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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."
this one needs a "no sh*t sherlock" tag...
obviously, when u stamp out one source....and not the demand, a new source will come to existence to fill in that demand.
Rapidshare, Megaupload, netload, etc. have been around for a while and do have legitimate uses (some times, trying to send to a 20MB PDF or Illustrator (.ai) advertising file can wreak havoc on email, especially with some of the free email ones or if your client is a small business).
Some opensource apps also use the services to host mirrors to their downloads to lighten the load on their own servers.
with things moving away from p2p and back to the client-server model, the number of people open to lawsuits drops dramatically. downloaders are no longer forced to upload, so they're no longer "making available", the the most they can be realistically charged with is making one copy.
TIAEAE!
A lot of warez stuff has been hosted on such services for a while now, it's only more noticeable because other services are being used less.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
They'll continue to make more and more draconian laws. In twenty years, they'll be threatening people with fifty years in the electric chair with a gerbil up their arse, and it will have done nothing to solve the problem. And between websites, new protocols, new control methods, demands to the ISPs, and all of that, the community will survive on shifting sands, always staying one step ahead of their pursuers because it takes time to legislate and administrate a response to what is inherently a social movement without any defined leaders or organizational structure. They cannot beat the economics of the situation, no matter how much technology or social control, or legal action they take: Which is that the cost of reproduction is effectively zero.
They will do everything they can to make distribution as expensive as possible, enforcing ludicrous bandwidth caps and trying to control the internet as much as they can. Eventually, it'll reach a critical point where the cost of forming a new decentralized network will become cheaper than continuing to use the old methods of communication, and the community will give birth to the successor to the internet. It's something of an irony that the internet was created on the ideas of free information exchange and ensuring that an open line of communication would always be possible between its participants turning into a profit-orientated tool by greedy corporations. But while they may someday succeed in control of the network, they will have done nothing to attack the ideals upon which it was originally built, and so long as those ideals live, it will continue to rematerialize like the goddamned phoenix, generation after generation, even as society claims to have no use for it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
RS et al is more than happy to take down anything determined to be a violation of copyright. PirateBay et al stood up and said "fuck off". This doesn't jive with the workflow IP capital demands under the DMCA. Yes, the DMCA is a parochial piece of shit that is only enforceable in the states, but given the size and power of the USA system and its networks, it only makes sense to appease the DMCA as it is the more restrictive of the nationalist bullshit rules re: IP copyright.
RS, mediafire, and others will take down stuff when someone complains. Hence, by "killing its own" it becomes much more resilient, as one gets the whack-a-mole effect, but with this major structural difference: with pirate Bay / napster etc. when the system is brought down, resurrecting or building a new network is very time consuming and difficult. with the RS/megaupload/mediafire/etc. model, they own they field on which whack-a-mole is played. So by letting the rights holders chase the pirates, RS et al get to profit on the churn.
The next thing will be blogs dedicated to software with links to DLs of the stuff in RS et al, similar to music blogs now, and then a master system to search it all, similar to chewbone.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
To preempt any discussion about newsgroups please read the following before posting:
Do not talk about fucking newsgroups, we have a good thing going here, don't fuck it up.
Usenet is not particularly useful unless you spend money. File hosting services are generally quite usable for free (granted, I don't have a big download pipe, so I can still max it out with the free options.) Bittorrent is 100% usable without spending money.
I understand the arguments in favor of Usenet, but the truth is the competing services are way better when your main goal is to spend no money at all.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Also, simple PC's with Wind0wz are also totally off the limits. Go to your shell account and use a real operating systems. L4m3rs without multitasking can't get in.
That gave me today's dose of laugh! Considering 90% of warez are applications and games designed for Windows, it's amusing that users with that OS are not allowed!
sorry to be rude, but not all countries adhere to the crazy copyright laws that the USA does. according to my interpretation of current Canadian law (which could very well be incorrect) the levies i pay on blank media go to the riaa/mpaa/canadian equivalents and i am allowed to download as much as i want. this doesn't mean i'm allowed to distribute as much as i want, but with a centralized server which is download only, that's not the problem that it would be with bittorrent, in which you're required to both send and receive.
not too mention that rapidshare et. al have an air of legitimacy, as they take down any files which are reported to contain content they aren't legally allowed to distribute. of course, "they don't have the resources to check every single file that is uploaded to their servers," only the ones that are reported. And the only reason rapidshare does that is because they are a German-owned company (if i recall correctly). some countries, like Colombia and Egypt don't adhere to any copyright law. presumably a company owned and operated in a place like that would be virtually immune to any information requests from the MAFIAA and their ilk.
it surprises me, given the invention and popularity of the internet, how many americans still struggle to think globally, and still assume that the rest of the world on their terms. this is not intended to be a troll or flamebait or personal insult, it's merely my own stated opinion.
"Piracy" is a clever term coined by the music and file industry to associate file copying directly with stealing.
You may be interested to know that "piracy" is also a term used by the cable and satellite-TV companies to refer to using their signal without paying them. Do you really think companies are going to spend $50 million or $100 million dollars putting satellites up into the sky if the whole world says, "I don't have to pay you; but I get all the channels for free"?
Existing information is replicated or copied nothing more and nothing less.
And if everyone treats cable piracy (or music piracy, or software piracy) as a non-crime, then why shouldn't everyone do it? The ultimate end-point of "companies provide a service + you won't pay them for it" is "you don't get the service anymore".
That may not be legal by current law, and there might be an "opportunity loss" for the content owner, but that is not "piracy" nor is it "stealing".
It's as much stealing as not paying your doctor or your plumber for work performed. Sure, you can claim "I didn't take anything physical from you, therefore, you aren't actually losing anything when I don't pay you", but work needs to be done, you want the benefits of that work, but you balk at paying for it. Piracy creates an unsustainable situation which results in people not getting paid for their work, even though you want the benefits of that work. How long do you think people are going to "volunteer" their time and effort just so you can benefit without giving anything back?
We can only accept so much "protection" before we delve into "revolution" once the people realize they are being "protected" right out of their ability to participate in society. Gift cards might be a "loophole" for them mean and evil "terrists" but the fact is those folks are gonna get money no matter what - but without the ability for POOR PEOPLE who have zero credit and no bank accounts to participate in society the folks on Pennsylvania Ave would end up with way more to worry about than a handful of radical nutcases.
We have become a culture of plastic money. Financially deprived people need access to that plastic as well.
Now, who should be surprised that they don't exactly have their finger on the pulse of the "warez" scene?
More likely than not, VI Labs slipped them a little cash to run this story so that they can pimp some new b.s. product designed to "fight piracy" on direct download sites.
As others have pointed out, this is just about data being copied. Data is going to be copied using whatever means are available, depending on the tastes and technical abilities of the users doing the copying. Since installing a single standalone helper app still exceeds the technical capabilities of a large segment of the user population, there is always going to be some market for direct downloads, but that is a long way from saying that direct downloads will replace BT.
What is more important than where users happen to be copying data, is where data is initially being distributed. BT has now become a major network for initial distribution, at least for movies, tv, and music, which has nothing to do with the technology but with the people who are using the network.
As long as new content is being distributed on BT, it will be the preeminent P2P network. FTP networks are still major sources of original content, and as long as they are, they will continue to be a major factor in file sharing.
Direct download sites are still very much downstream, because they are only copying data from FTP or BT. They are also unlikely to attract people who distribute original content for a variety of reasons, including their commercial nature, lack of security, availability of superior technological alternatives, etc.
If RS captures a large segment of the "sucker" market by reselling what other people give away for free, good for them, but that doesn't mean they are going to replace the people who actually distribute the content in the first place.