the hands of a very small minority of people who did nothing to contribute to the film. (A big problem in big corporations, not limited to the film industry.)
• The studios working together to keep the prices of DVDs artificially high.

That's just off the top of my head. Anyone else care to add to the list?

So no, not all profit-making is a ripoff. But that doesn't change the fact that some of it certainly is. And no, illegally downloading and/or sharing movies isn't legal or ethical. But in the grand scheme of things, I think it's a hell of a lot less serious an offense than what the movie studios and especially the **AA are doing.

Re:Ripoff?

[Surt]

It's a ripoff when the advertising misleads you into paying to see a movie that turns out to be nothing like the clips, and in some cases not even to contain the clips. When you're dissatisfied with the product, there is usually no recourse, you can't get any of your money back.

Re:Ripoff?

[BasilBrush]

Fair comment. The trouble is that I'm not sure what people downloading the latest Hollywood blockbusters on Bittorrent, burning a DVD and then spending the night at home watching it are doing to help those local independant cinemas.

Re:Ripoff?

[mesach]

How about removing the brats that talk on thier cell phones, or throw things, use laser pointers, get up and leave, then come back and mess with thier friends.

People who bring baby's and toddlers to movies because they cant get a sitter that night.

The guy who translates the entire movie line by line for his spanish speaking family of 8 so they can see it in the theater.

How about removing those people, because they RUIN my $10/ticket movie going experience. Which in turn makes me download the movie and sit at home and watch in comfort. They arent losing ANY money because I didn't go to the theater and buy a ticket. I have no intention of going to theaters because of the 10% inconsiderate fucks in the world.

Re:Ripoff?

[KingSkippus]

<rant style="rant-type:soapbox;">

they can either become investors or quit

Okay, this is the last reply I'm going to post on this topic, because this is as close to a flame war as I want to get. If you want the last word, feel free to post a reply and I'll let everyone bask in your victory. I diligently try to avoid the soapbox like this, but man, you just caught me at just the wrong moment.

Your post is typical of someone who has had a relatively nice middle-class ride through life and doesn't truly know what it's like to be an ordinary working class schmoe. It's awful easy to say stuff like "become and investor" and "quit" when you have spare money to invest and could find another job relatively easily.

I'm guessing that you don't understand what it's like to have no spare money or to be forced to work a miserable job to keep food on the table because I'm guessing you can't relate. You think that you "pulled yourself up by the bootstraps" and "made yourself what you are today" because you went to college on your parent's dime and/or government-provided scholarship, grant, and/or student loan programs. If you lost your job today, I'm guessing you probably have money stashed away that you could fall back on, or at worst, a family that would find some way to take care of you. You think you've earned everything you have, and if someone else is poor, they're not unfortunate, they're just lazy because they didn't work as hard as you did.

Well, I've got some news; news that you will probably not believe because you've so successfully fooled yourself into believing that you've earned everything you have, but others reading will probably understand all too well. In America today, how hard you work has very little to do with how successful you are. I'm not saying the executives don't work hard, because a lot do. But they like to think that their sixty to eighty hours a week somehow entitles them to the lion's share of profit. Guess what: Sixty to eighty hours a weeks is a normal work week for a LOT of people who are barely making ends meet. In fact, some of the people in the corporate trenches would consider a sixty hour week a vacation.

These people would like nothing better than to find a good job somewhere else and quit, but the other company they go to will be just as bad, and they would lose any vested time in any pittance of a retirement plan they may have, vacation time they have built up for being at the company several years, and so on. So yeah, it's easy to armchair-manage people's lives, telling them to quit and lose what little they have for something worse, if you're not the one who will actually have to pay the price for it.

It's not like executives sit down with the grunts on the line and work out what everyone thinks is fair compensation for all employees. No, they TELL employees what they'll get, and that will be as little as they can get away with. These days, it's gotten even worse because many executives don't really even care about the long term well-being of the company, as long as they get their bonus this year and their golden parachute next year. As a general rule (exceptions are few and FAR between), the executives that can get away with screwing the employees the hardest will be the most lavishly rewarded for doing so. Why? It's built into the corporate culture. Their job is to maximize profit and minimize costs (i.e. things like salary and benefits for average schmoes). Being fair to the employees isn't part of the equation; in fact, it is a significant hinderance.

Bringing it back on-topic, most of the people working on the film AREN'T being paid what they're "supposed" to be paid. They're being paid the bare minimum they can be paid. Even though both are in a sad state under the constant attacks they've suffered lately, we fortunately have things like unions and liberals around to try to ensure that the bare minimum will at least allow these people to eat. They "signed up" for it not because it

Re:Ripoff?

[Ubergrendle]

This is of course COMPLETELY different from the studio system pre-WWII that persisted from silent to talkies to colour. Oh wait, no, its always been this way.

Good independent work will always come to the fore. When people started getting sick of John Wayne movies and musicals and yet another damn Rock Hudson movie, along came Coppola, Scorcese, DePalma, Polanski, etc to bust it wide open.

I figure we need another year or two of ABSOLUTE DRECK before studios will start taking chances again on new work. Lucas used to be the counter-culture rebel...who is going to overthrow him? its inevitable, sooner or later 'our' generation will come out with an alternative. (Hint: Watch movies by David Fincher, Spike Jonze, and Christopher Nolan to get a sense of the new post-modern digital film future)

Re:Ripoff?

[emcmanus]

No, you're wrong. Production houses don't have a vertical monopoly on the industry, as you state.

Yes, it used to be true that houses owned all of the theaters in which their movies were shown, but that ended in 1948 when an antitrust case was brought against paramount (U.S. vs. Paramount Pictures, et. al) causing them, and others in suit, to divest their theaters.

I'd like to also point out that all of your examples of the movie industry "robbing america of its right to culture" are not the result of an evil mastermind, but the American Free Market. It's simple economy of scale, and it's the reason that you're paying $3.99 for a movie that cost millions to produce.

A CRUCIAL part to any free-market is the protection of individual property rights, and as value is increasingly being assigned to intangible property, this includes intellectual property, too.

So yes, George Lucas IS a role model for Americans.

Americans, remember. Not socialists.

Re:Ripoff?

[Sj0]

HEY! Who do you think you are? This is slashdot, where you're supposed to make a short, vague, insubstantiated claim about how the man is trying to keep you down, or company X is evil! How are we supposed to bicker amongst ourselves like the spoiled children we are, happily ignoring the sinister truths of this generation and it's overlords, while you deliver well thought-out and incisive jabs at a new culture which says only juggernaughts which can provide bland goods and services without any particular positive or negative aspects are the only businesses who deserve to continue to run because they make the most money with the least capital!

Next thing you know, you'll be telling us that the McDonaldization of jobs is detrimental to the economy, and the outsourcing of jobs added to it has and will continue to erode everything which makes our countries great, as everytone is either a burger flipper or a businessman telling chinese workers how to do their jobs over a video conference!

Re:Ripoff?

[Atanamis]

I'm guessing that you don't understand what it's like to have no spare money or to be forced to work a miserable job to keep food on the table because I'm guessing you can't relate.

I will admit to being the guy with the nice middle class ride through life to whom you refer. I have never in my life worked a minimum wage job, and the least I was ever paid was $6.25 an hour as a lab assistant in college. I have never had difficulty finding work as a soccer referee for over $15/hr on weekends, I have taken entry level grocery bagger positions for $9/hr and I have babysat for $7.50 an hour. During college I mostly worked internships at around $13/hr, which combined with $30,000 in government subsidized loans paid my tuition.

As bad as the school system is in this country, schools and public libraries offer sufficient resources for any interested person to obtain an education. I was homeschooled from K-12 grade, which meant that for the most part I taught myself. By buying used books online, you are looking at an investment of a couple hundred dollars a year. (And if you don't believe me I can put together a book list to show you.) It does not require a privleged middle class upbringing to obtain a quality education. I will agree though that for a kid whose parents don't really care, getting a quality education is much more difficult.

Obtaining a state college education is also not difficult for someone wanting to do so. My local state school has in-state education costs of under $500 a semester. Take your highly motivated examples who work two full time jobs. At $10/hr each job, that person is making about $40,000 a year. While $10/hr is high for starting salary, it is well within the reach of someone who is a good employee and is willing to relocate. Particularly if said party is willing to live in an inexpensive area (ie NOT San Francisco), they can very quickly have enough savings to go to school. If they can continue to work while in school, they may be able to avoid even needing much from their savings.

The real way a person gets into an untenable position is by making poor decisions. Not obtaining a quality high school education is the first mistake most people make. They then follow this by getting married or having kids they can support that family. Our society is unwilling to wait for anything or plan for the future. A person cannot end up a single mother with 3 kids working a minimum wage job without making some stupid decisions. While I do believe we should help such people recover from those mistakes, your claims that people aren't at fault for where they are in life just do not reflect the facts.

Re:Ripoff?

[jonhuang]

Maybe they think it stinks, like everyone else in the world over 16?

But they want to see it anyway?

Re:Ripoff?

[thynk]

You just stated all the reasons why I still love my local drive in and continue to support it as best I can. I don't even sneak food into the place because I know that they stay in business by thier food sales.

Oh, that and when it's the just the wife and I, she thinks it's kinky to play around or get busy in the back seat like we're a couple of teenagers.

Re:Ripoff?

[thynk]

Ok, so I disagree with almost everything you said in your post, and think that those who claim it to be brilliant must have an IQ close to that of your average house plant.

I do however respect your right to your point of view and you put your thoughts forth in an organized manner. I was able to clearly understand your point of view, and that generally is the point of communication (even on /.)

I could go on for hours and hours with the flaws of unions and liberal philosophies, but it's really not worth the effort. Let me just say that they both had a place and a time when they were useful and needed, but that time has passed.

corporations are antithetical to values that most people consider good qualities: fairness, sharing, caring, and that other kumbaya stuff that you probably would like your kids to learn.

Sure, I'd love my kids to learn that stuff. In fact, I've been teaching them that their whole lives. However, they also are learning that they need to work for what they want, they are learning that rewards only go to those who are willing to take the risks to get them. They are also learning that it's wrong for a government to do for the people what they can do for themselves.

I have no clue to your background, nor do you have any clue to mine. I suggest that further discussions be taken offline, I'd be happy to discuss philosophies with someone as rational as yourself.

Re:Ripoff?

[nahpets77]

Don't forget about all this free-trade stuff with China and other 3rd world countries that allows Walmart to manufacture stuff in China for cheap and sell it here for a huge profit. This replaces well-paying jobs with McJobs. I'm gonna stop there before I go on ranting. There's an episode of FrontLine that asks "Is Walmart Good for America?" (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wal mart/)

Re:Ripoff?

[killjoe]

"My local state school has in-state education costs of under $500 a semester."

Obviously that does not include the books right? And BTW WOW, what state do you live in where school is that cheap?

Anyway here is a question for you, please answer honestly if you are capabable of it.

Did you pay 100% of your schooling? By that I mean you received 0% of your education costs from your parents. If you got loans that's OK, you can also count grants as being "your money".

"'Not obtaining a quality high school education is the first mistake most people make."

Yes, it's a bitch when you live in some inner city to get a quality high school education.

"The real way a person gets into an untenable position is by making poor decisions."

Nah, it's all circumstance. I am a nice white boy who grew up in the suburbs. Like most nice white boys I drank and smoked dope when I was in high school. Lucky for me I lived in the suburbs where the cops were not constantly patrolling the neighborhoods. Also lucky for me I could drive my dad's car out to the "woods" where we could party safely away from the law. My friends who lived in the city didn't have that luxury, they drank and toked in the alleys of heavily patrolled areas. More then one of them got caught and one ended up in jail because of it. Too bad he didn't live where I did, now he has a record and will never get a decent job.

Being a nice white boy also saved me when I got caught for shoplifting once. The cop looked me over and decided to let me got with a stern warning and a call to my parents. If I was a nice black boy I am pretty sure the cop would want to scare me straight and haul me off to jail.

Trust me being a nice white boy has million other advantages, I am grateful for every single one of them. If it wasn't for my parent's money, my well appointed high shcool in a upper middle class neighborhood, my access to first class libraries, teachers, books, I would not be where I am today. I would probably be just another statistic, black man with a record.

Re:Ripoff?

[Destoo]

Hot grits/Natalie Portman

Back in the day, an anonymous troller (aka the "hot grits guy") would post a reply to every story with a simple "I have poured hot grits down my pants. Thank you." While he mostly got modded down as a troll, the hot grits guy is really the first recurring troll on Slashdot.

Natalie Portman is a popular target for this troll. When referring to her, they frequently profess their endless love for a statue of the naked and petrified actress, preferably covered in hot grits. Naked and Petrified is now such an infamous troll that it virtually epitomizes Slashdot trolling, and is often referred to and parodied in Slashdot comments. Other incarnations of the troll suggest that Natalie Portman pour hot grits into their (the trolls') underwear.

Re:Ripoff?

[nahpets77]

Walmart is just an example of what's going on in terms of free-trade etc. Huge corporations are making outrageous profits while paying employees here and abroad as little as possible. If you take the time to watch the Frontline episode, it might change YOUR view of what reality is like.

MM... looks strange

[xtracto]

Some questions, why does the DHS and FBI signs are from the elitetorrents.org site??

FBI:
http://elitetorrents.org/Shut%20Down%20By%20FBI%20 AND%20ICE_files/image002.gif
http://elitetorrents.org/Shut%20Down%20By%20FBI%20 AND%20ICE_files/image006.gif

So they shut it down, and the ip is:
192.31.21.68

And although ping do not respond. Who is throws:
OrgName: San Diego Supercomputer Center
OrgID: SDSC
Address: P.O. Box 85608
City: San Diego
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 92186
Country: US

NetRange: 192.31.21.0 - 192.31.21.255
CIDR: 192.31.21.0/24
NetName: SDSC-APOLLO
NetHandle: NET-192-31-21-0-1
Parent: NET-192-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: DNS1.SDSC.EDU
NameServer: NS0.SDSC.EDU
Comment:
RegDate:
Updated: 1994-12-20

TechHandle: TH60-ARIN
TechName: Hutton, Thomas
TechPhone: +1-858-534-5136
TechEmail: hutton@sdslug.org

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2005-05-24 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
interesting domain no?

Re:Department of Shitty HTML involved?

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> Look at EliteTorrents.org

Sweet mother of God, what an ugly page. View source and it gets even scarier...

xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:st1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smartt ags"

I need to wash my eyes now.

Interesting Verbage.

[Orcspit]

I find the specific words the author of that article used to be kinda interesting.

"Federal agents launched a crackdown on users of a popular new technology used to steal the latest "Star Wars" movie..."

Download instead of "steal" would have worked fine in that sentance. I guess steal just conveys a more sinister idea. Like roaving bands of junky Bit Torrent users are going to break into your home at any moment. The will "steal" anythign to get their fix!

"Within 24 hours, more than 10,000 copies of the "Star Wars" film had been swiped."

Ahh yes "swiped" the files were swiped from the servers, depriving the poor innocent children of their Star Wars!

I really hate CNN, they are getting as bad as Fox News.


-Orcspit

Re:Interesting Verbage.

[gorbachev]

You're surprised a media company, i.e. a major owner of copyrighted material, uses verbiage consistent with the positions of copyright owners' lobbyists (RIAA/MPAA)?

The fewer pirates will offset the new income...

[Pacifix]

How many people would have paid to see SW:III on opening night if they could download it, in order to avoid the lines? How many then would have paid again to see it in the theater to see in in full special effects glory? How many people now just buy their music from iTunes rather than pirate it, simply because it's easier? The huge gains media companies can reap from modern distribution would substantially lessen and offset the losses from piracy.

Re:Santa Claus was the first through the door w/ m

[EnronHaliburton2004]

If you're an American, you really need to know this. There's really no excuse considering the hundreds of news stories that have covered this issue over the last several years.

The government underwent a massive reorganization in the last two years. 22 agencies-- including big departments like the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, Coast Guard, Customs, and FEMA; have all been moved to, or are in the process of being moved to the DHS.

This is a BIG change... it's the most signifigant restructuring of the US government in the last 50 years.

You really, really need to know this stuff.

Compulsory Buying, Eh?

[reallocate]

Not only are you Canadian, you're a loon.

Just how is anyone selling anything ripping off anyone? No one is forcing anyone to buy anything.

Since most of the /. crowd really only cares about movies and throwaway music and other luxuries, maybe they ought to get a clue and realize that the way to thwart the Big Evil Corporate Bogeymen is to stop buying the stuff.

Smacks more than a bit of the obese bitching that Big Macs cost too much.

Re:Compulsory Buying, Eh?

[iamwahoo2]

Well if they are downloading the stuff the they HAVE STOPPED BUYING THE STUFF. Mission Accomplished.

Re:Compulsory Buying, Eh?

[iamwahoo2]

You say that like it is a bad thing. Organizations like RIAA and MPAA get no sympathy from someone like me. If Hillary Rosen was dying and only needed a drop of my blood to survive, I wouldn't give it to her. These are bad human beings. I beleive in copyright, but balance is important and if our government is going to allow these organizations to buy legislation and exploit our legal systems, I for one am not going to play along. If someone pushes me around, I am going to push back, not sit around and take it like a @#$$Y.

Re:Compulsory Buying, Eh?

[TheoMurpse]

I am going to push back, not sit around and take it like a @#$$Y.

What is an ahssy?

Re:Compulsory Buying, Eh?

[Ugly American]

I doubt it's even true with music; I can think of a good 20 or so CDs that I bought after downloading a few tracks and deciding I liked them. Now that I'm off the P2P networks, I've only made a handful of purchases (the score for Revenge of the Sith and the new Nine Inch Nails album,) so in my case cracking down on P2P has actually cost the RIAA some sales.

I saw 10 minutes of a pirated version

[EvilStein]

(NO, I didn't download it. Friend did and had it on his laptop.)

Bunch of us watched the first 10-15 minutes. Everyone said "Ok, so far it doesn't suck. Let's go see it." .... and off the group went to the next showing.

Remember when Apple let the first 7 minutes of "Chicken Run" loose on their trailer site? Good move, I say. I'm fed up with biased movie reviews and trailers that show the only cool parts of the whole movie. I'm still pissed off that I wasted $30 + 2 hours of my life to see "Mission to Mars" after seeing the trailer. Bastards.

Like pissing in the ocean

[nurb432]

Might make you feel better, but you dont make a dent..

The entire structure of copyright laws need to be revamped.

Of course i know that will never happen as long as the large corporations are in control of the government.

Obviously we're talking about subsets of unlimited

[millennial]

a selection of copyrighted works ... described as virtually unlimited

So this is virtually unlimited, but selective. As there are an infinite number of positive integers, but there is a larger infinite set of real numbers, EliteTorrents had a virtually unlimited selection, but they still didn't have everything.

I agree with what some others have said here - this looks like a DNS hijacking and fake warning. The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement have absolutely nothing to do with copyright enforcement.

5 years in pound-your-ass

[isorox]

First-time offenders convicted of criminal felony
copyright laws will face up to five years in federal prison, restitution, forfeiture and a fine.

5 years, isn't that a bit extreme. Still, kiddnapping gets 10 years, and that's only slightly worse than downloading copyrighted works

Re:Thepiratebay.org

[Capt'n Hector]

I don't know what your problem is, sir. I downloaded Star Wars III and don't remember raping any geese. But I do remember seeing it in my local movie theater a day later. I think the concentration of wealth that is Hollywood is proof positive that movies are overpriced. Has the P2P revolution hurt hollywod and the music industry? No, they've only helped it. Picture this: instead of vast recording companies, you have indepenent artists making their own music. They get exposure through word of mouth, P2P, etc. Their music is free for the taking. How do they make money then? Live concerts. So they won't be billionaires. Big deal, I won't have a hard time sleeping at night knowing I've prevented the latest pop idol from becoming extremely wealthy. As for movies? If the studios were smart, they would buy up audio and video hardware companies. Sooner or later, theater quality sound and video systems will become available to the home user and once that happens there will be no reason to go to a theater. Instead, the studios should make their movies free and make money off the presentation of their media. The more and better that media is, the more incentive there is to buy top quality gear. Kinda like the iTunes Music Store / iPod duality where the music is essentially free (apple makes nothing from iTMS) and the hardware to play it is the cash cow.

Anyway, just a thought. You can throw words like "illegal" and "rape" around all you want, but when Elite Torrents has more than a hundred thousand members alone... the people have spoken. It's time for something new.

IT'S NOT A HACK

[Spy der Mann]

I just found a Press Release from the FBI saying they were going to shut down EliteTorrents.

At the bottom of the page we read:

"The Motion Picture Association of America provided valuable assistance to the investigation."

So nope, it's not a hack. It's official.

I've got a plan!!!!

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

The dissidents in (insert your favorite African nation experiencing genocide here) should setup a huge rack of servers dedicated to hosting pirated movies and music. Then all they have to do is sit back and wait. Within a couple weeks I'm sure the Marines would arrive to "liberate" the country.

If genocide isn't enough to get the good old USA to act, "stealing" a few bucks from their VERY wealthy citizens should do it.

A better link for the punishment thing...

[KingSkippus]

I was in a hurry to get the post on here, so I missed the link in the geek.com story to the original article (non-Coral) at USA Today. That still doesn't change the fact that this kid got three months of a deferred jail sentence, three years of probation, 200 hours of community service (for those of you with a 40-hour a week job, that's five weeks off from work, or three months of weekends), $5,400 in fines, and he must take a class on copyright at the University (presumably at his own expense of time and money), and avoid file-sharing programs (I don't see any stipulation that the avoiding of file-sharing programs is limited to illegal downloads).

And in the article, it says that he was lucky that he was just a kid. If he had been older, the penalties would have been stiffer, including a mandatory three month jail sentence up front.

Oh, and I dug up the story from February 10 about the comparison between shoplifting and copyright infringement. Here is a link (non-Coral ) to the original article.

Re:A better link for the punishment thing...

[Altima(BoB)]

I was in a hurry to get the post on here, so I missed the link in the geek.com story to the original article...

Sheesh, go easy on yourself for missing out on a link in your original post. Four links in one post is like the bibliography of a PhD disseration for Slashdot :)

people need to learn moral nuance

[circletimessquare]

first off, p2p piracy IS wrong.

but the problem is that it is a different kind of wrong than stealing in the traditional sense. it is a new kind of wrong, and those who fight it are using a moral sledgehammer when moral nuance is needed. and those who fight p2p piracy are losing the battle by overreacting in their moral determination.

to put it another way: to convince people not to download movies, you have to stop using an elephant gun to shoot gnats. you need moral nuance, because those who are downloading aren't listening to fire and brimstone, as it comically outweighs the weight of their crime.

the usual cut off point between otherwise moral people on the issue of p2p piracy has to do with the notion of who copying files on p2p really hurts in society.

some would say that "it's still usually worth shelling out the cash so that the people that worked on the movie get the money that they're owed."

but that's wrong, philosophically AND practically. this is trying to apply binary logic to a question of scale.

the determination that not paying for a movie = stealing is wrong, not because not paying for a movie is right, but because it's simply NOT "stealing" in the moral sense that is brought to bear on the situation before us.

let's say instead of downloading a movie, you sneak into another theatre after the movie you paid for, something teenagers have been doing for decades. what have you stolen? well, if you didn't sneak into that theatre, that seat would have still been empty, correct?

meanwhile, if i steal a loaf of bread, i've stolen a loaf of bread. i haven't stolen half a loaf, i haven't stolen 100,000 loaves. it's a binary determination: i stole the binary value of a loaf of bread at market prices. i need to make moral amends so that "the baker that worked on the bread gets the money that they're owed."

that logic works PERFECTLY for situations where my actions results in something physically becoming unavailable for someone else's use. but that is NOT what is happening with pirated media.

i'll put it another way: let's say someone makes a movie for $100 million, and no one wants to see it, and the movie grosses $1 million. what is the logic behind asking for what "the people that worked on the movie get the money that they're owed?" is it safe to infer then that you support the notion that those who made the $100 million bomb get paid by society $99 million to make up for their loss?

no really, what are the makers of a movie MORALLY owed?

if someone makes a movie for $100,000 and it grosses $500 million, is that what they are MORALLY owed?

what are they owed in your moral sledgehammer approach to the problem?

so what is the value of applying the old binary logic of stealing to a question of scale?

the current moral attitude of the laws on p2p simply doesn't stand up to examination, philosophically and practically. with media: movies, music, text, etc... anything that can be digitized, the binary logic of morality when it comes to theft simply does not apply.

THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT RIGHT!

again, listen to me carefully, i am not introducing a slippery slope to acceptance, i repeat: it is still WRONG to copy a movie online.

but it is not the same KIND of wrong. it is more nuanced.

so what people operating in a blind, closed minded "it's just wrong" approach need to learn is nuance. the RIAA and MPAA and the people who write the laws in this country need to realize exactly WHAT kind of wrong it is, and stop swinging their sledgehammers, and thereby doing nothing but demonstrate that they don't really understand what they are really talking about.

because refusing to play anything but hardball with a situation that requires a more nuanced moral approach does not do anything except create deaf ears by the POOR and YOUNG who are doing most of the file swapping to simple minded fire and brimstone moral determinations.

because P2P piracy IS a question of m

What would Jesus do?

[Sathias]

Its lucky for Jesus that the FLAA (Fish and Loaf Association of America) weren't around in his day, they would have prosecuted him for illegal duplication of food during the Sermon on the Mount that put countless hard-working bakers and fishermen out of business.

Re:Department of Shitty HTML involved?

[whathappenedtomonday]

right after washing my own eyes I noticed the "invisible" tag at the end of the page, anyone know what it means?

RTJKJAS

Re:Santa Claus was the first through the door w/ m

[ScentCone]

departments like the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, Coast Guard, Customs, and FEMA; have all been moved to, or are in the process of being moved to the DHS

Perhaps the people that are modding this as "interesting" should ask themselves whether or not the comment is, or is not, BS. As an example, the CIA is not a piece of DHS, and is not being moved to DHS. Rather, we've got a new office (now occupied by Negroponte) that is coordinating the intelligence output (though not necessarily operations) of several disparate agencies or units within other agencies. While DHS has a strong interest in coordinated intelligence, it is not an intelligence agency, per se. The FBI, likewise, is still part of Justice, and neither are, or will be, part of DHS. Get your damn facts as straight as your tinfoil hat.

Subconscious copying

[tepples]

TOUGH SHIT. You have the right not to watch the movie

No I don't. Movie distributors often advertise on television, with a 30 second trailer. If I see one of those, then under the "subconscious copying" doctrine established in Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, I'm forever barred from making similar movies myself.

Re:did they really get this from elitetorrents?

[assassinator42]

It was the trailer, which they probably got previously from Elite Torrents. Look at the filename. It was taken from the first airing of the trailer on fox.

Not true about CIA and FBI

[Artifice_Eternity]

The CIA and FBI are not part of the Dept. of Homeland Security, nor are there any current serious plans to move them to the DHS. It was talked about a few years ago, but those agencies resisted.

But with this statement I agree:

This is a BIG change... it's the most signifigant restructuring of the US government in the last 50 years.

Elite Torrents was not just movies/TV/Music

[dimfeld]

Most of the commenters are talking about movies and music, but ET hosted torrents for all sorts of things. They had major games, a lot of movies and TV series that were already on DVD, applications, etc.

The shutdown of Elite Torrents isn't really comparable to the recent shutdown of various TV torrent sites. Their range of categories went well outside of the grey area of TV downloading and its ilk.

Think of it this way

[jonwil]

If I go and post an ad in the paper (for example) telling people where to go and buy illegal drugs from, I am breaking the law.
By the same token, the newspaper would probobly also be breaking the law because they published the ad (knowing full well the ad was for something blatently illegal)

All a .torrent file is is a note saying "talk to to machines x,y,z to download this file" (or something like that anyway, I dont know the techincal details of bittorrent). And, like the hypothetical newspaper ad, a .torrent file for an illegal copy of a movie/song/program/game/etc serves no other purpose than to aid people in breaking the law (downloading the item without permission from the copyright holders).

As for the sites themselves, the sites being shut down tend to have only (or almost only) torrents for illegal files so its quite within the rights for them to be shut down (depending on what country they are in)

Lay off the mothers

[krysith]

I'm afraid I have to join the chorus of voices who will inevitably respond to your modded-way-too-high-for-such-an-ill-thought-out post.

You said: A person cannot end up a single mother with 3 kids working a minimum wage job without making some stupid decisions.

Meet my mom.

Before I was born, she got a graduate degree in Zoology, and performed cutting edge genetic research. She met and married my father, a doctor, who is now one of the top anaethesiogists in the nation. She stopped doing research to raise her 3 kids - I'm the eldest.

So far so good, right?

Well, around the time my littlest sister was born, my dad was working around 100 hours a week. We'd see him once a week or so, and he'd always be angry and throwing things and cursing. Scary for a kid. Even scarier for my mom - her threw her down the stairs and rammed her head into a wall, giving her minor brain damage. Of course, she divorced him, and took us kids and headed to another state. However, ten years had passed since she worked in research, and she couldn't get a job in her field anymore. She managed to get jobs making cold calls on the telephone and secretarial jobs. So there she was, a single mother with 3 kids working a minimum wage job. Perhaps you could tell me the bad decision she had made? Was it marrying the rich doctor who loved her and treated her well for ten years? Or was it leaving her academic career to work on something much more important to her?

Now, I'm doing fine, but I'm about the same age as my mom at the "so far, so good" stage. I haven't made any seriously bad decisions, and I've made a few good ones. Who knows where I will be in a few years? Maybe struggling like my mom had to.

You are correct that there is more to life than luck - decisions do count. But you need to realize that as we are all humans, the information that people use to make their decisions is imperfect. Sometimes decisions which looked good at the time look bad only in retrospect. In addition, while bad luck isn't everything, it does happen - death, illness, abusive families. Just because giving up to bad luck isn't the answer doesn't mean that it doesn't make things much harder. I suggest before you go around judging those minimum wage mothers with 3 kids, you think about how their kids are going to judge you when you tell them from your privileged position how stupid they are.