The Truth About Suprnova Shutdown

Romeo E. Cabrera writes "You might remember it was exactly a year ago when Suprnova, once the most popular BitTorrent search engine went dark. Today, Suprnova's admin Sloncek, reveals the truth and details, about the events occurred then."

Comments

Re:So, to sum it up

[Anonymous Coward]

But now many invite-only trackers (running PeerGuardian on the server as well) are causing problems for the MPAA and RIAA to find bittorrent downloaders.

EU law and Slovenia

[frostman]

Slovenia is a member of the EU, so whatever EU law says about these P2P issues is probably relevant as well.

Any of our Euro-dotters care to comment?

I have a feeling this is not a fully-harmonized area, EU-law-wise, since the good folks at the Pirate Bay continue to entertain us with their responses to legal threats.

Re:EU law and Slovenia

[gladmac]

That'll be due to the laws of Sweden. They're very explicit about that you're allowed to communicate how to commit crimes, which is what the torrent tracker does. So for now they're safe. The law is nice for P2P, but doesn't really make sense so we expect that it'll change eventually.

Re:EU law and Slovenia

[dago]

The EU doesn't really make laws, but directives, which focus on objectives, forcing member states to implement them, generally with laws. The member states usually have some freedom in the implementation.

For example, for the EU Copyrirght Directive (EUCD), there're the list of all possible "faire use" exceptions, and this is even linked with anti-circumvention articles. At the end, the states are free to take an agressive, DMCA-like legislation, where it is illegal to "break" DRM to make a private copy, while other could choose to allow circumvention of DRM and creation of MP3 for private use (see article 5.2.b and 6.4).

So, it depends, and in this case, you should ask a slovenian ;)

Re:EU law and Slovenia

[Kjella]

At the end, the states are free to take an agressive, DMCA-like legislation, where it is illegal to "break" DRM to make a private copy, while other could choose to allow circumvention of DRM and creation of MP3 for private use (see article 5.2.b and 6.4).

Except the whole thing is full of doublespeak in the notes:
(52) When implementing an exception or limitation for private copying in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), Member States should likewise promote the use of voluntary measures to accommodate achieving the objectives of such exception or limitation. If, within a reasonable period of time, no such voluntary measures to make reproduction for private use possible have been taken, Member States may take measures to enable beneficiaries of the exception or limitation concerned to benefit from it. Voluntary measures taken by rightholders, including agreements between rightholders and other parties concerned, as well as measures taken by Member States, do not prevent rightholders from using technological measures which are consistent with the exceptions or limitations on private copying in national law in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), taking account of the condition of fair compensation under that provision and the possible differentiation between various conditions of use in accordance with Article 5(5), such as controlling the number of reproductions. In order to prevent abuse of such measures, any technological measures applied in their implementation should enjoy legal protection.

This is actually the same BS exceptions that are in the DMCA, and aren't worth the paper they're written on. 6.4. is equally full of BS like the emphasized part.

A Member State may also take such measures in respect of a beneficiary of an exception or limitation provided for in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), unless reproduction for private use has already been made possible by rightholders to the extent necessary to benefit from the exception or limitation concerned and in accordance with the provisions of Article 5(2)(b) and (5), without preventing rightholders from adopting adequate measures regarding the number of reproductions in accordance with these provisions.

In short, the entire directive is full of the same bullshit. Think of DRM as a safe. It can either be locked, or it can be open. For DRM to preserve fair use, everything must speak the same magic safe-language for "safe-to-safe" transfers, which isn't practicly possible, nor would it be very safe because there'd be hundreds if not thousands of implementations.

Re:Is Suprnova... up again

[outsider007]

it's up again, now it's newnova.org - maybe I shouldn't be sharing this but what the hell.

Translation

[Ghandalfar]

(slovenian speaker here)

The legal document basicly says:

Legal case against Andrej P. (his address blacked out), charged with criminal act of helping copyright infrigment by 1. article of 159. of some law with following objects written into log:
- server with serial number ..
- server with serial number ..
- server with serial number ..
- server with serial number ..
- personal computer ..
- personal computer ..


are returned to the owner because legal charges against A. P. are dropped.

And them some more legal talk where he can get his stuff in 30 days.

That is about as much as I can handle at this early hour.

Re:Text of the Letter

[Anonymous Coward]

I appologise for my poor English (legal), here is translation. And yes, document is genuine.

With part 224, ZKP and 6/136 of State pros. order we:
In criminal case against Andrej Preston, (adress omitted), in suspected criminal case of giving help with crime of unauthorized usage of authored (copyrighted) works at. 1/159 with connection 22 in 27 of KZ, are all objects in CD (corpus delicti) entry no ****:
***list of equipment****
to returned to owner, that is Andrej Preston, because criminial case against him was dropped.

LEGAL:
Named (Andrej Preston) can take above mentioned objects at District State prosecutor office in Ljubljana in 30 days from receiving this letter. After 30 days, all objects will be destroyed.

SuprNova may be gone but...

[Capeman]

NewNova is online, it offers the same content that SuprNova once had.

Re:So, to sum it up

[cpt kangarooski]

FYI in the US, there is secondary liability for civil copyright infringement. In a criminal copyright infringement case, it might be possible for the government to prosecute an indirect infringer under an aiding and abetting theory, but I'm not aware of any examples.

Re:And where's all the donated legal aid money?

[montyzooooma]

Needless to say but you seem to be confusing Suprnova with Lokitorrent. Loki pretty much took the money and ran after selling his registered users out. Suprnova never required registration to use the trackers, Lokitorrent did, so when Loki handed over his user logs the RIAA (I think it was) got there hands on the email addresses of anyone who'd used the sites. That's a LOT of hotmail addresses...

Re:So, to sum it up

[InsaneCreator]

The scanned letter is just a list of conficated equipment (streznik = server, osebni racunalnik = personal computer) which is to be returned, because the charges against him were dropped.

Re:So, to sum it up

[Dolda2000]

I don't know about the US, but here in Sweden, there is a law from the BBS era that holds sites free from any responsibility of linking to copyrighted material, as long as they don't host the material themselves. That is what keeps ThePirateBay afloat (since that's basically the way Bittorrent works).

Re:Darkness

[moonbender]

He had to pick the letter up at the postal office - probably because it was registred mail. When you pick up registred mail, you need to bring your ID, and you leave a signature. So yeah, they can prove you knew about the charges.

Re:RIP

[muffen]

TBP, safe to say the torrent community is still strong just like it was in the suprnova days, might just be you who decided not to be part of it anymore.

TvTorrents,www.tvtorrents.com would be another one, there are plenty of torrent site, thepiratebay, without a doubt, being the largest in the world.

If you wanna have a laugh, take a look at TBP Legal Threats, and then decide how big the chances are that tpb will go down (lawchange in sweden, where TPB is hosted, takes approx. 2 years, and they haven't even started trying to change it yet).

Re:So, to sum it up

[MoonBuggy]

You could always try HavenCo. It's located in Sealand and appears to be pretty much off limits to near enough everyone.

Re:So, to sum it up

[muffen]

Know anyone who owns an island or a small country and is willing to donate the domain name? What would MPAA or RIAA do? They can't invade a country.

In the case of supernova they probably bribed the police into doing all this scaring tactics. As far as I know the police in Eastern Europe is not really interested in piracy and computer fraud, they got other things to worry about and besides, some countries don't even have good laws concerning computers and internet BUT for a large enough bribe the police in those countries will arrest and scare anyone regardless of the crime.

Well, it's not really working that well for them in all countries, take a look here: Legal Threats against ThePirateBay

EU, efficient as it is, normally takes 5 years to answer a question on how a law is to be interpreted, plus the EU cannot in itself enforce any laws but rely on the member states to do so. In the case of ThePirateBay, Sweden sees itself as having followed the EU directive. If they haven't, well, ask the EU as to how the law is to be interpreted and wait 5 years, at the very least, for an answer :)
Then ofcourse you need to wait approx. 2 years more for Sweden to make a lawchange and then about another year for the law to be enforced, so I'd say time is on your side!

Ofcourse, DMCA or any other US specific laws do not apply in Sweden so TPB, or any other bittorrent tracker you wish to open, is completly safe and cannot be shutdown or forced to remove material in any way shape or form (as decided by the Swedish Supreme Court in 1996, linking to copyrighted material is not against the law). Hence, you do not need an island or a small (well, not that Sweden is that big but still) country in the middle of nowhere. Simply host the site in Sweden and you're set!

Re:So, to sum it up

[kevin.fowler]

Free-range torrent hosting and great gingerbread cookies. That's reason enough to move.