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?

Re:captain obvious

[xaxa]

"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.

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.

Free games?

[nycguy]

You mean RapidShare has something else besides porn on it? I'm going to have to grab my other joystick!

List of warez ftp sites... regularly updated

[DNS-and-BIND]

List of warez ftp sites... regularly updated.

General information on accessing these sites:

• Some sites are slow, down, whatever. Try again later.
• These sites use advanced authentication methods, such as reverse authentication look-up to local FTP daemon. Anonymous might not allways work if the address that you're coming from doesn't look 3l33+ enough, you might have to use your own userid and password. Also, disabling or enabling a proxy might help.
• 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.

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.

The first rule of usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT USENET.

The second rule of Usenet is that YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT USENET.

Re:Can we stop calling it "piracy" already?

[MagusSlurpy]

Frankly, I prefer hearing myself called a "pirate," versus a "copyright-infringing content replicator."

Not as cool as being called a ninja, but I'll take what I can get.

Re:The future of piracy...

[amRadioHed]

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.

Re:The future of piracy...

[Zontar The Mindless]

Everything adapts. Software will be something you rent on the Internet and never resides on your computer.

In your dreams, and Microsoft's perhaps. On *my* computer? I think not.

Music? The situation in China has "evolved" to the point where there is no more recorded music sold (or produced).

Been to China lately? When I was there last April, I saw plenty of Chinese music for sale.

(And my gf, who is from Canton, has boatloads of the stuff.)

In the West check your local radio stations... what is selling there is oldies. What will continue to "sell" will be music from the previous century and the Internet will be dominated by garage bands offering stuff for free in hopes of landing a gig.

I'm sure these guys (whom we listen to in the office nearly every day) will be interested in learning that Miss Li sounds like she recorded her stuff in the 1920s because she actually did...?

Movies? Eliminate digital distribution (DVDs) and you eliminate the problem.

Wrong

and

Wrong.

User generated content? Check out YouTube for that, especially ShayTards and Magibon. This is the height of user-generated content and people are starting to discover (realize?) that it is crap. All crap, all the time. No, that isn't going to be the future of entertainment.

(I am going to burn in Hell for this, but...)

[citation needed]

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. This is going to require a major adaptation that most "media" and "entertainment" isn't going to survive, but the adaptation will eventually succeed.

No, only in your fantasy will it really all be free. Someone has to pay, and patronage doesn't work.

No, what we've got is a generation that views the 'Every conceivable juxtaposition of eyes/ears with content entails a licence fee' model with derision. And rightly so.

So we all have to pay for what we consume.

Please tell that to the rich folk who got that way by finding some way not to pay for something (a lot of something). Which would be most of them.

But wait -- that's what *they're* telling *you*, isn't it?

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.

Re:Sucks to be American sometimes

[misexistentialist]

As has been said many times here, copyright is really only ethical as a means of preventing others from profiting off creators' work. Corporate controlled copyright has perverted copyright by exploiting artists more often than not, while increasing scarcity and decreasing quality of material. People have always shared information, and while p2p reduces revenue, it's more a reduction from "obscenely fucking profitable" to just "fucking profitable".

Re:Sucks to be American sometimes

[I(rispee_I(reme]

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.

You could not be more wrong.

[bigtallmofo]

BitTorrent, IRC and Usenet have been shut down for years. I dare you to try to get anything from them! It's impossible. They have been literally shut down by the MPAA and RIAA.

We are left with one alternative: Rapidshare. Sure, it's not perfect but that's all we have after the effective campaigns of the RIAA and MPAA. Now it looks like they'll have to focus all their attention on Rapidshare. Darn. Then we will be left with nothing.

But to reiterate, no need to focus on BitTorrent, IRC or Usenet - those are already dead. Yup. Dead and buried. Nothing to see there.