Mininova Starts Filtering Torrents

Dreen writes with this snippet from TorrentFreak: "Just a few days before their court appearance, Mininova, the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, has started to filter content. The site is using a third-party content recognition system that will detect and remove torrent files that link to copyright-infringing files."

Comments

Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us know how that works out for you.

Re:Lol.

[eric-x]

1. no one said 'always'
2. method of delivery has nothing to do with content. I presume you also think http is evil because there are sites that use http to serve copyrighted files.

Re:Lol.

[Dan541]

I never said I don't download copyrighted content.

Stop generalising.

I don't steal, but I do download.

Coming up next

[Anonymous Coward]

Mininova collapses. How Mininova went from being the largest BitTorrent site to being the smallest.

Re:Coming up next

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Mininova collapses.

Mini-blackhole?

Re:Coming up next

[Scott Kevill]

Mininova collapses. How Mininova went from being the largest BitTorrent site to being the smallest.

Like a Suprnova collapsing, but with a smaller burst of radiation beforehand.

Re:Coming up next

[mister_playboy]

They don't host their own tracker, so they weren't really putting anything on the line before anyway. This isn't surprising to me.

Re:Coming up next

[jollyreaper]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxtBG6FfSSw&NR=1

Remember when that other site got taken down, supernova I think? Yeah, it got taken down and nobody could find torrents anywhere else on the interweb after that.

In other news, traffic suddenly spikes at a new site, moninova. Hrmmm.

Re:Coming up next

[Anonymous Coward]

Note your parent's spelling of Supernova. He's referencing the same site you're referencing..

Re:Coming up next

[ThePhilips]

You have to remember that Mininova was always something secondary/tertiary - before first SuperNova and then TorrentSpy both went under.

It had became "largest" solely because RIAA/MPAA have eliminated already everybody larger than MN.

TokyoTosho probably remains now sole source of anime torrents.

Re:Coming up next

[tagno25]

TokyoTosho probably remains now sole source of anime torrents.

I use nyaatorrents and boxtorrents to get most of my anime.

If you want a anime release search try baka-updates.com

Re:Coming up next

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you did there!

Re:Coming up next

[BurzumNazgul]

This is par for the course when it comes to Torrent indexes. They become popular and appear on the radar of money hungry lawyers and are forced into collapse. It happened to Supranova and TorrentSpy and now it's happening to mininova. We'll just have to wait for the next one to come along.

Re:Coming up next

[kingcobra0128]

They will not exist soon enough going from actually being useful to not. Good thing we have easier means of getting stuff

Re:Coming up next

[fprintf]

No, because perhaps the people that think "hey, I know, let's start a torrent tracker so we can easily find torrents of X, Y and Z content" will reconsider because of what has happened to *all* of the largest services so far. That is, unless someone makes a conscious effort to a) only allow torrents that are fully legal (*nudge nudge, wink wink) or b) stay small enough to be smaller than the largest X # of sites.

Re:Coming up next

[shark72]

You win the prize for today.

One of the big strawmen foisted by the pro-piracy community is that Big Media thinks they can stop all piracy. The reality is that Big Media simply wants to keep it from going truly mainstream. By picking the low-hanging fruit, the goal is to scare people away from starting new trackers. If enough people are scared off, then the theory is that there won't be another TorrentSpy or Mininova in the USA -- just a number of smaller sites that stay under the radar.

It's very much like anti-theft measures at retailers and built into cars. The folks who put them in place know darn well that they won't stop everybody, but if they stop the bottom 80%, then it's a worthy investment.

Re:Coming up next

[h4rm0ny]

Yep. It's going to be very hard to get rid of all the torrent sites out there. But people like TPB were actually a very large and profitable group. If the profit can be taken out of running a big site, then you wont see many altruistic (for want of a better term) funding operations on that size. I'd guess that the most viable next step for people who want to organize a larger operation is to move it to a country that will support it. But this reduces both the pool of people that might do this and opens the site up to blocking internationally. The latter can obviously be routed around quite easily (though it may still limit things through adding extra inconvenience), but the former is more likely to be an issue I would think. The number of safe haven countries for dubious online activities is shrinking I think.

There are technological defensive measures that the pirates can take, keeping themselves anonymous, trackerless torrents, etc. This is a battle that can be won in a sense, but can it be won when the aim is to get a large mass of people to adopt these measures? The ante is definitely being upped.

For the world outside of Slashdot (where people argue the moral right to mooch), piracy has been popular because it is easy, free and seemingly without consequence. If any of those three can be eliminated, then piracy will drop sharply, I suspect.

Re:Coming up next

[ThePhilips]

I use nyaatorrents

Then you might be also interested in Anirena. Lots of groups track their releases here too.

... and boxtorrents to get most of my anime.

Probably they are better now, but in past they had pretty f***ed up registration process. Now they also feature mostly private torrents and their tracker is more than often down. Needless to mention that they host mostly complete shows - meaning really few of new stuff.

If you want a anime release search try baka-updates.com

That's a good hint! And they also have RSS.

Still, baka + nyaa + anirena are good to track releases of well established funsubbers. You can't beat TokyoTosho if you want to discover more different anime done by some lesser known (or unknown) groups/people.

Re:Coming up next

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's very much like anti-theft measures at retailers and built into cars. The folks who put them in place know darn well that they won't stop everybody, but if they stop the bottom 80%, then it's a worthy investment.

One big difference is that few people are thieves, but it is human nature to share stuff, especially when you can give it away to people and still keep it at the same time. So while anti-theft measures only have to contend with a very small portion of the population, anti-piracy measures are up against nearly 100% of the human race. Simply scaring a few people off here and there isn't sufficient.

Re:Coming up next

[Molochi]

Security through obscurity.

We need a tracker that only tracks torrents of lists of other trackers that don't use google to advertise them.

Re:Coming up next

[TheoMurpse]

I don't even download anime, and I could name three that still remain, and they're all big. I won't, though.

Re:Coming up next

[Anonymous Coward]

But people like TPB were actually a very large and profitable group.

Citation, please. (Bold text highlighted by me for clarity as to what I'm referring to.)

Preferably not from either "side" but from a reputable and verifiable source.

(In short: I don't believe you. Not one bit. Also, to be clear: The prosecution in the infamous court case at no time managed to present any evidence whatsoever of any profits being made at all, not to mention of any significance. So as I said. I don't believe you. But if you can produce some credible evidence, I might reconsider. Good luck.)

Re:Coming up next

[h4rm0ny]

Citation, please. (Bold text highlighted by me for clarity as to what I'm referring to.)
Preferably not from either "side" but from a reputable and verifiable source.
(In short: I don't believe you. Not one bit. Also, to be clear: The prosecution in the infamous court case at no time managed to present any evidence whatsoever of any profits being made at all, not to mention of any significance. So as I said. I don't believe you. But if you can produce some credible evidence, I might reconsider. Good luck.)

Well if you immediately rule out something from one "side" or the other, you're going to make it very difficult for yourself to find any figures at all. But rather than get into an argument with you on who it is acceptable to believe or not, the relevant point of the above is that it is expensive to run a setup as big as TPB. And in this case, TPB themselves will support my argument since their own defense in court stated that their running costs were something in the order of US$110,000p/a (your citation). If you're going to break even with those sorts of running costs, you need to be bringing in a sizable income which brings us back to my original point - not many people are going to be risking those sorts of sums of money when the law may shut them down at any minute. Which returns us to what I've been saying: small torrent sites, not big operations like TPB. I suspect we'll see the end of Mininova in its current form soon enough, though various micro-novas will pop up afterwards, I'm guessing.

Why Bother

[Anonymous Coward]

They're still going to end up in court.

Re:Why Bother

[Animaether]

Yes they are - but now they can more-or-less show 'good faith' to the judge.

Currently mininova - knowing full well the reason why people use their site - simply go by the strict laws.. if a copyright holder / representative tells them they're hosting particular copyrighted content, they'll take it down.

Of course it will be back up there 5 minutes later. This is pissing the Dutch interest groups off who are trying to slap the mininova people around a bit with other laws / more loose interpretations.

But now they can say "ahh, but look.. we installed a filter.. it's not our fault that them sneaky pirates find ways around those filters.. it would be *impossible* for us to manually go over each and every upload!".. then hope to exit the court grinning while their main page continues to display top 10 lists of every popular category with scarce 'legal' torrents (I think the Windows 7 Release Candidate was the only one when I checked yesterday and yes, I know there's nothing illegal about a torrent file itself.. splitting hairs over technical details is what they'll be doing in court).

Re:Why Bother

[LordSnooty]

yeah, cos it worked for TPB didn't it...

Re:Why Bother

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I think the Windows 7 Release Candidate was the only one

I'm too lazy to double-check, but I would be mightily surprised if MS had consented to unregulated 3rd party distribution of any version of windows. Just because MS lets people freely download it from their own servers, and possibly those of a handful of designated 3rd parties, doesn't mean they've given permission for just anyone to distribute it.

Re:Why Bother

[Animaether]

quite possibly so

But at least you -can- download that legally without restrictions from the copyright holder itself; unlike the other results.

that's all I meant, really, but you're absolutely right that Microsoft probably hasn't authorized alternative distribution channels /nokarma

Re:Why Bother

[mdwh2]

Currently mininova - knowing full well the reason why people use their site - simply go by the strict laws.. if a copyright holder / representative tells them they're hosting particular copyrighted content, they'll take it down.

Well I'm curious what the law is in wherever-it-is-that-Mininova is filtered?

In the US, responding to takedown notices is all that's required, and there is no obligation ("good faith" or otherwise) to do more. My understanding is that the problem with TPB was that they didn't respond to takedown notices (can anyone confirm?)

Furthermore, installing filtering software may run the risk of them being more liable, as they surely give up any claim of being a "common carrier".

I would be extremely worried if Mininova were found guilty for not actively filtering, even when they responded to takedown notices. Consider, how would one hypothetically run a legal bittorrent search engine (because there are at least a few legal bittorrents out there)? Would a bittorrent search engine be illegal simply because they fail to remove the link to copyrighted information even without a takedown notice? How does that make them any different to Google (not to mention ISPs and other hosts that make host actual copyrighted material, and not merely links to them)?

Re:Why Bother

[Macthorpe]

There's a difference between the Mininova defense and the TPB defense:

Mininova: "These are copyrighted, yes, but we do our best to remove content when flagged and we've even installed a filter to remove it automatically. It's not our fault if people still try and get around that."

TPB: "These are copyrighted, yes, but we don't fucking care. Ahahaha, losers."

I'm sure you can pick up the subtleties...

Re:Why Bother

[bluesatin]

Bear in mind that the takedown requests are based on the "Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA)" and is a law in the United States and should therefore have no legal basis in another country.

Re:Why Bother

[mdwh2]

Oops, I mean "Well I'm curious what the law is in wherever-it-is-that-Mininova is hosted" of course.

Re:Why Bother

[noundi]

There's a difference between the Mininova defense and the TPB defense:

Why is this modded +5 insightful!? The trials take/took place in different countries, which naturally don't hold the same laws. That is the only difference that matters as equal crimes will be treated differently in different countries.

-1, self centred.

Re:Why Bother

[Talderas]

I would be mightily surprised if MS had consented to unregulated 3rd party distribution of any version of windows. Just because MS lets people freely download it from their own servers, and possibly those of a handful of designated 3rd parties, doesn't mean they've given permission for just anyone to distribute it.

Most likely, especially since you still have a product key for the version of Windows 7 that you download. I'm making some assumptions here, but I'm guessing that you aren't issued a product key when you download Windows 7 via a torrent or an authorized 3rd party distributor. This would mean that Microsoft could technically go after torrent seeders as unauthorized distributors committing copyright infringement.

Re:Why Bother

[KillerBob]

No, he's right. The behaviour of the sites in question has a huge impact on the outcome... Mininova is at least attempting to appear as though they're cooperating with copyright holders. TPB, by contrast, has a long history of replying to C&D letters by telling them things like "This is Sweden, you've got no jurisdiction, silly American coroporation, so fuck off" and then posting said takedown notice on their site so that everybody can read their ridicule.

There's a slight difference. And the copyright laws aren't really *that* different in Sweden when compared to the Netherlands.

Re:Why Bother

[RulerOf]

The trials take/took place in different countries, which naturally don't hold the same laws.

He was pointing out the differences in the defense put forth by each, not the difference in the laws of the country in which the trial took place.

His point stands, I think. A big "Fuck you guys" is gonna get you on the shitlist of pretty much any judge, court, or (probably) jury.

Re:Why Bother

[noundi]

No, he's right. The behaviour of the sites in question has a huge impact on the outcome...

Oh is he now? I would very much like to see what you're basing this "fact" on. Most likely your only references are other American trials, but prove me wrong and I'll stand corrected.

There's a slight difference. And the copyright laws aren't really *that* different in Sweden when compared to the Netherlands.

If you had any idea what you were talking about you'd know that the question is not about breaking or not breaking copyright laws, the question is about assisting in breaking copyright laws. This doesn't exist everywhere, Sweden included, I would know as I'm a Swede.

I'll admit I don't know much about Dutch law, but what I do know is that it resembles Swedish law more than American law as both countries are very social democratic. I don't intend to flamebait but seriously, the world doesn't spin around the US. Read, learn, understand, then speak. I hate to make this about the US but you and your ignorant assumptions drive people into it. Stereotyping is bad, statistics are facts.

Re:Why Bother

[Animaether]

Correct - usually these sites are targeted under a "facilitating [whatever]" type thing;

"Hij benadrukt daarbij dat er, volgens hem, niets grijs is aan illegale torrentsites en trackers. 'Zij faciliteren de inbreuk en de torrents zijn ook een onmisbaar bestanddeel van de inbreuk. Dat is onrechtmatig, en een strafbaar feit,'" - citing Tim Kuik, BREIN (kinda like the riaa and mpaa and whatnot rolled into one).

To translate..
"He stresses that, according to him, torrentsites and trackers do not operate in a gray area. 'They facilitate the infringements and the torrents are a necessary part of the infringement. That is unlawful and a criminal act,'"

So regardless of whether mininova hosts the data, or even hosts the torrent files, if BREIN so wishes, they can sue under Dutch law.. and they are suing (court case upcoming). Whether the judge will agree with BREIN is another matter - but realistically, he would, and the arguments would be more about what damages are to be awarded.

Re:Why Bother

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, all those companies talking about DMCA. I like TPB response:

As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States
of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe.
Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here.

Re:Why Bother

[noundi]

I can sue you for anything under any law no matter the alleged "crime", that's fundamental. The problem is Sweden. Our shit-in-the-pants nation is so scared of international friction that nobody expected any other initial outcome for the TBP trials. The sentence however has been appealed and will most likely be tried in the Swedish surpreme court as well. Whatever "standard" this trial set is definetly going challenged. Still EU is not US. Just because it passed in Sweden it doesn't make it any EU "standard" by default, and if the judge would consider this as an important factor he's wrong and should be prosecuted. Dutch law is dutch law and Swedish law is swedish law. A criminal in Sweden is not a criminal in Holland until he's trialed and sentenced in Holland. Period.

Re:Why Bother

[KillerBob]

I'll admit I don't know much about Dutch law, but what I do know is that it resembles Swedish law more than American law as both countries are very social democratic. I don't intend to flamebait but seriously, the world doesn't spin around the US. Read, learn, understand, then speak. I hate to make this about the US but you and your ignorant assumptions drive people into it. Stereotyping is bad, statistics are facts.

And I know it's difficult for you to comprehend, but it's possible, even likely, that I'm not an American, and that I haven't set foot in the USA in more than a decade. The closest I've been to the US in recent memory was a flyover while I was on my way to the Netherlands Antilles (CuraÃao) for a vacation in January.

If you had any idea what you were talking about you'd know that the question is not about breaking or not breaking copyright laws, the question is about assisting in breaking copyright laws

When have I said it's about breaking copyright laws?

If you actually read what I said, you'll notice that I said that it's appearances that matter. Mininova is trying to appear as though they are trying to help the copyright holders keep their rights, by removing copyrighted material when asked, and by trying to develop a filter. How effective that filter turns out to be is completely irrelevant. TPB responded to takedown requests by laughing at them and posting them publicly.

In other words, Mininova is trying to appear as though they are inhibiting the infringement, whereas TPB was trying to appear as though they were facilitating it. It's got nothing to do with whether or not the site itself is infringing on copyrights by linking torrents, and everything to do with how the site reacts to requests from copyright holders.

And appearances are all that matters. Mininova could implement a completely innefectual filter, but from having put it there in the first place, they can still claim that they're trying to help, and escape the kind of punishment that TPB has earned.

If you had any idea what you were talking about you'd know that the question is not about breaking or not breaking copyright laws, the question is about assisting in breaking copyright laws.

While I prefer not to flame, I feel I should point out that if you want any credibility, it helps to actually read what the person you're replying to is saying. This being Slashdot, however, I can forgive you for not doing so.

Re:Why Bother

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't agree to any kind of agreement about the files (the ISO in this case) until you install it.

Also Microsoft has been hurting for good PR with Vista hanging over their heads so they're pushing to get anyone to run windows 7 and give it positive reviews.

Re:Why Bother

[rarel]

Wow...

What little sympathy I may have had for them is completely gone. It's one thing to disagree with some law, but obscenities and insults are just out of line.

Morons.

Re:Why Bother

[noundi]

His point stands, I think. A big "Fuck you guys" is gonna get you on the shitlist of pretty much any judge, court, or (probably) jury.

I'm sorry, you're wrong. The attitude of the person has to be kept separate from the crime commited. The crime must be treated unbiased. The law doesn't say "It's illegal to break copyright laws, and if you're a bit of a middleman it's illegal if you have a nasty attitude, otherwise it's ok". In Sweden (which I guess differs from the states in this sense as you seem to think that everything works as it does in the US) you should be able to flip off the judge and shit on his desk if you want. You'll get sentenced for indecent exposure but this should have absolutely no impact on the initial trial. That's called a fair trial.

Re:Why Bother

[allcoolnameswheretak]

I like the TPB defense best.

Re:Why Bother

[timeOday]

That is the only difference that matters as equal crimes will be treated differently in different countries.

You must have missed the verdict. What TPB case showed us is that different countries' laws are pretty much the same after all. Some of us might like to think there's no international consensus on this, but there is.

Re:Why Bother

[CarpetShark]

Why Bother... they're still going to end up in court

But now they can legitimately claim to be pussies and sheep led around by others, instead of people who believed in something and defied an unjust law, like the Pirate Bay team.

Re:Why Bother

[Lockblade]

I'd comment on their use of insults, but I'm trying to figure out if the irony in that last sentence was accidental or not...

Re:Why Bother

[bsdaemonaut]

"I don't intend to flamebait but seriously, the world doesn't spin around the US."

From what I've read many Swede's feel that Swedish copyright law is such to appease foreign corporate companies. Gee, I wonder where all those software companies are based? No, the world doesn't spin around the U.S. Unfortunately it does spin around large corporations.

And please, don't think you know the American public based on your small experience. We are hardly a homogeneous people.

Re:Why Bother

[rarel]

Totally accidental.

Dammit. :D

Re:Why Bother

[stonewallred]

What you are referring to is "in a perfect world". Reality, where the rest of us operate in, there is no such thing as a totally impartial judge or jury, nor an unbiased trial. No matter what the law "says" about impartiality and fairness, spit in the judges face next time you go to court, and find out first hand what really happens when you piss the judge off. You seem to place a great deal of faith in your fellow humans to expound so forcefully on how in your wonderful country, all the judges are perfect, of course this explains how "fair" trials happen in your wonderful country since the judge in TPB trial was on the payroll for the party suing TPB. That really seems fair and unbiased. Maybe you should check your idiocy at the door before posting again.

Re:Why Bother

[stewbacca]

Uh, since he said "behaviour", I'm just going to guess that he's decidedly NOT American, and your rant against him now looks very sophomoric. So speaking of "ignorant assumptions"...

Re:Why Bother

[stewbacca]

I'm sorry, you're wrong. The attitude of the person has to be kept separate from the crime commited.

It "has to"? Are you certain? Did you write those laws, or are you merely providing your opinion? Well, obviously you either have no understanding of the pragmatics of law, or you choose not to agree with the way laws are carried out. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it less true.

Pretty much every criminal trial encounters the word "remorse" at one point or another, which shows that courts do take attitudes into consideration.

Re:Why Bother

[Grizzley9]

Then you should have a big issue with "hate crime" laws. (as do many)

Re:Why Bother

[Ceiynt]

Theory and reality are two different things. In theory, one would get a fair trial, regardless of attitude. In reality, if you're an ass in court, the jury will most likely think less of you, and that you are more apt to commit whatever the prosecution says you did.
Granted, the defense can motion for a mistrial, at least in the US, if they think the outcome was because of it.

Re:Why Bother

[ittybad]

** Turns key, car engine starts.... "Holy cow, it started even though I don't have a license!" and/or "You CAN'T be here, I have a restraining order..." I agree with your notion of a "perfect world." There are rules that people, including judges, should follow. Then there is reality and emotional charge and all that stuff...

Re:Why Bother

[Kirijini]

Have you ever heard of "mens rea"? A required element of almost every crime is a culpable state of mind of the actor. There's a huge difference between doing the actions required for a crime (like, taking someone's stuff) with a reckless state of mind, as opposed to a purposeful statement of mind. (Recklessness would be if one knows there's a good chance that the stuff they are taking doesn't belong to them; purposeful would be if one took the stuff because it didn't belong to them.)

For most crimes, negligence isn't a culpable state of mind. If you didn't know the stuff you took didn't belong to you, but a hypothetical "reasonable person" in your situation would have known it probably didn't belong to you, then you're negligent. But you didn't commit a crime. On the other hand, if you were reckless about it (and the prosecution can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt), then you did commit a crime.

The parallels to copyright infringement (if it's a crime and not just a civil cause of action) by torrent sites should be obvious. The Pirate Bay was clearly at least reckless - more likely, knowing, which is more culpable - where as mininova is probably trying to show that they were just negligent, and that their action in putting up a filter is an attempt to correct that negligence. The judge might interpret the filter as reducing their culpability from recklessness to negligence.

This is all based on American criminal law under the model penal code, not civil law, and not dutch law. IANAL, YMMV, infringement isn't stealing, etc.

Re:Why Bother

[MightyYar]

What world do you live in?

Listen, dude... if you ever end up in court, may I offer some advice? A haircut, clean shave, a nice suit, and a very respectful attitude toward the judge. Don't loose your temper.

Yes, until we invent some kind of robo-judge who rules the planet with an even-handed titanium fist, even judges have egos.

Re:Why Bother

[Kjella]

The attitude of the person has to be kept separate from the crime commited.

Attitude yes, intent no. Particularly if the crime is "aiding and abetting", "conspiracy to", "facilitating", "economical gain" or similar. Lots of things that are otherwise legal would be illegal if you're doing them in relation to a crime. If an employee left the window open, that's not a crime. If an employee left a window open with the intent that his co-conspirators could break in through that window, it's a crime. There's a difference between being google and "Get your latest hollywood movies here" direct download warez search. It would be fucked up any other way, really.

Re:Why Bother

[CaptKilljoy]

The attitude of the person has to be kept separate from the crime commited.

Mens rea , dude, look it up. Don't they teach basic civics in school anymore?

Re:Why Bother

[drizek]

My desktop is out of service right now because my download of Windows 7 from MS was corrupted, and the installer hangs(after taking the liberty of formatting my existing OS, of course).

I wish they had put up a torrent instead, it is a much more robust way to download large important files.

Re:Why Bother

[rhsanborn]

The intent most certainly does have bearing on the law. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter. Likewise, the intent of the pirate bay was to facilitate the distribution of copyrighted content, the attitude is simply used as evidence of intent. Mininova on the other hand appears to be trying to show that their attitude shows a different intent.

Re:Why Bother

[GreyWolf3000]

Actually, that is the way the legal system in the US is designed to work. The US is among the first countries in the post Renaissance era to ensure through a Constitution that all persons are entitled to a fair trail. The idea certainly isn't ours, but the were arguably a catalyst for the adoption of this concept in Europe. Or maybe I'm drinking US-centric history kool-aid.

Re:Why Bother

[joetomato]

You've never watched Judge Judy, have you? To be fair, they sign away their rights to a fair trial beforehand, but she still technically is a judge. The Peoples' Court, Eye for an Eye, etc... Pretty much any daytime Fox programming is the same way.

Re:Why Bother

[shark72]

You write:

"Yes they are - but now they can more-or-less show 'good faith' to the judge."

But then:

"But now they can say "ahh, but look.. we installed a filter.. it's not our fault that them sneaky pirates find ways around those filters.. it would be *impossible* for us to manually go over each and every upload!".. then hope to exit the court grinning while their main page continues to display top 10 lists of every popular category with scarce 'legal' torrents."

That's not good faith. More importantly... if you and I know it's not good faith, it's not going to fool the courts.

The legal system is particularly unsympathetic toward bad actors. If Mininova can't control the actions of their users, then the court is liable to simply order them to shut down until they can.

If the piracy community has one weakness, it's putting too much faith in legal loopholes that simply don't exist, and overestimating the naivete of legal professionals. For instance, pirates continue to parrot the "it's just like google" defense, apparently oblivious to the fact that the original Napster, TorrentSpy, Kazaa, Aimster, Grokster, and countless others fruitlessly tried the same defense. Unless pirates get smarter about this, wishful thinking will be their downfall.

"I know there's nothing illegal about a torrent file itself.. splitting hairs over technical details is what they'll be doing in court."

This is actually a perfect example of what I mean. Of course a torrent file itself isn't illegal -- everybody already knows that, including the courts. Yet when you mention the terms "contributory copyright infringement" and "vicarious copyright infringement" to a pirate, it's often like shouting into a well. Yet pirates cling to the hope that this will allow trackers to operate legally. The best it will do is get you off of direct infringement charges, but the penalties for contributory and vicarious infringment can be just as severe.

Re:Why Bother

[PitaBred]

See, in theory, that's how it works in practice. In practice, it doesn't.
Appearances are very much related to the punishments and charges. Police don't pull over well-dressed people and search their cars, they pull over the people with rustbuckets and shitty clothes. They pull the rich looking people over for a speeding ticket, and they pull the poor looking people over to try to find drugs. The same thing happens all the way through the judicial system... you cuss at the judge, or don't respond with "Yes sir, no sir", he will give you a heavier sentence.

Re:Why Bother

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the gist of each site's defense is this:

Mininova: we do what we're legally required to - something.
TPB: we do what we're legally required to - nothing. (Also, you suck.)

Either site's interpretation of the law may or may not be correct, but neither of them is saying "yes, we're breaking the law, what're you gonna do" or anything like that.

Re:Why Bother

[Anonymous Coward]

'They facilitate the infringements and the torrents are a necessary part of the infringement. That is unlawful and a criminal act,'

Has he specified when his organisation will be targeting search engines like Google?

Re:Why Bother

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, he's both right and wrong.

A fair trial HAS to be unbiased - the defendants attitude can be taken into consideration during sentencing - but the verdict itself MUST be decided on the letter of the law in a fair trial.

Regardless of this rather moot point unfortunately, attitude is all too often (and most likely will be in this case too) taken into account. Completely fair trials don't happen too often, as they're not very pragmatic and don't appease the mindless mob.

It's one of the main times that I wish we had a document similar to the US Constitution, that solidifies the purpose and behavior of the judicial system (and Gov) - my ideal wouldn't be worded exactly the same as the US, but the spirit of the document and it's purpose seem vital to a fair and reasonable government.

Re:Why Bother

[Anonymous Coward]

I've long thought about the issue of pissing off authority. Though if in that situation I would back down and give the "Yes sir, please don't send me to the hole for 30 years" business I have come to the conclusion that secretly:

I resent the fact that I have to respect these grumpy, stodgy old men on the bench in the black robes. I hate that I have to respect them.

Re:Why Bother

[tiananmen tank man]

Guilty until proven inocent, eh?

Re:Why Bother

[Alef]

For most crimes, negligence isn't a culpable state of mind. If you didn't know the stuff you took didn't belong to you, but a hypothetical "reasonable person" in your situation would have known it probably didn't belong to you, then you're negligent. But you didn't commit a crime. On the other hand, if you were reckless about it (and the prosecution can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt), then you did commit a crime. [...] The Pirate Bay was clearly at least reckless - more likely, knowing, which is more culpable - where as mininova is probably trying to show that they were just negligent, and that their action in putting up a filter is an attempt to correct that negligence.

There is a big difference between your example about stealing, and the actions of TPB. If you take something that you think belong to you, you are not in a culpable state of mind because you didn't intend to nor knew you were breaking the law. You are negligent not to realise you are stealing, which you know is a crime.

In the case of TPB, they certainly knew copyrighted material was shared using their site. However, they claim they did not intend to break the law and did not know they were breaking the law. Unless this assertion can be proven in court to be false, we must assume that their state of mind was essentially the same as that of your hypothetical thief with regard to the crime. Their attitude is not an indication of their intent to break the law (on the contrary, many of their responses to take-down notices were basically variations of "haha, what we're doing is legal"), and should therefore not really imply culpability.

(IANAL)

Re:Why Bother

[Kirijini]

If you take something that you think belong to you, you are not in a culpable state of mind because you didn't intend to nor knew you were breaking the law.

Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law is no defense. Culpability has nothing to do with knowing what the law is. It only has to do with one's mental state as they are performing the acts that constitute the crime.

Stealing bread you know doesn't belong to you in order to feed your starving family is criminal because it involves a culpable state of mind (knowing the bread isn't yours). Knowing or believing (mistakenly) that that the law prohibiting theft has an exception for stealing bread when one's family is starving DOES NOT remove the culpable state of mind. You still know the bread isn't yours. And, your mistake about the law is not a defense to the crime.

The exception to this is when the law specifically requires knowledge of the law - in that case, knowledge of the law is an element of the crime, and has a mens rea requirement.

In the case of TPB... they did not intend to break the law and did not know they were breaking the law.

I don't know about swedish law, but under the American system, ignorance of the law is no defense. I think what was actually at issue was whether they were breaking the law (ie, whether the law prohibited their actions), and not whether they intended to break it, which is irrelevant.

Their attitude is not an indication of their intent to break the law... and should therefore not really imply culpability.

Their attitude was an indication of their knowledge or recklessness in contributing to infringement, and thus does imply culpability. As you say, they knew their service was contributing to infringement (or likely was). Thus, they had a culpable state of mind for that action. The issue is whether providing a service that contributes (or likely contributes) to infringement is actually against the law. (That's the legal issue. Additionally, there is the factual issue of whether the service they offered actually contributes to infringement.)

I suggest you read up about the subject. Wikipedia isn't an authority, but it is a good place to start for lay research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat

Yet again, IANAL, and this is only about American criminal law.

Re:Why Bother

[Anonymous Coward]

utter bullshit. courts take into account "attitudes" into consideration only to determine the penalty associated to a crime, if they do at all.

but in determining if a.- a crime has been comitted and b.- the defendant has any criminal responsability over its comission, "attitude" is not taken into account in any normal legal system since more or less the late middle ages.

unless of course you live in Iran or somewhere like that, and consider things like religious beliefs "attitudes".

Re:Why Bother

[ultranova]

Oh, there was a TBP *response* to takedown notices, just not, you know, the one that was hoped for:

From http://static.thepiratebay.org/dreamworks_response.txt, as a response to a DMCA takedown request:

As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here. For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Surely the Pirate Bay isn't bound by laws of a country it doesn't reside in?

Anyway, from now on, in every election, I'll be voting for the Pirate Party. Not just because of the copyright issue, but also because their anti-surveillance stance. It's ironic when people using a grinning skull and crossbones as their symbol are our best hope for peace, freedom and justice, but that's how it seems to be.

Re:Why Bother

[kelnos]

The product key is irrelevant. A copyright holder has exclusive right to control distribution. That includes *re*distribution. If MS hasn't given explicit permission for their copyrighted software to be distributed in a particular way, then it's by default forbidden.

Having said that, I'd be surprised if MS were to go after torrent trackers hosting it. Seems like their goal here is to get as many people running Windows 7 as possible, so I'd imagine they'd look the other way in this case.

Re:Why Bother

[phaed2]

I'm sorry, you're wrong. The attitude of the person has to be kept separate from the crime commited. The crime must be treated unbiased. You've never seen a court trial, have you? Your attitude and actions make a big difference. When most people are convicted of a crime, there is a range of sentencing, and your attitude and behavior make a difference whether you get the minimum or something more. It also makes a big difference in how aggressively prosecutors go after you and how many different charges they level at you.

Re:Why Bother

[Alef]

I don't know about swedish law, but under the American system, ignorance of the law is no defense. I think what was actually at issue was whether they were breaking the law (ie, whether the law prohibited their actions), and not whether they intended to break it, which is irrelevant.

To be fair, it is not at all obvious that what the people behind TPB did is against Swedish law. It is nowhere explicitly forbidden (as far as I know), and no precedence exists. In fact, it is highly probable that the case will be appealed all the way to the Swedish Supreme Court, and until they pass their verdict none of us really knows whether it is legal or not. Given that situation, TPB says they consulted legal expertise to make sure what they did was legal. You can hardly accuse someone of being ignorant of the law under such circumstances.

As you say, they knew their service was contributing to infringement (or likely was). Thus, they had a culpable state of mind for that action. The issue is whether providing a service that contributes (or likely contributes) to infringement is actually against the law.

Well, I understand were you are getting at, but that is actually not exactly what I said. They likely knew copyright infringement took place (albeit maybe not in the particular cases for which they were convicted, but that is a different story), but that is not the same thing as realising you are committing the act of contribution to copyright infringement. (It's hard to separate the action from the law here, since copyright is a legal construct.)

The question is, does simply running a tracker constitute contributing to infringement, even if infringement takes place on it? It seems TPB thought it does not, i.e. they thought they did not contribute to infringement, in the same way that a hand gun manufacturer does not contribute to bank robberies. And I don't see how mocking people that sends take-down notices citing irrelevant (foreign) law makes this any different.

Now, I don't know if it matters from a technically judicial standpoint when the law is so unclear that you can easily be fooled into thinking you are following it, or if you are somehow supposed to know in advance that the courts will rule it illegal. But common sense dictates that a person should at least be less culpable in that situation than in a clear cut case.

Suppose for example that a court suddenly decides that ISPs contribute to copyright infringement as well. Would you hold it against them if they prior to that refused to disconnect subscribers accused of copyright infringement, even if they did so with a bit of an attitude?

Re:Why Bother

[he-sk]

He was making a point about the differences in the attitudes behind the defense, a quite good one at that.

-1, basic reading comprehension fail

Re:Why Bother

[he-sk]

The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is none and, but in practice...

People are still people and attitudes matter. Or do you think policemen and judges are not?

Re:Why Bother

[KingBenny]

i don't know how bad it worked since TPB seems to be pretty much the same as before the verdict. I hope they never take it down. I only spend money on decent shit anyway and i don't think i will every buy any dvd or cd without having seen or listened to it first

Re:Why Bother

[bhiestand]

utter bullshit. courts take into account "attitudes" into consideration only to determine the penalty associated to a crime, if they do at all.

Unless they're trying to prove intent... which is the difference between murder in the first and manslaughter.

but in determining if a.- a crime has been comitted and b.- the defendant has any criminal responsability over its comission, "attitude" is not taken into account in any normal legal system since more or less the late middle ages.

I don't know what world you're living in, but down here intent is considered in the majority of cases from shoplifting to murder. Example: A man mixes ammonia and bleach and the resulting gas kills his child. If he's a chemist, he's going to jail for a long time. If he's an illiterate recent immigrant and he obviously did not intend harm, he's probably not going to jail.

Intent matters.

Good thing I got in when I did!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like mininova and I'd hate to have to go somewhere else.

Luckily I've torrents for gigs upon gigs of TV shows so I think I have about a years worth of stuff to download so that'll give me enough time to find another.

It makes them useless

[g253]

I saw the headline, and just immediately deleted my bookmark. I hardly ever used it anyway, but that makes them completely irrelevant to me.

Re:It makes them useless

[patro]

Well, I downloaded the latest Lost torrent from it yesterday without any problem (sorry, I can't wait until they decide to air it here in Europe), so the filter is apparently not very good.

Re:It makes them useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? They were the only torrenting place I ever frequented. Piratebay had too much junk, and I'd been burned one too many times to put up with it. isoHunt has a lower signal-to-noise ratio.

Mininova almost always got me what I wanted, when I wanted it. The few exceptions are movies that I guess no one else cares about any more and some really old books that no one has bothered to scan in.

Re:It makes them useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I discovered BTjunkie several years ago, I rarely need to go anywhere else.

Re:It makes them useless

[lilo_booter]

FTA: Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak that the system will be tested for 12 weeks with only a few titles.

Re:It makes them useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your tv shows direct from http://eztv.it/

Re:It makes them useless

[spike1]

Where in europe?
The latest Lost episode is on sky one this weekend. It's only a 3 day wait.
(not that I don't agree, I downloaded it too) :)

Re:It makes them useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Until they offer the channels I want and just the channels I want at a reasonable price without having to get all the crap music, movies, sport & other rubbish I will never get Sky/VirginMedia.

Re:It makes them useless

[g253]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be trolling. It's just that, unlike everybody else here (I'm sure), I've installed uTorrent not to download the latest OpenBSD iso, but to illegaly download movies and music that I wouldn't purchase, because my opinion is that there's nothing morally wrong with that.
So that move makes mininova useless for me (and presumably a lot of their users), because they plan to start removing the very content that I'm looking for. I realise they might still have their place, but I wanted to point out that when a torrent site starts filtering and removing, it doesn't slow down piracy, it just makes people use other sites instead...

Re:It makes them useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people have said this, it's kind of obvious that once they block out illegal content people who want only illegal content won't go to there site, who cares? And why are people continually modding comments like this up today? get on your game, modders!

Re:It makes them useless

[Anonymous Coward]

The version I tried to download was deleted and a message told me it was because it was "old" and had "no activity". I asked google for an alternative, found it and moved on...

Big Yawn

[Willeh]

Sounds like they don't want any hits anymore. Meanwhile, alternatives like the Piratebay, isohunt & torrentreator are likely beefing up their infrastructure to accomodate the increase in traffic. There has been speculation on dutch tech sites that they only did this to appease the dutch copyright vigilantes, so they are making a half-assed effort to filter some stuff out. Let's face it, a torrent site without any "illegal" (under dutch law, downloading music & movies is LEGAL!) content is about as useful as a 3-legged, dead dog. With a nasty case of fleas.

Re:Big Yawn

[Shadow of Eternity]

Biological weapon for a trebuchet.

Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Mininova often, primarily to find torrents for two TV shows I watch regularly.

So the question is - what are the alternatives?

Re:Alternative?

[AlmondMan]

tvtorrents.com I've personally never used mininova for anything. There never seemed to be anything that I wanted on there, so in my mind it was always just some runty site with no content.

Re:Alternative?

[bemymonkey]

Isohunt, Isohunt, Isohunt...

Re:Alternative?

[Archon-X]

Depends which category you fall into.

Personally, I use NNTP.
There are a few ways you can go here.
I use www.bitnabber.com - for the monthly fee, I get the NNTP service, but also access to the download library - verified Music/Movie/TV/Games/Anime downloads, with full info (source, quality, reviews,etc) - makes browsing for a movie to download a breeze. Also supports streaming on downloading (try doing that on a torrent..)

The other way is to get yourself a cheaper NNTP account: usenetserver.com / giganews.com are the best.
From there, you can trawl NZB sites to get the NZBs for what you want to download.
There are some good ones out there, the best being newzbin.com - but it's invite only, hence why I went w/ the top option.

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using the 'alternatives' for a long time now, namely thepiratebay and Demonoid. Far better in my opinion.

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

For TV shows I don't understand why anyone wastes time torrenting - use Usenet. Your ISP probably already provides a news feed, just set up SABNZBD with MyTVNZB and TV shows will be downloaded automatically as soon as they're available and you don't have to waste your bandwidth seeding unneccesarily.

Re:Alternative?

[junglee_iitk]

http://www.torrentz.com/

Search engine for search engines :) Plus you get the tracker list for free :) (So even if TPB goes down, your torrent will run.)

Re:Alternative?

[bluesatin]

Your ISP probably already provides a news feed [..]

Really?

How many ISPs actually have a feed set up, let alone anything more than just text.

I only know of a single ISP that provides a news server in the UK, that Virgin Media but I don't know anyone that trusts it.

Re:Alternative?

[Inda]

I haven't checked out usenetserver for a while but giganews is an all you can eat service. Great if you watch 2 movies a day but it's way over the top for casual users.

Astraweb has a pay per download service that suits me better. $25 for 120gb lasts me ages. When the GBP/$ exchange rate was good, this worked out the cheapest option for me. Today I pay about 70p for a DVDR. Today it takes about 35 mins from start to finish to download. 3 years ago, on my very old PC, it would sometimes take longer to extract the RARs than to download the whole DVDR.

binsearch (fantasic free service guys!), vcquality + a couple of greasemonkey scripts I wrote, makes finding stuff a breeze. NZB's are two-a-penny anyway.

Re:Alternative?

[Krneki]

http://thepiratebay.org/tv
http://eztv.it/

You own me a beer.

Re:Alternative?

[maxume]

Astraweb lets a person test the NNTP waters for $10, with no additional fees (That $10 only buys 25 GB of transfer, so the low commitment makes for a (relatively) high rate).

Re:Alternative?

[vlm]

Check out easynews before you commit to a NNTP provider.

Re:Alternative?

[value_added]

Personally, I use NNTP.

The first rule of USENET is ... oh, nevermind.

I use www.bitnabber.com

For yucks, I visited the site. Cute and friendly so I guess it would appeal to novice users. That said, the following caught my eye:

What can I download?

Using BitNabber's technology, it's possible to download anything you can imagine! Bitnabber updates in real time with the latest NZB files, allowing you to grab the latest in movies, music, tv shows, and software!

Reading the above I'm reminded of the way in which Napster (?) advertised themselves before being sued for contributory copyright infringement and went out business.

Then, there's the new and disturbing trend by state attorneys general to get together and browbeat content providers. Craig's List is the latest to draw their attention (turns out their Erotic Services section is too popular), but usenet providers have already been hit. A large number of groups that were alleged to contain child pornography are no longer accessible. Extending the successes of their Do It Or We'll Take You To Court approach to the alt.binaries.mp3 groups, for example, would seem a no brainer.

Glad you like bitnabber. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the moment astraweb has a $11 / month deal on which will give you unlimited downloads, 20 connections and ssl.
They have EU servers as well, I'm not sure if giganews has that.
http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html

Re:Alternative?

[Inda]

SSL is a must these days. Astraweb, on my package, give me unlimited connections. 30 is about the right ammount for me. YMMV.

18.5mbit down on my 20mbit cable modem. CPU + memory issues keep the speed down. Joining hundreds of parts is stressful on the electronics. :)

As an uncle post said, check the alternatives. Some are more suitable than others.

Re:Alternative?

[robably]

I've used the Virgin news server for downloading binaries for about two years now - it's the reason I'm with Virgin - what do you mean about not trusting it?

Re:Alternative?

[bluesatin]

Well if Virgin own the server, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for them to log everything you download, that is if I'm not misunderstanding how these things work.

Re:Alternative?

[Archon-X]

Virgin has nothing to do with it.
It comes in via Highwinds Media.

Re:Alternative?

[robably]

You think they're storing up evidence against me for two years, and that they're going to take me to court some day for using a service they provide? If there is illegal content there, it is Virgin who are making it available - they'd have to take themselves to court as well.

(In Virgin's case they don't own the server, they contract it out to a third party who provides the feed. I doubt it makes any difference to how easily they can inspect the logs, though.)

Re:Alternative?

[bluesatin]

Well I wouldn't put it past them that they would log all the data, and as soon as anyone requested it they would probably hand it over to them without a question.

I don't know if they still are involved with Phorm, but logging your downloads doesn't seem past their moral boundaries.

I should probably take my tin foil hat off.

Re:Alternative?

[jonnythan]

Site requires invitations.

Re:Alternative?

[Slazer]

www.eztv.it - I get all TV shows I watch from here. Good site. Good quality stuff.

Re:Alternative?

[mblase]

AFAIK, all of the major network's shows are available as free ad-supported Flash video on their respective websites or Hulu. (My computer is too old to run said video, sadly, so I still use downloads.)

Re:Alternative?

[LanMan04]

astraweb is the best provider out there.

Unlimited transfer, really fast, 200 day retention, SSL, 20 concurrent connections, for US$11/month.

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet! Mow my lawn!

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm . . . paying for it would be one alternative, you cheap bastard.

Re:Alternative?

[jwhitener]

I was curious, so I checked out bitnabber.

Is it just me, or is 25gigs for 20 dollars a month pretty pricey? Thats only 4-5 movies if high quality, making them ~5 dollars apiece.

Netflix streaming and other services seem far cheaper.

Of course, thats just talking about movies/music. If you were to use it to download certain software.. it certainly would be a better deal.

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider this one purchase made due to the parent post. Was going with giganews's $13/month plan for 35GB of transfer, but $11/month for unlimited transfer is too good to pass up. Thanks kindly.

Re:Alternative?

[Shinhan-sama]

Hulu eh? Seems somebody is suffering from a USA == World syndrome.

aha

[Anonymous Coward]

so that's why my tvrss links ain't working no more

Isn't that a bit like...

[bhunachchicken]

... hiding the body after you've been accused of murder, hoping that you'll then not be convicted?

Re:Isn't that a bit like...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that depends on whether or not the judge and jury watched you hide the body.

Re:Isn't that a bit like...

[Razalhague]

It's more like attempting to give CPR to the guy you just shot in the head.

Re:Isn't that a bit like...

[phalse phace]

Maybe they can download the video of him hiding the body from Mininova???

Re:Isn't that a bit like...

[Anonymous Coward]

... hiding the body after you've been accused of murder, hoping that you'll then not be convicted?

Maybe we could ask Mr. Reiser?

Re:Isn't that a bit like...

[bhunachchicken]

Aye; I can just imagine the jury sitting there with their laptops, one half bemoaning the audio / video quality, and the others screaming "FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SEED!!!!!!!1" :)

Re:Isn't that a bit like...

[Sparton]

Or maybe giving CPR to the guy that someone else just shot in the head, who may or may not have gotten the gun from you?

Re:Big Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

under dutch law, downloading music & movies is LEGAL!

[citation needed]

Re:Big Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Mininova can not technically be an alternative to a Bittorrent tracker (like TPB etc.), since Mininova is not a tracker - it's just an indexed repository for .torrent files.

torrents via Shareaza.

[crhylove]

That's why I keep IMPORTANT torrents alive on Shareaza. And I keep my outgoing encryption on in Deluge.

thats gash

[Anonymous Coward]

Extreme gash infact yet
another blow to filesharing, they were good for the odd thing here and there. I suppose the question is who is going to take their place.

Any bids ???

Not very effective

[SatiricComet]

Apparently it's not very effective... http://www.mininova.org/search/wolverine/seeds

Re:Big Yawn

[Overfiend1976]

Let's face it, a torrent site without any "illegal" (under dutch law, downloading music & movies is LEGAL!) content is about as useful as a 3-legged, dead dog. With a nasty case of fleas.

Yeah, let's hear it for defeating the purpose.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Big Yawn

[CRCulver]

Let's face it, a torrent site without any "illegal" (under dutch law, downloading music & movies is LEGAL!) content is about as useful as a 3-legged, dead dog. With a nasty case of fleas.

Downloading is in fact legal in many jurisdictions. But the problematic thing with Bittorrent is that it makes you an uploader as well, and that decidedly isn't legal in many jurisdictions.

Victory!

[Xelios]

And it only took the RIAA + friends what? 4 years to kill Mininova? It must be frustrating to know there are literally hundreds of other torrent sites, all of which will be happy to take the 'refugees' from this minor inconvenience.

In any event being able to bully torrent sites into submission through legal means isn't what I'm worried about. I'm much more worried about them coercing ISP's into their little self-regulation schemes, as if it's somehow an ISP's responsibility to protect Sony BMG's copyrights. It strikes me as being just as misguided as expecting the people who maintain our roads to be responsible for people smuggling drugs across the border. Sorry guys, if you want to cling to the old IP system in the information age you should be prepared to do all the hard work yourself. If you don't like it I'm sure we can come up with some new, fairer systems to try.

Or, you know, just bribe politicians until you get your way. I guess that works too...

Re:Victory!

[Have Brain Will Rent]

The US just sent an official blaming note to Canada, among other countries, but it's particularly bizarre in the case of Canada since there is a two way land border with posts manned by each country to check incoming traffic to their country. The complaint? The large number of pirated CD's and DVD's Canada allowed to sneak across the US border - into the US - to be sold on the black market in the US. The fact that traffic incoming to the US is screened by, and only by, the US border service didn't seem to make them think this complaint to Canada went off the bizarro-meter scale.

Re:Victory!

[jwhitener]

"It strikes me as being just as misguided as expecting the people who maintain our roads to be responsible for people smuggling drugs across the border"

I used to think this way. Even got into an argument with my sister (who is a lawyer) about it.

I was talking about why I don't think the Pirate Bay should be in any trouble, even under US law (if it applied).

My argument went like this:

We all know that facilitating/helping illegal drug sales, is, well.. illegal. That said, say I bought a private piece of land in the city, and named it "Drug Park - our motto: sell and use drugs here! - open to the public".

The park itself was a big flat open grassy park. Exactly like the public parks the city maintains. The single only difference is I put a sign on it, saying "Drug Park".

Could I be charged with facilitating drug sales? I'm not 'doing' anything really. My sister, the lawyer, said yes. I said no. I never really investigated which of us was correct.

But anyway, back to the original quote up top, 'expecting road maintainers to be responsible for what happens on the road'.

I do not think that is a good example any longer. If someone built a private road/tunnel system, told everyone it is open to the public, but it just happened to have 99% illegal drug traffic and 1% legit, do you really think that the cops would let you continue to maintain those roads and toll fees?

"Open to the public" does not automatically give immunity to owners of a privately funded 'anything'.

One thing I thought about, was when a relative of mine opened a museum devoted to agriculture in a small town, and wanted it to have a non-profit status for tax benefits, etc..

There were a lot of conditions that needed to be met to gain those benefits.

I wonder if a similar thing would be a good idea for internet services that wish to truly be considered a 'free/non profit/open to the public' venture. Ianal, so I'm not sure if it would give them any immunity to prosecution, but it seems like it should.

Oh, and lets all get to work on the next-gen p2p protocol that doesn't rely on a central server, is tor'ish and hides your IP, while at the same time very fast:)

Re:Victory!

[Xelios]

If someone built a private road/tunnel system, told everyone it is open to the public, but it just happened to have 99% illegal drug traffic and 1% legit, do you really think that the cops would let you continue to maintain those roads and toll fees?

If I were a cop in that situation I'd set up a checkpoint on that road and thank the good man for providing me with such a great place to bust drug smugglers ;)

The analogy doesn't hold up when we're talking about operators of a site like TPB, but I think it does when we're talking about ISP's. The MAFIAA expects ISP's to police their property rights for them, I say sorry, that's not how copyright works. As the copyright holder it's your responsibility to watch for abuses and use the legal system as a tool to enforce your property rights. But they're not satisfied with that, "It's too hard! There's too many of them!" they cry. Well tough. The rest of the world is ready for a change in how we handle IP, ironically the only people who aren't are the ones whining about how hard it is to enforce the old model in today's world, a world that's unbelievably different than it was 50 years ago. Imagine what the world would be like now if the people who made a living copying books by hand had managed to stop the printing press.

Anyway, sorry, didn't mean to get on a rant :)

It's kinda funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2569928

This is one of their "featured torrents". It's called "How to bypass mininovas copyright filter". I'm mildly amuzed.

Re:It's kinda funny...

[Eil]

The "solution" is to put the file in a .rar or .zip archive before seeding.

Kind of a lame workaround to a lame problem, if you ask me.

Re:Big Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you've never heard of legal material that can be downloaded through torrents like independent movies, large software distributions and such. But it's typical for people to think that everybody else is no better than them of course.

Featured torrents:

[skzo]

I went to mininova just now, and on the front page I found:
Featured torrents:
"How to bypass mininovas copyright filter"

I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[L4t3r4lu5]

I would guestimate that 3/4 of the OP comments which don't agree with this course of action are people who are actively using Mininova to search for copyrighted material, against the terms of the applicable license. Apparently BitTorrent is predominantly used for copyright infringement.

Well done for proving the RIAA / MPAA right, boys. You're a true help to the cause.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[mdwh2]

If I say that Google shouldn't have to actively search out and filter content (which they don't, nor do they have to by US law), does that mean Google is predominantly used for copyright infringement? I don't think so.

Your argument is a straw man anyway. I don't think anyone would deny that bittorrent is mainly used for copyright infringement, but the issues are whether search engines should be liable. Also consider that even though something is copyright infringement by law doesn't mean it is unethical - e.g., someone downloading something they already bought in another format, or a BBC licence payer in the UK downloading BBC produced content, and another example would be using it as a form of timeshifting, downloading a show you just missed on TV you pay for. Consider, in the UK it's copyright infringement to copy a CD you've bought onto your own mp3 player. So it would be accurate to say that "MP3 players are used almost entirely for copyright infringement" - however that's not really a fair statement, and doesn't mean people are downloading things they haven't paid for.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[mr_matticus]

also consider that even though something is copyright infringement by law doesn't mean it is unethical

That something may be called ethical doesn't make it permissible, nor does it mean that another perspective on that same issue is unethical. Your response to the straw man begs the question and implies a binary where none exists.

Property law isn't entirely about ethics--in fact very little law is. Instead, it's simply about balancing competing interests. Ethical conduct is the domain of criminal law and certain areas of administrative law. Most transactions aren't questions of ethics, and any ethical justification you might rationalize about copyright infringement is mooted by the ethical violations conducted in the unlawful taking. As they say, two wrongs don't make a right.

Quirks in the law do need to be resolved, but it doesn't entitle a person to flaunt it simply because they feel like it. They were never entitled to possession of any of it, except in exchange for their legally binding commitment to abide by the terms under which it was provided. It does absolutely no good for anyone actually working on practical resolutions to have the efforts constantly undermined by a certain subset of the population. Don't like, don't buy, do without has always been the rule--until greed and false entitlement took over.

It's bad enough dealing with the recording industry on good days, but when they see the brazen disregard from the vocal minority, it not only ruins the sensible majority, but also stirs up a fresh round of crazy from the industry giants. The RIAA and the belligerent loonies can point fingers at each other for the rest of eternity, but they're both wrong and nothing resembling an appropriate personal use framework will ever come to pass until the gimme-gimme generation quits stealing (and pretending it's noble) and the recording industry stops having a shit-fit (and pretending they're not the ones killing themselves) long enough to get something done.

The rhetoric of "revolutionary reform" is nothing more than a pretense for selfish destruction. Actual reformers keep having years of hard lobbying and legal work torn apart by both sets of wankers, and the cold truth is that both groups are reviled and equally idiotic. This community just happens to be too one-sided to see it, lost in rants on how they don't have anyone on their side and don't have any lobbying power and so they MUST act out like petulant children, because they DESERVE to enjoy entertainment they never had any intention of paying for, because anyone who's ever dared to sell rights-limited copies earns TOO MUCH. They don't, on either count, and the reason they consistently lose is by destroying the work of allies thanks to ignorance, sensationalist trolling, and astroturfing.

It's really quite tiring. It's just a different version of the 15 year-old brat complaining that the car she's being offered to replace her Toyota is a $40,000 Lexus instead of the $77,000 E-Class she demanded.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently BitTorrent is predominantly used for copyright infringement.

Well dur! I didn't think this point was ever really in question, at least on slashdot. You'll be asserting that illegal downloads are the same as lost revenue and that copywrite infringment is theft if you don't watch out. Keep up, this meetings been going on without you.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[Anonymous Coward]

So how exactly is downloading an album without paying different to simply not buying it, from the copyright holder's point of view?

You may find this helpful, as you seem to be somewhat confused about what theft is.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[L4t3r4lu5]

Woosh.

My point was that "groupthink" is pissed off because they can't get the tracker for XXXXXX copyrighted content from Mininova anymore. They're not whinging about freedom being curtailed, or their rights being oppressed, defending Mininova as "only linking, not hosting." One guy above talks about downloading Lost.

Where's your altruism now? Don't kid yourself, bub. We all know that BitTorrent can be used for legal purposes (WoW patching, iPlayer / 4oD content etc), but that most of it is for illegal file sharing. Argueing technicalities only gets you so far.

FWIW, I agree that Mininova shouldn't be made to filter their content, but how do you expect the **AA to listen when so many of the for-Net -Neutrality crowd are openly stating that they won't use Mininova because they don't give access to unlicensed media any more?

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[russotto]

Property law isn't entirely about ethics--in fact very little law is. Instead, it's simply about balancing competing interests. Ethical conduct is the domain of criminal law and certain areas of administrative law. Most transactions aren't questions of ethics, and any ethical justification you might rationalize about copyright infringement is mooted by the ethical violations conducted in the unlawful taking. As they say, two wrongs don't make a right.

There's no ethical violation, per se, in "unlawful taking". The existence of a law forbidding something rarely makes an otherwise-ethical action ethical. Furthermore, there is no "taking" involved in copyright infringement.

Quirks in the law do need to be resolved, but it doesn't entitle a person to flaunt it simply because they feel like it.

You know, you like to use a lot of big words and pretend you're a professional in this area, but if you can't use "flout" and "flaunt" properly, you're pretty much giving away the game.

Actual reformers keep having years of hard lobbying and legal work torn apart by both sets of wankers, and the cold truth is that both groups are reviled and equally idiotic.

The only thing "actual reformers" have achieved is to make the law more and more lopsided in favor of the RIAA. If that's the work being torn apart, good.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[malevolentjelly]

Well done for proving the RIAA / MPAA right, boys. You're a true help to the cause.

But they are right in that regard... I mean, come on. Let's not kid ourselves. I think this is an example where people just make-believe that bittorrent is some sort of misunderstood technology that is just being painted negatively by some evil group of corporate baddies. Everyone uses bittorrent to pirate media. I am sure some Freetard will pop on and say "I only use it to download linux distros and Creative Commons licensed music"-- but I guarantee you this douche is in the minority.

There is no misunderstanding here: people get upset over the fate of TPB and mininova because they like their free shit, whether or not it's legal. People are opportunistic first and idealistic later only when legitimizing their opportunism. It's why the first package many people install in their Ubuntu distro is ubuntu-restricted-extras, despite the fact that they know it's mostly illegal.

Let's be honest with ourselves, the F/OSS community is a bunch of leeches. But we are proud of that in some defiant "get off my lawn" way.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[Hatta]

any ethical justification you might rationalize about copyright infringement is mooted by the ethical violations conducted in the unlawful taking. As they say, two wrongs don't make a right.

You're begging the question. That is, you're assuming "unlawful taking" is unethical, and using that to argue that justifications for "unlawful taking" are moot.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the Google argument is that Google is a general-purpose search engine that indexes everything, whereas Mininova (et al) are search engines that exclusively index torrents. In other words, the primary function of Mininova is to index torrents whereas the primary function of Google is to index content (which happens to include torrents). Also, the majority of torrent searches on Google give you results that are hosted on Mininova (et al), so it is not particularly productive for the MPAA (or whoever) to go after Google. Not that I am comparing copyright infringement to drugs, but you don't go after the dealer on the street; you go after his supplier.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[russotto]

I only use bittorrent on my work computer to download linux distros and other legal content. Happy now?

As for ubuntu-restricted-extras... uh, lets see, what do we have here.

1) Support for MP3 playback and encoding. What's illegal about that?
2) Other audio formats. Same thing.
3) Microsoft fonts. Microsoft released them. They probably regret doing so, but they're legal.
4) Java runtime. Pretty sure that's legal.
5) Flash plugin. Also legal.
6) LAME, another audio encoder
7) DVD playback... sans DVDCSS2. Legal.

They're not "restricted" because they're illegal, they're "restricted" because they're neither "Open Source" or "Free Software".

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[malevolentjelly]

I only use bittorrent on my work computer to download linux distros and other legal content. Happy now?

I prophecized your arrival.

1) Support for MP3 playback and encoding. What's illegal about that?

MP3 is in terrible legal gray zone... do you think firms like Microsoft, Apple, and Sun pay licensing costs to Frauenhoffer IIS because they're just sillier than Canonical? Why do you think no one packages it with their distribution? I suggest you read up on wikipedia for this... because it's the main reason for the existence of OGG, WMA, and AAC.

Otherwise, I don't want to dig through the licenses to point out to you why some of this stuff is in the gray... if you're in the United States, you are likely violating some sort of patents somewhere in using these things. You've conveniently failed to mention plenty of the video codecs that package provides.

Seriously, if you're not playing your music and videos in Real Player or something, I guarantee you are violating someone's copyright or patent.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[russotto]

Patents? Software patents? There's patents on just about everything, often multiple patents on the same thing. Bringing them into the picture just muddies the waters. There's no way (including using only proprietary software) to be free of violation of software patents. If that's what it takes for something to be legitimate, there's no point in even bothering to try; may as well just raise the Jolly Roger and start downloading everything in sight.

Canonical DOES distribute the ubuntu-restricted-extras components. If they're illegal, why isn't Canonical being sued or prosecuted?

Furthermore, while Canonical doesn't include it, and it's clearly illegal in the United States, I include DVDCSS as perfectly legitimate as well. Just because the US courts have their head up their ass and think it's OK to make it illegal to play one's own DVD on one's own DVD player doesn't mean that refusing to accept that is a case of being "opportunistic" rather than "idealistic". Rather, it's a case of being "idealistic" rather than "legalistic".

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[mr_matticus]

There's no ethical violation, per se, in "unlawful taking"

Of course there is. It is a given in any situation that the rule of law is a social code whose contravention is ipso facto unethical. It is justified in some cases by competing ethical considerations to act contrary to it, but not in response to a thinly veiled justification lacking in compelling ethical grounding.

Ethics is a social code of behavior, and sitting at the very heart of this is the ordered function of society. To take without legal entitlement is by definition an affront to the social order.

Furthermore, there is no "taking" involved in copyright infringement.

Utterly false. To take is to acquire by action. To acquire a copy by a deliberate action is quite plainly taking. You are setting up a tired and legally inconsequential line of argument for no particular purpose.

You know, you like to use a lot of big words and pretend you're a professional in this area, but if you can't use "flout" and "flaunt" properly, you're pretty much giving away the game.

There's no pretending involved, and as for a rushed typo, it's pointedly humorous coming from you:

"The existence of a law forbidding something rarely makes an otherwise-ethical action ethical."

The only thing "actual reformers" have achieved is to make the law more and more lopsided in favor of the RIAA.

Which is the result of tools like yourself, and actually the precise point you're sailing past. The RIAA's already got a stronger position, but you're doing more to undermine progressive reform proposals (the Lofgren bill your ilk so helpfully torpedoed, for instance) than anything else...and then patting yourself on the back for it.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[mdwh2]

That something may be called ethical doesn't make it permissible

Another straw man - at least, if you mean "permissible" in a legal sense, it obviously isn't; in an ethical sense, that is what is under debate. The point is that those people commenting on the post have every right to express their ethical view, just as you are expressing your view here. This is not "proving the RIAA / MPAA right", as the OP claimed.

but it doesn't entitle a person to flaunt it simply because they feel like it.

I hope you don't own an mp3 player then, or maybe you are lucky to live in a better country than I.

It's really quite tiring. It's just a different version of the 15 year-old brat complaining that the car she's being offered to replace her Toyota is a $40,000 Lexus instead of the $77,000 E-Class she demanded.

Another straw man. By "different version", you mean "different argument".

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[mdwh2]

Fair enough, but as I said "I don't think anyone would deny that bittorrent is mainly used for copyright infringement".

(If I cared about Lost, I might download it - the same episodes incidentally that I'm already paying for it via my cable fees.)

FWIW, I agree that Mininova shouldn't be made to filter their content, but how do you expect the **AA to listen when so many of the for-Net -Neutrality crowd are openly stating that they won't use Mininova because they don't give access to unlicensed media any more?

Well we both disagree with the filtering, so a valid reponse to that might be to not use their site as a matter of principle - you mean that we should keep quiet about this, and we aren't allowed to protest openly against filtering?

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[mdwh2]

So you think that torrent search engines shouldn't be allowed, or should be subject to a higher standard? Consider, what if I want to run a legal torrent search engine - how can I do so? The fact that most people might use bittorrent for copyright infringement isn't relevant to my question here, because my interest is in running a legal one. Why should I be held to a different standard to Google?

What if I have a torrent search engine that also implements some basic search of web pages, is that enough to get round any additional restrictions? You see, I'm not sure that having a different standard for Google and torrent search engines is workable.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[malevolentjelly]

Furthermore, while Canonical doesn't include it, and it's clearly illegal in the United States, I include DVDCSS as perfectly legitimate as well. Just because the US courts have their head up their ass and think it's OK to make it illegal to play one's own DVD on one's own DVD player doesn't mean that refusing to accept that is a case of being "opportunistic" rather than "idealistic". Rather, it's a case of being "idealistic" rather than "legalistic".

This is exactly the connection I was looking to draw. I am not arguing the sanity of any of this, just that it's not legal. Canonical distributes MP3 in the loosest sense... they make it available with the user's understanding that it might not be legal, but keep it available since it is legal in some countries. The whole IP market is sort of shady and illogical, but it's been around for well over a century in the U.S.

Somehow, companies like Microsoft would get the crap sued out of them if they offered a lot of this functionality without paying tons of license fees and yet Canonical can boast it for free because whenever you sue F/OSS, it makes you like you're punching a kitten and it's almost not worth the lost public image. However, if Canonical ever gets to the point where it's large enough, we will see lawsuits on matters like these that will require hacked solutions like blocking restricted packages in the U.S.

I am all for the controlled distribution of media since I have worked in entertainment, but I sincerely do believe that the legitimate market needs to compete with the illegitimate market instead of quashing it.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[russotto]

Since you're obviously a troll, I hesitate to respond further, but...

yet Canonical can boast it for free because whenever you sue F/OSS, it makes you like you're punching a kitten and it's almost not worth the lost public image.

Yeah, like there aren't any number of litigious kitten-punchers out there who would be happy to do so if they thought they could win.

Have fun with Windows... just remember to stop using it next time Microsoft gets sued by a patent troll.

Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments

[mr_matticus]

Another straw man - at least, if you mean "permissible" in a legal sense, it obviously isn't; in an ethical sense, that is what is under debate.

That statement, even if we were to accept it as true and valid, does not a straw man make.

The point is that those people commenting on the post have every right to express their ethical view,

The real point is that the ethical view is inconsequential. It's a juvenile attempt to reframe a question of social order, of competing interests, so that it is easier to make an argument that sounds good in a binary. It's the quintessential creation of a false dichotomy.

It's both childish and naive to reduce ethics to a binary, and to suggest that actions in society are based solely on individualized, subjective moral decisions--when ethics is a social construct. There are no doubt situations when it is ethical to destroy your neighbor's rose bushes. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily a good idea to do so, nor does it mean that there are no consequences for doing it.

Labeling an action "ethical" doesn't alone justify its performance or render it free of consequences, and that's precisely the fallacious view being set up.

I hope you don't own an mp3 player then, or maybe you are lucky to live in a better country than I.

Meaning what?

Another straw man. By "different version", you mean "different argument".

There's no argument in the section you quoted, and thus, again, no straw man. You don't score any points for nonsensical applications of the term, no matter how much you enjoy it. The story is the same--when offered an improvement that broadens personal use rights, it is jeopardized and rejected by fanatics, who then in the end get nothing. Copyright isn't going anywhere, and the kind of large-scale distribution schemes that result in wholesale acquisitions of hundreds or thousands of titles will simply not magically stop being illegal. People who continue to undermine that process are, in fact, just helping to preserve the status quo. We can't get serious about copyright, because Slashdot and its sensationalism is such a ripe source of ammo for the big labels. You're two vocal minorities, equally responsible for the ongoing lack of progress.

When you're offered something better, but not what you want, you lash out with sensationalist interpretations and absurdity, scoffing at it like a spoiled child, and the most vocal public commentary on it rejects it, and the RIAA obviously rejects it, and tada! No change for the better.

Nothing is more hilariously embodying of this phenomenon than the "copyright infringement is not stealing" crusade. It's wrong. Copyright infringement is not theft. They are not coterminous in the least, and they're not interchangeable. The only reason to continue such a ridiculous and inconsequential quibble is if the underlying premise is that if it isn't stealing, then it's not wrong. That premise is invalid from the outset and thus even winning the argument would accomplish nothing, but the amount of energy expended arguing it never ceases to amaze.

It's an unauthorized acquisition--it enriches the actor unfairly, as compared to his fellow citizens. That's really all there is to it. Take the colloquial "stealing a ride"--taking a train without paying the fare. The train's going anyway, whether you're on it or not, so under this most bizarre theory bandied about here, it's apparently okay to ride that train without paying your fair fare and there should be no consequences for that. It is a thoroughly stupid position to take.

Are there any torrents left?

[worip]

After Mininova implements this fully, how much content will be left?
I guess the open source stuff will still be there, and any software that is in the public domain. How about those e-books that are nowhere else to be found, except on torrents?

Re:Are there any torrents left?

[Lord Lode]

I think it's good to have a legal torrent site that hasn't the risk of being closed down associated with it.

Sony v. Universal & Selection Bias

[langelgjm]

Apparently BitTorrent is predominantly used for copyright infringement. Well done for proving the RIAA / MPAA right, boys. You're a true help to the cause.

According to the logic of Sony v. Universal, as long as the technology has substantial non-infringing uses, the creators won't be held liable for contributory infringement. That's under US law, of course.

Also, there's this thing called selection bias. Or don't you think people who primarily use Mininova to download infringing material would be more likely to comment on an article that says Mininova is filtering infringing material?

Sheesh.

Re:Sony v. Universal & Selection Bias

[Jane Q. Public]

There is other legal precedent as well: radar detectors, cables unscramblers, etc.

The courts have generally held that the fact that a technology can be used for "evil" purposes does not justify restricting it, as long as it has legitimate uses as well.

And that makes sense. Otherwise they could take away your wrenches and baseball bats because they "could be" used to hit somebody.

Re:Big Yawn

[jabithew]

Unless you turn off the uploading...

In the mean time I note that Mininova still has in excess of 200 seeds and leaches active on the Fallout 3 DLC released a few days ago. So that's some good anti-piracy filter.

No great loss...

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped going anywhere near Mininova a long time ago. For two reasons -- 1. it is often full of fakes, and if you report them, the total jerks that run Mininova just block your IP address. And 2. It's absolutely full of torrents from private sites, which totally defeats the point of file sharing.

There's 100s of other sites, most of them better. Mininova will not be missed by many, nor for long.

Re:Big Yawn

[isaac338]

What in the hell's a "leach"?

Given the reach of 'IP' law

[Anonymous Coward]

those sites aren't much of an alternative. People are better off trying an anonymous network like I2P. Supposedly it can only handle song files in a realistic amount of time (at this point) but that is still significant to file sharers.

Re:Given the reach of 'IP' law

[spanky the monk]

not needed quite yet. Bittorrent is still good: we just need to index torrents (and maybe have trackers) on tor hidden servers. The actual p2p-ing can still be done on the open internetz.

Re:Big Yawn

[mister_playboy]

Grammar nazi fodder?

China torrent site

[Anonymous Coward]

Ww are all waiting for a torrent site in china.

Re:Big Yawn

[isaac338]

Touche.

Re:Big Yawn

[BJH]

Spelling Nazi, sir - get your jackbooted thugs right!

Re:Big Yawn

[bami]

citation

I know it's a wiki, but it's a carbon copy of the real lawbook, it's just the only page I could find that allows me to directly link to the article.

Let me translate something for you:

"Als inbreuk op het auteursrecht op een werk van letterkunde, wetenschap of kunst wordt niet beschouwd de verveelvoudiging welke beperkt blijft tot enkele exemplaren en welke uitsluitend dient tot eigen oefening, studie of gebruik van de natuurlijke persoon die zonder direct of indirect commercieel oogmerk de verveelvoudiging vervaardigt of tot het verveelvoudigen uitsluitend ten behoeve van zichzelf opdracht geeft."

Which you can translate loosly to:

"It is not considered copyright infringement if a copy is made solely for the purpose of own practice or study without direct or indirect commerical gain, and when the copy is only meant for himself".

If you want to read it yourself, here is a shoddy google translation: here

In short, under Dutch law, it's legal to make copy's of copyrighted works (be it a movie, music or a piece of text), only if it's for yourself and does not give you a commercial gain. This rule was originally built to support people making back-up copies for them selves, but applies to the internet too. What you CAN'T do is upload copyrighted files (uploading = distribution), and this whole legal blurb doesn't apply to applications (uploading or downloading of software is both illegal).

Your turn.

Re:Big Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

under dutch law, downloading music & movies is LEGAL!

[citation needed]

THIS!!! IS!!! SLASHDOT!!!

*kicks parent poster into the goatse.cx hole*

Mininova goes Supernova

[hesaigo999ca]

That will prove to be 99.9% of their traffic, and revenue...
well it was fun while it lasted, now on to the next one!
(crouches down as if on a hunt) .....have you seen any ISOs around here lately?

Re:Mininova goes Supernova

[glwtta]

(crouches down as if on a hunt) .....have you seen any ISOs around here lately?

Hmm, no, which is weird since I'm a complete junkie when it comes to BitTorrent.

HOW do they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems if they filter by text (like the title contains "batman" or whatever) then this would be extremely effective.

I'm trying to figure out how it would -not- be effective. I'm a moron... please explain. Seems torrent clients would need to be redesigned to use like some kind of encryption for the actual filename or ... ?

I'm not concerned with Mini, but the potential for all the other torrent sites to follow suit. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

Re:HOW do they do it?

[Rockoon]

BxAxTxMxAxN.mpg

Freenet?

[EllisDees]

Does anyone have any idea how difficult it would be to set up a tracker within freenet? Is there already a project anywhere trying to do this?

Re:Freenet?

[slux]

Never mind Freenet for this, you could use I2P which also features in-network Bittorrent. Of course if you really want to only share the torrents with an anonymising network you'll need to do modifications but at least it'll be easier when you can use existing tracker software. TOR's hidden services would work as well I suppose.

Just hosting the tracker on one of these networks is an interesting idea. It wouldn't provide any protection for the downloaders and seeders themselves but if people aren't quite ready to sacrifice download speeds at least it would shift the attention back to the people downloading again if the indexing sites/trackers were impossible to attack. It would be a step in the right direction. I can see why no-one has done this so far though.

Re:Big Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

The dutch law:
http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001886/geldigheidsdatum_08-05-2009#HoofdstukVI_Artikel45k

In short, making a backup copy of music is not illegal, even when the original is not yours. Taping a radio show for example is not illegal.

Letting others copy (uploading) on the other hand, is illegal unless you have permission to broadcast.

HOW?

[silver007]

Seems like this would be very easy to do. A text filter looking at the torrent names. I'm trying to figure out how this would -not- be effective... and if the host site didn't do this, why would the court not demand it? Seems like such an easy solution, until someone redesigns the actual torrent clients for encrypted filenames or something. I'm not worried about Mini specifically, but what if all sites were required to do this? Just hypothetically...

Re:HOW?

[swilver]

I think such filters might have existed in the past already, which gave rise to leet-speak.

I'll be impressed when they start blocking content with "24" and "X" in the title.

Re:Emule And Bit Torrent

[spanky the monk]

stop using eMule. use a dedicated bittorrent client.

It seems to me...

[theJML]

...that this is yet another opportunity to come up with a way of making a distributed lookup system part of the bit torrent spec. Sure, it wouldn't be as quick, but if your client can listen for other nearby clients and query them for a list of files that they've accessed (not just ones being seeded by them, but ones they've connected to recently or are currently connected to). I'm sure this would greatly limit the number of seeds you find, but with a proper system of distributed "well, I've heard this guy has this" and "I'm seeding this right now and I've transfered it to this guy who might also be seeding" and such would give you a fairly decent list of seeds that you can probably get a good speed to (since they're somewhat 'local'). This would have the benefit of not needing a search site, nor needing any centralized repository.

On the other hand if this worked and was really successful, the RIAA would just try to ban the protocol from ISP's.

Re:It seems to me...

[Kashell]

The **AA would enforce SecureROM and have the CD/DVD emit a zombie creating poison upon play if they could get away with it.

Re:It seems to me...

[bettega]

Something like KAD?

Re:It seems to me...

[ADRA]

Hello Gnutella... ack, we've gone full circle!

Indexted DHT URI's only legit?

[Danathar]

I've often wondered if a list of indexed DHT URI hashes would be any stronger in court.

I figure at some point we will have sites that don't link to or have torrents but just indexed and categorized DHT URI links.

Encrypting solution for torrent sites...

[LurkingOnSlashdot]

I think all torrent sites should 2-way encrypt all their search results (meaning the titles, descriptions, etc..) and put a statement up that says decrypting is not allowed. Then have "hackers" make a firefox addon that automatically decrypts the text on torrent sites. Everybody (except MIAA/RIAA) starts using the addon. The MIAA/RIAA can't use the addon because that would violate their own laws can be sued for breaking encryption.

Re:Encrypting solution for torrent sites...

[Richard_at_work]

That would be as effective as the FTP sites during the 1990s that had 'The FBI or any other law enforcement agency is forbidden from accessing this server' banners.

Re:Encrypting solution for torrent sites...

[Midnight Thunder]

I think all torrent sites should 2-way encrypt all their search results (meaning the titles, descriptions, etc..) and put a statement up that says decrypting is not allowed.

As that is will do anything. If you want something, then it would be an anonymous VPN, where no IP addresses are logged, except the 'problematic' ones. While this is not fool-proof it makes the job harder for the non-participants. Ironically in the point in time an IPv6 VPN would be even better, since I suspect most of the monitoring tools out there are targeted to IPv4.

Re:Big Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you are uploading, you are not making the copy. It is the other party who is making the copy using your computer as a means.

I prefer Hulu

[AcidPenguin9873]

TV shows available pretty much whenever I want. I watch a 1 minute commercial (or switch to another browser tab for 1 minute), and then I get the entire episode streamed. Just as convenient as torrents.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[ph0rk]

Hulu only keeps a handful of episodes around. No good if you want to watch the entire season.
A critical error on their part, imho.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[LiquidFire_HK]

In addition to what the other reply said, it doesn't work outside the US.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[Hatta]

I'd love to use Hulu, but they won't let me use it with my Xbox.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[jmcvetta]

I use Hulu fairly regularly to watch Colbert's show. It sucks my ass. Even tho I am fully willing to sit through their commercials (the price paid for convenience), the media cartel insists on discriminating against internet viewers by not releasing shows until the day after they air on teevee.

Seriously, every time I hear someone say "oh noez! if there's no copyright then the record/movie companies might go out of business, eek!", I say (out loud), "Hell yeah, that's the general idea!"

Re:I prefer Hulu

[AcidPenguin9873]

It's not the record/movie companies I'm actually worried about; it's the people creating the content.

What happens if the people creating the content now no longer have any way of either a) producing their content, since no company will finance production because no companies like that exist anymore, or b) making a living from producing their content, since no consumers pay for their content, so they decide to stop creating it and instead get a job doing something else where they DO get paid.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[AcidPenguin9873]

That's certainly a problem for you right now, but I don't think that's a fundamental problem with the business model or distribution method. Hulu is a relatively recent phenomenon. Eventually, someone (Microsoft probably) will have a legitimate way to watch TV shows via XBox, via Hulu or some other, similar, service.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[AcidPenguin9873]

You're right, there's no free, ad-supported way of watching an entire season of a show other than by waiting for reruns/syndication on another network, which loses the on-demand feature of Hulu or BitTorrent. Maybe the content producers have decided that if you want to watch an entire season after that season has aired, you should put up cash in the form of renting or buying the full-season DVDs. I think that's a bad decision, but they must think the market exists to support that business model. In the past that has probably proved to be true - I know I've rented full-season DVDs for shows I wanted to watch. Hopefully they can make an ad-supported business model work for past seasons.

That said, my most commont BitTorrent use case was for watching new episodes of shows that I happened to miss when they aired the first time.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[jmcvetta]

Get real.

Artistic production of all manner happened long before the imaginary property regime was instituted, and will continue long after it has crumbled. The media cartel throws up the fear of a world without music and movies as a boogey-man, to scare decent citizens into acquiescence.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[AcidPenguin9873]

Citation needed. I enjoy blockbuster-style movies with huge production budgets. Please cite an example of one of those being made, and breaking even on production cost, that was financed by a means other than copyright-controlled distribution.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[Homburg]

Artistic production of all manner happened long before the imaginary property regime was instituted, and will continue long after it has crumbled.

Though I'm sure it's true that artistic production will continue after the end of intellectual property, I do think it's worth thinking about how the conditions of artistic production, and so the kinds of art that gets produced, might change.

Before intellectual property was introduced, a lot of art was either folk art (in which the producers and consumers of the art were more-or-less the same people), or supported by the patronage of wealthy individuals or institutions (and so not necessarily accessible to the majority of people or particularly responsive to their tastes). The kind of mass art, that is, widely distributed commercially produced media, that we're used to from the twentieth century is pretty closely tied to intellectual property, and post-IP art is likely to be different. It may also be possible that actions we take now, as the IP system collapses, will determine whether future artistic production is better or worse than the system we've had in the recent past.

Re:I prefer Hulu

[forceman130]

TV shows available pretty much whenever I want. I watch a 1 minute commercial (or switch to another browser tab for 1 minute), and then I get the entire episode streamed. Just as convenient as torrents.

Unless you want to watch something from last season, which Hulu won't have. I guess that's to drive you to buy the DVD, but really, who's going to get a DVD box set just so they can re-watch an episode of "The Office" the thought was funny?

Re:Big Yawn

[drinkypoo]

Last time I tried mininova it was pretty much the least usable of torrent sites, super slow. So I gave up on it a long time ago. Perhaps this is their attempt to regain relevance — the fearful can use them.

Re:Big Yawn

[quadrox]

Isn't downloading something instead of buying it giving you a direct/indirect commercial gain? You are saving money after all - wouldn't that technically make it illegal? Or is the term of direct/indirect commercial gain more clearly defined somewhere else?

Re:Big Yawn

[armer]

Why oh why did my parents emigrate to Canada??? Oh wait, Canadian law is almost the same... Yarrr, its the pirate's life for me matey...

Re:Big Yawn

[bami]

You're distributing, not copying.

Re:Big Yawn

[Threni]

> You are saving money after all - wouldn't that technically make it illegal?

Doesn't make it a commercial gain, though, does it. If you brew beer at home are you a commercial beer producer if it's just you who drink it?

Re:Big Yawn

[bami]

That's thanks to my loose translation.
Lets take: "die zonder direct of indirect commercieel oogmerk de verveelvoudiging vervaardigt"
As a literal translation: "Who creates a copy without direct or indirect commercial purpose".
It's hard to translate to English, but as a native Dutch reader, you would comprehend it as
"Make a copy, but not so you can sell it and make money".

I'm going to agree here.

[Benanov]

It ceases to amaze me that a torrent site attempts to go legal and all I see comment-wise is a bunch of whines and complaints that Mininova will die.

I've realized in the last few years that I actually agree with people's ability to exercise their copyrights--and if I don't agree with the terms they set out for use of their content...I don't consume it.

I don't find alternate ways of obtaining it, I don't talk about it, and I definitely don't buy it. I'll use an alternative that is legal, or go without. It doesn't exist to me.

If everything on a torrent site was legal I'd be browsing that for quite some time.

Reminds me. I need to hit up Project Gutenberg for more books; Opsound for more music; et cetera. Those who WANT me to consume their content and are willing to show up to the table with terms I can stand...that's what I want to consume.

Re:Emule And Bit Torrent

[yahwotqa]

But don't stop sharing your C:

Re:Big Yawn

[russotto]

Doesn't make it a commercial gain, though, does it. If you brew beer at home are you a commercial beer producer if it's just you who drink it?

In the United States, yes. The Robed Nine wanted a way around a few irritating constitutional restrictions, so they reasoned that by brewing beer and drinking beer at home, you were impacting the market for commercially-produced beer and therefore were subject to regulation as a commercial beer producer.

(Really? No. The real case was about growing wheat, not brewing beer, and the subject was "interstate commerce", not "commercial". But the reasoning was the same.)

Whether the Dutch have followed that sort of tortured reasoning is another question, but I'm sure the US doesn't have a monopoly on it.

Private sites are better anyway

[Endo13]

Why expose your IP address by using a public tracker found on Mininova? It's just asking for trouble. Plus, the invite-only sites almost always have much better transfer speeds because ratio matters.

Re:Private sites are better anyway

[russotto]

Why expose your IP address by using a public tracker found on Mininova? It's just asking for trouble. Plus, the invite-only sites almost always have much better transfer speeds because ratio matters.

1) I'd never join a group which would have me for a member.

2) Being a member of an invite-only site makes me a target.

Re:Private sites are better anyway

[daveime]

Yes, because the **IA would NEVER think of signing up up for a private tracker and simply downloading the files themselves, thus exposing ALL the IP addresses of other downloaders.

Re:Private sites are better anyway

[Xelios]

Chances are if they did bother they'd go after the seedboxes first, the people with 100 MBit upload who are fairly common on private trackers. But the reality is getting into a private tracker takes a lot more work than simply using a public one, most are invite-only so they'd need to know someone on the inside as invites usually aren't given out on a whim. Plus the public trackers have far more users, there's just no reason for the MAFIAA to bother playing undercover games when there's millions of users on TPB.

Private trackers aren't safe, they're just safer. How much safer is anyone's guess.

Re:Private sites are better anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Why expose your IP address by using a public tracker found on Mininova? It's just asking for trouble. Plus, the invite-only sites almost always have much better transfer speeds because ratio matters.

You people and your false expectation of safety...because law enforcement officers would never be able to get an invite.

If your "private" site has enough people participating to make torrenting feasible, it has too many to be manageable, in terms of only having trustworthy members. You're not a single bit safer.

You do get the advantage of faster trasnfer speeds for older torrents. New torrents are plenty fast enough in any public site.

Re:Private sites are better anyway

[Endo13]

Notice what I said about invite-only? Yes, I do realize it's no guarantee, but it does go a long way. In fact, one of the ones I frequent regularly is hidden well enough that my filter at work blocks it under the category "vehicles". They don't even give out invites right now, so it's impossible for anyone to join it.

Re:Private sites are better anyway

[eqisow]

Ratio matter so much that it's impossible to get. I love What.cd for hard to find torrents, but I try not to use it for anything else. I uploaded about 20 of my own albums, approximately half in FLAC, and I still have a 0.74 ratio. All of the torrents have 4+ seeds and no peers and half the members are running torrent boxes with nearly unlimited up speed. Private trackers are overrated.

Re:Private sites are better anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually entered personal information to register an account at a torrent site? Idiot.

If getting unnecessary speed increases comes at the cost of protecting your identity and security, you're a damned fool to make that trade. Obviously you've made that trade multiple times already, idiot.

I made my entire point above but consider this... public trackers are fast enough that popular shows at standard quality (350mb for a 42-45 minute show with no ads) can be downloaded faster than you can watch them. You need faster? Again: idiot.

Time to fix that

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to write a tool to change a few pixels and ruin the recognition software.
It can auto-test itself by submitting files to Mininova and checking the results.

Death of Microsoft

[r45d15]

In countries like China pirated copies of windows come close to 99%. End of piracy will mark the death of Microsoft as we know it today. Microsoft is very lucky there's lots of piracy, otherwise by now this company would only have been an afterthought.

Re:Big Yawn

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Yeah... the law is weird though. In Canada it is legal to download music. A copyright tax is imposed on blank CD's, which is justified by the downloading - and vice versa. But, IIRC uploading is not legal... so um I have no idea where those torrents being downloaded come from...

This is going to be just like Prohibition, with the public and free sites like PB and MiniNova disappearing one-by-one and private pay sites spring up to take over...

Re:Big Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are referring to would only protect people downloading copyrighted material. The main issue is rather whether or not they are vicariously liable for making available copyrighted material that is infringed on... that's another story

Re:Big Yawn

[Paradise Pete]

In the mean time I note that Mininova still has in excess of 200 seeds and leaches active on the Fallout 3 DLC released a few days ago. So that's some good anti-piracy filter.

"Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak that the system will be tested for 12 weeks with only a few titles." -TFA

content distribution

[old and new again]

damn, i have about 400GB of content distribution stuff, hope they keep that up, it's the archive of my last 2 years in video :(

Re:Are there torrents left?hell yeah !

[delete2kill]

so they are going to filter how are they going to decode encrypted, password/key file protected files with generic names like 00128733-435.torrent heck you throw a filter we'll throw encryption with each level of sophistication it will become that much harder to check large amount of torrents for violations and links would be posted of realnames of torrents on bbs & private forums encrypted udp streams over tor or other distributed anonimizing layer are already available yes there will be costs (low speed) but with broadband speed increasing and native hardware encryption support coming to processors and hardware encryption available on harddrives (and our systems already dual cores ...or more) bring 'em on _ torrents on mininova 1,086,323

try bt.etree or legaltorrents

[Xtifr]

There's bt.etree.org, which shares live concert recordings of taper-friendly bands, and which tracks the shifting of petabytes each year. (It is, IMO, a much more useful site if you click on the "hide Grateful Dead and Phish" button at the bottom of the page, but opinions may vary.) There's also legaltorrents.com which specializes in creative-commons media. Neither one is going to have as much mainstream material as the illegal sites (that should go without saying), but etree, at least, has some fairly big names, e.g. Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Buckethead, JJ Cale, Los Lobos, Primus.

Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

"F/OSS" refers to kinds of software. It has nothing to do with downloading.

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

"F/OSS" refers to kinds of software. It has nothing to do with downloading.

It's also a cultural movement. Most people posting on slashdot belong to this subculture, so the general opinion on slashdot is usually representative of the F/OSS subculture.

If you don't see any connection between culture surrounding the pirate bay and the F/OSS culture, then your football helmet is probably on too tight.

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

Sorry, but misuse of the term does not a "culture" make.

"FOSS", or Free and Open Source Software, is a kind of software. I know... I have written some. "Free" has nothing to do with downloading, legal or otherwise, much less torrents... it has only to do with the fact that there is no charge for the software. And "the Free and Open Source Community", as it is often referred to, is the community of people who write and/or use Free and Open Source Software!

You may see a correlation between the two, but you are misusing the acronym. Plain and simple. FOSS and F/OSS have nothing to do with downloading files.

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

"FOSS", or Free and Open Source Software, is a kind of software. I know... I have written some.

Holy crap! I am in the midst of someone who has written a crappy alternative to some commercial piece of software using a trendy language... or perhaps even a crappy driver for an archaic monolithic kernel!

You may see a correlation between the two, but you are misusing the acronym. Plain and simple. FOSS and F/OSS have nothing to do with downloading files.

The free software movement is full of pirates, libertarians, and college students... well, it's really more of a venn diagram than anything else. Who else would waste so much time on this sort of crap and produce so little in valuable or marketable results?

You don't have to take it from me, though. Just check out the focus of Groklaw or the EFF... open source, software patents, Microsoft, RIAA & MPAA. The fixation is there and slashdot examples this as well. All these things are under the umbrella of the same subculture.

Or maybe we can just look at things your way. It's not like the Nazi's were anti-semitic, since that wasn't the focus of the party. It's not like drug dealers use drugs, because that's not part of dealing drugs... and Free software advocates don't write good software because that's not what the movement is about.. it's about FREE software.

Now go write a slow, ugly frontend for something in Ruby.

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

"Holy crap! I am in the midst of someone who has written a crappy alternative to some commercial piece of software using a trendy language... or perhaps even a crappy driver for an archaic monolithic kernel!"

Sarcasm, especially considering that you are still wrong, does not make you look any smarter. And if you are "in the midst of someone", shouldn't you be paying attention to her? Or him, as the case may be. I wouldn't want to discriminate.

"The free software movement is full of pirates, libertarians, and college students... well, it's really more of a venn diagram than anything else. Who else would waste so much time on this sort of crap and produce so little in valuable or marketable results?"

So what? The vast majority of people who download files know absolutely nothing about writing programs, and I know of a great many -- again probably a majority -- who download software and other files precisely because they are not Free or Open Source. If they were, there would be no need to download them illegally. I have some news for you: the Democratic "movement" is full of cheats, crooks, and liars... but so is the Republican "movement". It means nothing. The connection is just as valid as the one you made, which is to say: not very.

As for "wasting time on ... crap", FOSS is responsible for Linux, as well as a great number of very capable and professional programs, like Open Office for just one example. All by themselves, Linux and Open Office have eliminated the need to buy Windows and other very expensive Microsoft products, if one wants to take just a little trouble to learn something new. The fact that free software can rival Microsoft for quality (best them, really, when it comes to operating systems) at literally no cost to users, goes a long way toward demonstrating that it isn't "crap".

"You don't have to take it from me, though. Just check out the focus of Groklaw or the EFF... open source, software patents, Microsoft, RIAA & MPAA. The fixation is there and slashdot examples this as well. All these things are under the umbrella of the same subculture."

I have been following the EFF for at least 15 years now. The "subculture" you mention is against the abuse of "intellectual property" by corporate bullies who have managed to get the legislature to distort the laws in their favor. These people do not advocate the illegal downloading of files. Those are two very different issues. If you haven't learned to separate them, then you have not been paying close attention. Nor, for that matter, are the organizations you mention particularly concerned about Free and Open Source software, because by definition it is not being illegally downloaded.

"Or maybe we can just look at things your way. It's not like the Nazi's were anti-semitic, since that wasn't the focus of the party. It's not like drug dealers use drugs, because that's not part of dealing drugs... and Free software advocates don't write good software because that's not what the movement is about.. it's about FREE software."

Huh? You haven't even understood what I was saying... how could you presume to be reading my mind? And getting it so wrong to boot? Your connecting me to Nazi attitudes is offensive, sir. You have no call to insult me so, nor any reason to make such an association. This is called an Ad Hominem attack, and it does your argument no good.

"Now go write a slow, ugly frontend for something in Ruby."

Sorry, but you don't write a "frontend" in Ruby. Ruby runs on the server.

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

As for "wasting time on ... crap", FOSS is responsible for Linux, as well as a great number of very capable and professional programs, like Open Office for just one example... The fact that free software can rival Microsoft for quality (best them, really, when it comes to operating systems) at literally no cost to users, goes a long way toward demonstrating that it isn't "crap".

Well, I know you're not a system design engineer... and certainly not in touch with modern application development. Anyone who calls OpenOffice.org "professional" definitely isn't familiar with human interface design or modern feature sets... what did this awesome code you open-sourced do... did it echo "hello world"?

I have some news for you: the Democratic "movement" is full of cheats, crooks, and liars... but so is the Republican "movement".

Are you a libertarian? Ha! Is this a joke? How much time are you willing to waste proving my stereotypes correct by example?

I have been following the EFF for at least 15 years now. The "subculture" you mention is against the abuse of "intellectual property" by corporate bullies who have managed to get the legislature to distort the laws in their favor.

And the daisy chain continues...

These people do not advocate the illegal downloading of files.

...but they sure do fight tooth and nail to defend those who do!

Your connecting me to Nazi attitudes is offensive, sir.

And your inability to connect the manifest and latent functions of groups is sad...

This is called an Ad Hominem attack, and it does your argument no good.

It makes my argument way more fun to read and write, though. I will keep to my guns.

Sorry, but you don't write a "frontend" in Ruby. Ruby runs on the server.

Oh, so I guess I was just imagining GNOME2-Ruby and Ruby/GTK+. I obviously have a very loose grip on reality if I could find it in myself to see linux as crappy or archaic, seeing as it's basically a poorly adapted 1970's era operating system that pretends to be Windows or Mac occasionally and fails miserably at both... yet users will still always find themselves editing text files to get basic tasks done. That is so advanced that I cannot even comprehend it. I think I just reached nirvana... I hope that didn't crash your X session.

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

"Well, I know you're not a system design engineer... and certainly not in touch with modern application development. Anyone who calls OpenOffice.org "professional" definitely isn't familiar with human interface design or modern feature sets..."

That's pretty funny. Microsoft lost money last quarter for the first time in its existence. Why? It wasn't just the slow economy. Hint: Vista, OS X, Linux, Open Office.

"what did this awesome code you open-sourced do... did it echo "hello world"?""

You have no idea what I have done and what I have not, and insulting me does not forward your argument any. If you actually have one.

"Are you a libertarian? Ha! Is this a joke? How much time are you willing to waste proving my stereotypes correct by example?"

Again... insulting people does not forward your argument. It just makes you look more like an ass. My point was: there are crooks and liars in every profession, every organization, every walk of life. Saying that some of them are advocates of FOSS means nothing as far as cause and effect is concerned.

"And the daisy chain continues..." ... "...but they sure do fight tooth and nail to defend those who do!"

Really? Are you sure? Since there have only been two actual trials so far, and one of them is still in progress, how do you know? I see... you just assumed.

The EFF fights unethical practices on the part of the recording industry and others, who illegally abuse the law and intimidate people... often innocent people. They are not defending and have not defended the illegal downloading of files, and it remains to be seen that any of the people in question do. I have already covered this argument, but I will repeat myself anyway: these are two different things, and you seem to have difficulty telling them apart.

"And your inability to connect the manifest and latent functions of groups is sad..."

I have dealt with this argument just above. Connecting things that have no real connection is delusional. You have not presented even one argument that shows any kind of cause-effect relationship between being an advocate of Open Source, and the illegal downloading of files. You made the claim... why have you resorted to insults, rather than trying to back it up?

"It makes my argument way more fun to read and write, though. I will keep to my guns."

That's just downright funny. Have it your way, if you insist.

"Oh, so I guess I was just imagining GNOME2-Ruby and Ruby/GTK+."

No, apparently you just don't understand how they work. (And by the way, it's Ruby-GNOME2, not the other way around.) The "front end" is GNOME or GTK+. The front end talks to Ruby, which runs in an interpreter (which acts as the server, or back end). In a web application, the front end (HTML + JavaScript) communicates with the server, which is running Ruby on the back end. The interface (GNOME, GTK, HTML) is front end, the server side is back end. Get it now?

"I obviously have a very loose grip on reality if I could find it in myself to see linux as crappy or archaic, seeing as it's basically a poorly adapted 1970's era operating system that pretends to be Windows or Mac occasionally and fails miserably at both... yet users will still always find themselves editing text files to get basic tasks done."

Pretty much, yeah. You said it, I didn't. When was the last time you gave it a real try?

"That is so advanced that I cannot even comprehend it."

Apparently, it is more advanced than you comprehend, because it is not like that anymore.

"I think I just reached nirvana... I hope that didn't crash your X session."

No, you go have your fun. Using this computer full-time, for both home and work, it has crashed maybe 3 or 4 times in the last year and a half, and in every case, that was caused by trying to do something in Windows, running in a VM. I'm doing just fine, thanks.

Well enough, in fact, that I do not feel compelled to answer you after this. This is a waste of my time.

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

No, apparently you just don't understand how they work. (And by the way, it's Ruby-GNOME2, not the other way around.) The "front end" is GNOME or GTK+. The front end talks to Ruby, which runs in an interpreter (which acts as the server, or back end). In a web application, the front end (HTML + JavaScript) communicates with the server, which is running Ruby on the back end. The interface (GNOME, GTK, HTML) is front end, the server side is back end. Get it now?

So you can't write an interface (sometimes called a front-end) to something in Ruby... you can only describe the interface in Ruby and have it interpreted by Gnome? Holy shit! It's like how I don't READ books, I just read the words INSIDE THEM! :) :)

Pretty much, yeah. You said it, I didn't. When was the last time you gave it a real try?

Jaunty Jackalope. It was pathetic, the reviewers must have been on Ecstasy when they called it better than Mac OS X or Windows 7. I was really impressed by its almost 1990's way of handling screen resolution and multiple displays... until it didn't work at all.

The EFF fights unethical practices on the part of the recording industry and others, who illegally abuse the law and intimidate people... often innocent people. They are not defending and have not defended the illegal downloading of files, and it remains to be seen that any of the people in question do. I have already covered this argument, but I will repeat myself anyway: these are two different things, and you seem to have difficulty telling them apart.

I have never met a linux user who does not have a dragon's cave of pirated media... and I have met a fucking lot of linux users. I love how you treat this like some sort of proper debate... it's so delightfully naive! You must be new to the internet.

You have no idea what I have done and what I have not, and insulting me does not forward your argument any. If you actually have one.

Zing! Pop! Swoosh! Well, I can tell you're not a REAL developer because you're using linux. That means you're probably working in the web sphere. Have fun when your venture capital wears out.

That's pretty funny. Microsoft lost money last quarter for the first time in its existence. Why? It wasn't just the slow economy. Hint: Vista, OS X, Linux, Open Office.

Everyone lost money. EVERYONE. The world economy crashed, you dolt. How can you possibly ignore that minor detail? Sun took a nose dive, also- the ones who develop openoffice. Apple might be the only major tech company that kept its head up. In fact, you are correct about OS X being part of the reason Microsoft lost money. Just because it's sitting on a sort of wacky UNIX compatibility layer wrapped around a hybrid kernel doesn't make a product of F/OSS, though. Everything redeeming about Mac OS X is closed source. They are stealing market share from Microsoft, but for all the right reasons. Linux, meanwhile, has ballooned to a frightening 1% of the market share!! Windows server is actually winning back Linux market share, too.

No, you go have your fun. Using this computer full-time, for both home and work, it has crashed maybe 3 or 4 times in the last year and a half, and in every case, that was caused by trying to do something in Windows, running in a VM. I'm doing just fine, thanks.

Really? My Vista box has never crashed, and I run hardcore graphics shit like maya. Neither has my Mac OS X laptop either... I had Ubuntu go down a couple times in the short time I was using it though. It was really exciting. Blast from the past!

Well enough, in fact, that I do not feel compelled to answer you after this. This is a waste of my time.

Way to be a girl about it... oh SHIIIII--

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

Sigh. I will make an exception and answer you one more time. But this is getting very tiresome. This is the last time.

"So you can't write an interface (sometimes called a front-end) to something in Ruby"

Of course you could. But that is not what it is designed for, and that is not the way it normally works. There are already perfectly good front-ends for Ruby, so why would you want to re-invent the wheel? You even named two of them: GNOME and GTK+. There are also Windows front-ends for Ruby (IronRuby for .NET comes to mind). Or, you can write a Web interface and run a Ruby server on your local machine... but local or not, that is still back-end.

"you can only describe the interface in Ruby and have it interpreted by Gnome?"

It is very interesting to me how you got that completely backward, even though I have explained it twice: GNOME is the interface, or front end. Ruby is the back end. GNOME handles user interaction, Ruby the main logic. At least, that is the way it was intended to be organized, and the way it is almost always used. If you want to do it the other way around, by all means do so. See you in a year or so.

"Jaunty Jackalope. It was pathetic, the reviewers must have been on Ecstasy when they called it better than Mac OS X or Windows 7. I was really impressed by its almost 1990's way of handling screen resolution and multiple displays... until it didn't work at all."

Interesting how you disagree with all the reviewers and almost everyone else I know. Are you sure they are the ones with a problem?

"I have never met a linux user who does not have a dragon's cave of pirated media... and I have met a fucking lot of linux users. I love how you treat this like some sort of proper debate... it's so delightfully naive! You must be new to the internet."

That means nothing. I know damned few Windows users who do not have a boatload of pirated media... and there are still a lot more Windows users. So what's your point? I am not treating this like a formal debate, but I was asking you to support your claims with something other than "I know a few people...". You have failed to do so.

"Zing! Pop! Swoosh! Well, I can tell you're not a REAL developer because you're using linux. That means you're probably working in the web sphere. Have fun when your venture capital wears out."

See... there you go again. What a load of assumptions. And I do mean "load".

"Everyone lost money. EVERYONE. The world economy crashed, you dolt. How can you possibly ignore that minor detail? Sun took a nose dive, also- the ones who develop openoffice. Apple might be the only major tech company that kept its head up. In fact, you are correct about OS X being part of the reason Microsoft lost money. Just because it's sitting on a sort of wacky UNIX compatibility layer wrapped around a hybrid kernel doesn't make a product of F/OSS, though. Everything redeeming about Mac OS X is closed source. They are stealing market share from Microsoft, but for all the right reasons."

That's funny. Not everybody lost money, by a long shot. The "economy" did not crash, just certain sectors of the financial industry. Was it bad? Sure. But it's a far cry from "everyone" losing money. I didn't. Also, I did not say OS X was part of FOSS (although it is in a way... their Unix base is derived from FOSS). I just mentioned that it was helping Microsoft on its way downhill. And it does so indirectly as well as directly: Open Office runs on OS X, Linux, and Windows. I don't know a single person who has gone out and bought a copy of Word or Excel for years now. And that is just one example. Photoshop? Bleh. I use Xara for illustration and some photo editing, The Gimp for the rest. Admittedly, Xara is commercial software, but there is also and Open Source version available.

"Linux, meanwhile, has ballooned to a frightening 1% of the market share!! Windows server

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

Of course you could. But that is not what it is designed for, and that is not the way it normally works. There are already perfectly good front-ends for Ruby, so why would you want to re-invent the wheel? You even named two of them: GNOME and GTK+. There are also Windows front-ends for Ruby (IronRuby for .NET comes to mind). Or, you can write a Web interface and run a Ruby server on your local machine... but local or not, that is still back-end

I am not talking about web servers for fuck's sake! Graphical interfaces, you retarded broad! I meant like writing an interface for an application, a graphical interface like... like... like this bullshit:

http://fxtwitter.rubyforge.org/

See? Someone tossed a GUI on something using Ruby. It's like throwing words into a goddamn Cuisinart trying to communicate anything to you.

It is very interesting to me how you got that completely backward, even though I have explained it twice: GNOME is the interface, or front end. Ruby is the back end. GNOME handles user interaction, Ruby the main logic. At least, that is the way it was intended to be organized, and the way it is almost always used. If you want to do it the other way around, by all means do so. See you in a year or so.

I was trying to interpret your backwards fairy speak into regular words but it just wasn't working. I get it... but you CAN write a GTK app in the language "Ruby".

I just mentioned that it was helping Microsoft on its way downhill. And it does so indirectly as well as directly: Open Office runs on OS X, Linux, and Windows.

Somehow, despite running on all three platforms and being free and unprofitable for Sun, it's barely kicking like... 15% of the market? Wow! Impressive. They can't even give this shit away. What happens when Oracle decides that Ooo is a waste of time? Do you really think these projects come from the "community"?

I don't know a single person who has gone out and bought a copy of Word or Excel for years now. And that is just one example. Photoshop? Bleh. I use Xara for illustration and some photo editing, The Gimp for the rest. Admittedly, Xara is commercial software, but there is also and Open Source version available.

What corner of imaginationland do you live and work in? Do you work at an one of those little open source firms? I can't believe you're comparing The Gimp and Xara to Photoshop... you might have mastered using The Gimp to edit out your flat tire and manipulate your photos to make you look thinner, but it just isn't an industry standard. In industries like advertising and entertainment where appearance matters, people use real applications that cost money.

That 1% figure was only from one source; others estimate it closer to 5% or 6%.

Holy shit! So Mac OS X literally crawled out of the mud from a failed company and ran over venerable linux, which was the next big thing since like 1995? I guarantee the results are skewed because a lot of weekend warriors probably boot into linux occasionally, then have to reboot into Windows whenever shit doesn't work because they don't have time to hang out on IRC and forums to burn a goddamn dvd or something.

Maybe it's never crashed (I have serious doubts about that), but applications do, and it is s--l--o--w. I hope you're having fun with it. And it's too bad that you did not take an hour or two to learn how to set up your Linux properly before trying to tweak the settings. Most people I know say "RTFM".

Slow? Why don't you benchmark that slowness using firefox on linux v. vista? How about you check out your opengl 2.1 performance on any graphics chip that isn't running nvidia's proprietary X solution? The problem is that there is no fucking manual... most of the crap in the linux system is undocumented. It's supported by the forums unle

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

"I am not talking about web servers for fuck's sake! Graphical interfaces, you retarded broad! I meant like writing an interface for an application, a graphical interface like... like..."

You silly person. A web browser is a graphical interface. What did you think it was? But I know, I know... you don't understand that. Funny that you say that *I* don't understand, considering that apparently I had to explain to you that GNOME and GTK are also graphical interfaces.

"I get it... but you CAN write a GTK app in the language 'Ruby'."

What a weird way to put it. I am pretty sure you mean that you can communicate with the GTK API using Ruby. Of course you can. After all, that is what the Ruby/GTK+ library is for. But that is not even close what you said, this time or the last. If that's what you meant, why didn't you just say so? Don't blame me for your own garbled words.

I am not going to bother to go any further. The rest of this is just more drivel of the same quality, which is to say: really not worth my time. I don't know why I bothered. Good bye.

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

You silly person. A web browser is a graphical interface. What did you think it was? But I know, I know... you don't understand that. Funny that you say that *I* don't understand, considering that apparently I had to explain to you that GNOME and GTK are also graphical interfaces

I take it you're not really known around the "office"(I use this term very lightly because no company could possibly be productive with a full set of open source apps) for your communication skills? I know what GNOME/GTK is... and a web browser is a document interpreter so don't kid yourself. I know you jackasses want to make it into the new application API for the future but that shit is just retarded. In effect, it's just being used like a slower less consistent version of .NET or Java in the 90's and it's probably the least efficient use of computing power for productivity ever conceived. Is it viewing documents or running applications? No matter what bullshit you accomplish on that shitty little system, firefox is always going to suck all the power into the worst memory management and threading model available. It's like sucking a watermelon through a garden hose, but hell, the fact that you're somehow employed despite having the comprehension and communication ability of an autistic suggests that you know a lot about that.

What a weird way to put it. I am pretty sure you mean that you can communicate with the GTK API using Ruby. Of course you can. After all, that is what the Ruby/GTK+ library is for. But that is not even close what you said, this time or the last.

Seriously? Are you autistic or are you just foreign or something? English must not be your first language because I just tried this in google and it appears that Google has better natural language comprehension than you. I typed what I said into Google and the first link explained how to write an application with Ruby/GTK+. I said and I quote "go build a frontend for something in Ruby". First off, it was a dismissal like go fuck a tree, which I probably should have used instead since it's simpler and it seems like you really need to get laid. The way you interpreted it was almost unix-like in its incoherence, it's like even your brain is wired in that lame sort of local client/server model of thinking. You probably parse these comments into a filesystem mentally, too.

I am not going to bother to go any further. The rest of this is just more drivel of the same quality, which is to say: really not worth my time. I don't know why I bothered. Good bye.

You failed again! It's because you and your whole community are full of retards. You can't write usable software, so you have to do the next best thing and argue that your software is usable and decent... and yet even the most cost minded corporations often won't touch it despite having a pricetag of 0. That's a really bad sign. Linux for the end-user is like a narrow canyon with steep walls... it's fine as long as you walk firmly down the beaten path, but the moment you try to do anything unintended you immediately are faced with the lack of consistency and coherence and have to scale the wall to get anywhere else. It's an awful experience and it's obviously made you into a hardened and mangle-minded creature who can only communicate at the level of technical clarity required for a shell interpreter.

These arguments are all your community has! For one magical moment, in this fantasy you create to talk about how wonderful free software is, everything works just as it should! And yet there's not a single thing offered by the community that isn't just some sort of also-ran. It's like arguing the merits of eating out of dumpsters instead of at a restaurant because it's FREE! Oh, it's the same food... it's just a little older and sometimes it makes you sick but you're an idiot if you pay for it, you know?

I look at you poor bastards proudly and defiantly chowing down at the dumpster... and I just feel sad for you. You poor creatures, if only some friendly person would just give you a Mac or something... hopefully you find a Richard Gere to your Pretty Woman one day.

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

The longer this has gone on, the more incoherent and irrationally insulting you have gotten. Just in your first paragraph, for example: "... it's just being used like a slower less consistent version of .NET..."

A web browser is a slower less consistent version of .NET? That is what you said. What did you mean?

The rest of it is just more of the same: insults and incoherent gibbering.

There is the only one answer this can possibly deserve:

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

A web browser is a slower less consistent version of .NET? That is what you said. What did you mean?

A cross-platform architecture-independent application API. The web browser is being used like an application API instead of a document interpreter with things like facebook and google docs and such.

The rest of it is just more of the same: insults and incoherent gibbering.

You can use a screen reader if you have difficulty reading. It will deliver my impassioned insults to you in a gentle, calming, monotone narration.

Oh shit, do they even have that sort of thing in linux? Better hit IRC or the forums!

There is the only one answer this can possibly deserve: (bold faced text laughing)

What is that even a reply to? You're a perl script, aren't you? I should have known. That's why every single one of your responses is generic and seems to lack any semblance of wit or introspection. It must be so lonely being a girl who reads slashdot that you've lost any and all ability to communicate with other people. You poor ugly duckling.

You totally suck at not responding... are you one of those crazy chicks who starts her day off with a drug cocktail of anti-depressants and various psych meds and ends it with a nice soothing cutting session? Because this is obsessive behavior right here. As a trained physician, I am going to have to recommend you stop wasting your employer's time and get back into the goddamn kitchen already.

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

Keep those personal and OS insults coming! This is definitely more entertaining than TV. I haven't seen anyone make such an ass of himself since George Bush.

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

Keep those personal and OS insults coming! This is definitely more entertaining than TV. I haven't seen anyone make such an ass of himself since George Bush.

Was that humor? Very... topical. All you've done is baselessly refute my points for like 10 messages. In almost every case, you've given a dense and narrow-minded response that has simply exposed that you're a muddied mess of slashdot and F/OSS dogma. This whole time I've been making the point that these cultures share common membership and you're just affirming that with every single awkward unnatural response. It's like a mix between captain of the debate team and captain of the magic the gathering club.

Beyond this, you're immune to broad context, utterly witless, and probably fat. I usually don't take things this far, but this is fucking hilarious. I am just floored that someone actually employs you in something consumer technology related. I think it's a sign that the market is doomed and uninspired. You better pray that companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe are still around so you open source types still have things to rip-off.

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

There was only one point in this conversation, and I have stated as much several times: whether FOSS had anything to do with illegal downloading. You made a rather extraordinary claim, and never backed it up, even once. I am still waiting.

Everything else, as far as I am concerned, has just been you keeping me entertained with irrelevant blathering.

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

There was only one point in this conversation, and I have stated as much several times: whether FOSS had anything to do with illegal downloading. You made a rather extraordinary claim, and never backed it up, even once. I am still waiting.

I am not sure if this point is lost on you or not since you're blindingly dense, but there aren't really good statistics for the operating system breakdown among pirates. By design, the statistics regarding piracy are intentionally obscured and obfuscated. For instance, if thepiratebay or mininova posted their site statistics somewhere showing which operating systems and browsers most frequently browsed their site, it would only take a percentage of over the total market share (1%) of linux users to demonstrate that linux users have a higher tendency towards piracy. Since these figures are not available as far as I can tell, different evidence needs to be sought.

Popular news sites for people interested in F/OSS, such as slashdot, arstechnica, reddit, digg, and boingboing demonstrate a fixation on stories regarding anything related to mininova, thepiratebay, or any other p2p legal affair. It could easily be inferred that free software advocates have no respect for intellectual property, so one might make the observation that people involved in free software are also more likely to be sympathetic towards media piracy. It's easy to make this claim anecdotally by simply reading comment threads on slashdot. If you followed enough users, you could probably draw a connection. This isn't caused by Free software, but I believe that the general zeitgeist of the community is connected. I believe with the proper statistics, a correlation could be drawn between these communities showing that linux users have a higher tendency toward media piracy in reference to their community size than Mac or Windows users. I believe the only community that would surpass linux users in per capita piracy would be pirated Windows users IF that community was differentiated from regular Windows. It's just a freeloading mindset.

The subcultures of libertarianism, free software advocacy, and anti-drm advocacy share similar undertones regarding the rights of media content owners to enforce licenses on users. I think the anti-DRM bent is one of convenience, not idealism. The idealism grows from frustration regarding a culture that thrives on reverse engineering and exploiting content protecting technologies from DVDCSS2 to reverse engineered codecs to pirated media.

The fact that these are two different distinct interests doesn't mean that they don't share a community... one is not endemically linked to the other but there is strong cultural correlation. You could draw a Venn diagram across these various communities and you would find free software advocacy and piracy linked in much the same way Nazi party sympathies and anti-semitism might be linked or Liberal voters and sympathies towards homosexual rights or those who drive hummers and vote republican. They're distinct but pooled.

I am not getting hard figures for you because talking to you isn't terribly interesting or rewarding.

Re:Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

"For instance, if thepiratebay or mininova posted their site statistics somewhere showing which operating systems and browsers most frequently browsed their site, it would only take a percentage of over the total market share (1%) of linux users to demonstrate that linux users have a higher tendency towards piracy. Since these figures are not available as far as I can tell, different evidence needs to be sought."

It wouldn't matter if they did keep statistics, because Firefox, Opera, and yes even IE all work under Linux too. And headers can be tweaked to say whatever the owners want them to say.

Which just brings us back to square one: why did you make such a ridiculous statement, when you knew you couldn't back it up? Then, when I called you on it, you wrote page after page after page of attempts to distract, misdirect, change the subject, make straw-man arguments, and insult.

I have made my point, over and over. You were wrong about FOSS. At the very least, you have no rational basis for making the claim that you did. And you have finally admitted it. That is all I was waiting for.

Re:Huh?

[malevolentjelly]

It wouldn't matter if they did keep statistics, because Firefox, Opera, and yes even IE all work under Linux too. And headers can be tweaked to say whatever the owners want them to say.

It would take an organized effort for such a large volume of people to skew statistical results to that level. Just because it's possible doesn't make it even remotely plausible. Such a movement does not exist.

Which just brings us back to square one: why did you make such a ridiculous statement, when you knew you couldn't back it up? Then, when I called you on it, you wrote page after page after page of attempts to distract, misdirect, change the subject, make straw-man arguments, and insult.

I was just really surprised by your first comment, it was as if the person reading my comment had no grasp on society other than a dictionary like reference on terms... and it slowly drew out into this cascading wave of stupidity as your awkwardly choked over every single thing I said, responses ranging from obnoxious superiority to oblivious assumptions on the software market. It went from sad to hilarious so fast that I couldn't stop the lulz from rolling. It was like shooting fish in the barrel.. and it was a barrel of endless fish!

I have made my point, over and over. You were wrong about FOSS. At the very least, you have no rational basis for making the claim that you did. And you have finally admitted it. That is all I was waiting for.

I gave you a completely rational basis. I explained that the communities are correlated and cited the fixation on piracy by open source-centric media outlets. You clearly possess no higher level thinking ability as you fail to grasp that although correlation is not causation, non-causation does not imply non-correlation. The communities are pooled and statistical evidence would probably back it up. You can't argue with that point because all you have is the claim that they're "not the same thing". That argument is below the scope of the claim and you clearly have no statistics, either.

But wait a minute!

[Jane Q. Public]

In order for their "content tool" to know if a torrent points to illegal content, it would have to actually download some of that content to make a comparison.

So their tool has to break the law in order to "enforce" it. I call bullshit.

Re:Big Yawn

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"Isn't downloading something instead of buying it giving you a direct/indirect commercial gain? You are saving money after all - wouldn't that technically make it illegal?"

It would not, for the same reason why recording a TV programme or scanning a book borrowed from a library is not illegal even though it saves you money as you now don't have to buy a DVD and a book. Czech law, for example, states that any personal copy not only constitutes "fair use": it explicitely states that creating a personal copy of a copyrighted work is not considered "a use of a work in the sense of this [copyright] law" *at all*. (With the exception of software and electronic databases, but it applies to movies, songs, books etc.)

About as useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

...as the war on drugs or the war on alcohol that came before it. Prohibition never solves anything. What people want, people get. As we all become more and more networked socially it'll be increasingly harder to stop black market software/media.

Maybe I'm spoiled, but it's hard for me to imagine a world where I can't have everything I want at the tip of my fingers. I'm approaching 30, and have been lucky enough to have a computer in the home with internet for over 15 years now. For more than half of my existence I've been able to swap files in AOL chat rooms and instant messages, usenet, irc, icq, countless web forums, http and ftp sites, gnutella networked programs and now via torrents.
There are probably hundreds of people who will read this and think I'm a young punk and all that stuff I mentioned is lame and they'll tell me about the days of BBSes, and copying floppies.

I'm hardly worried that the sky is falling. I'm as big of a cynic as anyone, but I've got faith in the community to come up with some new way to distribute pirated material the day after it becomes too much of a hassle to find a decent torrent site.