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USTR Publishes Rogue Sites List

Posted by timothy on from the for-all-your-dungeon-crawling-needs dept.

bs0d3 writes "The U.S. Government has classified some of the largest websites on the Internet as examples of sites which sustain global piracy. The list released by the United States Trade Representative draws exclusively on input from rightsholders. It includes popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, file-hosting service Megaupload, and Russia's leading social network VKontakte. VKontakte says that company's copyright problems are in the past after a deal was made with the USTR. Also, for the first time in many years, China's leading search engine Baidu has been removed from the list. However, China's widely used online consumer and business-oriented online shopping service Taobao remains listed. The full report can be viewed here. It has no legal implications whatsoever, but may be referred to by policy makers regarding future legislation (e.g. SOPA)."

21 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Not All Rightsholders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm a rightsholder too. For example, I hold the rights to this post. But I wasn't included.

    I think it's more correct to say that they drew input exclusively from large media cartel members, not from rightsholders in general.

    If they had asked me, for example, I would have listed riaa.org and mpaa.org as rogue sites that sustain global piracy. I don't need evidence. I'm a rightsholder!

    1. Re:Not All Rightsholders by OutSourcingIsTreason · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well of course you're right. The RIAA and MPAA lobbied for copyright term extension legislation which allowed them to pirate billions of dollars worth of what should rightfully be public domain music and movies.

      --
      "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
    2. Re:Not All Rightsholders by amicusNYCL · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't like the term "rightsholder" in general. Doesn't that imply that there are some people out there with no rights? I'm a goddamned rightsholder too, I've got all kinds of rights. And yeah, they didn't ask me either.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  2. And? by multiben · · Score: 2

    Does anyone in the real world care about this list? Unless you're after government contracts I can't really see how business is likely to be affected by your inclusion on it.

    1. Re:And? by Carnildo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you're trying to find pirated movies or software, it's got a nice list of sites you can go to.

      --
      "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
    2. Re:And? by Jawnn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Does anyone in the real world care about this list? Unless you're after government contracts I can't really see how business is likely to be affected by your inclusion on it.

      Damned right they do! As TFA predicts, clueless policy makers will soon be citing it as "the official list of pirate sites...", if they are not already. "After all, teh list is on teh interwebs, so it must be true. Think of the children..." The same braid dead rationale behind SOPA is already in play here. Just because it does not (yet) carry the force of law, it's effect is very real.

    3. Re:And? by beowulfcluster · · Score: 2

      I care. I think this list is great! I've been looking for sites where I can find pirated material for quite a while now without success but within minutes of this list being published, I was filling up my bandwith with downloading torrents. A++, would read again.

  3. ThePirateBay and Baidu...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And not Google? or Bing?

    filetype:torrent $SEARCH_TERM

    Another biased & agenda laden publication from The United Corporations of America.

    1. Re:ThePirateBay and Baidu...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Usually Google is the tool the author and the end 'consumer of piracy' use to find these sites. And once found the "consumer" just cuts out google and goes to the site directly. Google is a good "research tool" in this way.

      Referencing the article, it is a very abbreviated list containing a variety of markets (albeit incomplete), but notoriously missing from the category of markets is the actual SOURCE(s) of the pirated content -- the sources that are producing the pirated material and also distributing it to the various markets (which are responsible for only mass distribution) listed in the document.

  4. Thanks by MCROnline · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks for naming all the popular sites I never knew about, keep up the good work, I tip my hat to the USTR :D By the way, if you close these sites, any chance you could do another report so I don't have to go to the fuss of looking for infringing content?

  5. U.S. Trade Representative by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case you're wondering, the current person filling the post is Ron Kirk, appointed by Obama in 2009. Though it doesn't seem that USTR policy differs much under Republican versus Democratic administrations; sadly this one isn't a partisan issue because both parties are generally on the wrong side.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:U.S. Trade Representative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...because both parties are generally on the take.

      FTFY.

  6. Modchip.ca and Controlsource by Fluffeh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I love how these two sites made it into the list. They are claimed to be selling "circumvention devices and components used to circumvent technological protection measures on consoles". If they are openly selling these things, I am assuming it is legal in Canada to do so - showing a lovely attitude of "If we call it illegal, it is illegal everywhere in the entire world!" from American "rightholders".

    Also, that must have been from the Rightholder Group Dept of Redundancy Right Holder Group.

    --
    Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
    1. Re:Modchip.ca and Controlsource by mirix · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not for long, though. The corporate appeasement party finally got their majority, and will likely soon pass some fairly draconian measures, that they tried to pass in the past and could not.

      Not entirely sure if it would apply to this, but I think it would. IIRC the gist of the bill seems fairly reasonable at first, some fair dealing exemptions and such, the right to transfer to different media, etc. It then goes on to state that if the media/device has DRM it is illegal to break it, therefore rendering all the rights given useless.

      --
      Sent from my PDP-11
  7. Isn't anyone wondering? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Isn't anyone wondering why we get to see lists like that, but no "shame" lists of various internet sellers of brand knockoffs? Ya know, the kind of asshats that keeps spamming /., amongst other sites, with their claims for cheap, cheap prices?

    One really has to wonder why this list and not one of the real problem for economy, the commercial infringers. The damage is by some margin higher, and unlike that one, such a shame list, along with action against the operators of such sites, would not only make the economy proponents happy, I bet quite a few internet users would love to see less "cheap outlet" spam littering in their inbox and message boards.

    Government really needs a few marketing goons...

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. Why isn't Disney on the list? by msauve · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The U.S. Government has classified some of the largest websites on the Internet as examples of sites which sustain global piracy."

    Disney has pirated a lot from the brothers Grimm, Mark Twain, Hans Christian Anderson, etc. And, they continue to pirate our culture.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  9. Legislate all you like... never going to work by erroneus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm convinced that anything which legislates against common human behavior will never have the desired effect. This generalization is, of course, with exceptions and limitations (consider laws against theft and murder and the like) but largely holds true of many things. Laws against prostitution, for example has never stopped it and does little to even inhibit it. A law against smoking wouldn't help. There are countless other examples where civil behavior will simply always be a fact of human society. I hold that file and information sharing is one of these things and what's more, I hold we can't really be human without it. I know it sounds absurd, but what we are talking about is sharing human culture, heritage, art, expression... these are the things that make us human. Trying to package it and make it a "product" is okay within limits, but at some point, it becomes anti-human and I hold we have passed beyond that point quite some time ago.

  10. People who do not have rights by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, plenty of people do not have rights -- like you and me. At least that is how the copyright lobbyists view things.

    --
    Palm trees and 8
  11. ip law is defunct by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the internet killed it

    it is unenforceable law

    millions of global media hungry technology savvy and most importantly POOR teenagers has made this so, and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do this short of destroying the internet

    not that they won't try, and not that they understand or accept this, but maybe someone should scream into these ignorant fucking media dinosaur's ears until they understand that no amount of purchased congresscritter whores, hired tech hacks, or lawyer goons can stop this

    game over morons. please don't destroy the most imporatnt media invention since the written word and the printing press in your disability to comprehend fucking reality

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:ip law is defunct by Pi1grim · · Score: 2

      Why don't we use the Army to stop shoplifting? Just shoot anyone suspected of shoplifting on the spot without due process, who needs that anyways? Oh, wait, I've got an even better idea — let's make up a nice act like Stop ShopLifting Act and just carpet bomb any mall, where shoplifting occurs. If you are against it — you are a shoplifter and should be shot on sight. Thank you, that is all.

      And let me point out to you — RIAA and MPAA are not after the pirates, heck, they could not care less about those guys, they mostly provide free ads for the music and videos. What they are really scared about — is indie movies and music. With the Internet all the giant media companies could be bypassed and they would stop being the censor deciding (and profiting from it) who gets published and who doesn't. And those guys just cannot let that happen. They don't care about pirates, they care about censoring the Internet (which makes about as much sense as filtering the ocean).

      What I expect to happen — as soon as they go agressively after torrents and pirates, then people will just move over to the places where free stuff is. If this legislation is approved, then we are to see the rise of i2p and similar networks. Probably even built into most popular torrent clients, depriving the corporations of the little control they had over Internet.

  12. Horrible Flash interface - posting proper links by jginspace · · Score: 2

    Don't make me load Flash then have to click twice to allow it store date on my machine please - I just want to read a document.

    Source is here: http://www.ustr.gov/node/6520 (pdf)

    Here's some Pastebin goodness: http://pastebin.com/Q5WzwXq0