Slashdot Mirror
The Pirate Bay To Create YouTube Competitor
Jared writes "The Pirate Bay has confirmed that is working on a streaming video site with user-generated content. A spokesman said the site will be modeled after YouTube but there will be 'no censorship': The Pirate Bay 'will not be the moral police' and determine what content stays or goes as is oftentimes the case with YouTube. He added that 'the community will have to do that.'" The site will be at thevideobay.org, but nothing is up there for the public yet.
http://www.xtube.com/ and http://www.pornotube.com/ beat them to it.
Let's be honest, that's what we're talking about here.
If the community controls it, that means censorship through mob rule. Post something from Ogrish? Maybe it'll get zapped even though that's a form of censorship.
Freedom of speech exists not so people can say things that other folks agree with, it's so that the unpopular opinions can exist too. That's why Illinois Nazis (I hate those guys) can do their thing, not just the civil rights marchers.
So, in practice, I bet there'll be little difference between the end product and YouTube. New boss will be same as the old boss, except instead of a room of guys with thin mustaches and black eyebands that cackle as they zap content, it'll be legions of computer users doing the same thing.
I'm curious how they are going to pay for the bandwidth to run such an endeavor. If the service is unreachable due to bandwidth issues then no matter how in demand it might be its not going to go anywhere. I'm sure that thepiratebay.org is a fairly high traffic site but essentially they are just serving lots of little static text files. Full, streaming video is going to be a bit of a jump from that.
I imagine they have some sort of person-network in place for bandwidth but how will that scale? Even things like topsites wouldn't use as much bandwidth as a youtube thing since they are hidden from the general public.
I'm perplexed.
I'm sick of seeing worthwhile content getting pulled from valid sites. I remember looking for some video clips of Carl Sagan's appearances on Johnny Carson's show, and finding links to them in an index, but then getting there and finding that they had been pulled due to copyright restrictions.. I do hope this site can make it through. Like other posters mention, porn, especially pedo, may be an issue... but it's the cost of free speech. Althgouh I hope at least some level of self-censoring is put into place. I mean, there *has* to be a limit somewhere.... right?
Hey, thanks for the links!
Software and Games for Wii's Opera Browser
I'm not sure that it is a good idea for TPB to try to build an real business running a proper internet service. The many software developers here on /. will tell you that there is a massive difference between what it takes to host the current TPB website, and what it would take to develop and deploy a youtube rip-off.
Developing such a site demands a return on investment, which calls for a business model and legitimate corporate structure, which will ultimately require them to protect themselves by censoring their users and removing illegal content.
Looks to me like the start of a slippery slope - if TPB ever goes legit it will bring about the end of an era. Until copyright law is reformed on the international stage, true rebels will have to remain completely outside of the system.
-P
Be my friend.
Here's a news flash for the "entertainment industry": I'd even PAY for such a site that doesn't have restrictions on hosted content. Pay AND click through to their advertisers. And because it's The Pirate Bay, I'd even tell my friends about it, because while Sony and iTunes and URGE and [Corporate Media Site Here] has always had some aspect of their service that was like a stone in my shoe, not to mention DRM (which is a deal-breaker for me under even the best circumstances], The Pirate Bay has managed to give this consumer exactly what he wants.
The big Entertainment/Industrial Complex just doesn't get that a satisfied customer is a happy customer, and happy customers will make you a success. So while they are all looking for new ways to frustrate the consumer, someone like The Pirate Bay has an opportunity to do it right.
The entire entertainment industry can't disintegrate fast enough for me. And you know what? There will still be music, and movies, and novels, and art. And the innovators, the creative souls will still make a living. Brittney Spears might become underemployed, but that's just the price of sucking.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Bandwidth isn't issue in the Northern Europe.
Americans have cheap petrol and Scandinavians have cheap bandwidth.
Law enforcement agencies love the fact that the Pirate Bay doesn't censor child-porn torrents. You see, when you connect to a torrent, you tell everyone else connected who you are. The only thing law enforcement likes more than self-identifying criminals is self-convicting criminals.
I suspect there will be something similar for the VideoBay site.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
If they are line drawings, sure it would be ok. That would be considerd ( sick ) art.
And dont forget, in some countries its a right to do things that isnt ok here ( whereever 'here' happens to be ). So who's 'rights' and 'morals' should prevail? Mine? Yours? How about the guy that thinks cows are his reincarnated relatives and is sacred so eating them is immoral? Or the guy that has a right to carry a firearm?
Nothing is black and white, unless we all end up living under ONE government at some point.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
My guess is that they've implemented BitTorrent inside the Flash movie player.
"But Flash XMLSockets can only make outgoing connections to servers in the same domain that supplied the movie," I hear you cry.
"Ah," I respond sagely, "who determines what is inside thevideobay.org's domain if not thevideobay.org itself?"
"So they're assigning single-use dynamic DNS names to all their clients, but that doesn't solve the outgoing connection limitation," you protest.
"Hush little one," I reply with irritating condescension, "have you never heard of TCP simultaneous open with port prediction? It has an 85% success rate through domestic NATs and doesn't require raw sockets."