Slashdot Mirror
Mininova Removes All Copyright-Infringing Torrents
Pabugs writes with news that popular torrent site Mininova has abandoned their attempts at filtering and simply deleted all torrents other than the legal ones they facilitate through their Content Distribution service. According to their blog post, they were left "no other option than to take [their] platform offline" after a court ruling from August. "The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringements, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros."
Farewell.
And a huge FUCK YOU to the MPAA/RIAA.
Mininova replaced Suprnova, and Mininova will be replaced by another site. It's like playing whack-a-mole, except there are 1000 moles and 1 hammer.
Most of the success from the CDN service relied on the fact that millions of users visiting Mininova for general torrents would also be exposed to the CDN torrents. With Mininova's general torrent index deep-sixed, traffic will plummet to a tiny fraction of what it was before, and activity on CDN torrents will drop correspondingly.
While this means that users of the CDN won't get any extra exposure, it's still a useful service for pure distribution (they handle the tracking and seeding). Unfortunately, with no revenue stream, mininova won't be able to support that for long.
The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringements
After seeing the Google/Italy article, it's nice to see that sanity holds elsewhere.
My webcomic
The Pandora box was open a long time ago and since then the piracy has become more and more mainstream. Since the dawn of the net it has never, ever had a setback longer then a week, hell will freeze over before the piracy will see a decline.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
That shows a lack of principle. We are all fallible, I'm petty and arrogant all the time - especially here ;) - but if we want to improve our lot as a whole education is the only answer. It may be too late for us cynical and jaded adults but perhaps we can try an experiment with our children. Teach them to be responsible citizens. Start with restoring an actual functioning public domain. Then teach copyright obligations in civics classes to primary school students. It will never be easy as we all want what is best for us. But, collectively, we have to have room for compromise or we will all get nothing.
Shh.
The MPAA/RIAA are not the ones to blame for this..
It was BREIN, the dutch RIAA... bastards.
Same droppings, different pile. The nine members of the MAFIAA (Sony, GE, Disney, Fox, Time Warner, National Amusements, Vivendi, WMG, and EMI) are the same no matter which country they operate in.
So mininova turns into www.legaltorrents.com. What they could do though it just de-reference the links, but keep the torrent names in the list. That way people could simply do a websearch on them. That way the only way to take them down would be to outlaw web searches :)
Bah. Remember Suprnova? It is only a matter of time until something else replaces it.
Bah. Remember Suprnova? It is only a matter of time until something else replaces it.
I've always wondered about this. Pirates get all upset and "they are traitors!" when the website operators give up and move on with their lives under heavy pressure from lots of multinational corporations and governments.
But when something bad happens to the guys running these websites, everyone goes "bah. someone else will replace it" and everyone turns their back to them.
Is this a growth some few persons like to fight for on their free time against such a power?
Some copyright is quite reasonable. What we need is a legalization of noncommercial copyright infringement. Leave the rest of copyright law perfectly as it is. I should be able to share all the files I want, but as soon as I start trying to make money doing that, that's when it should become illegal (as it is today).
I don't think there should be a distinction between commercial and non-commercial, there should be a distinction depending on the amount of damages, and obviously commercial copying would give more evidence of damages.
But consider what could happen if non-commercial infringement wasn't punished: Let's say Steve Jobs has an argument with someone who happens to be the boss of a record company. So Steve Jobs buys two dozen XServes, goes to a record store and buys all CDs made by that record company, plus orders all their back catalogue, hires someone to load these CDs onto the computers, then makes them available to the whole world, without asking for a penny. For a million dollars, he could drive that record company into bankruptcy. Completely non-commercial.
I agree in principle, but in practice things tend to be less elegant. I expect to see an increase of private trackers, because their hosts will not be the huge, tempting targets that Mininova and TPB were. This means that we'll all join exclusive, secret societies online and share files that way. It's not more egalitarian, etc., but it's probably more sustainable and seems more like a bunch of overlapping communities, which is sort of nice.
And as happens so often, a judge basically says "Well, technically what you're doing isn't illegal, but I still don't like what you're doing, and people are breathing down my neck to do something about you, so stoppit or we're going to bring the legal system down on you anyway. We may not be able to make it stick, but we certainly can make your life hell in the attempt." Surrender your rights and we'll leave you alone - persist and we'll make you regret it. Wonderful legal system we have here.
Judges that make rulings like that need to either be re-educated, or removed. Their job isn't to make the law, but to judge whether or not you've broken a law. (except in trial by jury, and then they don't even get that) Whether or not they like what you're doing, or whether or not they think what you did should be illegal isn't supposed to have anything to do with it. If they're more interested in writing the law, they need to give up their bench and run for senator.
Senators make laws and place restrictions on police and judges. Citizens break laws. Police arrest citizens that appear to have broken laws. Juries (/judges) interpret law and decide if citizens have broken a law. Judges insure a fair trial. Problem here is everyone wants a piece of everyone else's action. Oh if it only weren't for that pesky "separation of powers" thing...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
+1. If more people learned the power of saying "no" the world would be a better place.
Q: Want to work a 60 hour week for 30 hour pay?
A: No
Q: Want to let us look after your money so we can leverage it and then give you a tiny fraction of the profit?
A: No
Q: Want to borrow some of that money to buy an overpriced house?
A: No
The only reason "no" is not a viable answer to any of these and many similar questions is because there are far too many suckers who are willing to say "yes."
And stop with the stupid after copyright. It's not like Miles Davis can benefit from any copy of Kind of Blue sold today. The purpose of copyright is to provide a source of revenue for the creator, so more people will create stuff, not for some label can profit more.
Dilbert RSS feed
Now, I didn't really know Mininova before this. I had heard of it, but that's about it.
I did visit the site just now, and I saw lots of items about music that I'd never heard of.
Maybe it can become a good site to find new music from non-RIAA signed artists, who generally don't have much of a marketing/distribution platform? RIAA, meet foot, gun.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Unfortunately, when you're working for them, such a denial of service could be seen as a refusal to work. Which not only could cost you your job but also seem a bit suspicious. And ya know, this time and age suspicion is all you have to raise to be a criminal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I tend to agree, but, I'm willing to make a deal. Give me a fair term before public domain takes effect and in return I will accept a limited term of copyright. Not todays term which is effectively forever when compared to an individuals life-span.
Shh.
Your idea is retarded and will never work.
LeTS JuST GIvE iT aWAY FoR FREE!!! LOLOLOLO!!! THATS THE ANSWER!!
Pirates already have an entitlement complex. Why would they want to do stuff for the sites they are using?
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
Copyright holders have an entitlement complex: they expect to get paid over and over in the future for work they did decades in the past.
What crap. A TON of pirated content happens to be recent movies, games, music, books, etc. Your argument is intellectually dishonest.
They think one big hit entitles them to a free ride for the rest of their lives
This is BS. Content creators invest millions each year into creating new content. A significant proportion of music,movies,etc are never going to become hits. The major incentive to continue pumping out new content is the hope that one of those investments will turn into a hit and pay off. That is the current business model in existence. The incentive of earning a lot of money seems to work in motivating people to create better content. Pirates are effectively destroying this incentive. Yes there will be people who will continue to create content and give it away for the "love of the art" or whatever (even they need to find a way to get paid). I haven't seen anything that will lead me to believe this is going to be anything but a small minority.
Pirates only want to be able to freely exchange information
So where are the "information wants to be free"-pirates who are hiring people to create content they like? Then they can exchange this information all day long on their terms. Why is it almost always "information" that somebody else paid millions of dollars to create? What is the percentage of 'legit' content to content violating copyright law? A cursory glance at TPB and other sites leads me to believe little to no popular content on those sites is of the legit kind.
What crap. A TON of pirated content happens to be recent movies, games, music, books, etc. Your argument is intellectually dishonest.
No, it's quite honest. Don't you think the people who hold the copyrights on works released this year will still expect to be paid for copies ten or twenty years from now? Why would they act any differently from the people who hold copyright on works from past decades?
Besides, expecting to be paid today for work I did a year ago, a month ago, or a week ago is no better. It's still an attempt to enforce a contract on someone who wasn't a party to it at the time. I didn't ask Lady Gaga to record "Poker Face", so regardless of whether I listen to it or download it, why would I have any obligation to pay her for that effort?
Content creators invest millions each year into creating new content. A significant proportion of music,movies,etc are never going to become hits. The major incentive to continue pumping out new content is the hope that one of those investments will turn into a hit and pay off. That is the current business model in existence.
Yes, it's a stupid framework that barely qualifies to be called a business model. It's like calling "lottery player" a career. The major incentive to continue buying lottery tickets is the hope that you'll win the jackpot... but you probably won't. Why play the copyright lottery when you could be getting paid directly for creating art?
The incentive of earning a lot of money seems to work in motivating people to create better content.
You know what works just fine as an incentive in every other industry? The incentive of being paid for doing quality work. The best lawyers command a higher rate than the worst lawyers. The best carpenters get more work and get paid more for it. What makes you think artists can't muster up the motivation to do good work without special incentives that involve the rest of us giving up part of our free speech?
So where are the "information wants to be free"-pirates who are hiring people to create content they like?
They're on sites like Sellaband and Kickstarter.
Then they can exchange this information all day long on their terms.
Surely you've noticed that they can already exchange any information all day long on their terms. The question is, will content producers adapt to that reality, or will they remain in denial with a business model that depends on being the sole source of copies?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I didn't ask Lady Gaga to record "Poker Face", so regardless of whether I listen to it or download it, why would I have any obligation to pay her for that effort?
I see we're continuing the string of weak arguments. If you are not a consumer of her content, then you are free to ignore her work. Commercial artists record songs to sell them. If you are a consumer then you are expected to pay. You don't live in a vacuum and so as a member of society you can't just walk in and give yourself the right to pirate her work. Feel free to support record labels and artists that operate within an economic model that you agree with. If you don't want to live by the current rules, then be prepared to face the consequences. Society doesn't have to respect whatever rights you give yourself ad-hoc. You can't have it both ways.
You know what works just fine as an incentive in every other industry? The incentive of being paid for doing quality work. The best lawyers command a higher rate than the worst lawyers. The best carpenters get more work and get paid more for it.
And? Since digital content can't be technically stolen, you need copyright law to protect it. How does what you said change anything?
What makes you think artists can't muster up the motivation to do good work without special incentives that involve the rest of us giving up part of our free speech?
I have no clue what "free speech" is doing in this argument. This is about entertainment, not oppression.
Yes, it's a stupid framework that barely qualifies to be called a business model. It's like calling "lottery player" a career. The major incentive to continue buying lottery tickets is the hope that you'll win the jackpot... but you probably won't. Why play the copyright lottery when you could be getting paid directly for creating art?
They're on sites like Sellaband and Kickstarter.
Great. Problem solved then ! You can find like minded people such as yourself and as a group invest in whatever business model you agree with. Encourage new content to be created that isn't encumbered with whatever copyright law you disagree with. Why are you demanding that there shouldn't be a way whereby artists can get compensated by selling their goods and their rights protected through copyright? Surely there can be more than one business model so that it works for everyone?
The question is, will content producers adapt to that reality, or will they remain in denial with a business model that depends on being the sole source of copies?
That is irrelevant. If the current business model is a failure then the companies will die out. Thats how the free market is supposed to work. Why does it matter to you if they content producers stay afloat?