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

Coming up next

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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

[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.

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...

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: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: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

[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.