The Pirate Bay About To Relaunch Suprnova.org

kungfujesus writes "The Pirate Bay crew has been working on this secret project for quite some time now. Back in April they wrote a cryptic post on their blog announcing that something was coming. In a response to this announcement TPB admin Brokep told TorrentFreak: "The past, the present and the future. It's all the same, but one thing's for sure, we will radiate for weeks", today it became clear that he was referring to the resurrection of Suprnova."

Comments

But with mininova

[Cameron McCormack]

who needs suprnova?

Re:But with mininova

[nlitement]

It holds a certain nostalgic value. I'm really happy to hear this.

Re:But with mininova

[genrader]

Mininova is nowhere near the traffic that Suprnova once was. I used to be able to find anything and everything on suprnova, almost always. Mininova feels lacking a lot of the time.

Re:But with mininova

[TheThiefMaster]

Add isohunt and eztv to your list of places to look.

Re:But with mininova

[Jugalator]

But is this a "problem" with Mininova or increased P2P site competition? TPB, IsoHunt, TorrentSpy, ...

I don't think Suprnova will resolve that, but we'll see.

Re:But with mininova

[Danse]

But is this a "problem" with Mininova or increased P2P site competition? TPB, IsoHunt, TorrentSpy, ... Isn't TorrentSpy pretty much dead since they now have to turn over their logs to pretty much anyone who wants them?

Re:But with mininova

[icedcool]

Just use Torrents.to , best torrent site I've ever used.

Re:But with mininova

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Just use http://torrentz.com/ it searches all the big sites at the same time.

Re:But with mininova

[Espectr0]

Isohunt is now complying with the MPAA/RIAA. Don't use it.

Re:But with mininova

[CheShACat]

no, there will always be n00bs... :-S

Re:But with mininova

[dan4surf]

From what I know Supernova in the glory days ruled. Post by Dan webmaster of http://www.gadgets-club.com/.

Re:But with mininova

[halcyon1234]

I'm surprised TorrentSpy didn't decide to do something like "Sure, we'll turn over all our logs. Of course, in order to conserve disk space and cpu time, we've shut off logging, but that's besides the point, right?"

Re:But with mininova

[pedramnavid]

Unless you live in Canada

Re:But with mininova

[genrader]

I go to a lot of torrent sites. My point was that, back in the day, I only needed one site, whereas now I very often need 3+.

Re:But with mininova

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

I thought they relocated to Canada to avoid doing just that.
where did you hear this?

Re:But with mininova

[GodGell]

[citation needed]

Slashdot Users

[alfs boner]

I would never socialize with a Slashdot user. Sorry guys :(

Blame yourselves.

Re:Slashdot Users

[compro01]

i would never socialize with you either. sorry guy :(

blame yourself.

Re:Slashdot Users

[MarcoG42]

I often socialize with myself. I blame it on the lack of a Christian upbringing.

Re:Slashdot Users

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you plan on posting this all the time?

Not a bad idea

[chebucto]

From the article it sounds like the main technical thing going on here is that the suprnova site will be relaunched as a torrent index, using the same design scheme as the original site. Ho-hum; there is no lack of options for torrent sites at the moment...

... but the symbolic meaning is, IMHO, actually important. From TFA:

We also talked to Brokep, one of The Pirate Bay administrators and asked him why they decided to revive Suprnova. He told us: "We talked it over and decided it was something people would have use for, it would help the torrent community and it would also signal that if you shut one down it will get back up again."

Not to be overly dramatic, but things like this show that injustices to the filesharing community (if you see them that way :) ) will, eventually, be overcome.

Re:Not a bad idea

[nolifetillpleather]

remember donkax? that's the one holds a special place in my heart.

Re:Not a bad idea

[halcyon1234]

Ho-hum; there is no lack of options for torrent sites at the moment...

Sure, at the moment. All the more reason to open another one.

One of the main reasons the *AAs won't win the war on terror^H^H^H file sharing is because for every site they take down, two more pop up. This only works if the community is actively popping up sites.

That, and does it really hurt to have TPB 2: The Re-Novaing online? I mean, we all know it won't happen, but what if-- just, hypothetically speaking-- the Swedish government were to cave into foreign corporate pressure, and misuse the local police to raid TPB's servers. Obviously, this could never ever happen. But if it did, wouldn't it be nice to still have complete and total access via an identical, but autonomous portal?

Re:Not a bad idea

[Captain Splendid]

but the symbolic meaning is, IMHO, actually important.

Exactly right. There's little need for another torrent site, but the psychological impact is huge. That's what I love about the Pirate Bay guys. Love 'em or hate 'em, they certainly have a talent for harnessing drama.

Re:Stop the internet!

[Walpurgiss]

Next week on Fox 11, a story on the torrent downloading terrorist threat to the Universe; threatening to "SuprNova" vans at sports stadiums in solar systems across the Universe.

A few more details at slyck

[6350']

Slyck.com has an article up on the topic, with a few more details, and a couple comments from the original Suprnova maintainer.

He (Andrej Preston) comments in the article:

"My deal with [The Pirate Bay] was that the role of SuprNova can't change much. It needs to be community orientated, but I hope they make some updates the SuprNova was sooo missing. But what they will do, it's not my thing to decide anymore. But I know they will do [well] and will try to keep the community spirit running." http://www.slyck.com/story1561_SuprNovaorg_Transfe rred_to_The_Pirate_Bay

Re:A few more details at slyck

[Anonymous Coward]

It needs to be community orientated... And wine needs to be made from grapes that have fermentated.

Re:A few more details at slyck

[Paradise Pete]

And wine needs to be made from grapes that have fermentated.

And smart-asses are resentated.

Re:A few more details at slyck

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they can be appreciatated.

Re:A few more details at slyck

[compro01]

And wine needs to be made from grapes that have fermentated.

doesn't have to be grapes. any fermentable fruit works fine, and some occasionally work better, depending on your tastes.

Who needs it

[Kadin2048]

Mininova aside, why would they relaunch Suprnova, when TPB is already one of the biggest (if not the biggest) BT trackers around?

Is there really a market for that many different tracker/aggregators? I guess I can understanding having different sites tailored to different purposes; a site that's designed expressly for tracking TV-episode .torrents is probably going to be designed differently than one built around general-purpose dvdimage/iso/rar torrents, but it seems like this is something where bigger is better. The more files that are tracked, the more useful a site is.

Why create another one?

Re:Who needs it

[originalnih]

The Pirate Bay is crap. Demonoid is far better.

Re:Who needs it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a tracker. It's an aggregation site. It just stores copies of .torrent files from public trackers, which would include TPB. Most of the special-purpose (TV, movies, games, whatever) torrent sites are aggregation sites as well.

Re:Who needs it

[rts008]

Hear! Hear!

Demonoid is de man!

Most of my worthwhile/usable downloads are generated by Demonoid.

Usable should have been in ALL CAPS!

Re:Who needs it

[montyzooooma]

Demonoid requires you to register if you want to access older torrents, whereas TPB, Mininova and the old Suprnova didn't. Registration in the world of bit-torrent seems somewhat counter-intuitive.

Re:Who needs it

[geminidomino]

How the heck is that flamebait? Someone's been hitting the crackpipe pretty hard.

Doesn't demonoid have some sort of limited registration scheme going on these days? Invites or something?

Re:Who needs it

[TheThiefMaster]

That's not flamebait, it's a fair point.

There are many private torrent sites, and they tend to have one advantage over public ones: Fewer leechers. People on a private tracker get their download/upload exposed, and can be kicked out if they don't upload enough, so there is incentive to upload, which makes everyone's downloads go faster.

Remember, in bittorrent, total download rate = total upload rate, so the fewer people that only download and don't upload, the faster everyon else's downloads go.

Re:Who needs it

[anhdres]

the pirate bay might be the largest tracker, but suprnova was a search portal, the google of trackers. it's a very different thing.

Re:Who needs it

[Das Modell]

I tried a popular private torrent site when I managed to get an invite. It was, to paraphrase the Angry Video Game Nerd, fucking horrible!

Private sites tend to enforce a ratio, so if you don't seed enough you're eventually banned, which is what happened to me. No matter how much I tried, I was never able to seed properly (about 800 mb at most, and I must have downloaded about 10 gb). I had my client set up exactly like the site instructed me to, and I've never had any issues seeding on public trackers. I tried seeding big torrents, I tried seeding small torrents, I tried seeding small chunks from a large, popular torrent, and I even downloaded a file just so I could try seeding it... nothing worked. To make things even more difficult, what little I managed to seed wasn't properly registered by the site. Another part of the problem was that new users couldn't access new torrents, so by the time the torrents became available to me there was nobody downloading them anymore, or there was such a ridiculous amount of seeders that I couldn't seed anything myself.

Since then, I've had no desire to go anywhere near private torrent sites. And why would I? Public sites usually have anything you need, and if they don't then it's likely to be so rare that private sites don't have it either.

Re:Who needs it

[Gregar]

Demonoid? You mean the site run by admins who have no issues with banning entire countries without due reason or notice? Such as the Netherlands and parts of Canada recently. If anything Demonoid has shown us the need for more RELIABLE PUBLIC trackers such as The Pirate Bay and SuprNova.

Re:Who needs it

[AntiNazi]

Did you consider, you know, waiting a while. Every private site I have been a member of has a grace period where if you have downloaded less than a certain amount (say 5gb) you aren't subject to ratio requirements. You can sit there for weeks to build up your ratio. Or you could just download at full speed and wonder why you got banned in a week or so.

Re:Who needs it

[Ubitsa_teh_1337]

I'm a member at a bajillion private sites(i don't use public ones) and I've never had any issues with ratio. You probably just need some different strategies in your seeding than you use on public sites - private sites have nowhere near the amount of leechers that public sites do.

Re:Who needs it

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel for ya' dude. These days I have a really fast connection that often gives me a ratio of 3 or even 5 by the time I've finished so I never have to think about ratio. But I used to have a connection with such poor upload speed that it took almost a week to get a ratio of 1 (meanwhile the download itself took about 2 days for a DVDR). It's your ISP who screws you over in these cases simply because you can't upload fast enough.

This is why ratios suck donkey balls. With my connection I'm more than happy to do my share of uploading so you don't have to, but private (ratio-centric) trackers make this impossible. Ratio systems discriminate because on a private tracker I'd get to stay and you would be banned, which is why Suprnova and The Pirate Bay is the way to go. These trackers make sure that as many people as possible get the contents and people with fast connections are put to good use, as it should be.

That being said, I do favor private trackers most of the time becuase the quality of the content is often higher, or more precisely - there's not as much junk so it's easier to find what you're looking for.

Re:Who needs it

[Kattspya]

Seeding on one of the better "closed" torrent sites is hard but not impossible. In other words: you're doing it wrong. Get in early on a popular torrent and seed it as much as you can. Also you can't download whatever you want until you've establish a surplus upload.

That aside there is a big problem with sites that don't factor in that the ratio is a zero-sum game. There needs to be some kind of equalizing done from time to time or else there will always be people who get banned without trying to leech. Some sites have torrents that doesn't count against your download but gives you upload points.

Maybe a good system would be an artificial increase to everyone below a ratio of one from everyone that has above a ratio of one but without any subtracting only adding (if you did subtract everyone would have a ratio of one). There also needs to be a system to prevent pure leeching but that's to specific for me. I'm sorry I can't express myself better.

Re:Who needs it

[hostyle]

Er, didnt a Dutch company try to shut them down (BREIN)? And didnt a Dutch hosting company (LEASEWEB) give the owners name and address to same Dutch company? I can see why they might have developed a tiny Austin Powers-esque grudge against the Netherlands ...

Re:Who needs it

[Lord of Hyphens]

What was that, GameCodex? Half-assed, piece of shit implemention. "Oh, you can't download anything because your ratio is 0." ... how in the world are you supposed to get a ratio greater than 0 when you can't get on anything? Oh, wait, use the RSS feed as a backdoor (which defeats the purpose of the ratio restrictions, by the way).

Re:Who needs it

[Das Modell]

Why should I have to waste my bandwidth for a week? A week wouldn't have even been enough with that site. With public trackers I never have issues with uploading or seeding. I easily get a 1.0 ratio with anything I download.

Re:Who needs it

[Das Modell]

In other words: you're doing it wrong. Get in early on a popular torrent and seed it as much as you can.

But as I said in my post, the new torrents were off-limits for new users. It wasn't possible to get in early, and by the time the torrent was available it was too late. I spent a lot of time just searching for torrents that I could seed to improve my ratio, but nothing helped.

Re:Who needs it

[Kattspya]

That seems really retarded. Are you sure you were limited from the get go and not a few days after joining?

Re:Who needs it

[Das Modell]

As far as I remember there was either a certain period of time (much longer than a few days) before the limitation would be removed, or you needed to achieve a certain ratio (which clearly wasn't going to happen).

Re:Who needs it

[Deadplant]

Private sites with ratios are in my experience not worth the effort.
Quite frankly I get better transfer speeds from the public torrents. When it comes to torrents, the more peers the better.

In fact, you know what all the registration/ratio crap reminds me of? DRM. It is a practically useless regime of restrictions and limitations that just get in the way of me downloading the video I wanted and watching it as soon as possible.
I think ratio sites are really driven by kids wanting to feel elite, not by a desire to maximize download speeds.

The only redeeming quality I've found is the better quality control of the content of the torrents.

ah well.
If what you're looking for is today's episode of your favourite tv show or a big name movie released in the last few months then the public sites are the way to go without a doubt.
Maybe there are other niches that are much better served by the private sites.

Re:Who needs it

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part I've had success with a number of private trackers. Some sites are more anal about ratio then others. For instance on one site they not only require you maintain a 1.0 global ratio but a minimum of .8 on all of your torrents. So you can't say download 100MB and not seed (say because there are no leechers) and then download a 500MB torrent and just seed it an extra 100MB. Then they added in convoluted "seed points" systems which force you to leave your computer idling while you seed to earn a .8 ratio on torrents below 1. Anyway thats just one site. The other private sites I'm in are all very nice and well down, the best thing about having a smaller private tracker to go to is better response for requests if you can't find what you're looking for on the big sites. Granted the private sites I go to are specialized and not catch-alls, so that helps as well.

Re:Who needs it

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with private trackers is getting onto a torrent too late. Unless finish downloading and start seeding a file before the number of peers peaks, you'll never be able to seed to even a 1.0 ratio, let alone more.

Also, a lot of private trackers seem to assume that it's possible for everyone to seed more than they download. Barring the occasional lost/corrupted block, the overall torrent upload:download ratio is ALWAYS 1:1. Enforcing a limit of anything higher than a 0.9 seed ratio means torrenting becomes a race to upload as fast as you can.

Re:Who needs it

[ben there...]

I'm convinced that people who run private trackers don't understand bittorrent. If you've got a slow upload (a "leecher"), you are prioritized last for getting pieces from the seed. The seed may connect and give you one unique piece to share with everyone else, but most of the time you'll be connected to other peers. The peer with the fastest upload gets the pieces from the seed first, because he has the greatest ability to share them. And on down the line.

What matters with torrents is not the seeders/leechers ratio, it is the availability of each piece. If you're connected to a seed, your maximum download = the seed's upload (i.e. 40 KB/s). If you're connected to a seed and a number of peers, your max download of each piece that is available from more than one source is the sum of all of their upload speeds (i.e. 40 KB/s + 30 KB/s + 10 KB/s = 80 KB/s). So the theoretical maximum speed is much greater with more peers having more pieces and greater availability. It means you rely less on the seed.

And of course, if the seed disappears, you'll be happy that one dude with the slow upload has a copy of that one piece you need. He'll share it with a fast uploader eventually, who you'll probably get it from. In fact, that's the reason the seed tries to give a different piece out to each of many peers. Every piece they give out is one less piece they have to continue uploading in the first round (or one more available copy of a piece in subsequent rounds).

Re:Who needs it

[aliquis]

The registration is what makes demonoid much better than the pirate bay, because than all those cheap adsl leechers can't just download and limited their upload speed / leave asap because they have to care about their ratio. And therefor torrents are more well seeded and have much higher download speeds.

I hate TPB, it's useless, I can't understand why anyone would call it the largest bittorrent tracker in the world, what do they count? Amount of torrents created? Doesn't it matter anything if you can actually DOWNLOAD them?

Re:Who needs it

[AnonChef]

Private sites with ratios are in my experience not worth the effort.
Quite frankly I get better transfer speeds from the public torrents. When it comes to torrents, the more peers the better.
Private sites have their place. Especially sites with narrow content. In many cases transfer speed is not an issue, finding the stuff at all is often enough. Ratio is just a way to try to ensure some modicum of "play nice" among members for those places. With the grace period most have "hit and run" members are a problem even then.

Re:Who needs it

[Master of Transhuman]

See, this is what I don't like about BT sites.

The sheer complexity - and then the inevitable failure.

You spend a lot of time trying to find what you're looking for that STILL HAS A FUNCTIONING SEED - good luck with that! None of the sta

And then, once the torrent starts, you sit and wait. Eventually it speeds up.

And then you get to the last piece - which doesn't seem to exist ANYWHERE NOW!

So you've spent X hours and still don't have anything to show for it.

Until they fix this sort of thing, P2P is a real drag. The legal file sharing systems should be applauding the P2P screwups since they wouldn't have any customers if they didn't make it easier to download than the P2P people do.

Re:Who needs it

[rts008]

No, I don't have an invite, or to be honest...have never visited his(?) site.
What I can tell you for sure is that EVERY torrent I've gotten from him has been functionable, relevant to what I was looking for, and was maintained and working. Most I picked up via www.piratebay.org, or www.mininova.org.

What I usually do is this:
1. go to torrent site (two I use are listed above) and search in category for desired torrent.
2. order the displayed torrents by seeders
3. look for demonoid as submitter/tracker with at least 10 seeders
4. download and start the torrent
5. ????
6. PROFIT!
      HehHehHeh!...couldn't resist...sorry. ;)

But ignore 5 & 6 for serious answer.

Re:Who needs it

[rts008]

Thanks for the info. I have never visited demonoid's site- just picked up his stuff from TPB and Mininova.
  I can attest to the goodness of his torrents I have used (I look for 10+ seeders when I search for torrents, and give an added bonus for demonoid's torrents from my experience with them).

I have to agree with you on the counter-intuitive part. I would hope he only does it for his own use/ego, but I am not that fresh of the turnip truck.

Re:Who needs it

[rts008]

Err....maybe?!?!?
I don't know anything about his(?-I will assume 'his') website, just his torrents I've picked up from ThePirateBay and Mininova.
If one of his torrents have 10 or more seeders, I have always had good results. His files have always been as described, and 'just worked'. I don't know what else to say, or expect.

Maybe it's different here in the USA with torrents...I honestly don't know, but you surprise me somewhat. Is it really that different outside the USA?

Re:Who needs it

[socz]

Most of the "arguments against private trackers" are wrong, and in counter-spirit of the proliferation of torrent technology. The entire idea of torrents is to share 1.0 of EACH torrent you run. Why is having a ratio limit a bad idea at all?

Human tendency is to be abusive! So, if i can leech 100 gigs and not upload anything, that is what i would do. Now, if i had to upload 100 gigs back, then i might think about downloading 100 gigs.

If you complain about having to seed a torrent for a week, then maybe the persons who seeded it for weeks/months should have stopped so you could have never got it.

Very few people give back a little, and the few who give anything, give a LOT. I keep seeding torrents i see are interesting to people and keep building ratios, not because i care about the ratio, but because i know people want them. Something in specific is some rare robotech/macross stuff. I know people want it, so i keep seeding it. I actually ended up signing up at the trackers site because i figured someday they might have something i want, can't find it anywhere else, and i'll have a bitchen ratio!

I'm all for banning people who don't give back! But only those.

And on a final note/rant, that is why we have gov't, to protect us from ourselves! And can you see how well that's worked out for us ]:P

Re:Who needs it

[LupusCanis]

I assume you're talking about OiNK? That's the only private site I can think of where it's remotely difficult to maintain a ratio - even there, getting the 0.5 which is the maximum ratio you need to maintain your account isn't that hard.

Getting the 1.05 for Power User+ status is.

Of course, I could be mistaken about what site you mean, but I've yet to join any torrent site apart from OiNK where it's hard to seed. And to be honest, OiNK is by far the best music torrent site I've seen - between it, DC++ and Soulseek you can find practically all the music that's ever been on the internet. The only downsides are that it's very difficult to keep an ideal ratio and that they, for some reason, have around seven categories of electronic music, yet don't have a prog rock category or any metal subgenre categories....

Regardless, it is very much worth using private trackers, OiNK is very much the exception regarding the difficulty seeding (and there you just have to tread carefully) and the content, speed and security on private trackers is unparalleled. Provided it's a good tracker, of course! There're some duff ones.

Re:Who needs it

[Gregar]

It has little to do with what country you're actually in, the reason the Netherlands and parts of Canada got banned was because Demonoid has had problems with BREIN, which is a Dutch RIAA/MPAA-clone. It was an unannounced country wide ban affecting over sixteen million people. Notice my use of people here and not BREIN. This ban took out a large part of dedicated bittorent users without notice or anything, even those with a ratio far exceeding 1.0+. The only reason they probably though they could get away with it is because of the size of the Netherlands and because they never publicly admitted the banning.

Re:Who needs it

[Das Modell]

Well if you must know the site was Torrentleech, which I believe is pretty popular. If OiNK is more difficult than Torrentleech then I can't even imagine how the site can retain any users.

Re:Who needs it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why private sites are so much better. I never touch publics.

A private always has seeds until everyone is done.
A private always has the stuff earlier than mininova et al.
A private is so more organised, with only quality, non-duplicate torrents listed.
A private is always faster. I max my connection within seconds of joining a torrent.
Privates have way better quality comments per torrent, so you can really get a feel if what you're downloading is worth it, propered, etc.

And finally, a private ALWAYS has people moaning about ratio. Think of it as a community, and you're giving back about the same as you take. The internet and bandwidth isn't free- some guys sent you the file you wanted, so why not pass it along the same?

I have no trouble getting 1.0 ratio, even with vastly different down/up speeds (16/1). I don't leech everything in sight, I let it upload for as long as it takes- I've never consciously tried to get my ratio better, just played fair.

People often moan about it not being possible for everyone to get 1.0, well that's true if the end of the universe stopped right now. However, the site keeps going, new people and torrents get added, you seed more than 1 on some and less than 1 on others- it all balances out to show up the leeches who don't share back. Even 0.8+ is good enough for some privates- it shows the effort is there.

The publics are full of leeches, hence the lower speeds (people quitting as soon as they're done) and missing last few % for older torrents.

Re:Who needs it

[Deadplant]

You're probably right.
I still don't like it.
We need a third way.

Re:Who needs it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm only familiar with some of the arcane details of the ratio, but seems like most of the time it's always a DHT problem. With DHT on, private trackers (Demonoid, for one) can't keep tabs on your upload properly. I always seem to get better speeds with DHT disabled. YMMV, HTH ETC ETC

Re:Stop the internet!

[Carbon016]

Some say these "internet pirate gangs" are equivalent to "domestic bank robbers"! Those who feel threatened should immediately buy a dog.

Yeah, and...

[NMerriam]

Am i the only person to notice that their big, uncensored image hosting site lasted about 2 days before they started removing images by the thousand with no explanation? Entire categories disappeared. I'd like to see slashdot or somebody ask them what the heck the point of the site is even supposed to be, since it certainly isn't a place to put things to link to, even generic LOL forum-type images. There's no indication on their FAQ or anywhere else why or how or who will just decide to remove stuff on a whim.

Re:Yeah, and...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suspect that since they actually host the images they are within reach of the Swedish law and are trying to avoid copyright infringements. Or they may just be having database trouble.

Re:Yeah, and...

[Clazzy]

People can remove their own images, do remember that.

Re:Yeah, and...

[raynet]

I did notice that lots of images disappeared, but it seemed to have something to do with cookies on my computer, the 'safe' mode was turned on. After clicking bayimg settings page to 'view all images', all the missing categories were restored.

isohunt anyone?

[kantier]

I think that's the ideal for a torrent index. index + merge duplicates. How can the idea be improved over that? maybe a better site design, I don't know.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[chebucto]

A comment system to discuss individual torrents would be nice; it would make avoiding bad/poor-quality torrents easier.

Other than that, though, I agree with you. isohunt is by far the most effective torrent search site on the net at present.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Well, let's see.

* A search engine that actually uses booleans correctly.
* A policy that labels for CD or DVD images match what's on them in some consistent format, such as name, author, publisher, comments, with a matching search engine.
* Published checksums for the images: this could be used to reduce or elimiinate the duplicates.
* Open source or creative commons links: Bittorrent is the fastest way to get Linux CD or DVD images, but they *must* be checksum verified for security reasons.
* A policy of sending 3000 volts to the fingertips of the next idiot who uses yet another format for CD or DVD images, wasting my time with bittorrents for formats that no one but some teenager in Slovenia uses.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[Shinra]

They already do this on many private trackers sites, and have done it for the past couple of years, if not longer. I think they've also implimented comments or at least updates/RSS Feeds for certain torrents which get updated periodically (Such as Linux Distro ISOs)

Re:isohunt anyone?

[ascendant]

Isohunt fails because it has no comment system. However, it is good as a multiple tracker source. Often I go to TPB and find a good torrent, then search for the hash on Isohunt to get a good list of trackers. Too bad Azureus doesn't trat multiple trackers te same way uTorrent does. Gather together all peers and treat them as one swarm. If it did, Az would probably be perfect in my book.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[originalnih]

If you keep an eye on it, getting an account at demonoid.com is easy. Since getting in there, my bittorrent experience has been a lot better.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[Koiu Lpoi]

Agreed. Next time somebody sends me a .daa file, somebody's going to have to pay for it.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a .uif file.

If you want a compressed ISO, gzip it, damnit.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[tepples]

If you keep an eye on it, getting an account at demonoid.com is easy. How often does one have to check? Once an hour? Is it desirable that the sign-up experience resemble waiting for Tom Nook or the Able Sisters to stock your desired item in Animal Crossing: Wild World?

Re:isohunt anyone?

[msormune]

How about some kind of warning systems for low quality hand cam versions of those, um, Linux images?

Re:isohunt anyone?

[icegreentea]

its a bit confused right now. it use to be the registrations were open for 24 hours on fridays (i assume GMT). however, they changed it to something like 5 continuous days per month, w/o setting us a precise schedule. better off finding someone with an account and asking for an invite code.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[compro01]

Too bad Azureus doesn't trat multiple trackers te same way uTorrent does.

i thought 2.5.0.4 did work with multiple trackers, you just need to manually enter the trackers. or am i getting this mixed up with that feature when creating a torrent?

Re:isohunt anyone?

[tepples]

better off finding someone with an account and asking for an invite code. Say I ask everybody on my AIM buddy list who is online in a given day, and none of them is a subscriber to a particular site to which I need an invitation code. What's the most efficient way to add more friends?

Re:isohunt anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably assume since you're pirating that 2 GB Oblivion .daa, you can probably also afford to pirate that 30 MB PowerISO.

(Numbers made up, but close enough.)

Re:isohunt anyone?

[ascendant]

I know it had a lot of typos, but you're getting it a lot more mixed up than that.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[ampathee]

I swear, someone on mininova is getting paid by someone at Poweriso. If you ask questions on the forums like "what's so great about .daa?", you get banned.

Re:isohunt anyone?

[toddestan]

I swear, someone on mininova is getting paid by someone at Poweriso. If you ask questions on the forums like "what's so great about .daa?", you get banned.

Now there's a great business model - trying to sell software to a group of people who hang around a site used for software piracy.

scofflaws

[TheSHAD0W]

Speaking as a BitTorrent client developer, I have to opine that BitTorrent is a terrible way to distribute pirated content. All the things that make it a good tool for distributing LEGITIMATE content work against it when what's being shipped around is against the law; it's too easy to track down the people involved in downloading and uploading it, and any attempt to limit that significantly reduces the network's ability to handle the load.

The only reason BitTorrent is being used is because there are plenty of scofflaws out there who want to share this data, and BitTorrent works great to amplify their efforts. Tracking down the initial sources is a bit difficult but not impossible, but there are a myriad of other sources waiting in the wings.

Scoffing the law is a grand tradition in the United States; from moonshiners, to ignoring the double-nickel speed limit on the roads, we've turned our noses up at laws which, while they may have some social benefit, we feel they restrict us too harshly. Often those laws wind up causing more problems than they solve; ask someone who wound up poisoned by ethylene glycol from an illegal alcohol still made from a car's radiator.

In this case we have people being sued, fined and jailed for trading long strings of ones and zeros. The "intellectual property" owners tell us these strings belong to them, even though those strings can vary enormously (re-encoding video alters the data entirely) they still assert ownership. One innocuous file on one's desktop may spell disaster. But with hundreds of millions of people around the world throwing them around, it's practically impossible to stop.

One website returning to life doesn't really mean that much in terms of what's being traded, but it is indeed a symbol showing how futile the fight to enforce the ownership of ideas is; after all, how can one own an idea?

Re:scofflaws

[QuantumG]

That's great. The Pirate Bay operate in a locale where this material *is* legal to distribute.

So your entire argument is pointless.

Re:scofflaws

[CrackedButter]

America was founded by scoffing the law, remember the Boston Tea Party?

Re:scofflaws

[TubeSteak]

Speaking as a BitTorrent client developer, I have to opine that BitTorrent is a terrible way to distribute pirated content. Other than newsgroups, closed P2P communities, or something like TOR, what is?

Re:scofflaws

[totally bogus dude]

I thought TPB was able to operate because the mere act of tracking torrents and providing .torrent files wasn't illegal there (Sweden?) -- but they still have copyright laws. There might also be a wrinkle that it's okay to download copywritten materials, but not to distribute it. Okay, I'm a bit hazy, but I'm sure someone else will clarify.

Also, the P's in P2P mean that laws regarding distribution in the location you live in still apply, regardless of how legal it may be in another location.

Re:scofflaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation:
I am a content consumer, not a content creator.
As such, copyright only gets in the way.
Ergo...
      INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE !!!!!!!!11111111one

Re:scofflaws

[QuantumG]

Yeah, that's your problem.

Re:scofflaws

[TheSHAD0W]

Classical distribution systems like Napster and Morpheus are a bit safer, since people are connected to individual sources rather than to scads of them. It's easier to collect peer data on BitTorrent.

Re:scofflaws

[TheSHAD0W]

People in the United States downloading torrents tracked on The Pirate Bay are certainly in danger. And I'm sure plenty of torrents there are sourced from here in the US, or in other countries where doing so is illegal. So no, my argument is not pointless.

Re:scofflaws

[Talavis]

It's illegal to download as well as upload "copywritten" materials since 1 july 2005. As for providing torrents, it's still unsure whether The Pirate Bay will be to court for it or not.

Re:scofflaws

[Jugalator]

That's great. The Pirate Bay operate in a locale where this material *is* legal to distribute.

If you're saying material = the actual file data: no, it's not. I'm from Sweden and it's all illegal to distribute (download AND upload) actual material without the copyright owner's explicit permission. It is NOT illegal to host torrent files though, it's quite logically considered different from the material, with file hashes and tracker info basically all they contain. This is being supported by an old BBS case of 1996 where it was decided in the BBS site's favor to host indices of warezed material.

Re:scofflaws

[Jugalator]

There might also be a wrinkle that it's okay to download copywritten materials, but not to distribute it

No, that's illegal too now per EU directives, although made illegal more recently.

But again, that's not TPB's method operation, but the BBS case you cite. The parent is wrong though in that it's legal to distribute the actual files.

Regards "A Swede"

Re:scofflaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a BitTorrent client developer, I have to opine that BitTorrent is a terrible way to distribute pirated content. All the things that make it a good tool for distributing LEGITIMATE content work against it when what's being shipped around is against the law; it's too easy to track down the people involved in downloading and uploading it, and any attempt to limit that significantly reduces the network's ability to handle the load.

I agree wholeheartedly. But there's another problem waiting in the wings as well, and that problem is seeding and redistributing content. Basically, torrents 'die' after a week or so, and hosting your own torrents is nontrivial and far from automatic like it is with older P2P networks.

So basically, the best way to get a file is to get it right as it comes out, which are prime targets for the media companies who want to harvest IP's.

Thankfully, I'm not a big movie or TV show fan, and I much prefer the variety and unpredictableness of internet radio to waiting overnight for a CD torrent to finish.

Re:scofflaws

[LordSnooty]

If they are the same thing, why have we not seen legal action against users on the scale of that against the 'point-to-point' networks of eg Kazaa, Limewire? Both types are shifting bits illegally, after all - it's strange that the content providers cannot take action against BitTorrent users in a similar manner.

Re:scofflaws

[whereverjustice]

Well, that and armed rebellion.

Re:scofflaws

[Maelwryth]

One can own an idea because we created the concept of ownership, are indoctrinated in it, and we can damn well do what we want with it. It is a concept though, and it is useful, because that is how we think.

Re:scofflaws

[CrackedButter]

and the armed rebellion.

Re:scofflaws

[number11]

why have we not seen legal action against users on the scale of that against the 'point-to-point' networks of eg Kazaa, Limewire?... it's strange that the content providers cannot take action against BitTorrent users in a similar manner.

They can. (They do send takedown notices to BitTorrent users.) But Kazaa users are easier victims.

The goons go after numbers. If they can nail you for many items, that's far far better than than nailing you for one item. E.g. the RIAA likes to go to court with two lists: one big list of all the files you share, and a smaller list of things they claim to have downloaded. The big list is to make you look like a criminal mastermind and guilty guilty guilty, the small list is what the lawsuit is based on (X dollars for each item on the list). That's easy to do with Kazaa, where they can browse your list of shared files making screenshots, and download whole files from a single victim. But it would be difficult to aggregate such a list for a BitTorrent user, who in any case won't tend to share many files (at least at the same time), and only shares bits and pieces of a file. If they only can claim a single file, that's not cost-effective. And much less convincing.

Re:scofflaws

[DreadPiratePizz]

Yeah, we were founded by scoffing at unjust, unfair and immoral laws. The idea that you shouldn't steal copyrighted work doesn't quite seem to fit in those catagories...

Re:scofflaws

[bobonut]

You make an excellent point. If the creators of pirate bay were simply interested in distributing pirated content, why wouldn't they assist with or advocate networks that protect a users anonymity such as freenet or gnunet? Of course that may not be nearly as profitable.

Re:scofflaws

[TheSHAD0W]

Basically, torrents 'die' after a week or so, and hosting your own torrents is nontrivial and far from automatic like it is with older P2P networks.

BitTorrent wasn't designed to be used without dedicated seeds for each torrent; the fact that torrents work so well without one is a testament to BitTorrent's robustness. It really isn't that much more difficult to run one or more dedicated seed servers than it is to put up a tracker, and consumes less bandwidth than an HTTP server. Please remember BitTorrent was designed to enhance the performance of a standard server-based site, not to put up public trackers and let people upload torrents and seed willy-nilly.

Re:scofflaws

[Supurcell]

Yeah, we were founded by scoffing at unjust, unfair and immoral laws. The idea that you shouldn't steal copyrighted work doesn't quite seem to fit in those catagories...

It isn't stealing copyrighted work, it's copying copyrighted work. And the penalties for breaking such a law are unjust, unfair, and immoral.

Re:scofflaws

[Anonymous Coward]

America was founded by scoffing the law, remember the Boston Tea Party? Given that he said this:

Scoffing the law is a grand tradition in the United States; from moonshiners, to ignoring the double-nickel speed limit on the roads... I'm guessing that he's aware of that. So what's your point again?

Re:scofflaws

[Anonymous Coward]

poisoned by ethylene glycol from an illegal alcohol still made from a car's radiator Having suffered from minor ethylene glycol poisoning due to an aircon related antifreeze spillage (don't ask), I have to say it's the best form of poisoning you can suffer from. The cure is alcohol! You need to drink as much booze as you can until you can see a doctor!

Re:scofflaws

[AxelBoldt]

it's too easy to track down the people involved in downloading and uploading it,

Has anyone ever been sued for downloading something via bittorrent?

Re:scofflaws

[Snaller]

" It is NOT illegal to host torrent files though,"

It is in other countries who have signed the same treaties as sweden, so its only a question of time.

Re:Stop the internet!

[Antique Geekmeister]

Hey, if we can get the Bittorrent guys to carry pink water pistols, can we trick Fox into reporting it and get the rest of them fired? It worked on Bill O'Reilly!

Slashdot:Official message board of the pirate bay

[antifoidulus]

or at least it feels like it. Why is it that everytime someone at the pirate bay sneezes it makes it on to the front page of slashdot? You download torrents from the internet, well good for you, I'm so proud! But there is more to tech than people who spend their lives watching MPAA movies while cursing out the MPAA

Mere Conicidence?

[Shinra]

The Featured Article on Wikipedia today is the Supernova: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova Coincidence? Or a sneaky new method of marketing?

Re:Mere Conicidence?

[ocean_soul]

There must be something behind it... Some Conspiracy... The US secret agencies... Aliens... :-)

Re:Mere Conicidence?

[WWWWolf]

The Featured Article on Wikipedia today is the Supernova: Coincidence? Or a sneaky new method of marketing?

It's an admin cabal conspiracy - probably one of the admins is a RIAA spy who promited the article to Featured status, in order to submit the article vandalism history covertly to RIAA to expose filesharers!

So don't be surprised if humourless men in black knock on the door of your local university's astronomy department and ask inconvenient questions about "pop stars lol".

...obviously.

(I'm a Wikipedia admin so obviously I know what I'm talking about! (Okay, I've recently noted that I also spew a whole lot of rubbish, but that's not the point.))

*sigh*

[SilentChris]

I'm always bothered when I read articles like this because I know the Slashdot party line is always "File sharing good, fuck the content creators". I get upset because I think of my little brother, who's basically been screwed by piracy.

My little brother has a band. The music is quite good. The band is quite popular locally. It's so popular, in fact, that people bootleg their music and share it across the internet.

At first they were quite happy about this. They were reaching a much larger audience. Surely these people will come to their concerts and buy their CDs if they like the music (at least, that's what Slashdot always says will happen).

However, it didn't. Turns out (from conversations with their fans on their message board) that no one wants to buy their music. They like it, but hwy buy the music when fans can download every one of their albums for free online? Also, concert attendance has stayed flat. The pirating of their music hasn't suddenly increased attendance like they hoped it would.

So, while the band has a large fanbase (and it's growing), they've had barely enough to scrap by. My brother personally cleans a local diner's grease pit every night for a free dinner. They haven't (yet) gotten a recording contract, and I personally hope they do before my brother is actually eating the grease. :P

Long story short: don't believe everything you read on Slashdot. While I agree that the big content holders don't deserve any sympathy, there are artists out there that actually ARE hurting from piracy. It's mostly the little guys, and I haven't found one comment on Slashdot yet that recognizes this is as a problem.

Re:*sigh*

[dunezone]

Man I agree totally with you. This is hurting the little guy worse then its hurting the corporate level. I hate reading the countless comments praising them as heroes or saints at Pirate Bay.

Imagine the little guy putting countless hours and his heart and soul into developing a piece of software and offering it at a reasonable price. Then he hopes onto Pirate Bay and searches for it, and then he sees it being distributed by hundreds of people. Now some would feel happy that their software is being used. Unfortunately, that man is looking to make an income off of the software he sells. That man is now devastated and theres nothing he can do about it.

Pirate Bay is horrible. They know what their doing over there. I don't care if they operate in a country that by their law says they can do what they do. I don't care if they think their sticking it to the man. Those two excuses are getting old. And the worst part is how arrogant Pirate Bay is about all this.

Now most of you wont care of what I said. Thats fine. But I personally know someone who is devastated that his software is being distributed for free and theres not a god damn thing he can do about it. And I bet theres people on Slashdot that are seeing the same thing.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell your brother that I would be quite willing to take his case for a 40% cut. I'll deal with MediaSentry to get the names and IP addresses of the people infringing his copyrights. At $150,000 per song for intentional infringement, we should be able to make several million dollars.

--AC

Re:*sigh*

[scottrocket]

Another way of looking at this, is that the people who download the music aren't going to buy it anyway, so why not encourage them to download your brother's music; over time, they may develop a strong preference for his music, & reward him later. If some of them don't, you haven't really lost anything. Or your brother and his musical peers could set up a streaming co-op say, with hundreds of titles & then pepper modest amounts of advertising every 15 minutes or so. A lot of people are accustomed to internet radio: If it goes the way of the dodo, these indie artists may well be the ones to fill (& perhaps satisfy) the demands of an existing audience. Tell your brother to keep plugging away! :)

Re:*sigh*

[Kris_J]

If they do get a recording contract they'll really learn what theft is.

Re:*sigh*

[detect]

What's your brother's band called?

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

He's been screwed by piracy? You mean robbed, raped or murdered on the high seas? If not - then *call it what it is* - bootlegging.

Re:*sigh*

[Paradise Pete]

While I agree that the big content holders don't deserve any sympathy, there are artists out there that actually ARE hurting from piracy.

Yet another reason for reformation of copyright law. As "clever" as Disney et. al. think they were, there are repercussions and eventual consequences to shoving through self-serving laws. One of those is that people stop respecting the law.

Re:*sigh*

[sumdumass]

While this seems like an obvious troll, I will entertain your scenario with a couple I know of personally.

I used to be in a band, I was never real good but the other members were. We cut a few tracks and all, played a few bars and local joints, even a couple festivals. We never were conceded or stupid enough to think we could do this full time seeing how we got half of the 2 dollar cover charge at most dive bars and they seemed to over charge us for our drinks. I don't know, maybe I could drink 20 beer and 5 or 6 shots in the 3 hours we played? (could explain why I sucked). So long story short, we all kept our jobs and did it as a hobby while at the same time working to get a contract and all. After all, there is probably 200 bands in every mid sized town and how many famous bands with contracts? It isn't likely that being in a band will amount to much mor then just that with all the competition out there.

Well, our band eventually we split up. Work got to involved for me to spend the time necessary and the others were playing around with different bands and all. I had some of our stuff in the shared directory with XoloX which was the popular local file sharing utility. Eventually, I have friends unrelated to this venture asking me if I knew who that band was. I instantly recognized the tunes and told them. Well, he searched the other members out and attempted to form a band with them. I ended up cutting some tracks for them too and shared them.

While they didn't make it rich, they did get a decent following and even though most of the band members moved on, they still have the band together and play more or less for fun but still do gigs like bars and festivals. One of the people was contacted and wrote two songs for someone in Nashville, It wasn't a popular singer rather then a company that sells the songs to them.

I sit back and read your scenario, I think when ever I see non famous musicians in the movies, they all seem dirt poor. I wonder if there is something to this? All my friends in the band continued working and didn't resort to doing something he couldn't do well enough to get paid for just for a meal. All of them have decent paying jobs, while one went on to become a doctor, the others took different paths and became lawyers or started their own companies doing stuff they were good at doing.

So as I see it, your brother doesn't need people to stop sharing music, he need to either get better or find a real job. It would be nice if we could all live in la la land, but when our parents kick us out, we have to think about real life and get on with it. You could probably do your brother a favor by telling him to get a job. It doesn't mean he has to give up his playing or the band, it just means he needs ot take care of himself first.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

We cut a few tracks and all, played a few bars

Well there's your problem, your tracks need to be a lot longer than a few bars if you want people to buy them.

Re:*sigh*

[Carlinya]

Mod parent up please. This is a good insight, not a troll.

Re:*sigh*

[Embedded2004]

Why is the parent a troll?

I had software I was developing before in my part time and it was ripped off and pirated. It no longer became worth my time to work on it so it died a quick death.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is his brother's band. They suck: http://www.zendurl.com/jacobs/

They're called Isaac Jacobs & The Abrahams, but I think it's actually just one guy.

Re:*sigh*

[untaken_name]

So... I want to understand what you're saying. You're blaming your brother's band's lack of a recording contract on filesharing? Doesn't that seem a bit of a stretch to you? Should not the recording companies be held responsible? Also, how do we know that your brother and his band are doing their part to get signed? If all they're doing is waiting around for some A&R guy to download their music...well they could be waiting a while. Also, while in your brother's case, greater exposure may not have led to greater concert attendance, it seems logical that a broader base of people who know who your band is and like your music would lead to a larger pool of possible concert attendees, at the very least. This is why anecdotal evidence is poor evidence, because it is difficult to label corner cases as such without proper statistical grounding. One case is not a good sample size.

Re:*sigh*

[eclectro]

As another poster mentioned, this could be as much a problem with the copyright law as your little brother being able to sell music.

The fact of the matter is, we are awash in music. I have more CDs than I could count, and have only a handful that I listen to on a regular basis. So your brother had better be really good to get on my CD shelf, otherwise maybe he should choose another career path.

Beyond that, the best solution to this is some kind of compulsory licensing that would keep track of the amount of music downloaded and then the artist would be compensated accordingly. But the labels are fighting this tooth and nail because they want to sell the CD for $20-$30 with the one good song on it. Compulsory licensing changes that reality.

So the big labels and corporate interests could be blamed for your brothers problems (fighting technological change instead of embracing it) as much as the downloaders. And, I really do not have much sympathy for any losses that copyright holders may have after the Copyright Term Extension Act (Sonny Bono) passed, as that stiffed the public in a *big way* what they deserved. Sorta liked congress let corporations (Disney for one) download what belonged to the public.

As you can see, the problem is not simply "teh downloaders are bad" as much as it is corporate interests and corrupted politicians.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, they are exactly where they would be regardless of piracy. Whether their albums don't sell because they're not famous enough or because nobody wants to pay makes little difference to the fact that they need to keep their day jobs. You think piracy is preventing a recording contract from falling out of the sky? Or is it your opinion that people who didn't mind downloading some songs for free equates to people who would have paid money for them, enough to set your brother up for retirement with a few months of work producing the songs?

Nobody said that making it as a musician was easy. That was true before the internet and piracy changes nothing.

Re:*sigh*

[QuantumG]

Exactly, and now a whole lot of (fictitious) people are happily enjoy this guy's (fictitious) brother's music.

A lot of (fictitious) people benefited and the (fictitious) brother is no worse off.

It's such a shame that we live in a world where people have been trained to think in zero-sum terms about (fictitious) enjoyment itself.

Re:*sigh*

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm always bothered when I read articles like this because I know the Slashdot party line is always "File sharing good, fuck the content creators". If there is a "slashdot party line" it is "fuck the distribution cartel and their obsolete business model" not the content creators. Right now, the creators are caught in the crossfire. But since your brother isn't even signed, he still has the freedom to think outside the box and step outside of the firefight.

Tell your little brother to start thinking of recorded music the same way he thinks of live music - as a performance that he can sell tickets to.

Record each live performance and then set up a paypal collection plate on his website, when the fans have put enough money into the collection plate, the band puts the MP3's up for FREE download. Promote it as concerts for people who couldn't make it to the concert.

Do the same for studio recordings -- one song, a set of songs, even the entire studio session, outtakes and all.

Sell vanity performances where, for some suitably expensive fee, a guy can have the band record a version of the song that substitutes his girlfriend/wife/kid/enemy's name in the lyrics. For even more money, perform and record THAT version live at a concert

The reason your brother is being hurt by piracy is because he's been brainwashed by the content cartel to ignore the profitable opportunities that the internet makes possible.

Re:*sigh*

[cliffski]

the pirate bay do it to make money:
http://rixstep.com/1/20060708,00.shtml
20,000 Euros a day, also estimated at 9 million dollars a year, in advertising.

your friends band may lose out, but a bunch of swedes who take his work and give it away for free are doing just fine. Nice people huh?

Re:*sigh*

[Splab]

Very insightful. I know of bands that did what you did, but made it to earn a living of the music and went full time there.

If you are good enough you will get recognized.

P.s being musician full time doesn't seem all that fun to me, they do crappy hours and usually clock in more hours than I would in a normal job.

Re:*sigh*

[kklein]

You were obviously older than most rock bands are when they start out. If you had a job, you are pretty much already in the "no future" camp, sad to say. I was very serious in my 20s, but as my 20s became my late 20s, I had to realize that nothing more than what I was doing was ever going to happen.

At least in those days, though, we could sell tapes and CDs and at least recoup some of the cost of making them...

Re:*sigh*

[murrdpirate]

teh downloaders ARE bad. Do it all you want, I'm not saying I don't (or do!), but it's pretty ridiculous to try to justify it. If making your music free was actually a good way to make money, maybe we'd see people do it. To a certain degree it can be, but you can't just give it all away. How do you expect to have music if no one pays the people producing it? Shouldn't the musicians have the right to determine what songs (if any) they allow you to download for free? This kid spends his life producing music, and it's our right to do with it as we please? I don't understand why immaterial things get this rap. Can I steel a painting if I reimburse the artist for the cost of paint?

Re:*sigh*

[Zironic]

I fail to see how funding your site through adds is somehow evil. Doesn't all sites do that?

Re:*sigh*

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Unfortunately, that man is looking to make an income off of the software he sells. That man is now devastated and theres nothing he can do about it. You know how regular urban people just dehydrate and die or starve to death if they get lost in the desert? But the people who grew up there are able to survive because they know the 'lore' of the desert - how to take advantage of what appears to be barren surroundings - like what shriveled up plants actually store potable water, how to catch small animals for food, etc.

Your hypothetical software developer is like the urbanite lost in the desert. If he knew how to take advantage of the situation, then he COULD do something about it. All those people who download and actually use the software - not the 99% who download it, play with it and then delete, but the people for whom it is actually useful - those people are potential customers for version 2.0.

They all clearly need the software, they probably all have ideas about how it could be improved. If this hypothetical software developer had some business sense, he would solicit those people to pay for the development of version 2.0. Come up with a list of feature enhancements, set a price to implement for each one, and then make sure that all the regular users of the software know that by paying up front, they can get their most desired features added to the next release.

Of course, if the guy doesn't have a clue about the internet, and is stuck in the old pre-network mindset, yeah, then there really is nothing he can do about the piracy and he might as well just give up. Eventually someone smarter will come along and exploit the opportunities the first guy could not.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

So let me see if I understand this. Your brother was a dirt poor musician, but now thanks to copyright infringement he's a dirt poor musician with more fans? While you may see it as injustice I don't see much actual harm. Without the piracy he'd still be in the same boat, he just wouldn't have the internet to complain about.
The other thing I wonder while reading this is what the time frame is. You can't expect to get any result if your music is on the torrent sites on friday and your concert is saturday...

Re:*sigh*

[SlashDread]

"Also, concert attendance has stayed flat"

Maybe, just maybe, the music is NOT so good?

Re:*sigh*

[eclectro]

Whose to say that if by some magical way that all the downloading would stop that the day after your brother would start to sell music?? Also, look at the numbers. The US has a population of 300 million people and you saw a couple hundred download your brothers music? How do you know that the downloaders didn't download the music, listen to it once, and delete it off their hard drive afterwards? I personally think that downloaders download so much music that they can only listen to a song once. I hear local musicians perform live that are good, but just because I find their music good does not inspire me to buy the CD on the back table.

The fact that your brother can't get a recording contract means nothing (and is overrated - do your research on this, the labels scam artists - look on salon.com for Courtney Love's article). It's true that musicians have to earn a living. And that was my whole point of my post that you completely missed. That copyright reform needs to take place.

To whine about the bad downloaders is extremely myopic. And if your little brother had any talent, he would find a way to get CDs made and sold himself regardless of a recording contract. If they aren't selling he needs to improve. "Good bands" sell music.

Re:*sigh*

[blahplusplus]

"who's basically been screwed by piracy."

Piracy is a market force, get used to it. Piracy has been around forever, the only thing thats changed is technologies have now have freed music from scarcity. Music is a commodity get over it.

Think of how many people have been screwed over by new technologies, or new sources of cheap labour, from loom workers, to factory workers, to white collar workers, etc. And everyone picks on the "low skilled" labour people and the poor, who usually are anything but stupid, peoples lives are short and history is and progress are not always kind to you in the time and place in which you live.

You sound like a whining idealist, in the real world over 2 billion people live on less then $1 a day, so it's hard to feel sorry about someone who lives in a good country and has a roof over his head, food in his belly and access to enormous opportunities that others don't.

Re:*sigh*

[krusbjorn]

From the parent's parent's article :

The money is channeled through a company in Switzerland sharing an address with another company specialising in tax planning [...] He [Daniel Oded] refused to reveal where the ad revenues for The Pirate Bay disappear to.

So us Swedes have elected a government that hasnt (yet) illegalized this kind of bittorrent tracking, and TPB makes loads of money off of it. Then they channel it straight out of the country to avoid the taxes. First of all they make money by providing means to distribute what others should have been paid for, and on top of that they exploit the laws in one country without giving back anything to the people that essentially made those laws up.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

So, let's say the Internet didn't exist or there were no piracy. What exactly would change? Most of the people who have now heard of your brother's band wouldn't have heard of it in the first place. I don't understand how exactly would that be any better, atleast now they can be glad that some people actually dig what they are doing.

There's no law anywhere that says a man can do whatever he wants and get paid for it, be it creating art or something else. In fact most people never end up on their 'dream job'. Perhaps your brother should start to look for another career and keep music as a hobby. Or if he and his band are REALLY good (that is simply what it takes these days to make it big), the downloading and worldwide exposure will inevitably lead to success.

Just because you're popular locally and some people in the internet like your music doesn't mean you should take living off music as granted.

Re:*sigh*

[xtracto]

Your hypothetical software developer is like the urbanite lost in the desert. If he knew how to take advantage of the situation, then he COULD do something about it. All those people who download and actually use the software - not the 99% who download it, play with it and then delete, but the people for whom it is actually useful - those people are potential customers for version 2.0.

Pretty much A solution to software piracy is software as a service. As a software developer I hate PHP, WebForms, AJAX, etc etc and think that lots of programs are better off the Web (as standalone applications), however I started to deploy all my software as web portals and charge subscription fees for it.

If you look at it, maybe it is one of the reasons why Microsoft and other big companies are planning to do that, no conspiracy or whatever.

Re:*sigh*

[NorQue]

Something in this thread sounds wrong to my ears. I don't know what it is, but it sounds wrong. Anyone else got this feeling? Should I get out my tinfoil hat?

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

oh dear.
many sites do well because they provide content. The pirate bay just helps distribute *other peoples* content. Maybe you do not understand the difference?

Re:*sigh*

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Interesting, they offer a torrent with all their music on their site. In other words, the thread starter is full of shit.

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[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for contributing your content to a site that generates its revenue with advertisements

dipshit

Re:*sigh*

[Aladrin]

That was my first thought as well. People -can- get all the latest Britney Spears stuff free (illegally, but they don't care) and yet they still continue to buy her albums and go to her concerts as well. Any band that can only give their music away obviously isn't good enough.

There are even artists online that give significant portions of their music away for free, like Jonathan Coulton. You can listen to ALL of his music, in full, from his website and download quite a few of the songs in MP3 format for free. I liked it well enough that I paid the $70 and got the entire collection. This is by far the most music I've bought in a long time. Do I like 100% of it? No. But I like the majority of it.

Re:*sigh*

[Professor_UNIX]

Another way of looking at this, is that the people who download the music aren't going to buy it anyway, so why not encourage them to download your brother's music

That's a common excuse used, but it rarely holds any water. If you weren't going to buy it anyway then why did someone spend the time to download it in the first place? Obviously they're interested in the music so if P2P sites weren't available it is likely many more people would have bought it. I can't just go steal a BMW because "I wouldn't have bought it since it was too expensive, so stealing it is OK."

Re:*sigh*

[okoskimi]

Oh, COME ON! Almost nobody would pay in advance for software, and those who would are the fraction-of-a-percent minority where an abundance of cash, a charitable mindset and idealism (or lack of realism) meet. Because:

• Although a great many people may post on forums how a feature is absolutely crucial, not many people are actually passionate enough to put their money where their mouth is. Ever done a software pilot with a partner company? If you don't charge for enhancements (non-bug-fix-changes) during the pilot, you will get a hundred enhancement requests, most of them "really important", and the requests don't ever stop. If you charge for the enhancements, you will get maybe two, and they will stop the second the software does its job even remotely adequately.
• The buy-a-feature process is too complex and difficult. You would have to really love the software to bother. Most people won't.
• Software development is by nature an uncertain business, and small-time developers even more so. Paying in advance carries a big risk of losing your money, and you have no way of knowing what you will really get (whereas normally sold software has practically always a demo).
• The number of people who pay is going to be small because of the previous points. Therefore the per-user cost will need to be high, or the total amount of money will be low which would further reduce the likelihood of the software getting finished. This will further drive down the number of users who are willing to pay.

In general, the whole attitude of "content creators should accept piracy and find other means of generating revenue" is horse manure. It is just saying that because something illegal is suddenly technically easy and difficult to prevent, it should be accepted. You cannot ban the software and machines used for the illegal activity because they have legitimate uses. Compare with guns: shooting somebody is technically easy and difficult to prevent, and we do not want to ban guns (as a society - at least yet). Yet we did not just resign ourselves to accepting murder, did we? (insert obligatory joke about US gun violence rates)

I have no sympathy for media companies that are ripping off artists and trying to charge you multiple times for the same content. But neither do I think that it is your god-given right to freely enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.

But since this is turning into a rant, and those are rarely productive, here's my suggestion: Integrate the application with a server-side service that requires the application to log in to your server. You have to maintain your own server then but should be feasible for a small user base. Then you can keep track of the paid accounts and kill the compromised ones. The server-side thing should be important enough though that pirates don't just cut out that part from the application (or so intertwined with how the application operates that cutting it out is not feasible).

If you can't do that, then the only alternatives I see are either making such a niche application that the pirates don't bother (but then your application has to be best-in-class because market is so small), or focusing your application on people who aren't likely to pirate it (business and security applications, applications for novice users).

Finally - always make sure it is really easy to find and buy your application legitimately. People often are on the fence about whether to pay for it or not. A less-than-easy buying process will convince them not to pay (and probably pirate it and feel righteous about it...).

Re:*sigh*

[suv4x4]

I'm always bothered when I read articles like this because I know the Slashdot party line is always "File sharing good, fuck the content creators". I get upset because I think of my little brother, who's basically been screwed by piracy.

My little brother has a band. The music is quite good. The band is quite popular locally. It's so popular, in fact, that people bootleg their music and share it across the internet.

At first they were quite happy about this. They were reaching a much larger audience. Surely these people will come to their concerts and buy their CDs if they like the music (at least, that's what Slashdot always says will happen).

However, it didn't. Turns out (from conversations with their fans on their message board) that no one wants to buy their music. They like it, but hwy buy the music when fans can download every one of their albums for free online?

Did your brother bother making it easy to buy his music? Is it available on eMusic, iTunes, on his own band site (does he have one, what is it?). Does he advertise his art online and does he sell signed CD-s on his live performances?

Making money as an artist is a lot, lot more than making good art.

Of course, Pirate Byran's hypocricy is astounding - they're building very hot business around content piracy. Apparently if everyone shared their ideology, the very content they make money off wouldn't have existed, or would be easily accessible via other channels. They would be broke then.

But my post isn't about those losers, its about your brother who you believe has the automatic right to profit from making good music, and if he doesn't, it's others to blame. Art is a business like any else, the moment you want to profit from it. Same rules apply. Nothing works magically in business.

Re:*sigh*

[okoskimi]

While the "would not have bought it anyway" excuse is hogwash, the reality is a bit more subtle than you make out. People will fall into three categories:

1. Not interested, even if it is free.
2. Will not pay for it, but will take it if it is free.
3. Would pay for it, but will rather take it for free.

(Then there are the people who do pay for it, but they are not downloading so let's ignore them)

So your problem is the third group that would be prepared to pay for the content. These people represent actual financial loss to the content producer.

The commonly used BMW example does not hold water either, because the idea is that you could not afford a BMW. If you were able to "copy" the BMW and leave the original one intact, the seller would not have suffered a financial loss - he was never going to make a sale to you anyhow.

The interesting thing is that you can benefit from the second group, because they advertise your content via word-of-mouth. So it actually becomes a pricing problem. Typically you want to sell your product at different prices to different people, depending on how much they can afford to pay (airlines are the canonical example of this). So you need a way to extract full price from the third group while giving the product for free to the second group. This is commonly done in software with a free "personal edition" version. By adding a (valuable!) service component (web service with user accounts) to the "professional edition", you can prevent copying and entice the third group to part from their cash.

Re:*sigh*

[meringuoid]

He's been screwed by piracy? You mean robbed, raped or murdered on the high seas? If not - then *call it what it is* - bootlegging.

He's being screwed by bootlegging? You mean his records are being smuggled across the Mexican border in someone's shoe? If not - then *call it what it is* - copyright infringement.

Re:*sigh*

[Seiruu]

[quote]That's a common excuse used, but it rarely holds any water.[/quote]

Not necessarily.

[quote]If you weren't going to buy it anyway then why did someone spend the time to download it in the first place?[/quote]

Because they are in fact 2 totally different things? There's no relation here at all.

[quote]Obviously they're interested in the music so if P2P sites weren't available it is likely many more people would have bought it.[/quote]

Or they might not have even known about it at all. Like this guy's brother story: their popularity is rising because they got free versions available. Why expect that to increase sales? It's like borrowing money and pretending you're richer. You're not, everything is the same, you just have the impression that it's better. Course the extra publicity is nice and could potentially lead to (new) sources of revenue, but if your popularity is based on a free ride, why expect to get money?

Also, just because you work hard doesn't mean the end product is going to be good. Especially when it comes to music. Some people have talent for creating original and/or catchy music, and others can spend a lifetime trying to compensate for that lack of talent and never find/get it. You may think you're good and popular, but when your garage band disappears, in your place 20 other garage bands just to fill in that spot in some bar.

His brother did get nicked by piracy, but what really screwed him over is his naivety that sacrificing everything to gamble on his "talent" would make him popular enough to have people fork over the cash for his cd's, and he seems to be wrong. No different than people putting their entire life savings on a poker game and blaming the casino for their loss. It was his own choice to gamble on his talent, like gamblers on their luck and their abilities to win more than they lose, and he/they paid the price for it.

If you can, always work hard and smart. If you can't, at least work smart. If that's not a possibility, work hard towards working smart, and if you can't even do that, just work hard and pray you get lucky.

Re:*sigh*

[spyrochaete]

I agree with you 100% Just because a guy can thunk 2 spoons together doesn't mean he's entitled to room and board. Music is a hobby, not a career. That's why I've always given away all the music I've written for free.

Re:*sigh*

[estarriol]

Britney is arguably an odd example, as she's not particularly talented... she just has that groupthink thing going.

However, it's not hard to find a good example, as there are truly talented artists who are using the digital music world to their benefit. Prince is, right now, famously doing so by giving away copies of his new album (on physical media no less!) on the front of a newspaper, and also as a complementary bonus for buying a ticket to one of his live performances. Apparently he makes most of his money from live performances anyway, which is understandable as he's a hell of a performer.

Now, 2 things to justify my Insightful points:-

1) The digital music revolution weakens the profitability of studio music and big expensive distribution, yet increases the profitability of performance-based music - more people have easy access to your music, more people become fans, more people want to see you perform live (I have everything Fleetwood Mac have ever released on MP3 and CD, and yet I paid the equivalent of several CDs just to see them perform a few songs live, once). In other words, technology is making people more likely to get together in the physical realm and listen to music actually being performed for them in the flesh. That's a shit in the eye for luddites if ever there was one. You cannot beat actually being there, this experiential instinct is ingrained into our being at a fundamental level and it's what sane creative business models should be based on.

2) How much money did Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms etc make from selling recorded copies of their performances? None, and yet they all made a living off of it and were famous, well-connected and generally rewarded for their work. The music industry should get off their high horse and stop pretending that recorded sales of performances are the natural means of earning money and recognition from music. It wouldn't hurt musicians to realise this too, and stop expecting to be multi-millionaires from music - if ten times as many musicians could just be comfortably rich and somewhat famous from their performance-based careers as now, the music world would be a kinder place and potentially encourage more creativity. How many musicians have been put off the career completely by the "you either make it huge or not at all" nature of the industry?

On a final note, it really may be that the OP's brother's band just isn't that good. They should try setting up a begging bowl on their website, people who aren't prepared to pay $15 for a CD or ticket may be prepared to throw them $2 to patronise their efforts and "legitimise" their personal MP3s. I've always been amazed, given the general willingness of the average decent person to give small amounts of money away that more software doesn't work on this model. Certainly, if I ever release anything worth releasing, it's the model I'll use.

Re:*sigh*

[spyrochaete]

I'm not entirely sure what your conclusion is here. Are you arguing that if less people traded your brother's music then more people would attend his concerts?

I can only speak from personal experience but I can relay one story where an artist gives her music away for free and it was so good that I bought the same music from her on CD. I had the pleasure of exchanging emails with the artist, she shipped her album to me promptly within a week for a paltry $10,and she signed the album for me!

I talk about this and how I give my own music compositions away for free in my blog, if you're interested. http://blog.demodulated.com/2007/06/20/amber-is-no -sap/

Re:*sigh*

[MMC Monster]

I agree with the above. I saw a guy in his 70s in my office the other day. He apparently was a 1-hit wonder in the late 50s/early 60s. He still sometimes gets together with surviving members of his band to do an occasional show, but music just wasn't what he did for a living. For him, it was a fun diversion that made other happy. It made him a few bucks, but he was never under the impression that he should live off that hit for the rest of his life.

Re:*sigh*

[spocksbrain]

This all sounds quite normal for the music industry, in fact it was probably much worse for musicians before the digital age. Americans have this glamorised view of musicians but the reality of it is that even many signed musicians still have some kind of second job to pay the bills. I know a good many unsigned bands who have a large following and the fact is, until they get a recording contract, they will be bussing tables no matter how many people buy their cds.

Re:*sigh*

[ortholattice]

Something in this thread sounds wrong to my ears. I don't know what it is, but it sounds wrong. Anyone else got this feeling?

I agree the gp sounds like a troll. "cleans a local diner's grease pit every night for a free dinner"? Get a job, bro. Certainly he can fit a 4-hr/day part-time McDonalds job into his busy practice schedule.

This tale of woe is vaguely reminiscent of the Christian CD store troll that keeps popping up, although the gp did not post anonymously like the latter. Someone else pointed out the brother's band (if their detective work was correct) offers a torrent of all their music, so the complaint about piracy is a fabrication. I suppose the gp, not being anonymous, can reply to this accusation.

Re:*sigh*

[gsslay]

- those people are potential customers for version 2.0.

They all clearly need the software, they probably all have ideas about how it could be improved. If this hypothetical software developer had some business sense, he would solicit those people to pay for the development of version 2.0. Come up with a list of feature enhancements, set a price to implement for each one, and then make sure that all the regular users of the software know that by paying up front, they can get their most desired features added to the next release. At which point these people say "No thanks, we'll wait and take version 2.0 for free off Pirate Bay, just like we took version 1.0."

The argument you're using here is a common one on slashdot. "Yeah they're not getting paid for their work, and everyone is taking it for free. But think of the good publicity and all the money they'll make later on." Well here's news; "later on" is now, and everyone is still taking their work for free.

Re:*sigh*

[Jaysu]

Yeah, that's a bummer for your brother. On a side note, I believe downloading music *never* replaces the experience of a live concert. If people are truely fans, they will be at the concert.

The last Maroon 5 concert I attended, Adam Levine (the lead singer) told everyone there to download (aka "pirate") their album, as long as they came to the concert. Brilliant idea, especially since their concert tickets cost much more than an album anyways.

Re:*sigh*

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It is just saying that because something illegal is suddenly technically easy and difficult to prevent, it should be accepted. Yes. Do you know why? Because every single business model that relies on man's charitable nature has failed in the long run. Even so-called public-tv and public-radio in the USA has resorted to 'selling' physical objects in return for donations, and then there is the whole corporate-sponorship thing. So, if you can't beat it, you might as well join it.

Compare with guns: shooting somebody is technically easy and difficult to prevent, What a piss-poor analogy

Shooting somebody requires a gun - most people don't have them. Shooting somebody requires set of mental circumstances that are at least a 1000x more rare than actual gun ownership. Murder leaves behind evidence, the very least of which is that the dead guy is not around anymore.

Copying software requires a computer - most people have one or easy access to one. Copying software has a mental threshold just slightly higher than what's necessary for listening to the radio. You can 'steal' a million copies of software and there won't be a single shred of evidence left behind and no one will have seen you in the act either.

Just because software/content by contract is hard today does not mean it has to be hard. Before the printing press was created, the entire copyright business model wasn't feasible either.

Re:*sigh*

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

At which point these people say "No thanks, we'll wait and take version 2.0 for free off Pirate Bay, just like we took version 1.0." At which point the developer says, too bad, if I don't get paid for it now, there WON'T BE A 2.0.

Re:*sigh*

[1arkhaine]

To all these arguments I try to add my own anecdotal evidence.

I had never heard of the band Iron and Wine (This is back in 2004). A website I frequented mentioned them, so I downloaded the album. Fast forward a few months, my brother, sister, friends etc had the album. Fast forward a few more and Iron and Wine came to Australia. I went with my brother and a few of my friends, and we all bought shirts, and half of us bought cds. One of my friends bought all of the band's albums.

None of these sales would have occurred without me originally downloading the album.

Of course, this doesn't condone pirating necessarily, but it places some sort of 'regular usage' into context.

Re:*sigh*

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You've left out a 4th group - would pay for it, but not the current asking price.

Collective purchasing - where everyone pays up front what they think the product is worth to them until the creator's asking price is reached neatly captures the available income from that group.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, maybe he shouldn't be trying to sell something that has no intrinsic value according to the laws of supply and demand.

Value equals demand over supply (multiplied by some content). Sell the talent and effort involved in the initial creation of the work, because that's the only part of the equation that is in limited supply. The "product" can be copied and distributed ad infinitum for free, pushing supply to infinity and thus reducing value to zero no matter what the demand is.

I'm posting anonymously because this will probably be modded down as a troll, because some folks just don't want to accept the truth: the only thing you really have to sell is your ability to write that initial code or compose that initial music -- the intrinsic talent and man-hours that go into it. That can't be copied. Once you're done, though, the end result is absolutely valueless in the eyes of the market because it can be infinitely duplicated. You have to sell the means, not the ends.

Re:*sigh*

[NorQue]

Yes, but it's not only the GP. Some of the other posts in this post sound strange, too. They sound so... similar.

But most likely I'm just becoming paranoid. If I just could find this damn tinfoil hat...

Re:*sigh*

[d3ac0n]

Because every single business model that relies on man's charitable nature has failed in the long run.

Yeah, because that whole "Open Source" thing really didn't pan out too well did it? Sure glad we never relied on people's charitable code donations to something like a Linux kernel or thousands of Free (libre) and free (beer) applications. Goodness knows that would have NEVER worked out!
 
/sarcasm

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Record each live performance and then set up a paypal collection plate on his website, when the fans have put enough money into the collection plate, the band puts the MP3's up for FREE download. Promote it as concerts for people who couldn't make it to the concert.

Because it's much better to have a few people pay for everything while the rest of world freeloads, instead of sharing costs equally. Let's create a culture where everyone is entitled to anything they desire and do not need to contribute anything ever, and make sure everyone understands thoroughly that paying for stuff is for idiots!

And how exactly will artists be able to spent money on proper equipment, studio time, mixing and mastering? I can guarantee you that nobody is willing to foot the bill if the basic premise of your economic system is that if you keep your money in your pocket, you get stuff for free.

Re:*sigh*

[noidentity]

In other words, software developers need to charge for their time, not the finished product, much like a plumber charges for his time, not every time someone uses the finished product. But it's easier to complain about one's broken scheme not working.

Re:*sigh*

[Control Group]

Your assumption is that he deserves to make a living off writing the software. This may not be the case. If you assume a priori that the creator of the work has the right to absolute control of use, sale, and distribution of the work, there's no question that The Pirate Bay is unconscionable.

But that's the question that needs to be answered: to what extent does the creator of the work have the right to absolute control over it? I think most people - even on slashdot - would agree that the creator deserves some degree of control (I don't suspect you'd find many people who think the creator doesn't even deserve proper accreditation). I also think most people - even yourself - would agree that the creator doesn't deserve absolute control over the work (once you've purchased a book, can the creator swing by and disallow you from re-reading it?). Clearly, there's a balance that needs to be struck. There is a growing number of people (particularly obvious on slashdot) who believe that the current copyright regime has strayed much too far towards the control of the rights holder (which is not to be confused with the creator). I think it's telling, for example, that patents last 20 years from filing, while copyrights last 70 years past the death of the author.

The fundamental problem - as I see it, anyway - is that we've gotten caught up in trying to make money off a non-scarce good (copies of the work in question), rather than trying to make money off a scarce good (creativity). Market forces dictate that the price of a non-scarce good will always approach zero; it's difficult to successfully fight that (witness the current struggles). The ability to create, however, clearly is a scarce good. It seems to me that it would be easier to design a system whereby people are paid to create, rather than paid for copies of what they have created. Note that by "easier" I do not mean "easy" in an objective sense. But almost anything would be easier (as a society) than the current environment.

It's an interesting study to me, in fact, how the practice of selling copies of works came to be the dominant one. Prior to the 20th century, it certainly wasn't the norm for anything but books. Prior to the eighties, it certainly wasn't the norm for anything but books and music. It seems that it is the increase in technology that allowed copies to be distributed that created the market for the sale of copies. Given a somewhat historical perspective of the 20th century, it would have been easy for anyone who frequent slashdot to tell the people setting up their businesses on this basis that technology always gets cheaper. If your business model depends on the difficulty of making copies (as in, pressing records, or exposing film), your business model is guaranteed to fail at some future date.

It shouldn't be surprising that as copies get easier to make and distribute, those in the business of making and distributing copies find it harder to make money on the deal.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is, if I steal your stuff, then it's ok because you should have figured out a way to benefit from me stealing your stuff. Or, to put it differently. If you have a coffee shop, then it's ok for me to steal your coffee because then I can see how good it is, while you make no money at it, so you can make coffee V2 for me to buy. And that make sense because if I stole coffee V1, then of course I am going to buy coffee V2 and not steal it... yeah right.

Re:*sigh*

[Plasticus]

Speaking from personal experience, I don't think there's much money in making music. However, you can most definitely make money with the byproducts of making music.

My band in college made money hand over fist at shows. We offered most of our music for free on our website. We asked people to share it for free. Burn CDs for your friends, put torrents up on the IntarWebs, etc. People still bought our CDs at shows. Why? Because you got stickers with it. You got the CD with all the art. People still bought our t-shirts. These are things that are more difficult to pirate. Sure, you can make a shirt similar to ours.. but it's going to take more than grabbing a torrent file and waiting ten minutes.

If you want to make money in a band, you're lying to yourself in thinking that people will pay money for the music. Making money in a band requires treating it like any other product.

Re:*sigh*

[rhakka]

Well, there are two sides to this.

First, your brother isn't going to be able to make millions as a musician, most likely. That was a short blip in the history of music that's about to go the way of the dodo.

Second, to make a living at music, he's going to have to tour so the local market doesn't get too saturated, do paid gigs, etc. He can't rely on album sales.

Finally, they might want to try asking for donations.

Regardless of whether you like it, whether it's right, or not... the world is changing, and music is changing, and there isn't a damn thing you, me, or he can do about it. Recording music and distributing it is a trivial task. Playing it isn't. Again I'm not saying filesharing is good, but it's irrelevant whether it's good or bad. The only way to shut it down involves an awful lot of control over our lives by some authority figures that would basically have to amount to continual spying 24/7 to monitor our behaviour.

So your brother and his bandmates need to figure out what they need to do to make a living. Pretty soon, recording contacts won't even be an option. Then what?

Live shows, promotions, merchandise. And best of luck.

Re:*sigh*

[SoulRider]

Unfortunately that should have told you no one found true value in your software and motivated you to do some customer research to find out what features the users wanted, not to just give up and quit. Perhaps you had more useless features than useful features, perhaps you created a UI that was confusing or difficult to use. I have done the same and made money even though people were pirating my software. If the software has true value people will buy it even though they can download a copy off some warez site. Look at Microsoft and Adobe, people are pirating their stuff like mad, yet they keep making money off of that very same software. The only thing that ever bothered me about piracy were the people who would download my software then expected support on that pirated copy.

Re:*sigh*

[darkhitman]

Being a musician is always hard. Ever talked to a classical musician about their life? Most of them just can't do it for a real job, and those that do have to do gigs constantly to keep money coming in. They often teach, since that's more dependable than gigs. The only professional classical musicians who 'make it big' are those in the CSO or other such orchestras, and those are ridiculously exclusive.

My point here is that being a musician is almost never a full-time job. Even if people bought your brother's CDs, would the income be enough? If people won't come to a live concert, piracy has nothing to do with it. Live performances are valuable because of the chance to see a band perform live and have fun, not just to hear their music. If listening to a track, pirated or not, was equivocal to a live performance, concerts would be a thing of the past. The fact that his attendance at concerts didn't increase means, most likely, that people don't like his band as much as you think. Not that they're satisfied with listening to pirated tracks.

Yes, piracy hurts the little guy. But in my opinion, artists should make their money through live performances first, and CDs second. Any record label they sign with will probably take more money from the CDs than piracy could ever take, anyway ;)

Re:*sigh*

[kinglink]

So you're brother has a band who plays locally. Apparently someone took his music put it on file sharing and now he's not getting rapidly popular so filesharing doesn't work.

A. You do realize that people who download his music isn't necessarly local to you.

B. You do realize that selling CDs locally doesn't mean he won't get more sales. Has he tried a website and a well publicized website to sell music.

C. Face facts, maybe people "like" his music, at the same level I like ricky martin's, (aka I'm happy he's not around so I don't have to punch him in the face). If I hear a good song on the radio I'm not going to run out to buy a copy just because I sort of enjoy the song, if there was a cheap cd of it and a couple other songs I like I might buy it.

So here's some suggestions. Look at who's keeping him from putting his music on the airwaves, that's a local ability that might get people interested. If someone does put him on and likes him get them to announce shows.

People arn't going to magically fly around the world because they heard your brothers band.

Or maybe instead send the music to record companies. Let him get a contract, and then come back next year and bitch after you see what the record companies due to his cd sale profits or the fact that to make any money he has to constantly be on tour.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly why kind of band is this trying to be? Most bands, even upon recording contracts, get the majority of money from Concerts. Its the cash cow for the band not the CD's. Basically CDs are ADS for the bands concerts.

I think this is why pirating can help a band that is small. Flat concerts means that the music is just not energizing the fanbase. Ever consider that the band music is not that good? Pirating you may get "well its okay, but I wont go to a concert and pay to see them".. They are basically saying "This is a white noise band I don't care about".

Re:*sigh*

[sootman]

So, where does it say you're entitled to make a living doing what you enjoy? Where does it say that if you play music people like, you deserve to become a superstar? And finally, if the Internet didn't exist and the music weren't available for free, how many would still buy it? Please tell me you're not falling for the MAFIAA's logic that every copied track == 1 lost sale.

I work with quite a few artists (painters, sculptors, etc.) as well as several musicians. None are rich. None are megastars. They do it because they like it. Would they like to be the next big thing? Sure. Will they? Probably not. Do they accept the fact that performing is not the road to riches? YES. (By the way, I myself have two jobs. I don't clean grease pits because I've got other talents but I've had plenty of crappy jobs. Do I cry myself to sleep every night because no one wants to pay to watch me doing what I enjoy? No.)

Why do people have this idea that "because I'm an artist, I'll devote myself to my craft and live like shit." What's wrong with "I know I love doing this, but I want to have a decent life, so I'll get a decent job somewhere and play in my off time?" If someone is really, really driven to create art, and doesn't want to devote any time to anything else, that's great--that's what some of the best artists in history have done--but don't fucking expect me to cry for you if that's the decision you make! And don't blame the big, bad Internet for your lot in life. This fucking sense of entitlement has got to go.

Also, plenty of artists HAVE succeeded since Napster was all the rage. Guess what? It's about the same number that it's always been. Your brother's band isn't a hit? Well, I guess they need to be better. "Quite popular locally" != "1 step away from mega-riches." Also, "quite popular locally" != "we'd be rich if it weren't for those thieving kids."

There is a HUGE continuum of talent. Ranging from "no one will listen" to "you are rich." Along that continuum is "good enough to listen to for free, but not so good that I feel compelled to pay."

PS: They're hoping for a contract? Better read this.

Re:*sigh*

[Xtravar]

From what I can gather, Microsoft and Adobe don't make their money off of home users - they make their money off of businesses. Individuals pirate, but business entities rarely do because there's so much more at stake.

Developing software primarily for home users is pretty much dead. If you want to make money, you have to make a product that will be installed on hundreds of machines in a corporate environment.

While you might fool some people into paying $25 for your fancypants screensaver that shows the weather from weather.com, you won't make enough money to live off of.

Not to mention, with the emergence of "teh IntarWebs 2.0", it seems like ad-supported content sharing websites are the way to go. Really, who buys fat-client software anymore?

Re:*sigh*

[baalz]

Seems like both the usual knee jerk reactions are missing the point. Yep, filesharing inarguably hurts content distributors, I think the free advertising helps them is just a justification for what you wanted to do anyway - at least a large portion of the time. Indefinite copyright extensions, abolishment of fair use, and generally sticking it to the man have some valid points as well. The thing is, overall filesharing creates wealth, and I would argue is good for society as a whole. I'm an unabashed pirate, and though I spend roughly the same on software, music, and movies as I always have I get hundreds of times more media nowadays. It's debatable whether filesharing has reduced the amount of money I would have put into the system, but it has without a doubt provided vastly more benefit to me than my piracy has conceivably hurt content providers in theoretic lost revenue.

Look at it this way, lets assume for the sake of argument that wide spread piracy makes it much harder to make money with intellectual property, and consequently the amount of music/movies/software that is produced drops a whopping 50%. That's bad, right? Well, what if the average person is now consuming 10 times as much media as they used to? The net wealth creation is obviously positive. Particularly, some might argue, because the remaining work was less commercially motivated and more artistically inspired.

You've got to remember, the whole concept of intellectual property is an artificial abstract concept created to encourage creative works which are deemed to have value to our culture, leveraging our capitalistic economy to maximize the amount of artistic works people have access to. Does it suck to be a struggling artist trying to make a living? You bet. Is it an overall bad thing for society that artistic works are cheaper? The buggy whip analogy is too overplayed, but I'll argue that progress is usually painful for the minority while being greatly beneficial for society overall. I imagine the invention of theprinting press would have caused a similar shakeup if IP was as big an industry as it is today. It may be that the genie is out of the bottle and recording music is now in the very big list of things people enjoy that most people can't make a good living doing. Even if it became impossible to make any money at all (a situation I find hard to imagine) there would still be content produced due to human nature, and if the net consumption rises despite the drop in production then wealth is being created out of thin air.

Re:*sigh*

[Deadplant]

Riiiight....
I totally believe you.
So does my amazingly hot girlfriend... but she lives in france so you can't ask her yourself.

Does your imaginary brother's band have a name?

Re:*sigh*

[aleatory_story]

You can probably bet that, they'll probably need tenfold those earnings in order to fight the eventual court battles in order to stay alive. The political situation in Sweden isn't static.

Re:*sigh*

[cliffski]

the AC poster happily contributed a comment for free, which took him maybe 10 seconds. producing a hollywood movies takes hundreds of people years, and they do so as their main employment, to pay their bills and buy food and clothing.
Surely you aren't trying to compare a web forum with the production of blockbuster movies and top-range software?

Re:*sigh*

[jollyreaper]

We never were conceded or stupid enough to think we could do this full time seeing how we got half of the 2 dollar cover charge at most dive bars and they seemed to over charge us for our drinks. I don't know, maybe I could drink 20 beer and 5 or 6 shots in the 3 hours we played? (could explain why I sucked). Ok, maybe your playing sucked but I bet after all that drinking you sounded exactly like Joe Cocker!

Re:*sigh*

[chad.koehler]

As a software developer, I completely agree with this.

If I decide to write a program for someone, I will charge them an appropriate amount of money for the effort. Any additional features or support that is needed will be provided to that party at a certain agreed upon rate.

If that person decides to share that software with 100 other people, that's just the way it is. If that software meets the needs of those others exactly (no support, or enhancements needed) -- then I am out only the time I originally put in (and charged for).

Software as a service really is the only way to stay in this business. As has been said, if you target your software appropriately, there will be plenty of opportunity to make money on the service.

Re:*sigh*

[Popsmear]

Long story short: The band is not that good. If it was music would spread an attendance would increase. The music is spreading so it is probably marginal but the antecedence is not their because they are not worth $10 to see live.

These are the lies continuing to be spread. "It's not cause we suck, its file sharing!" "It's not that, as a major label, we release anything and everything thats sound like everyone else at hugely marked up prices, its file sharing!"

Bands do not explode overnight. It takes a lot of work, and the fan base is slow to grow. Many work second jobs for many years. Seems to me you have unreal expectations.



In the hardcore scene many small band MP3s are spread around on torrents. Its the release (or spread) of demo tapes from small bands that generates buzz and attendance. There are plenty of bands I would not have known of or never bothered seeing if I had not downloaded a demo people were buzzing about.

Re:*sigh*

[jZnat]

If you want to make a living writing or maintaining software, your best bet is to do custom software for businesses. In fact, the vast majority (I hate that phrase by the way) of software developers out there get paid to work on custom software for various businesses. You can do contracting work or get hired by a company to work for them exclusively. Hell, this is also how a lot of Free software is developed. Writing proprietary software for general use is pretty silly and depends upon a broken business model to survive. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe only survive because they have massive markets (and expensive prices) that many, many businesses are in.

Re:*sigh*

[chad.koehler]

...
And how exactly will artists be able to spent money on proper equipment, studio time, mixing and mastering?

That brings up an interesting question. If the artist requires money to get equipment, studio time, mixing & mastering -- HOW did the music get "out" on the internet in the first place? Seems to me that those items have already been paid for at this time. IF the artist took out a loan to do that, they knew the risks up front.

Re:*sigh*

[jZnat]

And a fifth group: downloads it for free but still ends up buying it for full price. I've done this plenty of times with music albums (some independent, a couple that are probably signed to big labels sadly), and I still continue to do it.

Re:*sigh*

[rtechie]

Also, concert attendance has stayed flat. The pirating of their music hasn't suddenly increased attendance like they hoped it would. I can tell you what the problem is right now: Your brother's band sucks. Or maybe they just suck live. If you have a band that is REGULARLY doing shows, isn't a cover band, and isn't generating any "buzz"... they suck. Or maybe he's in Austin and has lots and lots of competition. Or maybe his music appeals to a tiny niche (goth-industrial-rap-metal) and he's maxed out that niche locally.

Think conceptually about this a minute. How is the "piracy" different from radio airplay? It's people listening to the music. Now you're implying that they're downloading the music, listen to it over and over again, and then have NO INTEREST in seeing the band live. Does that make any sense to you? The question you should be asking is: Why aren't more people who hear his music going to his shows?

Or maybe he just has bad luck. I've know a lot of great, popular local bands with huge followings that went nowhere. It's VERY tough to make it in the rock business.

They haven't (yet) gotten a recording contract, and I personally hope they do And what would this accomplish? With most major label contracts you start by OWING the label money for the startup costs (production, etc.). You won't make a dime on the first album. Assuming the first album sold well, you'll be paid a small percentage on your next album. Basically, artists should assume they're going to make ALL of their money from touring and swag until they get about 3 or 4 albums into a major label deal. So if they were signed RIGHT NOW, they probably won't be making ANY money off their albums for the next 8 years.

Of course, the promotion the label gives them will do wonders for ticket sales at concerts (and swag sales, assuming they get that Hot Topic t-shirt deal), so they certainly will be making more money that they would without the label. But that assumes the label is bothering to promote them. If not, then they've just signed away almost all potential revenue from their albums (it doesn't matter if it's pirated if you don't own it) for very little gain. I've run into bands that sold bootleg copies of their OWN CDs at concerts for $2 for exactly this reason.

Re:*sigh*

[zerocool^]

If your brother wants to make money doing music (regardless of the fact that I think that's a bad reason to start a hobby, but w/e) he should tour. If he has the internet to distribute his music, he will have fans all over. Use myspace to set up a tour, go out on tour and make enough money to get to the next town. If attendance at shows is flat, it's because people are tired of it, and even if new people are coming to the shows, old ones aren't anymore.

But that's kinda not the point. I don't know why your brother wants a record contract; he doesn't stand to make money because he magically is on a record label. Certainly not by selling CD's. Record labels take almost 100% of CD sales. Bands make money at LIVE SHOWS and via SELLING MERCHANDISE. Tell him to sell T-Shirts and bumper stickers and whatever.

The bottom line is - Nobody makes money as a musician. Those that do are very lucky, and are a tiny minority. Do music because you love it. Like my friend (whose slashdot userID is KEPSUX): everything his band does can be found at http://www.atomicraygunattack.com/ and is free. He'll sell you a CD with artwork and a track list if you want it, or a T-Shirt, but it's for the music. Not for the dollars.

Re:*sigh*

[ben there...]

I question whether his brother's band would even be as popular as it is without all the piracy...err, copyright infringement. If the people who download it wouldn't have bought it anyway, he's not hurt by it. If some of them would have bought it, but others who did buy it wouldn't have even known about them, he breaks even financially, and suddenly has several thousands more fans, which must be worth something. Not all "pirates" are potential paying customers. In fact, I'd argue most aren't. In other words, I have no way to judge based on his emotional plea whether it has actually hurt or helped his brother's band.

Re:*sigh*

[Jherek Carnelian]

Lol dummy.

Free software as a business model is ALL about getting paid for the work you do. IBM, HP, Redhat, etc - they employ thousands of engineers. Tons of other developers are college-kids who reap the rewards of their work through increased knowledge and experience. Then there all the sysadmin/programmer types who work on tools that they use as part of their regular jobs.

Really, you could not have picked a worse counter-example. Even RMS gets paid by working on contract for Free Software - used to be only as a developer, now mostly as a speaker. The Free software economy is ALL about self-interest, scratching that itch. Once the itch is scratched, it doesn't cost a dime to give away the work-product, that's not charity that's hoping that someone else will scratch their itch and improve upon your work so that you can reap the benefits.

Calling Free software "charitable" is about as sophisticated an insight as calling it "socialist."

Re:*sigh*

[$uperjay]

If they haven't got a recording contract, were they really going to make much selling their music in the first place?

There are reasons that your brother's band isn't making money, but peer-to-peer is not going to rank particularly high on the list if you really investigate. Concert attendance fluctuates from city to city, year to year, and has a lot to do with local culture, the quality of local promoters, the specific situations surrounding music venues, etc. CD sales were never cash cows for independent bands, even before Napster; when you add up the price of engineering the record in the first place and pressing the discs, you won't see high profits even if you sell out a whole run.

I'm speaking not as a random Slashdot commentator here, but an arts journalist fairly embedded with my region's musicians and local labels. Making money as an independent band is hard, so significantly hard that peer-to-peer really doesn't have much of an impact. Your brother should be pleased that people are at least enjoying his work.

Re:*sigh*

[$uperjay]

Knowing that the barrier to copy is so low, perhaps you should have designed your product in such a way that you could offer added value over time to legitimate customers through updates, support, or some sort of syndicated content?

I know that this sounds cold, but if your aim is to create something useful, all you need to do is create something useful, and if that's your aim you should be satisfied. If your aim is make money, however, you need to employ at least a little business sense. Throwing code out into the wild when you know full well that there is little incentive for people to reward your effortts is not good business sense. I'm not saying don't create; I'm saying that if your intention is to make money by creating, you need to create in such a way that you will make money.

Re:*sigh*

[r_jensen11]

your friends band may lose out, but a bunch of swedes who take his work and give it away for free are doing just fine. Nice people huh?

Yeah, makes me think of people with parrots, ships, and swords.... What do the three ingredients create?

seriously, what do they create? I don't know....

Re:*sigh*

[Snaller]

"However, it didn't. Turns out (from conversations with their fans on their message board) that no one wants to buy their music. They like it, but hwy buy the music when fans can download every one of their albums for free online? "

No, why buy it if it isn't good enough. The band doesn't cut it - time to get a real job.

Re:*sigh*

[Snaller]

It isn't how much time you spend, it is how much others link it. If you are the only one who thinks it's great it doesn't have much value in the greather picture.

Re:*sigh*

[Snaller]

Where people able to live without it?

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

a bunch of arrogant freeloading twats who will do serious jail time at some stage?

Re:*sigh*

[gsslay]

Unfortunately these people rely on someone else paying the developer in order to ensure version 2.0. It's called free loading and what pirate bay is all about. Why should they worry if there's a version 2.0? If there isn't one they can always steal someone else's newer version 1.0. It worked out for them last time, so why should they go legit now?

Re:*sigh*

[scottrocket]

The artist _encourages_ them to download the work hence, no stealing. The _encouragement_ is why the potential customer downloads the song(s), to see(hear) if they like the song(s). Like the toothpick ladies at the supermarket: Very few people buy what they sampled from the tray, but enough do, and perhaps become acclimated to the product. It's a gamble.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* this tripe again?

You're 2 fucking orders of magnitude off according to the same article you reference. There is a wee but important difference between "a day" and "today".

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry if the truth about your swedish criminal friends upsets you. read the article, the numbers are explained.

Re:*sigh*

[ozphx]

You are right. Musicians throughout history were poor.

Re:Stop the internet!

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard they do it for "lulz".

Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[distantbody]

...and saw this claim:

Pirate Bay earns 20,000 Euros a day

controverisal pro-piracy website the piratebay likes to portray itself as an innocent hobby site that provides a free index without censorship, but recent facts show that the site is earning up to 20,000 Euros per day from its advertising. Taking in money on this scale puts a different slant on the motives behind the Swedish filesharing site, and could open up the runners of the site to prosecution for profiting from copyright infringement.

I wonder if that's true? The "from its advertising" part makes it sound like a load of bs fud.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[TheThiefMaster]

The "from its advertising" part makes it sound like a load of bs fud. So does the "up to".

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah they pull a lot of revenue. But they also have a lot of expenses, like bandwidth (100s of Mbit international) and servers. They also want to keep a good buffert so when the police raid again they can easily afford to replace all servers. They do not, afaik, make a personal gain. But even if they did, why is that so bad - they put in a lot of work and time on this site. Their motives are, and always have been, to fight the copyright system.

Remember, PirateBay was started and was running fine even when they did not make that much money off the site. Piratebay was started by guys from the "piratbyrån" - an organization in Sweden that is pro-piracy and is older than the piratebay. They hang around with guys that are very pro piracy, like Rasmus Fleicher - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_Fleischer

If the guys behind piratebay is getting rich I do not think it is due to the piratebay, but their excelent colocation service PRQ - www.prq.se.

The claim that they pull that much revenue was probably started by a swedish newspaper, I read about it a while back. The newspaper journalist tried to order the most expensive ad on the site (like full-screen front-page theme-ad) and it would be something like 20k euro / day. Such an ad normally only runs a few days and they are very rare (I have seen it once on piratebay). So it is not a good way to calculate revenue and a really lousy way to calculate profit. Furtheron that was what the ad-broker wanted, not what the piratebay actually gets. The problem I think is that the guys that write newspapers are also intrested in showing the guys in bad light, so they use bad methods on purpose to trash piratebay.

A final thing to remember that the piratebay guys (which are very young btw, all born in the 80s) are knowingly putting themselves in risk of going to jail. IMO it is very heroic to stand up for your ideals and risk your life for what you believe. Just like in US when guys fed up with england fought for independence, etc.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[famicommie]

Turn off Adblock Plus for a second and look at the ads that tpb offers. Now, I might be crazy, but I don't think that an obscure auction site or a "MEET HOT WOMEN IN YOUR AREA" site is putting out 20,000 per day for advertising.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[Jeek Elemental]

from TFA: "The past four months the Swedish company Eastpoint Media have sold ads for The Pirate Bay for an average of 60,000 per month."
not sure how this became 20k/day...not to mention this is the selling price, not what eventually ends up at TPB (assuming the numbers are correct, which theyre probably not).

Anyway I hope they make a fortune, cant think of a more deserving site.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[untaken_name]

I don't know...if they can make 20k euros per day off the crap they advertise, then hooray for them, I say. People stupid enough to EVER click on ANY banner/website ad deserve what they get. Yes, yes, I'm sure a bunch of you will respond with your pet ads that don't suck. There are exceptions to 'most every rule, I suppose. However, in general, you can find better pricing on whatever it is they are advertising with a small amount of research. Of course, it could be worse....it could be torrentspy making all that money.
Just out of curiosity, how many people here actually read website ads? I process them out automatically nowadays. Of course, according to statbrain they get about 5mil pageviews per day. If you don't think they should advertise, how do you expect them to serve that many pages? (Note: this is a general question and is not directed at the person to whom I'm responding)

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[gaspyy]

I wonder if that's true? The "from its advertising" part makes it sound like a load of bs fud.

It's hard to impossible to verify the accuracy of this claim - but it's not "bullshit" or "FUD".

I've disabled by AdBlock just to see their pages... they have FIVE ad areas (can't call them banners) as follows:

• Top right - Auction Ads;
• Top center - TargetPoint;
• Left - AdultFriendFinder;
• Right - AdBrite;
• Bottom - Auction Ads.

I don't know about their daily impressions, click-through ratio, but they certainly get more than 1000 EUR/day from ads, and the 20,000 EUR figure doesn't seems far-fetched to me.

I won't get sucked into moral or political discussions, but anyone who thinks that they (and others) are in just for fun, are simply naïve.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[TodMinuit]

They do not, afaik, make a personal gain. But even if they did, why is that so bad - they put in a lot of work and time on this site. Their motives are, and always have been, to fight the copyright system. Because then they're even worse than the record and movie companies. At least those companies do give something back, whereas The Pirate Bay is purely lining their own pockets on the backs of others.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[catxk]

Indeed they are. But then again, running a massive site like TPB (and the many other sites they run) isn't free. And say what you like, they really are putting their necks on the lines so I can download as much music as I like. Profit or not, they give me exactly what I want and they do it in great style but definitely not without risk. That being said, the status of the economics surrounding TPB is of importance.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[Zironic]

I think a lot of people appreciate the service that the pirate bay provides.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[Anonymous Coward]

They give a lot back - the biggest filesharing infrastructure in the world. This is probably spreading more culture than hundreds or thousands of libraries / video stores / cinemas. Spreading culture and facilitating information sharing is a very good thing and people behind it deserve big rewards.

The record companies OTH only sell plastic disks with tiny amounts of information - they give nothing back. They just want to push crap and make money. Piratebay OTH want people to share culture/information no matter what information/culture that happens to be. This piratebay is IMO the more ethical enterprise.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[gaspyy]

it is very heroic to stand up for your ideals and risk your life for what you believe. Just like in US when guys fed up with england fought for independence, etc

I may be jaded and plain cynical, but yes, I do think Pirate Bay and all other sites are in for the money. Risking lives and comparing them to those who really fought in the the US War of Independence is not only an overstatement, it's borderline troll (I'm not even an American).

I somehow fail to see this as a giant resistance and war against an oppressive Big Brother. Fact is, the torrent sites are used to distribute copyrighted materials. I don't agree with RIAA/MPAA/BSA tactics, but we are not ENTITLED to get anything for free - movies, songs or anything else. When you download Bourne Ultimatum, you're doing it because you're too lazy to go to a theater and feel better because you've spared 20 bucks - you're not fighting for freedom.

I've spent my childhood under communism and I'm kinda fed up with this attitude - oh they're so evil we can't get Evanescence for free. Where I come from, people were arrested for listening to Rolling Stones.

As a part-time photographer, I've had my work used without permission and let me tell you - it pisses me off. Making photos costs me money, even if it's only paying the model. I don't agree with copyrights for 70 years - 10 years would be enough for anything - but I have a hard time believing that those who took my photos did that to fight the system - they did that so they don't have to spend a dollar at iStockPhoto.

You can mod me down now.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[Anonymous Coward]

but we are not ENTITLED to get anything for free

And you are not entitled to tell me which bits I can copy and which I can't.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[stumblingblock]

But, wasn't the American war for independance all about money too? Taxes on tea, the Stamp Act, competition with English export/import. Without the money factor, America would still be part of the British Empire.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[freeweed]

we are not ENTITLED to get anything for free - movies, songs or anything else

We sure as heck are once the creator has had a reasonable chance to turn a buck on it.

I'll start giving a flying rat's behind about this stupid argument once copyright terms get reduced to a level where there's a chance that something from my childhood might actually hit the public domain before my grandchildren are retired. Until such time, if our current laws make no distinction between something that's 80 years old and something that's 80 days old - why should I?

I still sing Happy Birthday in public. Let them throw me in jail for ripping off a decades-dead songwriter.

I'll also resume caring at the point that I can once again use a CD in my PC without worrying about accquiring a rootkit, and when I can actually skip through idiotic "don't steal me!!!!" warnings on a DVD that I JUST PAID MONEY FOR.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[gosand]

I don't agree with RIAA/MPAA/BSA tactics, but we are not ENTITLED to get anything for free - movies, songs or anything else. When you download Bourne Ultimatum, you're doing it because you're too lazy to go to a theater and feel better because you've spared 20 bucks - you're not fighting for freedom.

I download a few things on torrent. But I try to keep it somewhat reasonable. The ONLY movies I have downloaded are ones that I have on VHS already. Call it justification, whatever. If I want a movie, I'll wait and buy it when it comes out on DVD. We don't get to the theater - not because we are lazy, but because we have 2 small children. Music? Eh, it all pretty much bores me. I have downloaded some things, and gotten some MP3s from friends. But I pretty much have it and don't listen to it all that often. I have downloaded TV shows that I have missed, or that my dang DVD recorder missed for some inexplicable reason. After I have watched them, I delete the files. I have also downloaded kids shows like old Sesame Street. I also record it when I get a chance, but the old ones are a neat change of pace (no frickin' Elmo!).

So I've broken the law. Boo hoo. I try and keep it reasonable, and I don't have a problem paying for things. I think the movie industry has done a pretty good job of keeping movie prices low enough that I'll continue to buy them. Hell, I bought VHS versions of movies for $59 back in the day... I remember when losing a rented video could cost you over $100. If we go to the theater, it will cost at least $20, so what is the problem with buying a movie for the same price? Music? Eh. Haven't found much to interest me as of late, but I have been going back through my CD collection. But I understand that I am probably not in the majority, and a lot of people will download anything and everything they can get their hands on, including recent movies.

Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose...

[really?]

They, TPB, are providing a service. Maybe you and I don't agree with what they do/offer, but, they do provide a service nonetheless. They make some money for it. Well, good for them I say. Its not something I'd like to do, but I have no problem with someone else doing it.

How DARE you!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Forcing us to read evidence contrary to our convenient conclusions! A troll mod for you!

Re:Slashdot:Official message board of the pirate b

[JM78]

More like a site full of nerds - the majority of which are interested in the subject. Seems pretty obvious (IMHO). If you don't care why did you click on the link, read the story and then spend the time to post a comment? N/M, that seems pretty obvious too.

*ba-dum pshht!*

[the Plums in us]

Never has a rimshot been more appropriate for a Slashdot comment! Well done.

Probably good to explain.

[Futurepower(R)]

Not everyone knows what PirateBay, Suprnova, Mininova, IsoHunt, and Demonoid do. I think it would be good to explain their purpose and their differences.

Other questions: Why does Demonoid have accounts? "People in the United States downloading torrents tracked on The Pirate Bay are certainly in danger." Why is that? What is PeerGuardian? What is MediaSentry?

For those who are tempted, please skip any negative comments. No one can know everything about computers.

Re:Probably good to explain.

[originalnih]

I don't think Demonoid's account restrictions have anything to do with user security. It's far more related to torrent quality. Upload a virus? Bam! You're out. Upload a fake? More bam! You're out.

The Demonoid folk make an effort to report torrents that work well too, meaning you can read in a torrent's comments to find missing files, cracks, serials, links to better torrents, etc.

Any effort I make to learn a new piece of software is often an impulse so I have to acquire that software fast. So thanks Demonoid, you've kept me educated. In turn I've purchased the software I've learnt to use. I don't think anyone at this point realistically argues that there's no place for piracy.

Re:Probably good to explain.

[DrMrLordX]

What, you mean this Cell?

Re:Probably good to explain.

[ResidntGeek]

No one can know everything about computers.

No, but they can use very common and simple methods like search engines to find out things they don't know, instead of sitting and waiting for everything to be explained to them.

Re:Probably good to explain.

[PopeRatzo]

C'mon you guys. Ixnay on the emonoidDay. Every time they get mentioned on some big site like this one, they end up getting a DOS attack or some other incursion.

All in all, happy about getting suprnova back. I've still kept the bookmark in my browser out of nostalgia.

Re:Probably good to explain.

[jollyreaper]

Not everyone knows what PirateBay, Suprnova, Mininova, IsoHunt, and Demonoid do. I think it would be good to explain their purpose and their differences. They brutally steal the caviar from the mouths of innocent media moguls. Won't someone think of their childrens' trust funds?

Re:Probably good to explain.

[Doc Lazarus]

I can see it now: "A-a-a-and instead of getting a Ferrari, I had to settle for a BEAMER! Oh, the humanity!"

Re:Probably good to explain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm there's a big difference between "today" and "a day". The article you link to mentions 60000 / month with half of that going to the ad company. That leaves 360k/year. Deduct cost for bandwidth, hardware, space and power etc. It's quite possible that they earn some money on the enterprise but your calculation is just a fantasy figure.

Excellent timing...

[MaJeStu]

This news couldn't have come at a better time, what with torrentspy's recent legal woes...

Yeah...I can see your point (NOT!)

[Newer Guy]

Imagine that his band signs with a major label and gets treated like this: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html Or this: http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/l ove/print.html Just imagine them working for FREE for their first two CD's. Filesharers are not your brother's enemies, the RIAA is! If he wants to make money off his music, have HIM make it available on his OWN web site. He should explain (respectfully) that he loves to make music, but also needs to pay the bills, so will you kindly buy some of his merchandise? Let me say this: if he comes off having YOUR attitude, I can see why no one wants to support him and his band!

Re:Slashdot:Official message board of the pirate b

[Opportunist]

Well, my guess is that this is due to how /. works. People submit stories. People choose what stories they deem important. And those Stories make it to the front page.

So I guess if /. is the press agency of TPB, that's what "we" want it to be.

YouTube competitor

[zis000]

A few months back, the PirateBay guys talked about launched a YouTube competitor... a video sharing site. Could that be it?

Re:YouTube competitor

[zis000]

Here's the link to the story http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-to-launch-y outube-competitor/

So I'm writing a book.

[Anonymous Coward]

...And I hear there're these absolutely, horrible things out there called 'libraries'.

Do you know that sick motherfuckers can go out and read *entire* books without having to pay for them?

Jesus H. Christ, talk about hurting the little guys.

Mod parent down

[McDutchie]

That's great. The Pirate Bay operate in a locale where this material *is* legal to distribute.

That's simply nonsense.

Re:Mod parent down

[wootest]

No. The Pirate Bay (and every other BitTorrent tracker) distributes .torrent files containing just hashes and checksums and other metadata. They don't distribute whatever copyrighted material or other material you end up with if you run the torrent file through a BitTorrent client - it never lands on their servers at all.

Copyright gets in the way of creators

[tepples]

Translation:
I am a content consumer, not a content creator.
As such, copyright only gets in the way.

"Content" can mean either "happy" or "works of authorship other than computer programs". I'll assume you mean the latter, in which case you still appear to have a misconception. A recent Slashdot story covered a documentary showing how copyright gets in the way of creators as well.

Re:Copyright gets in the way of creators

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

I'm sorry, but the refusal to call a personal audio device that plays mp3s an "MP3 player" is just loony, That link http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html does more to damage freesoftware than 30 MSFT articles in trade mags. Seriously people get over yourselves no one cares if you listen to Ogg files, the rest of the world is still playing MP3s on our MP3 players. Didn't you guys get the memo political correctness is dead, fat people are fat, short people are short, and bald guys are still bald. HTH

Re:Copyright gets in the way of creators

[GalionTheElf]

I take it you've never had the honour of meeting rms then? That nutjob could hold back the best of causes

My sweet lord...

[tepples]

I'm always bothered when I read articles like this because I know the Slashdot party line is always "File sharing good, fuck the content creators". I get upset because I think of my little brother, who's basically been screwed by piracy. What about the incumbent songwriters, who will claim to be being screwed by your little brother's band's subconscious piracy of their melodies?

$$$$ for cell-phone Internet?

[tepples]

As a software developer I hate PHP, WebForms, AJAX, etc etc and think that lots of programs are better off the Web (as standalone applications), however I started to deploy all my software as web portals and charge subscription fees for it. I don't know what kind of services you run, but I'd guess you are losing a lot of customers who do not want to pay $1,000 per year for cellular Internet access to get your service from their laptop computers.

Re:$$$$ for cell-phone Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you just live to make bizarre arguments or what? I mean seriously, what is your deal, where does this stuff come from?

I'd really like to know, not kidding (entirely). I know this one might be sort-of on topic but seriously, wtf. How small a subset is that? Like you said, you also don't know what he even sells, but still you come off with this weird shit about cell phone internet access.

Anyway, sorry just had to vent, my blood pressure tends to rise after your fifth outlandish comment.

HAND

Re:$$$$ for cell-phone Internet?

[tepples]

How small a subset is that? That depends on the nature of the application.

Like you said, you also don't know what he even sells, but still you come off with this weird shit about cell phone internet access. There are some applications that would work just as well without Internet access, but they're implemented as web apps solely to prevent unauthorized access. This breaks the whole laptop use model.

Re:$$$$ for cell-phone Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for replying, didn't expect that.

How small a subset is that? That depends on the nature of the application.
I'm sure he knows that better than you, he is certainly party to all the facts.

Like you said, you also don't know what he even sells, but still you come off with this weird shit about cell phone internet access. There are some applications that would work just as well without Internet access, but they're implemented as web apps solely to prevent unauthorized access. This breaks the whole laptop use model.
And this would be exactly his reasoning for implementing such a system.

BTW, I see you're still on the whole weird shit to say trip. That's great, keep it up <3

Attention whores

[tripwirecc]

Seriously, what's the point? Are they actively trying to piss off every media and rights company in the world? Not saying that this isn't a noble goal, but that constant provocation from TPB's side will rear at some point.

If TPB is relaunching it...

[Real_Reddox]

why is it for sale?
http://www.sedo.co.uk/search/details.php4?domain=s uprnova.org&partnerid=14460&language=e/

Re:Slashdot:Official message board of the pirate b

[Anonymous Coward]

Why has Slashdot becomes the personal blog and advertisement site for X? It seems like not a day goes by without a story about X. Do we really care about all the details about X? And why do people consistently comment about topic X, when that topic has been discussed to death on this forum.

Frankly I'm sick and tired of hearing about X. I think Slashdot should get it's act together and not discuss X anymore.

---

The above is a template for the "I'm sick of hearing about X" rant that appears on Slashdot frequently. Feel free to re-use it, replacing X with whatever you want. At various times, I've seen X be: Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, iPod, iPhone, XBOX, PS3, Wikipedia, and many others.

I think this is the first time I've seen X = Pirate Bay.

Isohunt Has better selection of Roms

[sbate]

Than thepiratebay. Plus it is run by Canadians I love Canandians.

Cry me a river.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where exactly is it written that your little brother (lets pretend I believe your story for a second) has the right to make a living by making music?

Lots of proffesions have seen their livelyhood dry up because of a changing world. I am originally trained as a baker and I used to be pretty good too. However the increasing shift in holland for people to get their bread and similar products from the supermarket (factory) means there is less and less business from small bakers.

Worse, laws about noise pollution (bakeries work at night in the center of towns) and such have made it impossible to open a new business.

So will you heart bleed for me? Should people be forced to change their basic nature (go for the cheap easy solution) and be forced to buy their bread seperate at a local bakery?

I happen to know two people involved in music. One is Henk, the zingende schilder. Never heard of him? Offcourse not, he is extremely local but he likes singing, he is very good at it. No he won't ever get rich of it but who says he should?

Another guy I know is heavily into experimental music, the type of music were you read that a new band has launched a new cd with a whopping 10 copies, and some are still available. If you see the included list of rental prices for equipment it is very easy to see most of these bands are PAYING to play their music. (And if you ever heard it, you might think they could never pay enough to be allowed to play it).

BUT they still play because they love their music, even if nobody else does.

Another friend is a soccar player, not a bad one either apparently, can he blame the current system of soccer of hiring foreigners for not giving him a chance to play commercially?

NO.

It is idiotic that you seem to think that you are entitled to make a living with your hobby. There are plenty of other hobbies that cost a lot more were people work long hours to be able to do the stuff they really want to be payed for if they could.

Race teams that slave the whole week to put their car in the race would LOVE to be picked by a big sponsor.

No your "little brother" does NOT deserve sympathy. If he doesn't like it, he can quit and get a real job. Else he must simply accept that for most bands the music will never be their day job.

Speaking as one of the billions working a regular boring day job, I can't bring itup to give a damn.

Wiki props?

[Bayoudegradeable]

Oddly enough, today's featured article on Wikipedia is about..... supernovas :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Corrections to the memo

[tomhudson]

"Didn't you guys get the memo political correctness is dead, fat people are fat, short people are short, and bald guys are still bald"

1. saying "political correctness is dead" is dead;
2. fat people are called "stupid fat lazy slobs";
3. you call a short person by shouting "Hey, Stretch";
4. bald buys have always been called "Curly";

Now, back on-topic: as of this morning, suprnova.org is still a doorway page, with a title that says "This web site is for sale!"

There's a link to sedo.com's listing of the site for sale info

DETAILS:
Domain Name suprnova.org without content.

DOMAIN STATISTICS:
Unique Visitors per month*: 168,113
Visitors to this Sedo Listing*: 600
Previous Offers for this Domain: 21
* Data from the previous 32 days

What gives?

If you believe in 10 year copyrights...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe in 10 year copyrights; do you release your photographs to the public domain after ten years? Or do you just sit with the maximum the law allows and say "you think"? Actions do speak louder than words.

Re:Oh Noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, isohunt was my favorite. It's been dugg: http://digg.com/tech_news/Bye_Bye_TorrentSpy_and_I SOHunt_Both_to_Filter_Copyrighted_Content?t=740046 8

Looks like its not the worst thing on earth, and I've been using it since. I'll probably head toward TPB

Re:Stop the internet!

[somersault]

What industry are you talking about? Software, music, video? Yeah, we'll all be much better off when there are no new commercial songs movies, songs or software. While we're at it, why don't we just run riot around the streets, breaking into a stores and taking our consumer goods for free! They can't stop us if we all do it!!

Sarcasm aside, while I have downloaded software, music and videos in the past, I do actually pay for the stuff I like and want to support.. I don't mind at all if Microsoft or Adobe disappear off the face of the earth however.. they're probably among the 2 companies to have the most software pirated (Windows/Office/Photoshop..?).

copyright is a good thing...

[sentientbrendan]

basically the entire software industry, even the open source parts, would fall apart without it.

I'm not going to say I've never pirated anything, but be honest. By pirating I'm not protesting some bad law, I'm violating an entirely valid law. The reason I, you, and pretty much everyone else violates the law on occasion isn't because it is moral, but because we have a high incentive to and because there's low risk we'll get caught.

I think that it is somewhat dangerous to try to ascribe some kind of moral purpose to all of our actions. Usually people just do stuff because it is convenient to them. People who think that everything they do is for some moral right are called zealots, and they tend to do a lot of damage without realizing it.

Re:copyright is a good thing...

[TheSHAD0W]

basically the entire software industry, even the open source parts, would fall apart without it.

Sort of like the coal gas industries fell apart when Edison started making light bulbs? And no, I don't think the open-source industries would collapse given the elimination of copyright. Users and businesses will still need support. Why do you think they would?

Re:copyright is a good thing...

[AnonChef]

Talking sense when it comes to copyright issues on slashdot!!!
Shame on you.

Re:Stop the internet!

[sepelester]

Sun: Hey Earth, I'm gonna go Suprnova on yo' ass!

DUH!

[-noefordeg-]

"... while the band has a large fanbase ..."
That just the same type of measuring that RIAA uses. They go about saying that the "Potenial customers = World population", which is just wrong.
You brother's fanbase is the amount of people who actually do buy his records or do to go to his concerts, and NOT the number of people who say they pirated the songs. I get the feeling your brother doesn't really have such a large fanbase.

You make it sound like that without pirating your brother would actually sell a lot of albums and have a lot of people attending his concerts? How do you figure?

U2 has a large fanbase because A LOT of people attende their concerts and a lot of people buy their albums...
The fact that a lot of people pirate their music, probably on a scale a million times larger than what your brother is experiencing, is not really anything people use to measure their fanbase.

How are they hurting, exactly?

[ducman]

You said, "The band is quite popular locally. It's so popular, in fact, that people bootleg their music and share it across the internet." You also said, "Also, concert attendance has stayed flat. The pirating of their music hasn't suddenly increased attendance like they hoped it would."

So you brother has a band that some people like. Why does that translate into an expectation that he should make lots of money? The fact that music trading "hasn't suddenly increased attendance like they hoped it would," just sounds like your brother had some false expectations. It certainly doesn't sound like anybody is stealing something from him.

Re:Slashdot:Official message board of the pirate b

[TheoMurpse]

I think it's because most Slashdotters hate the MPAA and RIAA and BSA and such, and the Piratbayen folks are very visible and vocal opponents of the media industries.

torrent metasearch

[HydroPhonic]

I use http://btjunkie.org/

Metasearch with added ability to search on names of files within torrent. Nice for rare stuff.

Re:*sigh* dl not = popularity

[Teriblows]

you confuse downloads with popularity. when somethings free, there is almost no barrier for people who just want to "see" what something is about. if your little bro even charged 20 cents to download that music it would massively cut down on downloads as people would suddenly wonder if it was worth the bother. many people just download a ton of stuff and sort through it later, or download things just to try them out. it may get deleted after listening to the first 30 seconds, you cannot know. if the bands popularity doesn't spread like wild fire and word of mouth then it just means the music wasn't popular. if people loved it they would attend concerts. and really, music companies would decend upon your brothers band like vultures if there was a real buzz around the net because people were downloading the music and talking about it because it was sooo good. the reality is people don't say much when they donwload something and its tossed in the recycling bin after a few minutes of listening.

As are BitTorrent.com, TorrentSpy.com, uTorrent

[PSdiE]

From: http://libcom.org/forums/news/utorrent-bought-mpaa

Los Angeles - - BitTorrent Founder and CEO Bram Cohen and Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman announced today that the motion picture industry and BitTorrent, Inc. are collaborating with the goal of inhibiting film piracy. Bram Cohen developed a revolutionary technology for websites to make large content files available on the Web and that technology is often used by others illegally to distribute movies and television shows. Today Cohen confirmed BitTorrent, Inc.'s commitment to removing links that direct users to copies of pirated content owned by MPAA companies from its search engine at BitTorrent.com. The announcement today is historic in that two major forces in the technology and film industries have agreed to work together and proactively identify ways to l and to promote constructive innovation in this area.

And from Bram Cohen, creator of the BitTorrent protocol, and Ludvig (Ludde) Strigeus, the writer of Torrent:

Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and Torrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired Torrent as it recognized the merits of Torrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together Torrent's efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent's expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.

Note that the above link title is misleading BTW - MPAA haven't "bought" uTorrent. Rather BitTorrent Inc have bough uTorrent and BitTorrent Inc have a commercial relationship with the MPAA.

I recall reading about a link between uTorrent/BT Inc and TorrentSpy too. At minimum, TorrentSpy.com is apparently planning to filter MPAA content soon:

http://digg.com/tech_news/Bye_Bye_TorrentSpy_and_I SOHunt_Both_to_Filter_Copyrighted_Content/all

Worrying times!