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."

Comments

captain obvious

[MoFoQ]

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.

Re:captain obvious

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Actually, moving to paid services is one of those short-sighted, brain-dead lemming moves the general public gets involved in periodically. This is simply so because most such sites need actual payment to download (unless you want to download 1 file per 24 hours at something like 10k/s in the "free", "oh how much faster it would go if you only gave us your Credit Card number", "trial" mode - and never you mind horrid java-script hells of a "web page" all of these "services" feature).

The end result is that there is a complete trail of uploaders, their IP Addresses, their emails, but what's even better, there is a complete trail of all downloaders, including their IP Addresses, emails, user ids and, the Holy Grail of RIAA, MPAA and BSA snooping campaigns: actual financial transactions of these donwloaders which immediately yield their identities and bonus preculde any possible defense of "sharing between friends" as there is actual money changing hands.

In short: stupidity squared on the part of any people who use RapidShare, MegaUpload and a bunch of similar scams, people who have no clue about the implications of their actions and were, due to their ignorance of technology driven into arms of these scams by the PR campaigns against P2P, people who got brainwashed into believing that the direct-download sites are "safer". All it will take is one of them getting sued and happily forking over all the logs and financial records. Than again, odds are that some of them are already controlled by MPAA etc as a result of some behind-the-scenes settlements.

No such thing was possible with BitTorrent as a vast majority of tracker sites are anonymous. The snobs participating in "private trackers" had more elevated levels of exposure because of their "registration" process offered additional levels of forensic evidence. In fact most P2P systems offer as the only point of identification the IP Address, which does not immediately translate into a personal identification (unlike your MasterCard with which you paid RapidShare) due to dynapmic IP assignments, possible WiFi holes, access by other people to your computer and what not.

In short, it will take only a series of mega-busts of MegaUpload users, followed by rapid (due to excellent and undeniable forensic evidence) convictions, until the lemmings will run back to more anonymous and thus more sane methods of file-sharing.

Re:captain obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk about Bit torrent use like it's in the past, however it's very much a live and kicking.

Re:captain obvious

[MoFoQ]

never heard of jdownloader?

it doesn't have to use a "paid/premium" account to access those files and it automates a lot of the tedious aspects of the free versions of the services.
plus there are services out there meant for uploading to those file hosting services, anonymously and automatically, as well as payment services from various countries that don't share the bed with the lobbyists like the US/UK/France that handle the payment services as well as proxy services...

yes...I can go on and on.
It's a cat-and-mouse game, where the mouse usually is more savy and has a head-start.

Re:captain obvious

[ScrewMaster]

In fact most P2P systems offer as the only point of identification the IP Address, which does not immediately translate into a personal identification

Apparently you've not been following the RIAA lawsuit mill. According to them (and the majority of courts which have bought into it) an IP address is unquestionable proof of identity. The fact that it's not doesn't matter if you've been screwed into the ground by a frivolous lawsuit.

Re:captain obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that it's not actually illegal to download warez, right?

xIAA loses

[lucas teh geek]

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.

Re:xIAA loses

[jez9999]

Erm, but the whole weakness of the client-server model is that there's a single point of failure - the server. Napster got taken down easily. I don't care if these sites are hosting other fiels amongst illegal torrents, you better believe the MAFIAA will sue the fuck out of Rapidshare and/or they'll just remove these torrents as much as they can.

Newsgroups

[Frogbert]

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.

Re:The future of piracy...

[rohan972]

User generated content? All crap, all the time. No, that isn't going to be the future of entertainment.

It won't be the whole future but it's here to stay whether you like it or not. User generated content is being used as the entire basis for mainstream media content sometimes now, such as in this news story about the "wedding dance video". You are way off base if you think this type of content isn't going to have a place in mainstream entertainment.

What most people don't understand is we've grown an entire generation that believes it all should be free and will never, ever pay.

Like with free to air TV and radio? Free content is hardly a new thing, for many people a significant portion of their entertainment has been free (ad supported) content for decades.

The idea that people aren't willing to pay is a lie anyway and everyone who promotes the idea knows it. iTunes proved that. If you provide the product or service people want they will pay for it. Make paid for DRM free downloads available at the right price and most people won't bother with "pirate" sites with even minimal risk of getting caught. Just having predictable quality movie and music files will win people over on convenience over illegal downloads.

Re:Sucks to be American sometimes

[Artemis3]

Actually the law is not like that in US, thats why its crazy. If ONLY the author were the copyright holder and the only one with those rights, it would made some sense. However, the US system allows "transfer of ownership", thats the death trap. The original US copyrights lasted 14 years, and were meant to put a stop to perpetual rights of printer guilds in UK. Today, these "printer guilds" (corporations) have restored their hereditary powers. For this reason, if you are not going to fix it, we are going to ignore it, or even better, legalize non-profit sharing and put an end to the abuse.

You keep your US only Hulu and your DRMed iTunes, i keep my worldwide p2p file sharing sites and my anonymous p2p networks. If artists want money, they better start touring or taking direct donations, i don't believe in third parties "owning" content and exploiting said artists beyond their lives. Or the corporate state imposing their rule to the world.