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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."
I spent far too much time on that site :(
Safe to say that the torrent community has gone downhill since, I'd say.
~ Crummy
Incredibly lucky for the guy, really... but do you think it was because prosecutor couldn't figure out how to get the guy?
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Good to know that nothing really happenned to the guy. Sometimes us leechers forget that behind every torrent/p2p website, there's still good people working behind the scenes who made it all possible... sadly, they are usually the ones who get all the blame.
I'll be honest. I would have done the same thing as him. I mean really, Everything turned out okay for him in the end anyway. He didn't serve any jail time, and he got all of his stuff back. Hell, hes probabbly glad about the site bein' kaputs. All these people that will say that he should have fought, etc... Well, they need to understand this guy has a real life as well, and not just one that encompases a website that gives torrent files to materials in wich you didn't pay for.
Yay, I have a sig.
Police raid ISP
Police confiscate servers
Police visit Suprnova operator at home
Police seize two computers and various media from Suprnova operator
Suprnova spends a few months in limbo
Suprnova stresses out over mail from prosecutor
Case dropped
Suprnova still gone
I'd be interested in a translation of the letter that he posted on the site. Specifically, I'm interested in knowing why exactly the prosecutors decided not to pursue the case.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I concur with other posters on this one.
Police raiding your home, seizing your property, and dragging you through legal proceedings, when you've done nothing wrong sounds pretty bad to me.
Huh? The article was written by "Suprnova's admin Sloncek". He is the one who came close to being prosecuted, his computers were confiscated, etc. He is the only one who can give an account of the story, and if he choses to say blah blah and blah blah, there is nothing anyone else can do to fill in those details.
Your remarks would make sense if an original news item was dumbed down for the "general public".
If the guy who got the letter from the prosecutor does not wish to quote verbatim from it, or he thinks it is not relevant, why question it? It's probably not relevant anyway, just some law numbers and dates.
He does provide the original letter (in Slovenian), so read it yourself for the gory details. Or, scroll down for helpful translations below.
Without knowing the details of Slovenian copyright law, I'd guess that it was dropped because he didn't actually do anything wrong. No copyrighted data went through the suprnova servers, and copyright infringement is not a criminal offense in most countries, so it's likely that contributing to it is not illegal at all, either (it typically only is for criminal activities).
In other words, it's the same reason why ThePirateBay still operates - only that the latter is hosted in Sweden, where it's probably (I assume!) less easy for the music/movie industry to get the police to investigate things when there is no evidence of an actual crime being committed.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
More likely the prosecutor looked at the case, and figured he shouldn't put much effort into prosecuting a countryman for the benefit of American movie studios.
vcrs (famous betamax decision) helped people carry out an illegal act.. but it was legal.
just providing the means does NOT equate into illegal actions.
napster got in trouble because they kept the master file list on their own servers- and then couldn't filter out content the riaa & others wanted blocked.
Laws concerning morality never fit in with the 'average' views of the citizenry--
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Suprnova may have been popular at the time, but like all websites, they come and go. There is always someone else to take their place. Remember isonews.com when it was taken down by the FBI years ago? Hey guess what? Their back up and running with a new website theisonews.com
Now we have sites like thepiratebay.org which is probably one of the best torrent sites on the internet. Heck, they even tout the lawyers and post the threating legal letters on their website for everyone to read http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php
Quite hilarious if you ask me.
Of course you have other torrent sites as well, like torrentspy.com which is another popular site.
sites come and go, they come and go....
~Later~
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.
I hope I can remember not to facilitate piracy on a massive scale so something like this doesn't happen to me!
And RIAA's job here is done.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/