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Pirate Bay Closure Sparked P2P Explosion
Barence writes to share that the closure of The Pirate Bay seems to have done nothing to stem the flow of potentially copyrighted materials. In fact, there has been an estimated 300% increase in the number of sites providing access to copyright files, according to McAfee. "In August, Swedish courts ordered that all traffic be blocked from Pirate Bay, but any hope of scotching the piracy of music, software and films over the web vanished as copycat sites sprung up and the content took on a life of its own. 'This was a true "cloud computing" effort,' the company said in its Threats Report for the third quarter. 'The masses stepped up to make this database of torrents available to others.'"
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
It's kind of pathetic to watch the industry and the courts try to stomp this out. Perhaps if more judges, politicians and corporate leaders were familiar with history, they'd know that once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. Smashing printing presses didn't exactly stomp out the increasing speed and distribution that information often unfriendly to Our Betters (kings, politicians, merchants, Church leaders, whoever) received with that technology. Everyone had to bloody well learn to live with a completely altered information landscape.
The whole battle against P2P is looking increasingly like tilting at windmills. Perhaps, at the end of the day, that's an awfully good description for this whole cabal; they are indeed qixotic.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people
The article makes it seem like a covert/mystical action, but really, anyone who has been reading TorrentFreak in the days since the TPB offer of sale and events surrounding the trial will know that people have been thinking about ways to mirror TPB for a while now, under the assumption that it will sink: http://torrentfreak.com/its-time-to-sink-the-pirate-bay-and-replace-it-090913/ , http://torrentfreak.com/torrented-pirate-bay-copy-comes-to-life-090820/ , etc...
This is cloud computing like buying another pair of pants is cloud clothing.
I have feverishly been engaged in whacking moles, and cannot for the life of me comprehend why they continue to pop up.
Certainly does not look dead yet.
Keep trying, suits.
For every Web site you shut down; for every IRC server you pay to have DDoSed; for every eMule node you raid; five more will spring up in their place.
You can pollute the edonkey net with malware; we'll move to IRC. You can kill public websites; we'll make private, invite-only underground darknets, that you can't see, find, or regulate.
The society that you are trying to prevent the formation of is, in good part, already here. We will continue working to establish it, for the ultimate benefit and enrichment of all; ironically even you yourselves in the end.
The end of scarcity is inevitable. You can attempt to stand in the way, you can slow it down, marginally...but you will not stop it.
This is similarly ineffective as going after drug dealers. This addresses the symptoms, but not the underlying causes.
Anyone see the 60 Minutes piece last night trying to link Bit Torrent to Mexican DVD piracy to gangs to child prostitution? (think of the CHILDREN!)
It was quite ill informed, seeming to only gather information from the MPAA and other similar sources.
The link between people using camcorders to record movies and make bad quality DVD's for sale on street-corners I get, but their assumption that these are the SAME people uploading to BT, was casual at best.
Seriously, if you go through all the trouble to cam-cord the movie and burn DVD's in mass, aren't you just as threatened by BT as the studios?
Perhaps use it as a source, yes, but upload your own movies for free? I don't see it.
That's a delightful theory, rather like "If we make hiring prostitutes/taking drugs/whatever sufficiently onerous and legally dangerous, people will stop doing it."
By turning filesharing into a vice, the media companies, politicians and courts are in fact only increasing the attraction. There's a peculiar psychology to it. People like guilty pleasures.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Something like ordering the shutdown of Pirate Bay makes it look to the non-tech world like “something is being done to stop those evil hackers.” When in actuality, most of the stuff you find on Pirate Bay is widely available at just about any company that has a resident Nitendo DS playing, I-Pod listening, Warez junkie working there. Most of the companies I've worked at already had at least two “darknets” up and running at all times, and that was before I worked there. (I don't condone that sort of activity, but resistance is futile.) I know of 10-year-olds that spend more time on torrents than they do texting... and that's hard to believe. They would have to kill the whole internet to make it stop, then it would start on cell phones.
I think the media companies thought that when they brought the Pirate Bay to trial and won a conviction that it would scare everyone away from file sharing (legal or otherwise) and that people would go back to buying DVDs, etc. What really happened is that they generated a lot of news which basically informed countless masses unaware that torrent was even a word that they could use these things to get free movies, music, etc. off of the internet.
It's almost a little bit like the Streisand Effect in that they're really only making the problem worse. If they really wanted to do something about piracy, stop talking about P2P and go after the people who are burning physical copies that they're selling. These people are actually distributing thousands of full copies of product for which they have no license to reproduce. That's a battle that the record companies, movie studios, et al. might actually be able to win.
PirateBay isn't a web site, it's a culture. You can't stop culture with laws.
It is from the perspective of the people who create such works in order to get paid. But hey, who cares about them.
No it's not. What you mean is the perspective of the people who distribute such works in order to get paid. It is a key difference that will lead creators to ways of making money that don't rely on charging a fee for distribution.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Time to trot out this old but still pertinent quote again:
From "Life-Line" by Robert Heinlein (1938)
"Before we leave this matter I wish to comment on the theory implied by you, Mr. Weems, when you claimed damage to your client. There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all"
Why do they need the author's permission to copy it in the first place?
United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8. The Congress shall have power ...
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
The theory being that if authors did not have some control over their creative works, there would be fewer works created. Would the major studios fund movies if they knew 99% of sales would not generate revenue for them?
Sure, we would still have print/web-page/other-low-cost works, but not many people will spend tens of millions of dollars producing a movie without a decent chance of a big payoff at the end.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Are you saying making those illegal and having consequences when caught have absolutely no effect on if people will do them?
Of course they have an affect. Countries with legal prostitution and drugs have lower use rates of both.
Look at Slashdot cheering at the piracy. It's really sickening how much Slashdot LOVES piracy now and encourages it at every opportunity.
Slashot loves technology. It's the users that love and encourage piracy, and enjoy something for nothing. While I am at it, I would like to take the time to encourage you to go to PublicDomainTorrents and download some movies for free. Or maybe you can grab a torrent to "pirate" Linux and other GPL s0ftwarez. To the ISPs that throttle, all torrent traffic looks the same, so hopefully you don't have one of those ISPs.
Remember kids:
Drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and downloading music and movies makes you look cool, and girls really dig it!
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Piracy and copyright are not comparable to monks and the printing press. The primary question you should ask when figuring out whether a comparison to piracy is accurate or not is this: "Does society end up with the same or comparible product in both cases?" That is *the question*. The printing press put monks out of work, but society still got the books -- and they got the books at a lower price. If the printing press put authors out of work, then maybe you'd have a gripe about the printing press. Piracy, on the other hand, puts the authors and creators out of work. The final stage of piracy is that no one can earn a living from their work that is benefiting society.
Piracy, on the other hand, puts the authors and creators out of work.
no, you've drunk the koolaid, the distributors' propaganda. piracy puts ONLY the distributor out of work
The final stage of piracy is that no one can earn a living from their work that is benefiting society.
you've somehow made the fanciful leap that the distributor is an integral part of the economics of the music creating process. the final stage of piracy is that distributors go out of business, and only the distributors. first, you are assuming that the pre-internet distribution model gave artists a living. plenty toiled in poverty, and plenty will always toil in poverty, regardless of piracy or not. that's simply the nature of being an artist: for every success, there are thousands of anonymous failures, always was and always will be. nothing about the pre-internet distribution model protects the artist from this truth, and nothing can ever protect the artist from this truth (and nothing ever should: if you suck, oh well)
plenty of one hit wonders became broke as well, as the distributors wrote their agreements so the artists got pennies while the distributors reaped all the real benefit. only the stellar hits: the beatles, jay z, were able to muscle their way into the sphere of distributor-level profits
meanwhile, on the internet, artists have free advertising to everyone in the world, rather than a gateway controlled by distributors. artists can connect directly to fans for free, and distribute their works for free. then they make a living via concerts, promotions, endorsements, advertising, and other ancillary revenues. this is superior to the distributor model as the artist is completely in control, not beholden to some asshole who signs contracts for willynilly reasons and willynilly projections. via a direct link between artist and consumer, an artist rises and falls simply on quality as perceived by the consumer, without an artificial filter in between of a distributor. this is a more efficient model of who deserves cash flows. rather than a distributor giving millions of dollars in advance to an artist who makes absolute crap, while utterly ignoring a musical genius, for random pointless reasons of the distributors sole discretion
study up on the history of artist-distributor contracts, and what millions of artists, successful or not have said about the randomness and arbitrarienss and frustration of their contracts, having nothing whatsoever to do with quality or the fans
Printing press = fewer jobs for scribes, more books for society, lower costs for books, and supports authors.
Piracy = creators and authors go bankrupt, society has fewer new creations and becomes culturally poor, feeding on the remnants of old creations, when creating them was still financially possible.
Piracy = distributors go bankrupt, society has diurect access to millions of artist rather than working through a bullshit filter and becomes culturally rich
why do you believe large financial outlays are required for the creation of art? why do you believe we need distributors to tell us what to listen to and that this artificial filter is somehow a definition of cultural richness? why do believe their decisions are more valid or more economically efficient than you yourself and millions of consumers deciding directly who deserves to reap economic benefits from all of the ancillary revenue streams available to an artist?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes. And? 80% of the world's population cheers the pirates. So, you point is, what? You think that when something is right, when that something is overwhelmingly approved around the world, Slashdot should kowtow to the corporate weenies? Are nerds and geeks supposed to be stupid, or what?
Let me help you to understand: the movie moguls and the music studios are STILL MAKING MONEY!! They are making so much money that they can afford to support the ineffectual RIAA and MPAA. What more evidence do you need to convince you that piracy is good for Hollywood and good for the studios? Just how many millions have they dumped down the gullets of the RIAA vultures, and the MPAA hyenas? What has been the return on those millions? Maybe - just maybe .00000001%?
Aye, matey, it's the pirate life for me!! Do you need me to rip something for you?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I don't see how piracy is an idiotic term, especially from the standpoint of the people whose products are being stolen.
Pirates sailed the high seas, yes, they murdered and stole, yes. However, of note to the people who 1)produced the goods and 2)bought them, the goods were being stolen, not merely destroyed. Entire markets sprung up where people could acquire LARGE amounts of stolen goods, no questions asked. The people selling were mum about their sources. The people who did the act were difficult to pin down. Often somewhat honest tradesmen were the only people the enforcers could find who had any connection to the theft. People who wanted legitimate goods or who placed a special order would pay higher prices to make up for the drop in sales and the efforts to find the culprits. Granted, there were other expenses not happening here, such as loss of ships, etc.
What we have now are markets where large amounts of stolen goods being acquired, no questions asked. The people distributing them are mum about their sources. The people who did the act are difficult to pin down, lost in the vast ocean--a metaphoric one, but it's a good metaphor. People who want legitimate goods are paying high prices (whether this would not be true if there were no pirates is another question) and forced to deal with DRM. Honest tradesmen, and now unfortunately honest consumers, are being forced to deal with the wrath of the producers. Granted the distribution of a single image is of no cost because the MARGINAL production cost is almost nil, but that fact doesn't mean that the people producing software didn't have large amounts invested in the project.
If you're going to argue that the whole of the argument is how much software should cost, don't. When coders are sponsored by the state and producing software is free, then it will be reasonable to expect to get software for free. Until then you either will or won't get it for free by the whim of whomever made it.