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BitTorrent Usage Increases In Europe, Following the Pirate Bay Blockade
MrSeb writes "In a twist that will surprise no one except the RIAA, MPAA, BREIN, and other anti-piracy lobbies, the amount of BitTorrent traffic has stayed the same or increased in Europe following the blockade of The Pirate Bay in the UK, Netherlands, and other countries. This news comes from XS4All, one of the largest European ISPs, which has published a graph of the network traffic associated with the BitTorrent protocol — and sure enough, since the Dutch Pirate Bay blockade began in February 2012, traffic has stayed the same or increased slightly. There are probably a few reasons for this: a) The European blockades created a lot of publicity (and no publicity is bad publicity); b) TPB isn't the only torrent site out there, and many of its torrents are available elsewhere; and c) Internet denizens are a lot more savvy (proxies, VPNs, etc.) than the MPAA and co give them credit for."
An equal hypothesis could be, everyone has stopped downloading files from the pirate bay and with all the free time they have now they are unable to watch movies, the are now committed WoW or D3 players, or whatever other games use Bittorrent as a patch delivery mechanism.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Piracy will never go away. It's literally part of the market itself. No matter what kind of laws or restrictions they impose, people always find a way to share information. So it's not a force that's hurting the market, it's simply part of it. And if the copyright holders can just learn to use it to their advantage, it can be one of the most powerful forms of advertising online. It doesn't cost them any customers or money, it only provides new opportunities.
There I fixed it for you.
Ever since they blocked The Pirate Bay I started using it. XS4ALL is my ISP and they will fight for my freedom to use it or not use it. So I stick with them. And lo and behold setting up a proxy is easy enough(Block google is probably much more effective) and yep of we go downloading stuff. Just to give a big fuck you to BREIN and Tim Kuik(leader of that bunch of nitwits).
The irony is is that I never downloaded anything that wasnt free(as in beer) over bittorent.
I am not stealing, I am downloading. I have ZERO intention of purchasing most of the products I download but I do purchase some of the good ones.
IF they ever come up with the perfect DRM then I will stop downloading BUT I will not start purchasing their shit. I'll simply look for other forms of entertainment.
So have I have not stolen anything.
Let's ponder for a moment what happened most likely. Take Joe Randomcopier. He doesn't know jack about getting around DRM or how to "crack" software, all he actually does know is how to use a torrent program. And that he knows 'cause it's point-and-click, and no harder to use than any other user space program out there.
His access to torrents gets blocked in some way. Be it that the tracker becomes unreachable, be it that his ISP filters, be it whatever it may. What will Joe do? He doesn't have the tech knowledge to figure out a way around. What Joe does have, though, is the internet and access to its knowledge. Joe might not know much, but he does know that someone knows more than he does and that someone will publish the information he needs. And he knows how to use Google, Bing or whatever other search engine there might be out there. Even if Google, Bing or most other engines start blocking "such" information, Joe will by then have found a new engine that doesn't. How? By using the same venue of information gathering he uses now. No matter what information you try to block, it's a bit like fighting malware: You can only start fighting it once it is out there somewhere. And playing whack-a-mole has never really been a very efficient way to curb information distribution.
So Joe gets pointed to some board, some blog, some podcast, some youtube video that shows him in terms even Joe can reproduce how to get around this blockage. If everything fails, someone clever enough will come up with a new kind of torrent client that ignores said blocks, be it by redirecting the blocked accesses to trackers through proxies or by disguising the blocked protocols as HTTPS traffic. Joe doesn't and needn't know how it works. Joe just needs a pointer to the place where he can download that program or configuration. And those pointers he will get, no matter what you try to do.
So yes, the "average copyright infringer" doesn't know how to work around those blocks. But he doesn't have to. Just like the average game copier doesn't need to know how to crack copy protection. All it takes is one person smart enough to do it, the others can just copy his work.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In the Netherlands, if one googles the pirate bay (which is what many users do instead of typing in the URL, especially those that aren't particularly computer-savvy) the second and third hits both provide a list of proxies. It is just a matter of clicking a different link. Circumvention is very easy even for the most clueless.
If the anti-pircay organizations want to achieve something, they should probably sue Google to have them censor searches for the Pirate Bay. Given that ISPs can be forced to block it, there is a fair chance judges will require Google to censor such searches.
Since when does all BitTorrent traffic = piracy? I download 10's of gigabytes/year using BT and none of it is pirated content. All of my BT traffic is legitimate and legal.
In my opinion, this association of "all" BT traffic with illegal downloading is preventing BT from being more widely utilized for legitimate uses. It is nothing more than a distributed file-transfer protocol; the fact that some amount of BT traffic is used for illegal activities is really irrelevant. We should be driving more legitimate usage of BT to tilt the traffic patterns more towards legal use of the protocol and drown out the "noise" of illegal usage. This is the only way to ensure widespread use of the protocol in a way that survives any legal attempts to block it. The more BT is used for illegal activity the more likely it will be blocked or filtered at some point.
Just imagine if someone "discovers" that TCP/IP is being used to transfer these illegal BT packets all over the internets...
"If it was easy to create an official, legal version of The Pirate Bay, then the entertainment industry wouldâ(TM)ve done it already - theyâ(TM)re not that stupid."
It took almost 20 years of hard work at RCA to develop the CED video disc format. You know, the discs where a needle in a groove picks up the video. Hit the market a few years after the laser disc.
What, you mean you've never heard of it? Not too surprising, actually.
But yeah, they're SMART, they are.
This space available.
Not sure if you're trolling or indeed buy that "piracy=theft" argument. Let me explain it to you again: for theft to happen, the original owner would need to be deprived of the object stolen.
It's like in that "would you download a loaf of bread" argument. Of course I would, and if replicating bread would be cheaper than baking it (and kept the quality, like copying does), the society as a whole wins big time. Arguing that "but the bakers lose" is precisely glasser's fallacy.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Something has been lost because the value of the original has been reduced. Much of the value of real world items is based on the perception that they have value. My first boss used to say "If you give something away for free, people will esteem it as worthless". Most people who say "I do not pay because it is not worth it", merely say that because they are used to getting it for free.
Something has been lost because the value of the original has been reduced.
If the person wouldn't be paying for it anyways then that person views its monetary value already at zero, therefore its value cannot be reduced any further anyways.
How can they identify BitTorrent traffic, since virtually all such traffic is encrypted and all the ISP can see is that it is SSL?
Are some people still silly enough not to encrypt their transfers?
First of all, it is very easy to identify BitTorrent traffic even if it is encrypted, you just cannot identify the contents of said traffic. Secondly, e.g. uTorrent by default does not use encryption and quite obviously Joe Blow doesn't even come to think of that, let alone know how to enable it.
I'm guessing that clients that make hundreds of encrypted connections per minute to different IP adresses are easy to track down..
In europe we hear a lot about like video and books in services like Google Play, ITunes, Amazon, Netflix. But the reality is that these services has done a very poor job in supporting the european market. I don't know who is to blame, the EU for not creating a single european content market, rights holders for making it too cumbersome to add their content to these services. Or maybe Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and others are just too lazy or too inept. Who do you think is to blame?
If something you own now has less value because somebody else now has the same item, I would suggest that your initial calculation of value is flawed and of no use to society.
Only on Slashdot can such a comment be modded Insightful.
We get that the current system is not perfect. But publicly declaring that you're not going to pay for anything anymore while obviously still expecting to get all the latest new stuff... how is that fair to anyone, especially the creators of the stuff you're consuming?
I for my part am simply more selective about who I'm giving my money. And if I decide I do not want to fork over money for something, I may simply not consume it. If you want something to change, vote with your attention. Otherwise it's no wonder this is turning into a war.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
"This news comes from XS4All, one of the largest European ISPs..."
XS4All is a big provider in the Netherlands, but not the largest. They are definitely not one of the largest in Europe.
They do however have a long history of standing up for the rights and privacy of their customers.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Most people who say "I do not pay because it is not worth it", merely say that because they are used to getting it for free.
No.... I do not pay for modern recordings, because they really aren't worth it. Modern recordings sound like shit. If I can't get 'em for free, I'll stick with radio. Until the recording industry pulls their heads out of their collective asses, however, I'm not going to spend money on a recording that was engineered at the behest of a moron. As they're "remastering" old recordings and rereleasing them with this crap, it means that I have probably already bought my last CD ever from mainstream producers. (there are still indy producers who know what music is supposed to sound like, and I do still buy discs from them).
No, it's right that we see what happens, rather then closing our eye and screaming hopping that the problem* will go away. The whole IP scene must evolve, the money is there if the service provide more to the user. *I don't think this is a problem at all, it's just a problem for distribution companies, and I hope they all die in pain.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Not quite. There's nothing illegal about downloading a copyrighted file that is being distributed according to whatever terms the author has set. In the vast majority of cases the author is allowing distribution for consumption through a web browser. The author is not, however, giving up all rights to the copyrighted work. The most common case where this is fought is when images are illegally used. Furthermore, in US law, at least, it /is/ the downloader's problem if he downloads copyrighted works outside of legitimate distribution.
I am not endorsing the current state of affairs, just reporting them.
Meh - I'm happy to fork out $80 for Attenbourough's "Planet Earth" box set, it's much more effective to use your dollar to change the market rather than pretend it doesn't exist.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Most people don't want free. Research has already been done on this topic. People want "fair". When given the choice between free and fair, most people choose fair.
Noone argues that. Point is that THEFT Has a fixed definition. Talk of Fraud, betraying someone for his gain. Point is - he still has the original, and THEFT is defined as removing property from someone.
The problem is this:
The *IAA and their friends have set up a thicket of rules that result in a legal, purchased copy being *less* valuable to me as a customer than a "stolen" copy. Further, they have made complying with the rules almost impossible. If I play my radio where others can hear it, that's a "public performance" and I need a license. If I play music in my class, I need a different license for that. If I want to complie a playlist (ie copy tracks off a cd and make my own cd) I need a license for that too. Ech of these licenses is sold by a different entity, and the process for getting one takes weeks.
So "stealing" is much, much easier, and *everyone* does it. I mean *everyone*. Even Grandma Moses.
So if the *IAA were to simplify their rules, and actaully ask their customers what adds value, they might survive.
But the result of their stupidity is that there is now an entire generation that has grown up pirating music, and sees nothing wrong with it, in fact, there is value added to a pirated product. It can be freely shared, it doesn't have DRM, it doens't have those FBI warngins, it can be played anywhere in the world. That's makes it more valuable than a restricted product.
But why wouldn't they pay for it? Is it possible that they would indeed pay for x product if they couldn't get it for free? Perhaps not in all cases, but I doubt all freeloaders would entirely abandon movies/music/games if unable to grab free copies. In a world where copying is prohibitively difficult, people would go back to how we used to be before the rise of file sharing: some people picking up bootlegs, and the bulk of people having to consume according to their spending power. Atari 2600 titles were relatively difficult to pirate, so at the time I either saved up allowance to buy titles, or more commonly visited my local game renting shop.
JC
for theft to happen, the original owner would need to be deprived of the object stolen
So you cannot steal ideas?
You cannot steal GPL'd code either?
No, and nope.
Ideas can be copied, as can code. Neither can be stolen.
Of course ideas can't be stolen - if they could, then you wouldn't even be able to use this argument, as someone else came up with it first, and you would be stealing his 'idea' that 'stealing ideas' are wrong. It's just a fucking stupid idea.
I percieve the value of a film to be pretty low, I mean I watch them for free on TV when they are shown. I percieve the cost of a DVD to be low, I can buy a stack of blank ones for a relatively small amount of money. Why is a digital download almost as much as a physical copy?
If I add the "value" of the film, to the "value" of the DVD (or download), I don't get anywhere near the price I'm expected to pay for them. The only DVD's I tend to buy are the £3 ones from supermarkets and DVD stores, I don't buy digital downloads, they are just too expensive, if I'm shelling out cold hard cash, I want something physical they can't take away from me, if I'm paying pennies then I'll accept a digital copy I can play wherever I like (not just where I'm allowed to). I'm not paying £10+ for a DVD, as I don't think that is good value for money.
The other argument is they need to charge £10+ for a DVD because so many people are copying it? That's nonsense, if they were actually losing money they wouldn't be making more films, the music and film industries are certainly not (as a whole) making a loss.
The "I do not pay because it is not worth it" argument is very true, it *really* isn't worth it, the cost of a DVD is over an hours minimum wage, pushing an hour ar average wage I would guess. When I can get entertainment from the BBC for ~£130 a year, and I listen to and watch a lot of BBC content, I read the website, *that* is value for money, I also don't have to go out of my way to access it.
Because some corporation has brainwashed a lot of people into thinking it is hard done by, and sticks rigidly to an ancient (in terms of media delivery) business strategy, shafts over the little guys, people agree with (and defend) them... It's rather sad.
I don't understand why content providers are so hostile towards the idea of free crowd-sourced backups of their data? Beware, Do-Gooders, no good deed goes unpunished!
The Admin and the Engineer
So you cannot steal ideas?
Let's put it this way: an idea can be owned as much as a person can.
For both, there are/were laws that declared them property, allowed to buy and sell them, and so on. And both kinds of laws worked by draconian restrictions on personal freedoms.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
From TFA:
If it was easy to create an official, legal version of The Pirate Bay, then the entertainment industry would’ve done it already — they’re not that stupid.
Actually they are that stupid... Countless surveys and similar has made it obvious that the primary reason for piracy is unavailability and to a lesser degree price. So how has the industry responded to these fully-in-their-control-easy-fixes? By doing absolutely nothing. Yes, they are THAT stupid.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
I don't know if they realized this but popular torrent files can be uploaded and shared anywhere else on the internet too lol. They're like 20kb on average. In fact, I think there's some new thing where you can just click a highly encoded link and it tells your bittorrent client which file it refers to so you don't even need to download a .torrent file at all. So some little text post on some dumpy little forum could start a torrent download just as easily as the pirate bay.
So giving a negative review of a piece of content is theft ?
it reduces the value of the original, doesnt it ?
I repent from my evil ways and accept you as my savior.
Noone argues that.
I do. Each copy has exactly the value that the purchaser (or pirate) ascribes to it. The actual value lost to the producer of digital content per copied item is best shown in a bulleted list:
*Loss of a potential sale to a potential customer.
*Oh, wait... that'll pretty much wrap this list up.
The claim of "the studios need to pay their business costs!!" accomplishes precisely nothing when arguing against piracy. Of course they do. So does the Ferrari factory mentioned earlier. If nobody's buying Ferraris, they're gonna have a tough time paying them, aren't they? So, Ferrari would look to why people aren't buying, and adjust their business practices accordingly. The ONLY difference is that digital goods can be replicated extremely easily, making the artificial scarcity that Ferrari relies on (or DeBeers, or Starbucks, or any store that offers specialty goods) a non-factor.
If you accept the claim that a digital downloader would not otherwise purchase the copy of the software he downloaded, then nothing of value was "lost". In fact, one could just as validly surmise that the download provided a gain for the producer in the form of advertising. Of course, you don't have to take this claim at face value, but then you're arguing that the pirate's dishonesty has cost the producer, not file-sharing, and that's a totally different argument (guns don't kill people, people kill people).
The point of all this is there are a great many assumptions being made when people try to determine the actual damages of piracy. You can argue that people who pirate are being disingenuous when they state "I wouldn't have bought it anyway!" or "I buy the ones I like!" but the truth is it doesn't matter, from a business standpoint. Some facts of life: 1) People are pirating software successfully. 2) It has been proven that the distribution costs of a piece of software can be next to nil; set up a webserver and let people do their thing. 3) As a commodity, software is valued arbitrarily, and it's been heavily, heavily skewed by points 1) and 2). These facts conspire against the old model of software distribution.
The harsh truth is the studios have 4 options, all of which are happening in various markets. 1) Create a way to bring in revenue after the original purchase of the software, which requires after-market purchases (pay-to-play, DLC, expansion packs, font packs, etc). 2) Campaign against piracy as an immoral act. I imagine this approach will continue to have the same effect as a campaign against oral sex. 3) Lower the price and increase the convenience of software acquisition to the point where it is easier and cheaper (in terms of time) to purchase software instead of pirate it. 4) Increase DRM protections more, and more, and more. Perhaps going as far as copy protecting all software via encrypted hardware keys. This is currently done for high-end or industrial software, and while it doesn't prevent piracy, it makes it orders of magnitude harder to crack the DRM. This has historically had the unintended side effect of pissing real consumers off, leading to even MORE piracy, once the inevitable software crack is released into the wild. Maybe it's worth it to insure initial sales before piracy begins, but that would be a case by case determination.
We can argue the morality of it all we want, and we can argue the "intrinsic value" of a copy, but a copy's true worth (or that of any purchased product, going all the way back to the first time a fellow traded an old spear for a tasty rabbit) is what the purchaser ascribes to it. Value is NOT set by a creator; that is price. When the price of software is higher than the consumer's value, you will get piracy (for non-digital goods, you don't even get piracy; you just get fewer and fewer sales as the disparity increases). That is simply the way it works.
I would probably agree with statements such as "The quality of digital goods is likel
Fairness? How about the big FUCK YOU consumers get when they buy a DRM-laden product...
Exactly, if you don't like it, DON'T BUY IT!
You are not entitled by nature to receive all the stuff you want under the conditions you want. If you don't like the conditions, then DON'T BUY THE PRODUCT. You are not making the problem of DRM any better with illegal downloading. Yes, life's not fair enough to let you have your cake and eat it too.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
True. And I depend on my lovely fiance for sex. Knowing that she can easily say "no", which is the better practice?
Treat her with disdain, attempting to convince her she should be lucky to get the little "D" when I offer it, and ensure that I get what I want prior to giving her any sort of satisfaction? Maybe even going so far as calling her immoral for figuring out how to sex herself, for free (hot) when HELLO!? I'm right here with the wienermobile, and any time she thinks about the sexin she should be coming to me, as the only lawful provider in town?
Or, improve my offering by a) making sure she'll get something out of it, b) treating her with respect and caring instead of disdain and distrust, c) having the exchange become personal and welcoming instead of sterile and cold, and d) providing a service she truly enjoys, keeping her coming back for more?
Now, I'm no scientist or corporate executive, but I can tell you pretty clearly which approach has NOT worked out so well for me in the past, putting my little production facility right the hell into bankruptcy.
Sure you might get some negative karma. But just smiling at someone is probably enough to offset a few billion copies.
Something has been lost because the value of the original has been reduced.
You're very, very close, but not quite. The original commands a far lower price for the same utility, yes, but what has really been lost is the artificial scarcity that drove the price up in the first place. You nailed it straight on the head with your boss' quote, which is about maintaining scarcity. If a product is free (as in beer), it's not less valuable (in terms of utility to the owner), but it is less valuable (in terms of what people are willing to pay for it). Piercing through the ambiguity of the word "value", the situation is facepalmingly obvious: nobody's going to pay for something they can get for free unless there's enough utility added to warrant the price.
When we look at something like the loss of easily managed scarcity, I can't help but think consumers have shrugged off shackles at the expense of the production studios. Any good that becomes freely available *should* see a much lower price point. If every person in the world discovered a diamond mine in their back yard tomorrow, diamonds would be next to worthless. Bad for them, but good for us, so long as there is a producer that can subsist on creating a product that actually has more utility than the old freebie option. I think the biggies may not survive, but I don't think it's impossible to set up a business that takes advantage of the brave new digital world. Even if it IS impossible to make a profit creating digital goods, digital copies are flying directly out of Pandora's box, my friend. We could be seeing the end of digital goods as we know them, but I highly doubt it; my bet is someone much smarter than me is gonna create a new empire based around consumer satisfaction.
...say "I do not pay because it is not worth it", merely say that because they are used to getting it for free.
These two statements lead to the same end result, and are quite possibly 2 ways state the exact same idea.
And while you're "killing" the distribution companies, the artists die with them because they depend on the same money you're not paying them.
The distribution companies don't pay the artists either.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
What does the "Lon" stand for then? The answer is "London", because it was "discovered" there as well.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.