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

[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?

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

[CrackedButter]

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

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.

*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*

[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*

[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*

[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: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.