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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."
There is obviously an issue with regards to copyright in our society. Millions and more are sharing all the time. This points the finger at the issue being systemic. We need to educate people to enable a wider debate. That is the only thing that will lead to fair change. Piracy is not the answer. There is a place for copyright that is not todays distorted parameters. Boycotting in the mean time is the answer, however, unless boycotting is whipped into shape it is also not the answer. Debate! Educate your friends and family it is a small start but it is the only way.
Shh.
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.
It's always annoying to have loads of stolen software music and films come up when I am searching for a torrent.
Having mininova get rid of all the illigal stuff will make it much easier and more pleasant to use. Legitimate stuff gets buried as there is so much more stolen stuff.
I hope other torrent sites follow suit, even just for the ease of use reasons.
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
Mininova included far too many torrents on private trackers. Sort of defeating the purpose of BitTorrent, actually.
No great loss, all things considered.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
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.
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?
Mininova is gone!
If only there'd be some kind of alternative! I guess I'll just have to rely on sumotorrent, btjunkie, eztv, fenopy, isohunt, seedpeer, torrentz, torrentbox, torrentdownloads.net, torrent portal, torrentreactor.net, torrentreactor.to, alivetorrents, demonoid, boxtorrent, animelab, animesuki, kickasstorrents, torrentplaza, movietorrents, torrentomega, flixflux, overget, superfundo and all the other sites I can easily find on google by doing a simple search.
I hope I'll be able to survive!
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.
> But, collectively, we have to have room for compromise or we will all get nothing.
I can think of a lot of futures where this is not true.
For example, the future where copyright law is unchanged, infringement is rampant and unenforceable, and the content industry merely has to scale down because of lowered profits.
Or the future where the content industry pushes copyright law so out of whack that no one infringes, but their profits are just as lowered because many people are so afraid of the possible penalties they totally avoid buying their products and instead go for the safe indie products which have CC/alternative licensing and/or viewing the content only in ephemeral ways (like on television or a movie screen).
BTW, when I finished school I was a model "responsible citizen" in that I would never have thought to break any laws. Now that I am an adult, I see that the simplistic "law == morality" equivalence is far from being correct. So you might have a big problem in your plans, there, eh?
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?
I can't imagine any decent human being simply standing there and watching while another human has a heart attack, no matter who they work for.
You called that one, I sure couldn't just stand there and watch. I mean, how often do you get a chance to kick a RIAA person WHILE they are having a heart attack?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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?
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