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The Pirate Bay Blocked In Italy
imhassan tips us to news that The Pirate Bay has been blocked in Italy. Other attempts to block the popular P2P site have been somewhat less than successful. From TorrentFreak:
"Pirate Bay's IPs and the domain name are inaccessible, as they are blocked by ISPs all over the country. Whether these blocks will be very effective, however, is doubtful, since The Pirate Bay has already announced several countermeasures. An insider working at an Internet provider in Italy told TorrentFreak that all the relevant large access ISPs in Italy have complied with the request to block the popular BitTorrent tracker, which was sent out yesterday. Italy is taking a stand against BitTorrent sites, so it seems. Two weeks ago, the largest Italian torrent site, Columbo-BT, was shut down by the same prosecutor who is responsible for the Pirate Bay block."
...or worse?
Was it the mafia? I heard that the mafia doesn't like pirates or fascists for that matter.
The only thing worse than blocking Pirate Bay is not blocking Pirate Bay.
Tor is the answer to everything.
Use Tor to access the trackers. Problem solved.
Unless and until every system connected to the Internet needs a unique key of some sort before it's allowed to exchange packets, blocking anything will be completely ineffective.
The current net neutrality debate is the first line of defense toward preventing such a system.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Our fine Italian friends can still access TPB at labaia.org. Here's to hoping for as little irritation as possible.
I am just an ignorant American, but I believe if an ISP is now taking it on themselves to filter content, then they are possibly no longer a common carrier and as such can be subject to many other sanctions to block "bad" content. In Italy it may be entirely different, but either way, if the ISP does not say in their TOS they can block sites at their will, then they could be in big trouble for breach of contract, if such a thing flies in Italy.
http://labaia.org/ .
The italy government sucks. Someone really should to put a bullet through Berlusconi's fascisti face.
That useless : use tor or another proxy to connect to the search engine/tracker (doesn't need high trafic).
Once you got the *.torrent you want and the ip of the peer that share the file, you can connect directly to them without needing to pass by a proxy...
While this certainly has a lot of terrible implications, those people could just use other torrent sites. The only reason TPB is being blocked here is because of their notoriety. I honestly can find my trackers easier using other bit torrent sites anyway. And what will Italy do once people get their TPB trackers from other sites?
Then Italy has solved the problem right? Good thing there are no other trackers out there...
Perhaps someone should inform them tpb hosts no files, so the people actually hosting the files are unaffected as are those attempting to download.
The boat leaks from millions of places and you have put a patch on a hole well above the water line.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Say it isn't so!
You know that Mussolini's party is still active in Italy right?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I am in Italy and I can surf to Pirate Bay right now. My ISP is Tiscali.
Since wikileaks.org is operated by the same guys, I wonder if wikileaks.org has been blocked in Italy as well? If so, that's probably the real reason.
And have they managed to block every proxy server that can connect to every other proxy server that can see and connect to TPB? It just sounds like more press grandstanding to this observer.
.tor files upon request? Got that blocked yet?
And how about an ICQ that serves up torrent files? The file you need to get from TPB just isn't that big.
And how about IMBF (Information Must Be Free) people offering to e-mail in
Strikes me that shutting down TPB countywide (unless you're China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or the like) isn't easy, or likely.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They've already changed their IP address and bought the domain name labaia.org for Italians to access the site. Seems very different from "absolutely nothing"
Had you said, "Mussolini's *daughter* is in politics", you would have been correct.
When ideas fail, words become very handy.
They changed the name, but it was the same party, consisting of all the people who weren't hanging from lamp posts by the end of the war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Social_Movement%E2%80%93National_Right
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Local groups sharing between themselves. Able to physically meet and verify each other.
At the borders of that group, individuals physically moving material between groups. Very easy now with portable hard drives of a terabyte or more.
So instead of material being available instantly ... it will be available in 7 days to anyone, anywhere. Because we all know that there are only 7 degrees of separation between any two people.
I can confirm I can access the site (I'm in Italy, my ISP is Fastweb). Just in case it is blocked by some Italian ISP, it seems that labaia.org is a new alias. ;-)
...is what happens when you elect a media owner as your country's president.
Ciao free speech!
Oh right, they block websites that could threaten what props their system up.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If they didn't get a court order isn't this kind of blocking illegal harrassment and interfering with internet communications. It is severely outlawed at least here. Piratebay should file a criminal suit against them for running illegal interference.
I've used TPB for legal torrents as well as the "illegal" ones. I taste movies before buying them, and TPB is a great way to try before I buy. I actually spend MORE money on DVDs purchased legally because of this method.
So the Italian prosecutor would call me a criminal. Fine. He's using public funding against what would be a "crime" between private parties. He's using the taxpayer's dollars to do the work the "harmed" party should be doing.
In reality, Italy has far larger problems than issues between two private parties. There is RAMPANT corruption that is costing REAL dollars to the taxpayer. The Italian government should be seeking out bad seeds amongst themselves as a priority. There is also massive amounts of theft and loss within their own body; maybe they should focus on those problems?
While I don't wish to distract from what is, in many respects, a premier example of the genus 'angry rant', I feel I should point out that no-one in Italy (or anywhere else that I know of) is actually blocking bittorrent.
They are blocking a website which serves bittorrent files. There's rather a lot of difference.
Also, lets get real, most of thepiratebays content links users to content which is being provided contrary to the laws of their countries.
Is this wrong? Well, the debate goes on, but we get nowhere by pretending that everything's lovely with downloading 'unauthorised' content, and get with the real problem, that copyright itself is very broken.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I can confirm I can access the site (I'm in Italy, my ISP is Fastweb). ;-)
Just in case it is blocked by some Italian ISP, it seems that labaia.org is a new alias.
Here the bay is still reachable too! I think the control may be in the DNS system (like for the *forbidden* betting sites)!
I'm happy with openDNS! :-)
I suspect he has a lucrative career ahead of him in the entertainment industry. Wouldn't be the first case of that happening.
From the webpage:
Fascist state censors Pirate Bay
We're quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators.
This time it's Italy. They suffer from a really bad background as one of the IFPIs was formed in Italy during the fascist years and now they have a fascist leader in the country, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi is also the most powerful person in Italian media owning a lot of companies that compete with The Pirate Bay and he would like to stay that way - so one of his lackeys, Giancarlo Mancusi, ordered a shutdown of our domain name and IP in Italy to make it hard to not support Berlusconis empire.
We have had fights previously in Italy, recently with our successful art installation where we had to storm Fortezza in order to get our art done. And as usual, we won. We will also win this time.
We have already changed IP for the website - that makes it work for half the ISPs again. And we want you all to inform your italian friends to switch their DNS to OpenDNS so they can bypass their ISPs filters. This will also let them bypass the other filters installed by the Italian government, as a bonus. And for the meanwhile - http://labaia.org/ works (La Baia means The Bay in Italian).
And please, everybody should also contact their ISP and tell them that this is not OK and that the ISPs should appeal. We don't want a censored internet! And the war starts here...
And how many seats do they currently hold in the parliament?
You're really beating the wrong cat. ;)
When ideas fail, words become very handy.
thepiratebay.se resolves to 83.140.176.200 in the free world, so what happens if you just open that IP address in Italy?
No this is not a rickroll, goatse, tubgirl or lemonparty.
PS: What, do I sound like I've been burned before?
Ok, so they want to block information on a tool that is designed to make sure information gets distributed (the internet)? GOOD LUCK!
If they want to make sure information doesn't get distributed, better make sure the people don't have access to the tools to do so (in other words: forbid access to the internet altogether).
The Pirate Bay SSL proven ineffective: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=803927
Seriously folks, what is happening here? Question these moments both in the case of Pirate Bay and that of individuals who lose their jobs for freedom of speech.
....a woman censored by being fired for writing a book! And she works in a library....the irony.
DIGG Story on Women being fired for writing a book
OpenDNS.
Man. What a poor job they've done to block the website -- and still they can claim they did.
Suddenly, I love my country again!
What a great country which provides again free advertisement for the Piratebay! After the pitfall of Denmark trying the same impossible thing ... will they ever learn?
http://thepiratebay.org/blog/123 or http://labaia.org/blog/123 for people in Italy
Copty and paste
(I sure hope they don't sue me for copyright infringement)
Fascist state censors Pirate Bay
We're quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators.
This time it's Italy. They suffer from a really bad background as one of the IFPIs was formed in Italy during the fascist years and now they have a fascist leader in the country, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi is also the most powerful person in Italian media owning a lot of companies that compete with The Pirate Bay and he would like to stay that way - so one of his lackeys, Giancarlo Mancusi, ordered a shutdown of our domain name and IP in Italy to make it hard to not support Berlusconis empire.
We have had fights previously in Italy, recently with our successful art installation where we had to storm Fortezza in order to get our art done. And as usual, we won. We will also win this time.
We have already changed IP for the website - that makes it work for half the ISPs again. And we want you all to inform your italian friends to switch their DNS to OpenDNS so they can bypass their ISPs filters. This will also let them bypass the other filters installed by the Italian government, as a bonus. And for the meanwhile - http://labaia.org works (La Baia means The Bay in Italian).
And please, everybody should also contact their ISP and tell them that this is not OK and that the ISPs should appeal. We don't want a censored internet! And the war starts here...
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
In English, it's extremely close to "labia", which I guess grandparent was joking about ("Hoping for as little irritation as possible").
Works perfectly now here in Milan. Just downloaded a few torrent files to check.
Yesterday and the day before it was unaccessible though.
Perhaps the Polizia Postale (yes, it's the postal police who checks on the net here) is helpfully unblocking it on Sundays?
They have got to be kidding. I can't believe that the "Government" of a country can't figure out or hire someone to explain to them it won't work. What passes for govenmental bodies now days is scary.
I'm in the very heel of Italy, Puglia, and it's working swimmingly. Needless to say I am also on some random's open wifi connectiont too ;)
in the words of mario mario (yup... his last name's mario)
Knowledgeable people in Italy will just use Tor or whatever to bypass the block. Less knowledgeable people will just move to the next big thing (mininova, kazaa, etc...)
The "Goverment" will look like it has made as much as possible to protect the interests of the artist lobby groups that are pushing this
Make It Secret Protect your privacy
I use the biggest italian ISP, Telecom Italia, and TPB is still reachable!!! I'm using opendns, maybe italan ISP just removed TPB form their dns...
.
Mussolini had his own way of dealing with the petty thief - and that - stripped of all pretense - is what the downloader has become. Films like The Dark Knight aren't produced as a free gift to the geek with a network connection and a DVD burner.
When they came for The Pirate Bay I did not complain, because I used Mininova. When they came for Mininova I did not complain, because I had a Demonoid invite. When they came for Demonoid...
And, since the usual RIAA fanbois usually pop up once you mention Tor, casting FUD to scare people away from it, here's the EFF's legal FAQ, and here's the Tor FAQ.
Also note carefully what the parent said, namely, "Use Tor to access the trackers". Tor is, by default, set up to disable bittorrent transfers, since it heavily loads the Tor network. Here's one article which well explains Why you shouldn't run bittorrent over Tor.
And if you look at the default exit node policies (see section 4.16 of the Tor FAQ), the standard bittorrent ports are explicitly rejected. So you really don't want to run bittorrent over Tor.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
What should we do for that? They have no corporeal body and the government aren't stripping them of corporate status, so what should we do?
I know, take from them like they took from us.
Payback's a bitch, isn't it.
I love these wishful thinking posts.
Here's a newsflash for you: the authorities and big business have way, way more control over the Internet than you appear to realise. Companies like Google have the resources to index the entire web. Every major international pipe is controlled by one of a pretty small group of major telecomms companies. Despite the grand redundancy claims, there are plenty of single points of failure that will disconnect, or at least seriously inhibit, flow of data to or from entire countries.
You can make defiant noises about how impractical it would be for the authorities to police everything and how important net neutrality is, but TPB is the enemy here, because by its very existence and public position on openly breaking the law in most countries, it provides all the evidence that politicians and their major contributors need to justify not fighting for net neutrality and pushing for ever more surveillance and control.
A few years ago, there was all this talk about the Internet being some new, special place. Sorry, but it's neither above international agreements nor above individual countries enforcing their own laws and cutting off anyone who doesn't play nicely with their efforts to do so.
The world will be a better place for most people if the freedom that generally exists on the Internet is preserved, but if that freedom is abused by a vocal minority, the rest of us will all get shafted by the consequences.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
it didn't work in the last two days, but today it works again, my isp is fastweb
I semms like that Telecom, wich is italian n.1 priver, is just gibbering the DNS replay: A query for thepiratebay.org returns 127.0.0.1 . /etc/hosts should do:
So just a static record in you
# echo -e "83.140.176.200 thepiratebay.org\n83.140.176.156 torrents.thepiratebay.org" >> /etc/hosts
Or you (gentle italian reader) can just use a different DNS. Http is fine, so appears to be the peer to peer thing.
You know: it's not like I fell the need to download some copyrighted materials, it's just that _I_'m used to be the one who blocks things in my net, and I go mad when someone tricks my DNS (they did some other trash on those DNS some time ago as a sort of forwarder for mispelled domains: some one in there found a new toy and since then each day they play a new trick...).
That's just a glorified ad hominem attack. TPB's openly admitted purpose for existing is in violation of Italian law. When you break the law, you forfeit certain legal protections and certain freedoms. A public official blocking them from helping people to break the law isn't fascism or censorship, it's simply enforcing the law, and some random group of people who don't agree with the law do not get to decide what is the law for an entire country.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I fully understand the implications of said action. I'm just not particularly worried in this incident. They can *try* all they might to block TPB, but it won't work. Even if a few users are affected, there's so many torrent sites out there that it won't matter. Besides, there's always Tor.
If the law is fascist then yes, enforcing the law IS fascist.
It's blocked by at least one ISP here in Denmark as well. OpenDNS FTW!
Less knowledgeable, or pragmatic?
Not being able to access PirateBay isn't really critical. People can get their less-than-legal software and porn elsewhere, it's the principle that's important.
For what it's worth, I'm somewhat doubtful to whether or not most of the piratebay users really give a crap about free speech, net neutrality and so on, as long as they can download stuff for free...
Arrrrgh!!
You can't stop the signal, Mal!
Non potete arrestare il segnale, Mal!
Ah I say let the Italians (pronounced here in the US eye'talians) whine a bit, I mean we've seen them whine at football (us we call it soccer lol) I'd say after about three months they'll be begging PB to set servers up in the vatican just to shut the whinny people up. Trust me If you don't think it'll work ever seen a bunch of whinny people get to together. Its Usually poop and diapers everywhere, and its not a pretty site!
Now Italy will be exporting its wealth to the rest of the world and becoming relatively poorer.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yes. The western world needs more totalitarian dictators. Isn't it nice to have a Kim Jong-Il or Saddam Hussein in your country?
The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers.
A public official blocking them from helping people to break the law isn't fascism or censorship, it's simply enforcing the law
Enforcing the law or not, it is censorship. Whether you agree with it or not does not change the fact that it fits the definition of censorship.
some random group of people who don't agree with the law do not get to decide what is the law for an entire country
Are you objecting to people discussing what the law actually is, or discussing whether the law is right?
Our fascist corrupt government is trying to set up a precedent to block a bunch of sites which at present are the only way people can oppose the bastards who are governing us.
The criminal Silvio Berlusconi, our premier, already owns some of our major TV networks and controls what the others air, plus he owns or controls newspapers too. In other words people who are trying to oppose him cannot get any coverage on mainstream media; today the Internet is the only remaining media we can use to spread the word about his crimes, and he wants to block it as well.
Please don't let us alone, it's getting worse every day.
Would you please explain why you continue to elect such a corrupt, criminal asswipe as Berlusconi?
This is actually why their letter is NOT an ad-hominem attack. "Fascism" means (among other things) using the government to restrict people's freedoms. Thus, their accusation of fascism calls into question the validity of Italian laws, and provides a reason for them to ignore those laws.
If you want a reply with more punch, take the parent post and replace "TPB" with "the Dalai Lama" and "Italian" with "Chinese."
They are only blocking it like the gambling sites, through a DNS Poison.
Just changing to OpenDNS (Like I have 1-2 years ago) solves it.
In other words people who are trying to oppose him cannot get any coverage on mainstream media; today the Internet is the only remaining media we can use to spread the word about his crimes, and he wants to block it as well.
Hmm.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
The Pirate Bay was banned by the Italian internet regulators. They are accusing the regulators of being fascists. Having lived in Italy I can tell you that the Italian government is not run by Fascists. However Berlusconi does take the interests of businesses (usually his own) into consideration somewhat to the exclusion of others.
If you want a reply with more punch, take the parent post and replace "TPB" with "the Dalai Lama" and "Italian" with "Chinese."
OK...
Wow, I had no idea!
It's all so clear to me now.
I must kill the prime minister of malasia!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They have no right to strip away your capacity to consciously choose to break a law you feel is unjust.
They have a right to prosecute or litigate against you for it, but they don't have a right to impede your free will!
When you start doing this, it's called fascism. Information gets censored because it's "dangerous" and will "incite criminal actions". Butcher knives should be banned too! they are clearly designed with the express purpose of slicing flesh, and humans are made of flesh.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Or if you want to go a step further: use I2P for the entire download. That way, you're also fully anonymous.
I find it hilarious to see someone who's done far, far less to make the world a better place whine about TPB. TPB, on the otherhand, has brought a lot of enjoyment to this world to people who otherwise wouldn't have it. And helped bring about changes to a corrupt business industry which needs to be abolished.
I thank TPB for their efforts.I hope they get rich off of it. It looks like they are.
Let us know when you've managed to do something one millionth as noteworthy.
The "War on the greedy music biz" is failing. Or that is, it might be won, but at a high price. Running a small label I slowly started realizing that Im the one loosing the battle, not the major labels. The reason is simple. You wont find my music on TPB. And even when i put it there myself, people would still look around for Britney Schmears or whatever other brand the majors are launching at any given time through advertisements, media control and whatever. And even in the rare case they DO seek up my music, and even want to support my label by buying the record, they most likely wont be able to as most indies cannot distribute their records to all corners of the world until long after the air is out of the balloon.
It sounds more to me like the business model you have for your music is wrong.
1) I find it very hard to believe in this day and age that you couldn't sell world-wide through the Internet.
2) The fact that you don't even publish a link to your music here on Slashdot makes me believe that you're missing important business opportunities. Or is this connected with (1) (you would have no way to profit from Slashdotters being interested in your music)?
3) Your music may just be too "niche", in which case you'll just have to live with the reality that you're never going to be the next Brittney Spears, and will have to keep a day job also.
The problem is... You have to be breaking Italian law to make your argument valid in Italy, and there's a lot of stuff on TPB/LB that's quite legal to download in Italy simply because it either is free or not protected in Italy (the same goes for the all other countries). So, you say that because someone does download something illegal in Italy it is quite okay that all Italians loose certain freedoms and legal protections?
That's not enforcing the law, that's fascism.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
When you break the law, you forfeit certain legal protections and certain freedoms.
Well, Italy prime minister broke the law for more than ten years (a single entity can control no more than 2 of 12/13 national TVs) or changed the law to avoid prosecution in a corruption case, so in Italy it depends on who you are.
as of now, i can access TPB as well as always. but i have experienced some blocks in the past few days.
this is via ISP telecom italia business' network. Oh wait, I am using openDNS and maintain our own dns server.. so that would be the cause? so this block is via DNS only?
To me, this brings up a few questions, and maybe someone with a bit of knowledge about italian law can help me here.
1) How was this allowed to happen, what law was used here? I mean, they can't shut down access to a website because they don't like it (and with they I am referring to the Italian government). If they simply shut it down without applying a valid law then what is stopping them from shutting down access to, for example, cnn.com, if they don't like the content?
2) Had TPB been sued in Italy? I would assume that anyone should be given a fair chance to defend themselves, and if Italy feels TPB is breaking Italian laws, then they should sue them. I understand shutting down access to the site while the lawsuit is going on, and it is very likely TPB won't go to the Italian courts, but at least if it was done this way TPB would be given the option of defending themselves.
3) Stopping access to sites without the backing of a law simply has to be wrong, so if I am right in my assumtion that TPB has not been sued, any person should be able to sue the government / ISPs no?
But it's a glofiried ad hominem attack on Silvio Berlusconi, and hence is richly deserved.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Not just Berlusconi, look at the mayor of Rome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Alemanno
Seriously, Italy and Belgium are the only countries in europe that have a monthly limit. Why stop the small ones? the bigger oens are in countries that offer the golden standard of UNLIMITED broadband a month, at a fixed speed.
Since stuff like P2P and spam takes alot of bandwith without any of the service and content providers making money
Excuse me, but how do the ISPs make money? from users subscription. And why do users care that their internet access have decent bandwidth (beyond the cheap basic service they need to read their mail on google or yahoo?) because of large, multimedia downloads, which are effectively distributed (legally or illegally) over P2P.
The ISPs have no natural economic incentive to block whatever the users want to do, unless either:
a) they have a flawed billing model, where they provide extremely high bandwidth at a flat rate and expect users not to use it
OR b) anticompetitive, vertical integration: the ISPs are also content providers, and want to hook you into whatever shit they are selling you
Of course, anti-P2P regulation can provide such incentive (by giving ISPs big fines if they don't block P2P, for instance).
Fixed that for you.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Enforcing the law or not, it is censorship.
OK, strictly speaking, you're right. But in that sense, all IP laws are a form of censorship.
Are you objecting to people discussing what the law actually is, or discussing whether the law is right?
I'm not objecting to anyone discussing anything. I'm objecting to people breaking the law. Those people are free to pretend that they are on some moral crusade to justify that action, just as I am free to say their argument is a load of weasel words completely lacking in substance.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
OK, just stop with this one, please! TPB openly and repeatedly advertise their services directly to those who wish to break the law, and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that a heavy majority of the material identified by TPB is infringing.
There is a valid argument that technologies that have positive uses should not be prohibited just because they also have negative uses. That is a very important principle, but it does not apply here, because the Italian government is not going after BitTorrent technology, they are going after specific users of that technology whose publicly stated aim is a violation of Italian law. It's the difference between banning cars and banning drivers who think doing 90mph through a residential area is a legitimate use of cars. It's the difference between banning knives and banning the guy who sells combat knives outside a school known for its problems with violent pupils with a banner saying "If you don't like someone, just stab them!".
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
One of the big issues with the piracy problem is the situation the music industry got itself into in the first place. Humans are a rather stupid race when it comes to our perceived value of entertainment. 15$ is a reasonable representation of what a CD would cost you to purchase at a retailer. The CD itself is worth less than 1$, but letâ(TM)s assume we take the entire life of the CD as a music distribution medium and say that the IP is worth about 12$ of that ticket price. That leaves us with 1$ for the CD and 2$ for the box art, printing, and the plastic casing. 12$ for a recording of a performance is, well, completely outlandish. That is way too much money for what we get. The music industry should have NEVER been what it is today. It is not a host of talent filled individuals becoming famous for their talents; rather, it is marketing companies providing the population with what they will pay most for. The music industry is a heartless machine that sucks individuality out of our lives and replaces it with the same mundane crap day in and day out until we get bored. Lets be reasonable here, does anyone actually believe that a professional musician deserves more respect and money than say, any given engineer? Of course he/she does not. Musicians should only make about the same amount of money any other person with a 4 year education (yes, you should be required to attend a musical institution before you can be classified as a professional musician). Obviously, some people will bypass this and still make the same amount of money, just like inventors who can market their ideas without degrees. There are outliers, just like there are in every other professional field, but the general mass of professional musicians is streamlined into a bell curve of yearly earnings. The corporate industry behind the labels makes more of course, but just like respectable engineering firms they are not all filthy rich. Suddenly, the perceived value of the IP changes from being a penny from a heartless millionaire to the earnings of a respectable professional. Society would view it entirely differently. A compact disk featuring the IP of a band should be somewhere around 5-6$. With the option of purchasing individual tracks online for a reasonable price (10-12cents). If you feel that musical talent is hard to come by, and that they really do deserve that kind of money and respect, sit down and try to learn and instrument. If you take courses, learn the history and how music works, I assure you it is fairly easy. Anyone is capable of learning how to play an instrument. There is NOTHING special about being a good guitar player, or having a singing voice. It is a skill that is developed by rigor and training. Just like any other educational and marketable skill. If you make the music industry seem human, and introduce some hard work into the filthy money they make people will change their opinions on pirating. I know itâ(TM)s a sad place for indie music developers because they are exactly what the music industry should be, but there is nothing you can do about the situation. Youâ(TM)re a grain of sand in a beach full of boulders, I feel for you, but thatâ(TM)s just the way it is. The dream of being rich should have never, ever been there, you do not deserve it. The fact that society actually let people who produce the same crap over and over again have a higher income than those who spend years in university to save our lives and better our civilization makes me sick.
And, I might add, this party is explicitly against Italian Constitution.
if TPB wasn't a criminal organization, I might be worried, but guess what...they are nothing but criminals. /.'ers like sex (ok, they enjoy the thought they may have it someday)...so are they going to jump to the defense of rapist as well?
stop defending the criminals.
Tor is the answer to everything.
Use Tor to access the trackers. Problem solved.
Tor is only the "answer" if you think pirating movies, apps, music, etc is cool. Otherwise, the "answer" is to reform copyright law, and then respect it. Not everyone on Slashdot thinks all copyright violation and piracy is a good thing.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Isn't it just another torrent? Why does the Pirate's Bay get so much more press than all the other torrents?
Just google for what you want:
site:thepiratebay.org Nirvana ... and then click the "cache" links.
Incredibly useful when TPB is down, too (more often then not)
Also, lets get real, most of thepiratebays content links users to content which is being provided contrary to the laws of their countries.
Lots of people use their cars to speed, which is contrary to the laws of their countries - I don't see anyone advocating banning automobiles.
It's the same as the old VCR case - just because you could use something for illegal purposes doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to use it for legal purposes.
IP owners don't have any right. ...
there is no amendment in the US bill of rights, nor is there an article in the universal charter of human rights...
They certainly do have rights (though not extreme ones of course!). It is up to the governed to give up (willingly!) certain rights to facilitate their affairs (called "consenting to government"); it is not up to government to exist by fiat and hand out rights.
Even though the people who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights felt this was obvious, it is made very explicit in the ninth amendment to the US Constitution:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Human social government is an amicable (typically, and hopefully, that is) limitation on rights, not the broker of rights, let alone their source.
there is no amendment in the US bill of rights, nor is there an article in the universal charter of human rights, which reads "and IP owners hereby have more rights than others, including the right to veto all other rights detailed herein, because it threatens their almighty pocket books"
It's dishonest to say "they don't have any right" and then to back up your argument with an example that is exaggerated to the point of false caricature: "see, they don't have these unreasonable rights, therefore I can claim they don't have any right". I think you know your position is not rigorously founded, but since you like it anyway you thought demolishing a straw man was justified.
Your original statements are indeed insightful:
They have no right to strip away your capacity to consciously choose to break a law you feel is unjust.
They have a right to prosecute or litigate against you for it, but they don't have a right to impede your free will!
but they do require the modification suggested (at least):
No, you need to add some more qualifications to that, such as: As long as it doesn't step on anyone else's rights.
But then, if you did that, this case wouldn't apply, would it? Since the IP owners have rights and you'd be stepping on them.
Of course it would apply. The whole point you were making (without being so precise) was that the "rights" the IP owners have are derived through a social contract you (and others, as you probably guess!) find unjust. Their monopolizing "the useful arts" in effective perpetuity causes harm to society at large. Worse, their litigious "defense" (er, expansion) of these "rights" makes a beachhead for rights at the expense of others' rights, and draconian laws in general.
You just over-reacted to insightful but misapplied criticism.
I've been reading over this over the last days. Right now I'm on a free WiFi on a camping in Italy (yes, I do this even in vacation ^_^).
Here is the current situation. http://labaia.org/ was accessible yesterday night, currently http://thepiratebay.org/ http://labaia.org/ and even 83.140.176.200 try to point to localhost, so adding
to /etc/hosts was of no use. Using OpenDNS did not help. Probably back home, by having complete control over my internet connection, I could get around it somehow, but from here all I could do to make it work was to use a free online proxy (name yours, I used http://www.youtubeproxy.ws/ for the sake of the example). The Italian blogosphere reports that Tor works as well, but this is a much easier and faster solution IMHO, which does not require additional software installation.
As I wrote on the coverage of the event, this will only help strengthen the popularity of the torrent community and stimulate ways to circumvent government censorships. Italian politicians are generally very ignorant about internet-related topics, and this case makes no exception.
I can still remember when colombo-bt, the biggest Italian torrent tracker, was shut down by the police, the replacement page was made with front page....
At present, most of Italy's ISP are blocking the old TBP IP at access/core router level and/or fake the DNS answer to make it point to 127.0.0.1 or something like this.
Using OpenDNS should be enough to bypass the filter, since TBP changed to a new, unblocked IP.
A bad news is that "stop page" for the blocked site is hosted by a IFPI associate in UK. This means that they are recording IP addresses and requests made to the trakers/homepage/blog.
Even worse, after reading the order from the judge, and even if I'm not a lawyer (but I used to work as consultant in IT related topics during legal trials), I point out that there's no legal support for the judge to grant the "seizure" of TBP.
The preventive seizure is based on unproven assumption, deal without any law-based fundation, cite absolutely unrelated laws (basically the only stuff cited that is somehow related is a grant of innocence for ISP bearing E-Commerce related traffic in case of an external fraud.. I mean, what the hell should it be related to block of TBP?).
Moreover the Penal Prosecution Code (Codice di Procedura Penale) can't give any stuff to them since it was last updated in 1989 and is based on something written in early 1900 years.
Last, but not least, the same Code states that no foreign seizure can be requested or executed if there's no real chance for a final sentence of extradition, and it's not the case for sure, since Sweden justice already claimed TBP innocent, so the alleged crime simply isn't a crime in Sweden.
So they are basically playing out of their own rules, and I bet that if someone proposes appeal, it's going to win easily (given a good lawyer, of course).