The Pirate Bay Sails To a New Home

the monolith writes "Back in August, the company supplying bandwidth to The Pirate Bay was forced to disconnect them. Quoting TorrentFreak: '"It took just 20 minutes before the Hollywood companies telephoned the new host who took over operation of The Pirate Bay," commented Patrik from the ISP which had been indirectly supplying bandwidth to TPB. Despite initially putting on a brave face and standing strong, Patrik's company continued to feel the heat. It is not a large outfit and doesn't have the resources to fight the entertainment industry and its threats. Last night, Patrik could hold off no longer after receiving mounting threats from the entertainment industries, which culminated in threats of a court summons. Having come this far, there is little doubt that IFPI and the MPAA would litigate if necessary. ... On the heels of several rumors today, Patrik said he could confirm news of the move, saying that he believes The Pirate Bay is now hosted in Ukraine.'"

Comments

Google Purges Pirate Bay?

[D Ninja]

What happened to the article "Google purges Pirate Bay from search results?"

It's listed on the front page of Slashdot, but when I click the link, I can't get to it. I want to know what that is about, dang it.

Re:Google Purges Pirate Bay?

[straponego]

Interesting. I'd thought Google's revenue streams centered around providing the most accurate and relevant search results. Looks like they've punted on that. So there are opportunities for new search providers after all.

In fact, this could go a long way to explaining why they haven't gotten serious about semantic search, which would be the next giant leap in relevance. it's because they'd rather give you pseudo-relevant (but profitable) answers first. This is why when you're searching for reviews on a product, you get sales crap instead. And it also explains why the count the whole page, even navigation/spam crap, as relevant, rather than grouping articles/sections/comments as logical units.

Re:Google Purges Pirate Bay?

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

Google is an advertising company. Not anything else. Not the technology tinkerer it works to portray itself as.

I'm sure I don't need to explain further.

What does the next gen filesharing tech offer us?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Pirate Bay is the first place everyone I know goes for their torrents. Without tpb most people would be lost. What will we do when tpb goes down for good??

I only hope the next major technology in file sharing has some feature that is built in for anonymous use, and can offer single click access to load media files.

Dealing with .rar files for a movie that could have been downloaded as one file is so 1990's...

Something that could combine the best parts of usenet and p2p would be the best long term solution I think...

host the servers in antigua

[circletimessquare]

they are invulnerable:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21iht-wto.html

PARIS -- In an unusual ruling Friday at the World Trade Organization, the tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua won the right to violate copyright protections on goods like films and music from the United States - worth up to $21 million - as part of a dispute between the two countries over online gambling.

The award comes after a WTO decision that Washington had wrongly blocked online gaming operators on the island from the American market at the same time it permitted online wagering on horse racing.

Antigua and Barbuda had claimed annual damages of $3.44 billion. That makes the relatively small amount awarded Friday, $21 million, something of a setback for Antigua, which had been struggling to preserve its booming gambling industry. The United States had claimed that its behavior had caused only $500,000 damage to the Antiguan economy.

Yet the ruling is significant in that it grants a rare form of compensation: the right of one country, in this case, Antigua, to violate intellectual property laws of another - the United States - by allowing them to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products, among other items.

i mean of course its all bullshit. the concept of intellectual property makes no moral, financial, logical, or philosophical sense in the internet age. but i guess we have to wait a few years for the vanguard of ignorant dinosaurs to die off

Re:host the servers in antigua

[FlyingGuy]

i mean of course its all bullshit. the concept of intellectual property makes no moral, financial, logical, or philosophical sense in the internet age. but i guess we have to wait a few years for the vanguard of ignorant dinosaurs to die off

Of course, you could not be more wrong if you tried. Those "dinosaurs" as you call them are being very quickly replaced by young 20 somethings that are creating new and interesting content. They need capitol to do this, they need to hire good coders, designers, graphic artists, admin's the entire gamete of people it takes to pull something like that together and get the attention of the audience, not to mention the cost of rendering farms and big internet pipes to distribute all this content. Like it or not, those people don't live on being "elites" or whatever the current cool phrase is for those with the drive and talent to create all of that content, they have mortgages to pay, insurance, you know like people who have actual lives

Rampant theft of the programs they write causes more then just people not making HUGE "profit" it causes the VC people to look elsewhere to invest which in turn causes all this new and interesting content to be still born.

Put yourself in the VC's place. You have the cash to invest, and someone comes to you with an actual business plan, backed up by a decent demo, with realistic projections for sales. The VC asks, "How are you going to control distribution?" The problem is there is no good answer to give. The VC thinks about it and simply decides that the risk outweighs the possible return and says, "Hey great idea, but with all the pirating out there, how many copies do you realy think you are going to sell? Sorry kid, great idea, but just can't risk the money."

There are a great many things that can be produced from the effort of many people working small amounts of time, and over along period can produce something worth using. GIMP is a fine example, It took the efforts of a great many people, mostly working part time, a great deal of time to come up with something that comes close to challenging Photoshop. Unfortunately things likes games have a far shorter lifespan, whats col today might not be so cool 6 months from now and then its on the scrap heap but not because it was executed poorly or the writers and designers had poor imagination but because peoples taste in entertainment changes just that fast. When it coasts millions of dollars to put that one really cool game together, the people that made it happen want to make money and more then just breaking even because the risked a LOT to get it out the door.

So give me an actual reason why they should not profit from the efforts, why they should not earn whatever the market will bare on EVERY copy sold, and why they should expect people to buy one and then post it on TPB or some other equivalent?

Real actual reasons, not "information wants to be free" rhetoric but actual concrete logical reasons.

Re:Why bother?

[sqrt(2)]

The legal department of the RIAA has to look like they are doing something. They have to try and make some accomplishments, even symbolic ones.

Re:What does the next gen filesharing tech offer u

[sqrt(2)]

Isohunt usually has a comparable or better selection depending on what you're looking for, they largely mirror each other anyway. If TPB ever dies for good the community might splinter, but there will be replacements and word will get around what they are.

Re:The Powers that Be

[turing_m]

So if you value your country's sovereignty in the least, consider the threat real. Many want to eliminate The Pirate Bay's every chance of asylum.

I think it's relatively unlikely that there won't be some sort of movement by those with power to counter the lack of control caused by the internet. We are seeing that now. It would not surprise me if the media mafia kept up the full court press until every last country folds. They have plenty of money and power.

OTOH, their enemies are getting something they formerly paid for, for nothing. Not much money to fight with there. Do they have any allies with an income stream? ISPs are a natural ally - they are not stupid. Without media downloads, porn is the only thing really driving large cap high bandwidth accounts. Sure, a lot of people download a lot of porn, but I'm sure the ISPs would be giving up a large chunk of income if the MPAA were able to shut down torrents of movie downloads.

If the MPAA were to succeed with shutting down torrenting, it's not even the end of technological improvement. We just head towards some sort of darknet. But I suppose that the longer torrents are fairly easy to find and download, the more people come to expect media for free, the more entrenched is the file sharing culture, and the more potential Bram Cohens there will be to code up technological solutions in their spare time. So I suppose this delaying action does serve a purpose.

If the MPAA could even defeat that somehow, cost/GB keeps dropping and local transfer rates keep increasing. We'd have a scene kind of like a souped up version of 1980s tape copying. Except you'd be able to copy the entire year's output of the entertainment industry in a few hours. The only real problem then is converting the media to a DRM free digital version and assembling it in one place.

Still wouldn't work, probably

[Mathinker]

Unless they manage to outlaw one-to-one encrypted communications, people will still be able to use the net for organizing personal transfers of enormous amounts of content (just think about how many songs, or even non-HD movies, fit on one microSD chip now). Eventually it will be possible to tracelessly exchange enormous amounts of content in person, and social networking sites which enable this as a side-effect can easily be set up.

TPB will morph into "The Pirate Get-together Organizer", and as long as they are attentive-yet-ineffective to the demands of the content groups, as opposed to militantly "in your face", they will survive for a long, long, time.

Re:Still wouldn't work, probably

[palegray.net]

Unless they manage to outlaw one-to-one encrypted communications ...

The vast majority of Internet users (a) wouldn't understand that concept if you spent an hour trying to explain it, or (b) wouldn't bother to implement it even if they did "get it."

I'm a huge fan of encryption, and I actively promote its use wherever possible. That said, the much larger issue is very simple: at what point will our government start allowing private corporations to instantly determine guilt or innocence? What's to stop them from outlawing "illegal" encryption using mechanisms like the DMCA, i.e. only allowing crypto they have keys for on their networks? We're getting uncomfortably close to that point (some would argue that we're teetering on the brink), and there's probably no going back once that bridge is crossed. It'd be easy to simply inflate prices for "unchecked" connections to the point where no ordinary person could afford them, making them only accessible to business interests.

All the good intentions and solidarity in the world won't get you anywhere if you're sitting in a jail cell on the whim of some company that decides you're a criminal worthy of confinement.

Re:Still wouldn't work, probably

[Mathinker]

the much larger issue is very simple: at what point will our government start allowing private corporations to instantly determine guilt or innocence?

I totally agree with you here; that has to be one of the more insightful comments I've seen in the copyright-wars-subthread at Slashdot.

What makes it even more insightful is that one's actual ability to know if you are violating copyright will be more and more in question. If I see a file which is claimed to be: "First half of New Blockbuster Movie" which claims it is legally licensed for redistribution for publicity, I don't see it being a strong case in court that I would knowingly be violating copyright by downloading it.

But now what if there is another file which is "Last half of New Blockbuster Movie" with the same claim? It would be fairly obvious that if I download both, I can be fairly sure that I have downloaded at least one file with a false claim. But what if, for example, my best friend downloads the second file instead of me?

Re:Why bother?

[AlgorithMan]

The industry will be satisfied when they gain the ability to monitor everyone's net connection

which will cause anonymous p2p to catch on (like frost in the freenet). And if that happens - and nobody ever has to be afraid to be caught again - then the content industry is dead...

so to rephrase your statement: the industry will be satisfied when they commited suicide...

Pretty simple

[adewolf]

Time to enact legislation that separates the government from corporations, much like separation of church and state. Pliable/compliant/paid off corporate governments must be stopped. No government should ever be "compelled" to defend private corporations interests. Well, all the big record companies will go out of business soon anyways. It's really a waiting game.