Slashdot Mirror
Hundreds of IP Addresses Make Pirate Bay a Hard Target
jones_supa writes "Last week The Pirate Bay added a new IP address which allows users to circumvent the many court-ordered blockades against the site. While this proved to be quite effective, the Hollywood backed anti-piracy group BREIN has already been to court to demand a block against this new address. But that won't deter The Pirate Bay, who say they are fully prepared for an extended game of whac-a-mole using the hundreds of IP addresses they have available. Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and the end is still not in sight."
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
I wonder if they have IPV6 support, unfortunately searches on "the pirate bay" are blocked here at work. If tey do they could add billions of IP addresses!
So Pirate Bay goes around and getting new IPs and I assume releasing the old ones. Then what? Imagine getting a new netblock for your own stuff and finding out it used to be a PB IP. How do you go about getting that unblocked all around the world.
The Internet is not just some fancy cable TV system; websites are not channels, "access devices" (read: personal computers) are not "view only," and BitTorrent is not some service that can be shut down. Millions of people want to share and download their entertainment; I would guess that they outnumber the people running the various businesses that are still struggling to adapt to this "new" technology. How about instead of fighting a battle that can never be won, we tell the copyright industry that they need to adapt or die?
Palm trees and 8
Nobody will ever successfully block that one. It'll be brilliant.
Probably if IP address will be shared with other resources (who are not related at all to Pirate Bay), it will be illegal to block the IP. Let's see what they will do with that. In case they block by IP, resource are free to sue ISP who blocked ip - for damages.
IP addresses tend to change hands. The "bad guys" get new IP addresses, while some innocent bystanders gets the old, tainted ones. It is hard enough to get an IP address off a vigilante style blacklist, but how bloody hard would it not be to get it off a court ordered IP block? The block would likely be in a different country altogether, or perhaps several countries at once.
They are really starting to mess hard with the core structure of the internet. But of course, these big cartels do not care. They get their slightly higher profits, and as usual someone else gets to sort out the mess later on.
I love Photoshop. I know it well, and can do things in it far easier than I can in GIMP, largely because of experience, but I do not have the time to invest to learn GIMP well.
If I want to make a quick button for me website, or clean up a photo, or make a nice card from my girlfriend, it is the tool I go to.
I am not well off.
Graphic design is -not- my career, therefore I really only have need to use Photoshop once a month or less.
I am not going to pay $700 or more for software that I only use 6 or 8 times a year. That equates to about $100 per project/use.
If I could somehow rent it for less. Say, $25 for a week, then I would be more willing to pay for it.
Of course, adobe now has their creative cloud, which if you sign up for a whole year is $50 a month. For a single month it is $75.
However, I do not need the whole month when I have a project I want to complete. I may need 2 days to a week, so that $75 still feels an unfair price, and untenable on my budget.
Ergo, pirating as solution.
That is one scenario for pirating out of thousands. But the bottom line is, as long as people have things they desire--music, movies, software, designer clothing, etc--that are out of reach to them because of the price or the pathetic way in which it is delivered, there will always be some sort of black market. Some sort of theft, because there will always be people who see the reward as greater than the risk.
Silence is a state of mime.
Of course, if only a handful did it, the lawyer goons would stamp you out mercilessly and put you in something as close to debtors prison as currently legally possible.
But you could also have an "I am Spartacus" moment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8h_v_our_Q
Anyone remember this 5 years ago?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy
At first, websites and individuals were bullied into censoring the hex number. But as the outrage grew, a trickle turned into a torrent, and the bullying tactics were turned into a joke: their bullying dynamic turned against them.
I'm wondering if the same dynamic could apply to mirroring TPB?
That is, we aren't talking about something as simple as a hex number, but if the issue can be framed as a simple webpage to cut and paste, or I don't know, a bit of javascript, something that can easily be encapsulated, something simple and small that people can easily cut and paste all over the web, in revolt, then we have the making for the same PR failure dynamic as the HD-DVD hex number.
Their own menace on our freedoms can be harnessed to turn public outrage against bullying tactics into a final verdict in the court of public opinion on these IP law douchebags.
Anyway, just a tactic that might be worth considering, in some form or another.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
TPB has a torrent of their entire database that is updated every 8 hours. All it takes is one person to release it elsewhere for TPB list of magnet links to get out to those being oppressed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I like TPB but the super easy way that studios are able to subpoena a face behind an IP just makes me stop stop using it. You can use a proxy but you end up with slower downloads. I decided to go back to trusted, tried and true friend usenet! It uses SSL (so my provider doesn't know what I'm downloading) and it's faster than torrenting anyway. easynews.com will do all of this for about 10.00 a month. Save the torrenting for Linux images kids!
Wait until they find out that TPB is only one of many torrent sites.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Does The Pirate Bay have any accessible proxies via TOR (.onion), NameCoin (.bit), or the Invisible Internet Project (.i2p)?
I'd like to see the MAFIAA try to shut those down.
Of course, .bit wouldn't help for blocking an IP address but .onion and .i2p addresses certainly would.
Helm has just such a service for car service manuals that I've used many times in the past. They have a 1 year ($350) , 1 month ($50) , or 3 day ($10) subscription. So if you are working on your car and want all of the up to date information for troubleshooting a problem you can get the 3 day subscription and have access to everything the dealer does including service bulletins and warranty repairs. I used to go try to find a .pdf manual for my car and download it but I'm fine paying $10 to have all of the up to date information.
http://www.helminc.com/helm/Result.asp?Style=helm&Mfg=AHM&Make=AHM&Model=ACRD&Year=2006&selected_media=ES&st=S
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
In the Beta Max case, Universal sued Sony because their video device could record TV, and dual decks could dub copyrighted video tapes. The court found that, regardless of the primary use case, the devices were legal because of the mere POSSIBILITY that they could be used in non-infringing ways.
Now... That was a court in the USA, and the US is not the world... TPB isn't blocked via my US ISP, either. However, it's primarily US corps petitioning the US government to make treaties that push US laws into foreign lands with only all of the bad, and none of the beneficial parts going with them.
I download lots of legitimate stuff using torrents from The Pirate Bay (my OS, Project Gutenberg works, Revision3 shows, etc), I wonder how many people pressed the record button on their VHS and Beta decks while watching TV? I mean... The things had whole menu systems with multiple timers and some could even record one show while you watched another. Point is, copying information is the basis of life, it's not going away any time soon.
I fear the end result will just be raised ISP bills, just like the blank CD & DVD tax. My whole life I've tried to play by the book. I didn't make mix tapes, I didn't dub rented videos, I didn't rip & burn CDs or DVDs of copyrighted content... I created my own content and backups to store on these, but I paid the infringer's tax the whole time -- for my whole damn life. Screw these entitled media bastards. It's enough to make me want to cancel Netflix (which I just did, after I read this article), and not fund the big media in any way possible.
I have kept full regular backups of my entire life's worth of content, photos, slides, etc on multiple media formats... I calculated that I've paid over US$5,000 in "pirate taxes" just over the existing media I still have on hand. The idea was that such tax would pay for any possible infringing I might do. The money I've already paid to cross the trolls under the digital bridge would more than pay for my media entertainment expenses for the next five years, at least... That's why I cancelled Netflix. I'm not paying them another red cent, I'll import my blank media if I have to.
All that time NOT infringing any of their content while paying a "pirate fee" for all my blank media?! I can see how some people would just say, "Screw it, if I'm going to do the time, I might as well do the crime." Petitioning our "representatives" isn't working either, because $$$ = speech. Well, screw it I say. You know what happened last time there was a bunch of taxation without representation and or mock trials that unjustly rule in favour of the corrupt establishment? Well, then you can guess what happens next. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Let me begin by saying that this post is *NOT* a deliberate troll.
Although I recognize that it might sound like one. It is actually a sincere question. I'm not taking sides here, I am simply trying to project what I think might potentially happen as a result of things like this. I am prefacing my comment with this disclaimer, because the one other time I pointed out what I am going to say below on slashdot, I ended up getting flagged at -1 troll within about 15 minutes or so of my post, from which I can only infer that people were not understanding my meaning, since I'm was not making the point to start an argument, rather because I wanted (and still want) people to think about the possible repercussions.
So with that disclaimer out of the way, does anyone think that it is possible that prolonged disputes like these might actually end up slowing the widespread adoption of IPv6? With IPv4, the number of potential addresses to have to block to effectively blacklist a site that the recognized powers have deemed offensive is substantially smaller than it could be with IPv6. Even though there may be many v4 IP's available right now, that number is still shrinking daily, and cannot possibly last more than a few more years. With a full-scale move to IPv6, even *hoping* to block an organization by IP would be completely impossible on any sort of time scale that humans could identify with, so would the organizations that are trying to shut off places like the pirate bay be lobbying to try to slow (or even halt) the adoption of IPv6, so that what they are trying to do here doesn't end up becoming completely unworkable? Why? Or why not?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In the old-fashioned paper realm, isn't this kind of like publishers trying to stop library users from using the card catalog to find books on the shelves and borrowing books to photocopy? Except that there are hundreds of independent catalogs and there is no library, just a list of people that have the actual books.
It's not going to be effective, guys. Worst case, if they shut down one of the more popular catalogs, other ones will pop up.
Another approach would be for the pirate bay to start using IPv6 in addition to IPv4. It is always going be cat and mouse, so we just need to make sure the mouse is more techno savvy and uses technology to its advantage.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Turing fail.
The internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it.
Can we somehow get this as a big, all-caps warning whenever people try to censor the internet? It seems like they missed the memo.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You are fully aware that free software exists that will do what you need, but you don't want to take the time to learn it. You're willing to pirate commercial software worth hundreds of dollars because you are lazy.
Your sense of entitlement is staggering. You're not well off? Neither am I, but I wouldn't go out and steal a nice car because my cheap shitty car doesn't have all the features I would like. And I certainly wouldn't justify such action because buying a nice car is "untenable on my budget".
If you can't afford to obtain PhotoShop® by legitimate means, too f*cking bad. Save up for it, or use something you can afford.
Whenever I read stuff like this, I know it's going to draw out all the triumphalist pirates. As someone who opposes piracy, here's how I see it -- let's say a bunch of criminals were writing software to steal your credit card numbers or bitcoin cash. Or let's say that biological viruses could talk. They'd talk about how they're going to win - how you can't stop Chinese or Russian hackers from stealing your personal data or your credit card numbers. Viruses would laugh about how your latest vaccine is going to be rendered ineffective and you should just give up because they're going to mutate and they're going to keep coming at you and kill as many human beings as they can. How would you feel? Would you give up or would it just double your conviction that hackers and biological viruses were scumbags - not only are they harming you but they have the audacity to add insult to injury? That's how I feel about it. Pirate triumphalism makes me feel angrier towards pirates and piracy -- just as you'd get angry if biological viruses like polio or HIV appeared on Slashdot and started taunting humans about how it's "going to keep mutating so you might as well give up".
For some reason I never see any possible solution to the situations on any site,... a somewhat dirty hack could be:
Brein and the other countries assorted "companies" are privately, not run by the government. why not start a similar public-ally funded organization (if they have the right to sue and scan etc.. so are we), release copyrighted material of our own (nice movies of pigeons for example, or pigeons sounds ;-), be creative with naming the movies or songs (not to violate other copyrights but enough that people will download it and scan the torrent traffic, etc etc... and sue ANY company, person related (even family, especially sons & daughters or wives) to Brein or in our case the RIAA and MPAA and any affiliated (legal) companies or goverment department (Judges etc..) for violating copyright. ;-) and make a public ass of them...
It will be somewhat personal... but on the other hand could probably make a lot of money in just sending settlement letters, because THEY don't want the bad publicity... That would be a solutions to back of the bullies... (you can sue them afterwards anyway for violating the music copyright in the pigeon movie
There are probably variations on the theme... This would be more constructive then discussions on who is right and who is wrong, etc...
The best solutions so far for me is NOT to watch hollywood stuff in bulk anyway... be selective in what you watch, it seems quantity (in form of special effects & 3D, shock and awe) is more important then quality (a good story)... Good stories sells anyway, as do good music, the record/movies companies seems to forget that ;-) Not to mention the effect on the brain of our children (e.g. watching propaganda war movies, "wow it seems the hero of the movie is a real die hard, gets the girl, the fame and glory, I think the army is a nice place to be... the reality is more like hell but ftw) anyway... just a thought...
Just fine/etc the ISP's that give them an address to use under the guise of "contributing". Hit a few hard enough and then others will be afraid to give them bandwidth.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I may be missing something, but surely the ISPs will update their list of blocked IP addresses more or less as soon as TPB use a new one, it's not like TPB can keep them secret is it?
Or does the law work that the government/ISPs have to get a new court order every time the IP address changes?
Because that sounds like a remarkably unlikely loophole for them to have overlooked.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The first rule of IPV6:
DO NOT mention IPV6.
What about less-direct legal order circumventions, the ones that aren't about specific addresses but provide workarounds for entire enforcement methods (e.g. the Mozilla anti-DNS-block add-on)?
Something tells me we will see more and more of these. While whack-a-mole is certainly fun, a class-break that is done once and handles every case of the given class is more efficient.
In the age of global computer networks, transnational corporations, and culture that ignores borders, can the stubborn clinging to market partitioning by the outdated concept of nation-states still be considered "legitimate"?
Why should someone do without something that can be easily available just because some asshole in a suit'n'tie keeps thinking in terms of countries? (This applies to everything from said music market partitioning to export/import restrictions on technology.)
The ones with money can buy laws, can shuttle the production and hosting around the world as they please. Why shouldn't the consumers do the same, even if it means (oh horror!) breaking a law or three?
At least the geolocation crap can be worked around in quite many cases, using VPNs, proxies, and friends. Don't piss off geeks!
I haven't used TPB in years...lots of alternative torrent sites out there y'know...
It should be obvious that going to court to block one IP number at a time is probably the single most wasteful court activity in the history of man. Not only is the required maintenance orders of magnitude more trouble than rebinding the server to a new IP, a new technology is required for dealing with this kind of thing. As robust and self healing as the Internet was designed to be, Hollywood is on the wrong side of this equation. Because of the nature of the communication methods available to the people now. If one person discovers a new IP for TPB, they can post it on the Internet and it will go viral faster than the newest Bluray encryption key. People will be wearing it on their teeshirts. Someone will register it as a domain. I am not sure what the right solution is, but whackamole is not it.