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.

Comments

Something tells me a war is comming

[Intrinsic]

It will be interesting to see what happens if the new pirate bay video site becomes as popular as youtube. As more sites pop up that dont have restrictions on hosted content, what is going to happen to the other content providers who are restricted to what content they can host?

Re:Something tells me a war is comming

[xmas2003]

YEP ... although my guess is that censorship at the country borders (as has been done to YouTube a couple of times) and/or blocking by large organization (US military is doing so now) might curtail this slightly if they get really, really popular.

But yea, the content providers who have to "operate by the rules" will be handicapped ... so perhaps I Too Welcome our new Video Site Overlords!

Is this legal?

[Poromenos1]

How is this legal? I can understand how a tracker is legal, since they aren't hosting the actual files on their own server, but unless they come up with a way to do p2p video streaming, I can't imagine how this will stay up very long.

Re:Is this legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would imagine they will simply host the site in a country where copyright laws aren't enforced.

Hence the forthcoming server move to North Korea?

Potential Uses

[anjin-san 3]

If implemented properly this video service could be quite useful for pirate bay users. Imagine if you could use it to preview the quality of a movie before you torrent it. That would save a ton of wasted bandwidth previously used for mistakenly grabbing a camcorder-quality flick.

Of course the video quality would have to greatly surpass that of youtube for this to work...

Re:pr0n

[CowboyBob500]

And there's also sites like TV Links that link to streaming videos of all your favourite TV shows.

The genie is already out of the bottle, and no-one can put it back in again.

Bob

Sneak preview

[glassesmonkey]

Thanks to the google.

(Though one of their test uploads looks to be NSFW) google cache of thevideobay.org/recent

Prior to shutting down all external links that were left live, they were using flvplayer.js with this header in the javascript.

/* Unobtrusive Flash Objects (UFO) v3.20 <http://www.bobbyvandersluis.com/ufo/>
Copyright 2005, 2006 Bobby van der Sluis
This software is licensed under the CC-GNU LGPL <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/LGPL/2.1/>
*/

Re:If TPB went legit...

[TubeSteak]

Until copyright law is reformed on the international stage, true rebels will have to remain completely outside of the system.

That'd make for a nice sound bite, but it's wholly ignorant of the international landscape. There are plenty of small countries in Eastern Europe & Asia that have fat internet pipes and no regard for copyright.

The only small countries that give a damn are those trying to get into the WTO or the EU. And most of them don't take enforcement as seriously as the MAFIAA/RIAA/BSA/etc.

Misplaced morals

[mattpointblank]

"The Pirate Bay 'will not be the moral police'"

Moral? Er, doesn't it just mean, "the police"? Sharing copyrighted material is a legal matter, it's not like debating the ethics of euthanasia.

this is a non-event

[acidrain]

But yea, the content providers who have to "operate by the rules" will be handicapped

Or the main stream won't notice because censorship is a nerd issue. So for the last time, there are no girls surfing youtube that want to see you naked.

Also Sweden's laws allow hosting .torrents as they are not copyrighted, but tpb will have all the same headaches as anyone else if they start serving up tv rips off their servers.

Re:No censorship? Or no blame for censorship?

[soulxtc]

I was also wondering about the same thing, for is censorship any less wrong when it's done by the many instead of the few?

Clever, Pirate Bay, very clever indeed.

[Jugalator]

Did you people know that it's 100% legal for Swedes to watch copyrighted streaming video? (without holder's permission)
I'm not sure about the USA, but over here, it's not put in the same class as downloading. That's illegal as usual.

So while the uploader may well be a criminal according to Swedish law, due to the design, that'll probably be very time consuming to prosecute those. Much like individual BitTorrent original seeders. You don't see those punished often. And all Swedish users of the site would use it legally. I'm not sure where the host would stand legally, but then again, I'm not sure TPB will be the hosting server either, or if it'll be distributed to a third party (read: country).

So, once again, they're seeking to enter a legal loophole much like The Pirate Bay currently operates within the boundaries of a Swedish "BBS law" where it's OK to host non-copyrighted content, which .torrent files of course are.

Re:Ironically

[dmsuperman]

A good way to serve it would be using the technology that TPB is known for; BitTorrent. Have the server be the main seed, then once people download it they can help with the distribution of the videos. If you could incorporate the BT protocol into a web browser, you could substantially lift the load off of the server.

Re:Thanks

[rozz]

How the fuck did this retard get modded +2 Insightful? Sheez, the quality of the slashdot moderators is as good as the digg crowd. I am posting this anonymously for obvious reasons, but this is too lame folks.

100% agree with your oppinion about *some* of the moderators.
but i disagree when you call the GP retard .. the guy only said thx.

and what exactly are you doing to fight against "diggy-slashdotters"? or maybe you think an anonymous post will help?
and in the end, why did you post anon? what exactly were you afraid of, the diggy-slahdotters will burn your house or what?