Slashdot Mirror
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."
who needs suprnova?
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?
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.
:P
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.
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.