Slashdot Mirror
IsoHunt Shut Down?
psic writes "One of the most popular torrent search sites, IsoHunt, was taken down on tuesday. The owners of the site say that the move came from their ISP without prior notice, though it is probably linked with the MPAA's lawsuit against various torrent search sites earlier this year. They plan on moving ISPs from the US to Canada, and say that moving the servers so someplace like Sweden or Sealand is not an option, as they put it: "BitTorrent was created for legitimate distribution of large media files, and we stand by that philosophy as a search engine and aggregator."" This is a story we've heard before with other sites, only serving to further demonstrate that playing wack a mole with torrent aggregators isn't the solution to anything.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers
anyone got a mirror?
This is a story we've heard before with other sites, only serving to further demonstrate that playing wack a mole with torrent aggregators isn't the solution to anything.
I wholeheartedly agree that, from the perspective of the **AA, playing wack-a-mole isn't a good solution. But as an observer it's pretty funny.
More seriously, I think it is providing a long term solution, just not the one the **AA want. As these stories grow they continue to be seen as the greedy bullies they truly are. The main purpose of the RIAA and MPAA these days is to do the dirty work for the actual labels/studios and absorb the backlash. People get mad at the RIAA, not Sony. Or so the strategy goes. As anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA sentiment grows in severity and spreads into the mainstream, there will start to be bleedthrough to the actual labels and studios.
So basically the wack-a-mole strategy is the best education we could hope for that IP laws are a disgrace, that greed is the real motivator of DRM, and that DRM does nothing but create a nuisance for the consumer without effectively harming pirates. I want more and more of your average Joes to hear about stuff like this and start asking "What is with these guys anyway?" The answers will lead to some sensible IP reform.
It's a long-term goal, and I realize that in the meantime a lot of innocent people are having their lives ruined, but I think that tactics like this go a long way towards the final solution for DRM.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Who wouldnt want to be the first torrent site on Sealand?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
All well and good until your ISP throttles all bandwidth for unapproved services, where "approved" services are ones sanctioned by the RIAA/MPAA, and which also pay a tithe to your ISP.
With the end of network neutrality, it could easily happen.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
torrents are just the hurricane katrina of the internet.
Cripes, I *WISH* torrents had that sort of speed. :-\
BTW, I fully admit to being a looter. I know the law. I just don't give a shit. In a world where our government is selling us out to another country, where illegal aliens are given more rights than citizens, where some soccer dude can get handed a quarter of a -*BILLION*- dollars for playing a game, why should I be a nice little nobody who follows all the rules? Fuck all that. It's every man for himself from this point on.
The copyright holders are losing, not because TPB or ISOHunt will always pop back up, but because they are trusting the business and revenue to a group of people who are whole heartedly working overtime to ruin their business. The **AA are subhumans (more or less) who are trying to create a supply and demand situation where the demand is greater than the supply by choking off all supplies but their own. This is typically termed manipulating the market in most circles, but they have paid the lawmakers to make it look legal.
The only people who will continue to lose out in big ways are the content creators who sell their copyrights to big business like the **AAs of the world. Right now, we are seeing the beginning of content creators starting to distribute their products without the help of the **AAs of the world, and its working. The more that happens, and the more that we, the people with a clue, name the companies responsible for bad laws, jacked up prices, market manipulation... the more chance there is of John Q Public understanding what is happening and voting appropriately.
So, who is responsible? Sony? No, there are way more than a few. Here is the RIAAs board of directors:
Polly Anthony Geffen Records
Mitch Bainwol RIAA
Glen Barros Concord Records
Steve Bartels Island Records
Victoria Bassetti EMI Recorded Music
Jose Behar Universal Music Group
Tim Bowen SONY BMG
Bob Cavallo Buena Vista Music
Mike Curb Curb Records
Joe Galante SONY BMG
Ivan Gavin EMI Recorded Music
Charles Goldstuck RCA Music Group
Zach Horowitz Universal Music Group
Dave Johnson Warner Music Group
Craig Kallman The Atlantic Group
Lawrence Kenswil Universal Music Group
Michael Koch Koch Entertainment
Mel Lewinter Universal Music Group
Kevin Liles Warner Music Group
Alan Meltzer Wind-up Records
Deirdre McDonald SONY BMG
David Munns EMI Recorded Music
Jason Flom Virgin Records America
Tom Silverman Tommy Boy Records
Andy Slater Capitol Records
Rob Stringer SONY BMG
Tom Whalley Warner Bros. Records
http://www.riaa.com/about/leadership/board.asp Board of directors
If you want to know if someone's music is safe from **AA, try http://www.riaaradar.com/
I am certain that there are plenty of other resource on the Internet as well. So, lets all join together and try to make sure that content creators understand what the **AAs are doing to their business... namely killing it and any chance of real revenue.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Hey! It's perfectly legal for me to time shift a TV show using a blank tape and a VCR. Why would it be illegal to time shift the same show with a torrent site and a computer?
Torrents generally encompass people-shifting, which isn't quite legal...
What tripe. Copy != Stealing.
Copyright is an arbitrary ARTIFICIAL law -- whose time has come and past. Why is illegal? Because the government says so; and who creates the government? The people, and the people clearely are showing that it's an archaic hold-over when information was a scarce commodity.
Sharing is caring. That's the best kind of (free) advertising you can get!
Cheers
Clearly you have never created anything you hold valuable.
I'm going to have to stand up and give my unpopular opinion here. Copyright does have its place. People SHOULD have the right to retain ownership of things they worked hard to create. They SHOULD be allowed to choose what happens to what they have created. If that means letting a limited number of people seeing it, if that means only allowing it to be seen in certain galleries or theaters or sold in certain stores, if that means charging what they feel is a fair price for each reproduction of that work, if that means not allowing other people to distribute their work freely then they have the right to that - for a finite, and fair, amount of time. I create stuff. I write stories. One day, I hope to publish and make money from what I write, which is why not everything I write is freely available online. I don't want people to randomly copy and paste my stories elsewhere without asking me. I'm lenient, but I draw the line at people who profit themselves from it, or don't give me due credit. Is that so bad? Don't I have the right to draw that line?
The argument is this: the movie studios and recording companies believe that they are losing staggering amounts of money from piracy. They believe - or have convinced themselves - that EVERY downloaded song or movie is a lost physical sale and therefore they SUE indiscriminately, for appallingly disproportionate sums and prison terms (decades in some cases), to make it so that the general public FEARS piracy.
But the fact of the matter is: when you copy me, I may lose sales - or, I may not. But I also gain a wider audience for my work. And through that wider audience I may gain sales - more than I originally lost (whatever that number is). If I am an artist and I created solely so that people could see my work, then I lose NOTHING. If I am a businessman and created solely for profit, I MAY lose something, or I may gain something.
The pro-piracy argument here is surely not that "all information should be free, everything you ever created should be available to everybody for no cost and they shouldn't have to pay you". That's insane. The argument is that choice should be with the creator - something the internet has facilitated, to the **AA's chagrin.
I'm beginning to ramble so I'll stop here.
qntm.org