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Pirate Bay To Offer VPN For $7 a Month
Death Metal sends along an Ars Technica piece about The Pirate Bay's plans for a virtual private network service to help ensure its users' privacy. "The Pirate Bay is planning to launch a paid VPN service for users looking to cover their tracks when torrenting. The new service will be called IPREDator, named after the Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) that will go into effect in April. IPREDator is currently in private beta and is expected to go public next week for €5 per month. ... IPREDator's website says that it won't store any traffic data, as its entire goal is to help people stay anonymous on the web. Without any data to hand over, copyright owners won't be able to find individuals to target. ... The question remains, however, if any significant portion of The Pirate Bay's users will decide to fork over 5 Euro per month solely to remain anonymous. It seems more likely that the majority either won't care, or will simply start looking for lesser-known torrent trackers to use."
7 dollars a month for VPN. Can you get it cheaper somewhere else?
How do you maintain that you're not expressly in the business of circumventing copyright law (as they did in the recent trial) when you offer a paid service that really has no other function?
Seems like a risky strategy.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
VPN networks may become useful if anti-sharing laws are passed or if sites starts to block foreign connection.
Still it is good to know people are preparing if things doesn't go as we hoped.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
You're as anonymous as your credit card details allow you to be. How are you supposed to pay for something web-based without handing over your details?
Furthermore, couldn't the courts just request THB hand over a list of paying customers if it were pertinent to a case?
ilovegeorgebush
You're supposed to do it anonymously, noob.
Oh, wait...
ilovegeorgebush
Considering you have to pay them somehow, won't the authorities be able to extradite the client information that way? Granted, The Pirate Bay claims they won't log your activity, but having an account with them might put you under scrutiny.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Why would anyone need to "cover their tracks when torrenting" unless he was doing something illegal?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If you are willing to pay something, why not use something else like the old University Networks. No uploads. Maximum download speeds your pipe can handle.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I hope that the RIAA and all the other IP zealots realize the delicious irony that if they hadn't come down so hard on the pirate bay to begin with, they might never have even though of offering such a strong way for its users to cover their own asses. Looks like the Copyright Overlords may have unintentionally done something right by trying to do something wrong!
I'm all for an anonymous web, however this is really quickly going to be the way thieves, crackers and all the other low lifes on the net do their work. I can tell you that if I were to try and break into something like the pentagon or some large financial institution I'd use this service. How long will it be before see a major break in originate from this service?
I can't believe someone beat the Tsarkon Report guy to the first post!
Rex Ping
Free to board, $7 for us to clean up behind you.
VPN services are just anonymous surfing... You don't have to use them solely for downloading by bittorrent, though many people do.
All TPB has to say is they're offering a privacy service. I think the Swedes would be cool with that, especially considering the only evidence there could be is that you bought the service. There's no way to tell what you did with it.
Also, it appears to be optional, so the last few sentences don't make sense except as sensationalism to sell ads on a website.
But will it also ensure copyright protections or protect IP holders' rights?
No, but why should it? many of us think that the current US copyright laws are unconstitutional, despite what SCOTUS says; Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig, for one, who argued that current copyright is unconstitutionally long in front of the Supremes. He details the reasons he lost, and what he did wrong that caused him (and us) to lose in his (copyrighted) book Free Culture, available for sale at your local bookstore, free at your local public library, or free on his web site.
After all, they wouldn't want to be aiding and abeting a criminal operation, would they?
I have no problem with aiding and abetting a criminal operation when I buy pot. Drug laws should also be judged unconstitutional; they needed a constitutional amendment to outlaw the dangerous drug alcohol, why would they not need the same to outlaw the relatively benign marijuana? Where in the Constitution (besides the much abused "interstate commerce clause", which could have theoretically been used for alcohol) does Congress have the right to stop me from screwing up my life any way I wish?
Copyright infringement is still a crime in the western world.
Copyright infringement is largely a civil matter. And Pirate Bay doesn't limit itself to the western world; the internet is world wide.
Free Martian Whores!
Years ago, the US Government opened up one of these Anonymous web surfing sites. There was no indication that it was the US Government. The let this run for considerable time. After a while, the truth came out in a proceeding. The US Government was using this Anonymous site to find people violating US law. Many people ended up in the tank.
If you send ALL your traffic to this VPN service, what makes you think you are safe? While PB may not log, what is to stop a government from forcing PB to place their own logging device inline?
After being a very quick and nice dialup service, Earthlink suffered a year of horrible response times, poor performance, and high drops. Then it quit, but not until after they lost a lot of subscribers. In a case it turned up that the US Government put these tracking devices inline between Earthlink and their backbone connections which was the cause of the slowdowns. The current crop, though, don't have this issue.
People need to think about these things.
The question remains, however, if any significant portion of The Pirate Bay's users will decide to fork over 5 per month solely to remain anonymous. It seems more likely that the majority either won't care, or will simply start looking for lesser-known torrent trackers to use."
Why would anyone move trackers just for this reason?
This shouldn't affect their normal services in any way, so the only reason someone might shift would be because of a moral problem with the service, correct?
And honestly, how many tpb users would switch in the context of a moral dilemma like this?
Suppose this takes off and TPB starts raking in cash.
This shows that even Pirates are willing to fork over money and pay for the products if the service is good enough and the price is low enough.
Netflix already has similar Pay-for-Unlimited-Access plans between $8 and $20... and if TPB is successful, I predict that more distributors will move to this service model.
Imagine Blockbuster or Amazon or iTunes saying: "Take whatever you want. Movies, music, ANYTHING. $20/month." They'd make a fortune. Hell, if you threw games in there, I'd personally pay like $100/month.
Why would anyone need to "cover their tracks when torrenting" unless he was doing something illegal?
Ah, careful there. You're coming dangerously close to arguing the old "mind of I search your car/house, what do you have to hide?"...
Remove the torrent-laced, copyright-riddled emotion from this for a moment. It's about offering users a service to stay anonymous while using the web. The concept is certainly not new (care for a fresh onion on your browser burger?), this one just happens to be offered by a fairly popular website. Something tells me if Google were to offer the same thing, we wouldn't be talking about people hiding Gmail content.
Sorry, I meant to say I want to use the VPN for trolling Slashdot.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I don't get this blurb from the headline. Seems to me like this service wouldn't be mainly targeted at users accessing torrent trackers. This is anonymity for the Internet in general, and torrent trackers are only one small part of that.
Furthermore, I'm not familiar with any case so far that is based on turning over the logs from a website to get the users. I don't think that would present a strong enough case that someone is sharing, which is what they've been getting people on. Instead, they've been snooping the actual upload traffic from people by requesting downloads based on everything I've been seeing.
No, but it doesn't hurt those things either. I wouldn't worry about a tool that only serves one purpose and doesn't address others. For example, my car helps ensure I can travel, but it doesn't help me shave my beard. And yet, people who shave don't avoid using cars. IP holders who want privacy aren't going to be unusually (moreso than not-IP-holders) biased against using this VPN service.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Relakks, anyone?
Strange that TFA doesn't mention it.
have you been defaced today?
Soon last.fm will charge for most non-US users. If the VPN gives me an american IP, I could listen to last.fm again. So it's 7 euros for VPN to listen to last.fm, which charges 3 euros... Well, I get to see all other goodies for americans only like Zulu and the like.
I'm not going to argue that providing a VPN service is in any way illegal. But please don't tell me that the majority of the customer base (if there actually is any, we'll see) is going to use this for legitimate purposes. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. (I'll' limit the rest of this to music): I am so sick of this stupid argument. It's illegal to download copyrighted works (without owner consent, etc), and everyone knows it. If you want to tell the RIAA/BMG/Sony something, just stop listening to their music instead of giving them a target. There's lifetimes worth of free music out there, go listen to some of that if you really want to tell the big record companies something. "I love your product so much, I'm willing to steal it!" is the only message you're sending here. Listen to some internet radio. Like what you hear? Go buy the album which is probably available at places like CD Baby, and very likely has been released by the artist themselves. No evil record companies required, only "good people" get the money. /rant. That's the first time (as far as I remember) that I've gotten into this argument. Hopefully the last.
Good point, and I can only hope that it does come true. However, I remain skeptical as things are not looking good:
Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Sadly enough, IPRED is no april's fool joke.
Why don't they just give away free VPN access? Aren't they all about protecting "Freedom"
Their porno ads should make them enough money already.
The idea is vulnerable to traffic analysis. Once the IPs of the PB VPN endpoints are known, last mile providers could just drop traffic from them.
The whole point of P2P is to use the bandwidth of each client as a server in addition. This relies on a network being distributed without a central bottleneck.
VPNing in to TPB will introduce just such a bottleneck, killing performance. Or have they figured out a way to do point-to-point VPNing between all registered users?
What VPN technology are they using? How does it work?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Oh, crap. We need to sue Winrar. After all, everybody uses rars for piracy! If you weren't pirating you'd just use Zip! Ignore all the arguments otherwise! YES, KILL BUSINESSES WHICH PRODUCE SCARY SOUNDING PRODUCTS!
Virtual Pirate Network, ijaaaaaaarrrr
Oh come on, everyone was thinking it.
I don't think he paid the $7 fee to do that ...
I'm not sure I want to be on the Cosa-Nostra Care Center staff, even if only 0.1% of their customers are criminal
Nullius in verba
Nothing to hide? argument again.
"Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect."
Can Chloe O'Brien set up a secure channel for me?
Let's cut through the crap here.
There is a reason they call it Pirate Bay.
The more commercial and expansive the operation becomes the greater the risk for the Swedes. This is not a particularly good time to be alienating your major trading partners.
So ecplain to me why the sterotypically tin-foiled - paranoid - geek - is looking at a VPN service that will be obviously under the gun from the day it launches.
While 99% of the comments here debate the morality of whether this is right or not, I'd like to ask: Would this even *work*?
Let's suppose you're torrenting the latest hollywood movie and you're using TPB's VPN. The copyright police are out there, searching for people sharing it. They're paying the $7 for an account, too. So, they try to get a piece of the movie from you. I can only figure two ways they get the data: 1) TPB gives the downloader your real IP and instructs the downloader's VPN software to contact you directly (in which case, you're busted. Granted, nobody will know what traffic you exchanged with the copyright police except you and them... but you're still busted), or 2) all of the traffic goes through TPB, in which case you get a huge bottleneck... although, maybe they're planning on affording a huge pipe and huge servers at $7 per month per user.
Is there some other way this is supposed to work that I'm not seeing?
I have personally tried a few of these VPNs for just this purpose.
It was mostly slow and unreliable.
However TPB has a USP: They deal with I suspect some huge ass pipes. They will be able to buy a lot of bandwidth at prices most small and even medium sized ISPs would love to get.
I suspect they will have some large support from certain anonymous people with financial clout
Also think about it this way, if you torrent just a few torrents, you may only get 100K/s per torrent, so combined you are running 200K/s. You can fit 4-5 of them per MBit. Then. Wholesale price I suspect is a lot lower than $28-32 per Mbit, when buying multiple GBit pipes, obviously you have to include cost of encryption hardware, support etc but I suspect they will do ok.
Another idea that I think would be great is to offer a per MBit price, so you pay for upto 5MBit, you get 5Mbits worth of pipe. Then for $4 or whatever you can do .5Mbit- Appeals to a wider audience.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
If say 5% of bitorrent users get the service and use it how could they afford the bandwidth costs at $7 an account. Now I know that a some of the traffic would remain on their network and wouldn't need to get out to the public net, but I can't imagine that $7 would cover even the bandwidth costs for the traffic going out of their network. Perhaps they plan on throttling the traffic, which would be ironic to a scary level.
Also I'm not that familiar with the technology behind bitorrent or how it works. But wouldn't this create a huge swarm on their network and another huge swarm at the point of their internet feed. How would this affect the protocol?
How do you maintain that you're not expressly in the business of circumventing copyright law (as they did in the recent trial) when you offer a paid service that really has no other function?
Seems like a risky strategy.
Why should i? Around these parts its "innocent until proven guilty" beyond a reasonable dobut.
Using a *legal* service is not grounds for being guilty of anything, other then perhaps paranoia.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No, but why should it? many of us think that the current US copyright laws are unconstitutional, despite what SCOTUS says; Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig, for one, who argued that current copyright is unconstitutionally long in front of the Supremes. He details the reasons he lost, and what he did wrong that caused him (and us) to lose in his (copyrighted) book Free Culture, available for sale at your local bookstore, free at your local public library, or free on his web site.
I do agree that the present copyright laws are unreasonably restrictive (especially as far as terms go). However, if we had a breakdown of copyrighted material illegally distributed via Pirate Bay by release year, how many of those would you expect to be still copyrighted even under the original U.S. copyright terms (which was 14 years initially + explicit 14 years extension, so 28 years)? I would expect 90%+. In fact, I would expect that most of the content wouldn't even reach a 10 year term yet.
This could seriously lead to legislation that outlaws encryption. Until now, encryption hasn't hurt corporate profits. I expect the Honorable Senator from Disney to make encryption, and by extension, VPN, illegal. --edfardos
Isn't this what relakks already is? I thought the same guys the run TPB run relakks and relakks is nothing but an encrypted VPN, right?
1) A lot of these battles between 'the pirates' of various types and copyright/content owners has to do with maintaining control over distribution, not just money.
The RIAA is probably the best (or most obvious) case of this, as, without maintaining their role as a middle-man, eventually we'll reach a point where it's hard to see exactly what value they add (some would say we've already reached that point).
2) Tragedy of the anticommons. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons)
When you have multiple owners of a resource, where to do something or other requires complete unanimous agreement of all parties, then all it takes is one person to "overvalue" their interests/rights/property to bring it all to a screeching halt for everybody.
This is, in the real estate world, generally why we have the concept of "eminent domain". If the government (or some other party) wants to build a railroad for example, if it requires the unanimous consent of all property owners along the proposed rail line, then it only takes one (out of perhaps hundreds or even thousands) crackpot who's overvalued his land by a couple orders of magnitude to screw it up for everybody.
Maybe we'll reach a point in the future where we'll have the equivalent of eminent domain for IP?
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
What is the value of using the original US terms of copyright? The original terms of copyright in the US didn't apply to foreign owned works, if you were a British author your works had zero copyright protection in the US. Given that almost every studio is a multinational or completely foreign owned, under the original terms of copyright their products would have little or no protection either.
See the problem with using the original terms as the benchmark?
Times have changed. It has always been human nature to share cool stuff with others, back when the original US terms of copyright were written into law it was nearly impossible to make copies, the general public were limited to tedious handwriting or more commonly oral story telling and live performances. Thus the original terms were no great burden on the public.
Now, because anyone has the ability to easily share cool stuff with friends and strangers alike it is a huge burden to restrict that ability, even for a few days. It is a burden on the people so restricted and it is a huge burden on anyone whose job it is to enforce the restrictions.
It is kind of like arguing that US export limits on computers set back in the 80s (attempting to prevent foreign ability to develop home-grown military tech) should apply today - rolling back the restrictions to under 5mips doesn't help because computers aren't even manufactured in the US anymore. It is orthogonal to the real issue - the world has changed and going backwards sure doesn't help to catch up with modern reality.
One guy makes a reasoned argument, and the next guy quotes a catchphrase.
OK, this one wasn't so bad, because he simply pointed out that it was a dangerous path to travel down, rather than saying "you're wrong, because the catch phrase said so".
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
What is the value of using the original US terms of copyright?
It was just a specific historical example of the more reasonable terms, for the whole "copyright is okay if it weren't extended all the time" crowd (to which I myself belong).
If you think that copyright has no reasons to exist regardless of its scope, then it was not intended for you (and I do not know any good arguments; at that point, it's a matter of personal beliefs, not rational reasoning).
According to TFA, which I read at Ars earlier, they will specifically NOT be logging. So billing records, sure, but logging, no -- at least not pre-case. At least in the US (which this is not, what laws apply there I don't know), the service provider can be ordered to keep logs on a specific account, given sufficient cause. Originally the provider could demand a warrant (whether they did or not was of course up to them, the AOLs of the world infamously did NOT), but of course the (non-)Patriot Act did away with that and the Bush admin pushed even further, with fallout still winding its way thru the courts and the Obama admin justice dept. unfortunately often siding with the Bush admin justice dept. arguments.
So while general logging may not be the case, individual logging must be assumed as possible by anyone using the service, at least beyond whatever reaction period might be necessary to actually get such an order.
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
You should probably worry more about whether a concept is right or wrong than trying to stereotype the style in which it is presented like that's some kind of insight. In fact, I would go further to say that the reasoning of 'you're wrong because the pithy phrase said so' is actually more sound than 'you're wrong because you quoted somebody'. A phrase can itself be right or wrong, sound or unsound, relevant or irrelevant, but categorically dismissing arguments because they center on one is irrational.
I will grant you didn't explicitly say that this is how such arguments should be handled, but at the very least you imply that they are somehow intrinsically inferior, regardless of how sound, relevant or even correct the reference made might be.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Wrong. I'm not trying to stereotype (unlike yourself right now).
I guess the keyword is 'trying'? Because you were stereotyping. 'I see this a lot in arguments against libertarians' is a generalization of observation about a group. It is objectively equivalent in meaning to 'I see Jews being miserly a lot' or what have you. It's an oversimplified negative observation (albeit the negative is a later referenced antecedent) that you're trying to apply to a group of people. Textbook denotation of a stereotype. So, if the keyword is 'trying' then I guess I have to accept that your stereotyping is an accident, but if you're arguing that you're not stereotyping, you might as well be pointing at a cat and calling it a dog.
As for me, only by a very subjective standard (specifically how much is something oversimplified) could my argument be considered a stereotype. Even that would be a stretch, since stereotyping connotes assumptions about groups much more than individuals, and I was talking only about you and what you said, never once saying 'you fall into group X, which is bad'.
(If I might borrow your own logic momentarily, I must say I've seen a pattern in the behavior of Slashdot 'intellectuals' to knee jerk about the first assigned negative and assign it back to the accuser whether it's the least bit rational or not.)
... but they're at a rhetorical disadvantage for ignoring the other guy's arguments, and quoting the one-size-fits-all phrase instead.
I can see and accept this as a reasonable perspective for your original post.
Another example: it's a fairly common argument to say "Stereotyping is wrong". This too has conditions attached to it. It's great (mostly) if someone is stereotyping a group. It's not so great if someone is passively observing a trend.
Too bad observations about a group, such as you made, are within the definition of stereotyping. The observations may be true, but it is an oversimplification (by nature) of the attributes or behavior of a group.
See how it works?
Another Slashdot favorite. Now ask yourself.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Sure. Just open a socket on my desktop and I'll stream it over.
Isn't Relakks offering just the same thing for P2P users?
It is in Sweden, btw.
Does anyone use it?
There is a common stereotype that wherever there is an observation of a trend correlating with a specific group, there is also a stereotype, but that isn't always true (although, it commonly is - I've noticed that trend myself). I made an observation, but I never generalised it, neither explicitly nor in implication (accept it, or prove me wrong). Thus it's not a stereotype. The whole thing just doesn't fit, despite your attempts to shoehorn me into the stereotype mould.
Yeah, but there isn't logic in there, only observation. If you said that Slashdot 'intellectuals' knee jerk ... (etc, the rest of your observation), there would be the implied logic that because you made the original observation, it applies to generally to all Slashdot 'intellectuals'. Therein lies the stereotype.
Or if you made that observation, and then concluded that my argument was without merit from that observation alone, then you would be stereotyping me. Always, always, there must be something more than a simple observation in order for there to be a stereotype.
Just as a side note, I have argued with a lot of Slashdotters over the years over a variety of issues, and I have accused people (and been accused myself) of hypocrisy in much the same fashion as you have observed. It's a rhetorical technique that actually fits a surprising number of situations. Which is why, I take the effort to be careful with my words. As I said, I have been accused many times of hypocrisy, but I cannot think of a single time that someone has accused me of hypocrisy, and not have their claims subsequently, and conclusively disproved. Just a warning, in case you wished to try it on me.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It was just a specific historical example of the more reasonable terms, for the whole "copyright is okay if it weren't extended all the time" crowd (to which I myself belong).
Those terms were reasonable within their own historic context. They would not be reasonable even today.
If you think that copyright has no reasons to exist regardless of its scope, then it was not intended for you (and I do not know any good arguments; at that point, it's a matter of personal beliefs, not rational reasoning).
I absolutely disagree that it is about belief and not rational reasoning. I thought I did a good job of laying out a rational argument for why copyright is infeasible within the context of the modern world. I'll try to do it again, but if I'm missing something then this will probably be a broken record:
Copyright in the modern world is unenforceable. The cost to enforce it is way out of balance compared to the cost of enforcement before the internet. Today anyone can distribute tens of thousands of copies of any number of works to others for little effort. Whats more, unlike other crimes like murder, rape, assault, etc - people are naturally hardwired to share ideas, especially when it costs them practically nothing to share. So you have a situation where essentially everybody has motive and means to break the law.
Thus, no matter how beneficial copyright may or may not be (which, I will concede *is* a matter of opinion) the cost of enforcing anything remotely like copyright will dwarf even the most optimistic evaluation of the benefits of copyright.
Thus, no matter how beneficial copyright may or may not be (which, I will concede *is* a matter of opinion) the cost of enforcing anything remotely like copyright will dwarf even the most optimistic evaluation of the benefits of copyright.
Ah, but you do not need to enforce it to its fullest, vigorously tracking down every single case, no matter how scarce the evidence. That, indeed, would be quite unenforceable. But most people really only need to know that there is a chance - however slight - to get caught, to cut down on copyright infringing very significantly. Which is pretty much the situation that we have today. If it were a free-for-all, I'd imagine that a lot of content creators, which now make a profit even with all the piracy losses, would become unprofitable overnight.
Which is pretty much the situation that we have today.
You seem to be implying that the current situation, other than duration, is perfectly acceptable.
Byzantine laws, life-ruining fines, FBI task forces, copyright czars, strained international relations, ridiculous licensing requirements where samples of just six notes or 5 seconds of a painting in the background of a video don't qualify as fair use. All of those costs - enforcement or otherwise - are hugely destructive to our culture.
If it were a free-for-all, I'd imagine that a lot of content creators, which now make a profit even with all the piracy losses, would become unprofitable overnight.
Obviously there are lots of people who make money under the current system, but they are propped up by all the losses of the people who get the short end of the stick. Consumers, creators and tax payers who are bearing the costs of the current system.
I have been following this project for years and while I knew it was a good idea I just never thought we would need it so soon.
Please, show your support. Even if it is just spreading the word.
http://freenetproject.org/
Rooster - A friend. "Anyone's friend in particular or just generally well disposed to people?"