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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."
So, summarizing the article:
Nothing happened
Case dropped
Suprnova still gone
Why normal people are catapulted into a spotlight they didn't ask for will always be a question of concern. If you want to be famous, you can be. But think about it. If you want to be famous, you're not thinking straight. As small site owners are plummeled with traffic and legal issues, how can we help them survive? This reminds me of the blogosphere, which recently experienced growing pains with the servers and datacenters struggling to cope with demand.
Sloncek's story is disputed by Slyck here.
slyck of course being the most prominent file sharing news source on the web.
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.
(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.
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.
NewNova is online, it offers the same content that SuprNova once had.
> Oh hell, anybody here speak Slovenian?
Sure. Here is a helpful translation into icelandic:
"KJa wfoami coliaboa cklembi 224. Anerpicja 13 ZKP 6 opwef nabrioa. 136 Kpentitia. Kpmarij manstani onikapp."
HTH.
On my end, Adobe lawyers contacted my ISP and sent a short, but curt letter: "Shut him down, or we will." I balked and so did my ISP after some heated conversation. I ran a VERY popular macintosh serial # site and yeah, serial numbers are sort of a grey area as far as I was concerned (and so thought my ISP thought, as well).
Whoops.
Yeah, it was stupid on my part but I enjoyed the money that rolled in from my sponsors. In the long-term I got burned, much like this fellow will. I had to claim bankruptcy, due to my mounting legal bills. I'm basically screwed for the next 7 years. Hooray. Some people can walk that thin grey line between legal and illegal but I found a way to trip over it. Oh well.
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
#include "coucou.h"
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...
How the hell does an admin go a week, let alone "November to December" without having a single clue as to why police would raid his servers? Why his site was shut down? Fear or apathy?
His statement strikes me as someone who was simply hoping the problem would go away (as quoted) from the onset. More pressure on both the police and a legal defense from the onset could have both quelled the investigation as groundless and gotten the site back up.
It's an unfortunate truth that law enforcement often only succeeds in setting legal precedent in computer investigations only because people aren't more diligent in defending themselves.
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).