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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."

67 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. But with mininova by Cameron+McCormack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    who needs suprnova?

    1. Re:But with mininova by nlitement · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    2. Re:But with mininova by genrader · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:But with mininova by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 2, Informative

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

    4. Re:But with mininova by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    5. Re:But with mininova by Danse · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?
      --
      It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
    6. Re:But with mininova by icedcool · · Score: 4, Informative

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

      --
      Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
    7. Re:But with mininova by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 4, Informative

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

      --
      Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
    8. Re:But with mininova by Espectr0 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    9. Re:But with mininova by pedramnavid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unless you live in Canada

  2. Not a bad idea by chebucto · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    --
    The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
    1. Re:Not a bad idea by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
  3. Re:Stop the internet! by Walpurgiss · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. A few more details at slyck by 6350' · · Score: 4, Informative
    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
    1. Re:A few more details at slyck by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 2, Funny
      And wine needs to be made from grapes that have fermentated.

      And smart-asses are resentated.

    2. Re:A few more details at slyck by compro01 · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  5. Who needs it by Kadin2048 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    1. Re:Who needs it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Who needs it by montyzooooma · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Who needs it by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Who needs it by Das+Modell · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Who needs it by AntiNazi · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:Who needs it by AnonChef · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.
  6. Re:Stop the internet! by Carbon016 · · Score: 3, Funny

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

  7. Yeah, and... by NMerriam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
  8. scofflaws by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:scofflaws by CrackedButter · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    2. Re:scofflaws by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Informative

      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?
      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    3. Re:scofflaws by Talavis · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:scofflaws by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    5. Re:scofflaws by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Informative

      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"

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    6. Re:scofflaws by whereverjustice · · Score: 2

      Well, that and armed rebellion.

    7. Re:scofflaws by Supurcell · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.
  9. Re:isohunt anyone? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  10. Mere Conicidence? by Shinra · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

  11. *sigh* by SilentChris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:*sigh* by dunezone · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:*sigh* by scottrocket · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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! :)

    3. Re:*sigh* by Kris_J · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    4. Re:*sigh* by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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.

    5. Re:*sigh* by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:*sigh* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    7. Re:*sigh* by Embedded2004 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    8. Re:*sigh* by untaken_name · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    9. Re:*sigh* by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    10. Re:*sigh* by cliffski · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      --
      DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
    11. Re:*sigh* by blahplusplus · · Score: 2

      "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.

    12. Re:*sigh* by krusbjorn · · Score: 3, Informative
      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.
    13. Re:*sigh* by xtracto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    14. Re:*sigh* by okoskimi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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...).

    15. Re:*sigh* by suv4x4 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    16. Re:*sigh* by gsslay · · Score: 2, Insightful

      - 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.
    17. Re:*sigh* by kinglink · · Score: 2

      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.

  12. Just happened to be browsing firehose... by distantbody · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ...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.
    1. Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose... by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The "from its advertising" part makes it sound like a load of bs fud. So does the "up to".
    2. Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose... by gaspyy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
    4. Re:Just happened to be browsing firehose... by gaspyy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.
  13. Probably good to explain. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Probably good to explain. by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Funny

      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?
      --
      Kwisatz Haderach
      Sell the spice to CHOAM
      This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  14. Excellent timing... by MaJeStu · · Score: 2

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

    --
    The best mixed martial arts training in Boston - www.redlinefightsports.com
  15. Re:YouTube competitor by zis000 · · Score: 2, Interesting
  16. Attention whores by tripwirecc · · Score: 2

    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.

  17. Re:isohunt anyone? by msormune · · Score: 2, Funny

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

  18. Cry me a river. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  19. Re:Slashdot Users by MarcoG42 · · Score: 2, Funny

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

    --
    If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
  20. As are BitTorrent.com, TorrentSpy.com, uTorrent by PSdiE · · Score: 2, Informative
    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!