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Warez Moving From BitTorrent to Conventional Hosting Services
ericatcw writes "Driven by increased crackdowns on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, software pirates are fast moving their warez to file-hosting Web sites like RapidShare, reports Computerworld. According to anti-piracy vendor V.I. Labs, 100% of the warez in its survey were available on RapidShare, which, according to Alexa, is already one of the 20 largest sites in the world. V.I. Labs' CEO predicts file-hosting sites such as RapidShare will supplant BitTorrent, as the former appear better protected legally."
If you download a lot of files from one-click hosting sites like RapidShare, MegaUpload, etc., you should definitely check out JDownloader ( http://jdownloader.org/download/index ). It automates the downloading of files from several dozen sites and even has features like CAPTCHA breaking. Linux, Mac, and Windows are all supported.
"V.I. Labs' CEO predicts file-hosting sites such as RapidShare will supplant BitTorrent, as the former appear better protected legally."
As a former courier from the mid to late 90's, most of the "good" shit will be found underground, on unlisted boards. All the releases you see on IRC or where ever are 1/10th of what you see on the private servers.
JDownloader has really come into its own over the last few months. Older versions were prone to errors, dropped links and excessive CPU usage, but the current version does very well. As the program has grown, it also keeps up much better with changes in hoster page layout (which can break downloads).
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Personally I've already seen Forums used to post links of RS or MU. I've even seen Twitter linking to a blogger's site which contains the URLs in text files!
This is already being done... its just not as mainstream as one would think.
~Cruxado ~
Rapidshare will not go down because they remove the copyrighted files promptly - as soon as they are notified.
Agreed... But really though, rs is going to overtake torrents the day that users decide manually downloading 800 pieces of a file from a server is easier than letting an app do it for you (from a network of peers, none the less).
Does this smell like Chloroform to you?
No, nobody will ever be convicted of anything. They may be found LIABLE after the RIAA proves a preponderance of the evidence is in their favor but nobody is getting convicted of anything. There's a reason the MAFIAA keeps using civil suits rather than trying to pursue things in criminal courts.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
They've worked for everything I've needed them for online or offline. Also, your 'projection' is meaningless, and I could give a shit about what can be purchased in other countries.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
It was a joke...that web page is from 1995 or so. You couldn't do anything from a Windows 3.1 box on SLIP dialup. I didn't expect it to get +5 Informative...I was planning on +5 Funny, but go figure.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
http://icefilms.info/ Uses some javascript hack to start a divx player in your browser and stream the content directly on the megaupload site. No download limit.
What do you mean recorded music isn't sold or produced in China? I've got a handful of recent CDs from China sitting in front of me right now.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
The third rule of Usenet is that is costs lots of money and is a major pain to download anything from if you could ever find anything that you wanted. So everyone should just forget about waiting time with Usenet.
Oh and rule four, you don't talk about Usenet.
one word.... jdownloader
makes downloading RS easy
(still time consuming)
It can even do RS folders automatically.
Yeah, but no.
Warez used to be the scene. Mostly private FTP servers, sometimes on legitimately owned machines, sometimes on somebody else's machines, but also a good deal of commercial HTTP/FTP services and usenet. There weren't many people involved, but they were all technically inclined enough and dedicated enough to make it work.
These days, warez has expanded to include not just the original software and occasional e-books, but also music, audiobooks, TV, and movies. While this is principally a result of across the board bandwidth increase (faster net links for distribution, bigger hard drives for local storage, faster CPUs/graphics for decoding and rendering quality video), it's had an initially unexpected effect of broadening the audience substantially. But most of the newcomers have no interest or capability of ripping new works, and little or no interest in collecting and distributing existing releases, so they generally have no direct contact with the scene.
These consumers can't really make it worthwhile for the scene to directly support their leechage, so they have two routes available: One is to pay for download bandwidth from a site like RS (or, if they have enough tech know-how, or patience, to work with the free service). The other is to use P2P sharing software (bt, ed2k, etc.) which removes the brunt of the bandwidth to them and others like them. The relationship of scene groups and consumer distribution networks vary -- sometimes a release group will directly seed a torrent, as well as posting their release in "the usual places" (if you know the scene, you know; if not, I'll name no names); some dedicated distribution groups exist (such as eztv and vtv) for the express purpose of initially seeding releases almost immediately, and sometimes some random person connected with the scene seeds it.
But the scene at the core is still there, still using the same network of private, pwned, and commercial servers, and the flux of non-scene downloaders between the latest P2P net and whatever hosting services are popular today has not altered the way the scene runs one bit. (This explains, for example, why the actual scene releases that get directly seeded have 20Mb rars, even though so many non-sceners complain vigorously...)
"stores always have to accept cash. it is legal tender, you can't not take it."
Do you live in the US? I live right in the middle of it, and an extremely large number of business now refuse to accept $50 or $100 bills. I assume they would cite counterfeiting as the concern, but I think it's pure bullshit.
If you do business in the US, you ought to have to accept US currency.
If you are owed money in the UK, you must accept legal tender: Bank of England notes of value £50, £20, £10 and £5, coins of value £5, £2, £1 in any amount, up to £10 worth of 50p and 20p; up to £5 of 10p and 5p, and up to 20p of 2p and 1p. You can (of course) accept anything else.
When you ask to buy something from a shop, you don't owe anyone any money, so the shopkeeper can decided what to accept. Many won't accept £50 notes.
So, the bus driver is allowed to refuse to take your £50 note, or your handful of 1p coins. But if you get a fine for not having a ticket they have to accept legal tender for payment of the fine.
Once this short and partial relapse to centralized commercial services will unevitably be sued to pieces (I mean, duh...), the next evolutionary step _will_ be anonymized P2P. The excellent OneSwarm protocol (implemented and working today!) has a very good change of becoming "the sh*t" when it comes to this I think, and I'm very surprised by the low buzz concerning it: http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/ And for more general use, something like the (not equally yet implemented) Phantom protocol will probably have a place in the market too: http://code.google.com/p/phantom/wiki/MainPage
Oh, and if you want to talk about what "most of the stuff" is, the bigger picture is that, even according to the UK Government's own documents (which if anything is going to be biased on the anti-filesharing side, as it is supporting a new law to disconnect suspected filesharers), the alleged damages from commercial software piracy by businesses is 144 times greater than the alleged damages from filesharing.
Source: http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page51696.html
So if you want to talk about most of the stuff, why aren't we bringing in draconian laws to target where the vast majority of the problem is, instead of worrying about less than 1% caused by people downloading something using bittorrent?
100% of the time? Maybe you've never come across a 'This file has been deleted for breach of our TOS'...
How exactly did "they" "steal" from you?
They (being corporations) stole the public domain.
The prime example is disney. Here's what happens...
1. Disney pilfers the public domain to create a "new work", for example, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or Aladdin.
2. Disney changes just enough to allow the work to be copyrighted.
3. Disney enjoys the privileges of copyright until they would expire, then purchases a renewal by way of lobbyists and campaign contributions.
Note that copyright is extended every time Steamboat Willy would pass into the public domain. Note also that many of Disney's works derive their value from previously existing public domain works. Other media corps are no different than Disney, it is just that Disney is the most blatant example.
To summarize, media cartels are parasites that steal from the public domain (or "myth pool" for the advanced readers out there) while contributing as little as possible. I hope this answers your question of how "they" have stolen from us.
The following are also not legal tender in the UK:
Amounts in 1p and 2p coins over the value of 20p
Amounts in 5p and 10p coins over the value of £5
Amounts in 20p and 50p coins over the value of £10
So anyone attempting to pay their £1000 fine or bill in pennies to try and be clever is going to be shit out of luck because no one has to accept it.