Pirate Bay Shuts Down Tracker, Switches To Distributed Hash Table

think_nix writes "The Pirate Bay has shut down their BitTorrent tracker. Instead TPB is now using Distributed Hash Table to distribute the torrents. The Pirate Bay Blog states that DHT along with PEX (Peer Exchange) Technology is just as effective if not better for finding peers than a centralized service. The Local reports that shutting down the tracker and implementing DHT & PEX could be due to the latest court rulings in Sweden against 2 of TPB's owners, and may decide the outcome of the case."

Comments

Distributed Post!

[Lissajous]

F......

Re:Distributed Post!

[russlar]

i........

Re:Distributed Post!

[Rik Sweeney]

Seriously guys, can you PLEASE SEED!!!!

Re:Distributed Post!

[clambake]

Crap, stuck at 99%!

Re:Distributed Post!

[clambake]

R.......

Re:Distributed Post!

[Rigrig]

...s.

Re:Distributed Post!

[sopssa]

....t.....

Re:Distributed Post!

[pHus10n]

C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!

Re:Distributed Post!

[selven]

C-C-C- COMBO BREA.......

Re:Distributed Post!

[sopssa]

piece 443 failed hash check

Re:Distributed Post!

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

I"VE BEEN STUCK ON 98% FOR 3 DAYS!!!!!!1111!!!1!! SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED.

Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[Kirin Fenrir]

Proving that technology is always one step ahead of copyright law.

Re:Does this mean TPB will still be working?

[DangerFace]

I personally wouldn't demonize TPB. While this kind of sharing isn't the nicest thing, if the companies who are being effected had been decent about their cost structure people wouldn't have resorted to this in the first place.

To be honest, I'm starting to see the whole argument about filesharing redundant. If the cost structure was fairer I would most certainly spend more money on it. However, if I walked into a shop and bought everything I had downloaded over the last year, say, we end up with this:

~1 000 albums, at £15 each = £15 000 (assuming cheap albums balance out rare items - I know for a fact the market value of some of my Nina Simone stuff would be in the hundreds of pounds, but I'm choosing to assume that they are outliers and can be ignored)

~250 films, at £10 each = £2 500

~50 full seasons of TV shows, at £20 each = £1 000

TV shows as and when they come out in their country of origin = a little over £1 000

~30 games, at £35 each = £1 050

Adding up to a grand total of £19 550 ($32 851.38). So assuming I didn't have to pay rent or bills, buy food, or have any way of watching this stuff / listening to this music / playing these games, I'd still need a significantly increased household income. And I haven't really listened to / watched / played loads of that stuff, I just like being able to think "I want to watch x genre" and having it there, and when someone comes round and I discover they've never seen WarGames, come on, I need to be able to show them...

The point being, I spend most of my disposable income on media of various sorts, but that doesn't mean I can afford everything I want - and if I can have it, why not? No one would be getting my money if I didn't 'steal' it, so the only person losing out would be me. The whole argument has been rendered redundant in my case by me not having a huge pile of cash to hand over in the first place. The RIAA/MPAA/whoever can take me to court for however many millions of dollars if they want - they'll get a lower percentage of my income awarded to them than I hand over voluntarily.

tl;dr: my girlfriend gets annoyed at how much I spend on media, when I should pay bills, and I still pirate more than 95% of the stuff I own. Meh.

Those guys are playing it dangerous! Hashtable?

[NoYob]

First "Pirate Bay" and torrents and now Hash?!? What next, cocaine?!

Still guilty

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

So they go from hosting a tracker to hosting a bootstrap node that gives clients access to the DHT swarm? In short, in the eyes of the law (and probably of the general public), they're still facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. At the very least, they look guilty as hell, because they seem to do try their hardest to stick it up to da man.

Re:Still guilty

[thisnamestoolong]

Hold on there, hoss. It's not that simple -- if we were to define our terms that simply, then ski mask manufacturers would be facilitating the illegal procurement of liquor store cash register contents. The law needs to operate on very black and white terms, and things like the Pirate Bay are operating in very new, and very gray, legal territory. I am nowhere near enough of an expert to comment on how this will specifically affect the legal standing of the Pirate Bay, but I will say that such sites operate on a knife edge of legality -- and any case the legal system can possibly raise against them will depend on an extremely specific set of conditions. If not, Google would be every bit as guilty as the Pirate Bay (as would every single ISP on the planet). What this means is that if the Pirate Bay sufficiently distances itself from the actual illegal activity, then there is no way they can be legitimately prosecuted. We saw the same thing happen with Kazaa (where the industry types decided to go after individual users instead).

Re:Still guilty

[purpledinoz]

Then aren't ALL ISPs also facilitating copyright infringement? Isn't Cisco providing the network technology for copyright infringement? Isn't Intel providing the ability for consumers to download illegal material from the Internet? Isn't AMAT, a semiconductor tool manufacturer, guilty of providing Intel with the tools to make microchips for copyright infringement?

Re:Still guilty

[Xest]

The real problem is that under standard interpretation of Swedish law they weren't in breach of the law in the first place. The only reason they have been found guilty is because of a corrupt judge who made up a false interpretation of the law to suit his goals and to find them guilty.

So on one hand this view that they're in breach of the law is incorrect as it falsely assues judges are infallible, which of course we know full well they are not, but similarly I don't think this will be much help because as the creative industries got away with installing their own judge once and ensuring his position and stance was upheld (even though he did not follow Swedish law as it is written) and so realistically they'll just be able to do it again.

Effectively, for the TPB guys the law doesn't matter, because whether they stay within it or not a corrupt court system is allowing them to be found guilty regardless. If anything I'd say that they have done this because it's possibly harder to shut down and perhaps easier to move around than a full blown tracker. I don't really blame them for just playing a game of cat and mouse instead, if their own country has failed them in initially allowing an unwarranted police raid due to foreign pressure, then not giving them a fair trial by allowing a judge with a blatant conflict of interest to preside of their trial, and then protect the judge when they follow the proper process for handling such conflict of interest- again, all because of pressure from foreign corporate interests, then I think it's perfectly justified for them to shun the law.

I'm sure they're also perfectly aware of the consequences, some call this stupid, but then, that's the difference between people willing to risk their freedom for something they believe in and people who just whinge about things on sites like Slashdot I suppose.

Re:Still guilty

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's unfortunate that the quote I want to make right now ("The tree of Liberty...") comes from a founder of the very country which put such pressure on the Swedish government.

I suppose the great always have further to fall.

Re:Still guilty

[cfalcon]

Jefferson WAS a lawbreaker. He participated in a revolution. And the copyright in the constitution was designed to expire- unlike the one we have today, which is unconstitutional.

Peer ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirates are like ants and always find a way around obstacles and tend to attract more pirates to use the same path.
Removing a single tracker, no matter how widely used it was won't deal much harm. This may lead to the removal of other trackers in the future, but peer exhange and DHT are pretty much a good subsitute in my opinion.

Re:Peer ants

[dkleinsc]

In other words, the Internet is seeing copyright enforcement as damage and automatically routing around it.

If DHT and PEX are

[mehrotra.akash]

" just as effective if not better for finding peers", then why did they wait for the ruling to change over?
why not just switch over a long time back??
especially if they are better..

Re:In a related question

[sopssa]

Magnet link is an URI, your browser is supposed to send it to it directly.

It's interesting that TPB takes this stance now when it has become too expensive and hard to keep their trackers working, and while having legal issues shot against them from everywhere. DHT and PEX have been around for years with no significant improvements. This isn't a change because "the technology is ready now", but because the ship is sinking.

Napster et al court cases...

[nweaver]

One of the reasons why BitTorrent didn't suffer the legal fate of Napster, Kazaa, etc is that BitTorrent only handles data transfer, not search, and has significant noninfringing uses.

Having trackerless torrents however doesn't help the noninfringing uses, only infringing uses. (If its non-infringing, just host a tracker damnit!), thus trackerless client features start to get very dangerous from a legal perspective for the developers.

Re:In a related question

[Galactic Dominator]

Of course this is in response to the legal situation, but DHT is a better method provided users get their clients configured correctly and ports forwarded. Your comment implies they are switching to an inferior technology which is certainly not the case. It's far more fault tolerant and less prone to bottlenecks, it simply requires more from the user. As more sites switch to this method, swarms will increase in size and throughput with less liability for all. I'm glad this finally happened.

Congrats, you've successively cut off a head from the hydra.

Still confused

[SgtChaireBourne]

It looks like someone is still confused there about copyright treaties like the Berne Convention.

It is perfectly legal to download and re-distribute the copyrighted material when the copyright owner gives permission. MPAA, RIAA, Disney / Microsoft don't want that discussed. And when formerly copyrighted material has its copyright revoked, either by the rights holder or by the passage of time. For example, the early Elvis recordings are now in the public domain in many countries because the copyright on that particular edition has expired.

Further, in some countries, fair use extends to copies for personal use. So while it may give you the warm and fuzzies to Repeat After Bill his every word, consider that the Internet is a global network and not just limited to your block.

What is likely at the heart of the matter is the issue of whether decentralized communications networks shall be allowed by control-freaks in various companies or their subservient governments. If it's not centralized, it's hard to track or censor.

Re:In a related question

[sopssa]

Is it illegal to download a list of instructions on which chunks to use ( and in what order ) to create a copyrighted work from your family photos? :)

That's just the same old "but it's just random 0 and 1 on my hdd, it's not the movie, it just happens to have the same order in bytes!". No matter how you try to circumvent laws with stupid technical jargon, if it's clear you are or your intention is to violate copyright laws, you wont get far with such jargon.