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The Pirate Bay Launches Free VPN
bs0d3 writes "The Pirate Bay team is going to be making the RIAA angry, with the launch of a new ad-supported VPN service. PrivitizeVPN is available for free from The Pirate Bay. Instead of earning revenue through subscription as ipredator does, PrivitizeVPN comes packaged to install the Babylon search bar (adware). PrivitizeVPN appears to be available for Windows users only at the moment. The Pirate Bay staff has a long history of promoting services that have no logs; e.g. , you can't get in trouble if your anonymized IP is subpoenaed by government officials. Although PrivitizeVPN is being released silently, with no press coverage, no official statement, and no comments from The Pirate Bay of any kind, people are assuming that PrivitizeVPN will have the same familiar data protection policies. A backup download location has been setup here for people who have limited access to the Pirate Bay domain."
honeypot!
Theft implies loss of property.
... whatever
This would be the worlds greatest honeypot if it was setup by the **AA themselves.
The RIAA is probably behind this, Babylon search bar is a far worse punishment than thier frivolous lawsuits.
No sig today...
too bad no one reads TFA
Even when the damage is data retention laws and the best censorship their wholly-owned politicians can shove through the legislature. Will the dying, dinosaur media companies ever realize that Pandora's box can never be closed, and the genie cannot be returned to the bottle?
You would think they would realize now, almost 15 years into this cat-and-mouse game that their offensives are futile, burn goodwill with their customers, and make them look like an angry old man who wants the kids off his lawn.
Smart record, production, and media companies take note right now: You WILL innovate, or you WILL go bankrupt. I'm not some radical pirate or communist, I'm giving you advice, trying to help you. Technology CANNOT be killed by legislation and propaganda. Your only hope is to adapt. Better to realize that now than before you are completely bankrupt. You're welcome.
It seems I cannot opt out of installing the search bar during installation.
So sandbox it in a VM; that's my plan.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The war on piracy uses pretty much the same tactics as the war on drugs.
You can't have downloaded content. Any downloaded content you do have must be in clear digital containers with the administering agency. Even if you have prescr--er, license, for the downloaded content you have in your possession, you can still be charged with a crime if it does not come in a pre-approved container. Taking other people's downloaded content, even if they have the same content as well, is also forbidden. You cannot move your downloaded content from one container to another container, this is also illegal. Admission that you have downloaded content, or a suspicion that you may be in possession of downloaded content, legally or not, is grounds to search your person for it. Possession of a sufficient quantity would normally get you intent to distribute as well, but we have declared a quantity of zero to be intent to distribute: Every downloader is also an uploader, as a matter of law.
If charged, you are guilty until proven innocent. The best lawyers in the geographical area you are being prosecuted in will be used against you, while you will be given a crappy public defender, or none at all, since we've found that we can throw you in jail for civil violations as well, and only criminal court has to provide one. Possession in and of itself, regardless of whether or not you have a valid license to possess it, is sufficient for a conviction. There is no appeals process, or any appeals process present is designed only to look at things that are a "matter of law". You'll note the law has been so narrowly written as to make everyone guilty, merely by possession.
Fines and punishments will be far worse for this than any other crime. In fact, if you murder the artist who's song you downloaded, you'll face less time in jail and less fines. Actually, you could murder the whole band, and their agent, and still get off comparatively light.
Oh, lastly, trying to hide your content trafficing using encryption, vpns, or any other obfusciation technology will result in additional punishments, as it is obstruction of justice now to do so. Thank you for you cooperation, corporate citizen.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You seem to be missing the point. The whole goal is the adware, why would they make a version that doesn't have it?
I don't get your analagy. How would changing the rims have any affect in making your car more secure? Is the analogy not about security and just a comment in general? Something like, "A 89 Carolly is already shitty beyond hope, so why bother putting rims on it?".
Ironically, the funniest part of your comment is right after the "Jokes Aside" comment where you suggest that there might be a *nix version that dosen't require adware. Get out of the basement!, Also, someone is stealing the rims off your Carolla.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
This is a normal thing that you see within any context where there are people who want control vs people who want freedom, this is just one type of manifestation of such a situation. Yes, RIAA and the cohorts will be pissed and they will try to shut it down as well. Yes, TPB will try to avoid being shut down and there will be more services like this one available. The fact that TPB is going to try and make a buck off of it makes perfect sense, somehow the service has to be managed, somebody has to put in the time and resources, whatever capital, land and labour that it will take to have this thing running and it makes perfect sense to try and run it for profit, why not, if people find this to be a useful service, they'll go for it, ads or no ads. Actually I wonder if they will also just have a subscription model, so that the service could be just bought with a monthly payment?
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Well, what good is a torrent site without seeds?
it worked weird from sandboxie, it was tricky to stop after; just bust it open with uniextrator and run the exe without the ads like tfa says
It seems I cannot opt out of installing the search bar during installation. Too bad, I will never get to try it out.
Are you trying to tell me that the level of technical finesse possessed by the average slashdotter is insufficient to defeat a toolbar install? I'm going to download this into a vmware session right now to see what horribly intrusive and nasty malware this i--er... wait a second. Google just updated. Ah. It's just an ordinary toolbar, uninstallable in the traditional fashion provided by the operating system.
Deeeeeerp.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It's not called stealing. It is called infringement, but it isn't stealing by *any* definition.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
That requires actual investigation. So if you're going to use it for something that will piss off a real law enforcement agency, you might want to think twice, or at least be very careful. If you're going to use it to download movies? The MPAA is unlikely to go to that kind of effort, certainly not on the scale of their IP address scraping.
Call me paranoid, like the voices in my head do, but why should I trust the Pirate Bay with access to my network? A VPN goes both ways and most people are not going to be up to the task of fire-walling off the VPN host from connecting back to their local system.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The problem is the "Guilty until proven innocent" take on the stuff I do by legally. Why am I not allowed to copy it however I see fit? I bought it, and by 'it' I mean a license to use it, so I can use it wherever I like.
And if you want to argue I need a new license for every different 'use' of it, well you'll find most people won't agree with you when you explain that...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
You can opt of setting babylon as you default search engine and home page. But you cannot opt out of installing their toolbar. It also seems to install iNTERNET Turbo, which I would consider yet another spyware.
just run it full time in a VM, or on a spare machine you don't care about.
at that point, who cares?
"This adware can totally see everything I do on my computer... which is... download torrents. that's it."
What a shocker, you can't disable the advertising on an advertising supported service!
If you don't like the search bar, there is an option without the search bar... You just need to pay for it.
I don't have a big moral problem with free file sharing only because the people this harms (MAFIAA) are such immoral scam that they deserve the treatment way worse than this. They are greedy assholes who are going around harassing and suing single mothers for ridiculous amounts of damages. This waaaay overshadows everything file sharers do.
BTW, I know people who download content illegally on principle, just because they don't want to give any money to this scum.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Yeah but taking a sniff of that smell doesn't prevent anyone else from smelling it.
If I have an orange in my hand and you take it from me, I no longer have the orange. I now have one orange LESS than I had before. That is stealing.
If I have a cd in my hand and you copy that CD, I still have the CD in my hand. I do NOT have one LESS cd than I had before.
Small children can detect the difference between these two scenarios; but to some people they are equivalent. I have no clue why that that is.
Piracy of Linux is indeed a serious issue. I found quite a few Linux torrents at TPB.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
No, that's called competition.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Because it is not about the orange or the CD. It is about the money in your wallet. You have it. They don't and they want it, so it must be theft, because otherwise they would have it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
OK so I installed this on a VM (MS Virtual PC 2007, running XP) and it has installed fine. However, DESPITE EXPLICITLY SELECTING NOT TO INSTALL BABYLON, it still installed. Regardless I'm not bothered, easy enough to uninstall.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
So do You plan on criminalizing the loss of potential sales, then?
How about a bad review, then? It certainly limits the earning potential of the imaginary property owner, as some people might trust this reviewer and don't buy a CD. It's definitely a loss of a potential sale, isn't it?
It's about what is on the plastic disc, and if I copy why is on the disc, the owner has not LOST what was on the plastic disk.
This idea of potential sales is stupid; it exists only in your imagination. It's handwaving puffery.
If you take my car, I no longer have a car. The car has been stolen from me.
If I create a song, and you copy it without paying for it, I still have the song. I have lost nothing.
Again, small children understand this distinction; apparently you do not.
I consider iron-clad anonymity on-line to be a human right, but I'm not going to throw my house keys and bank books into a mob-rule crowd that sports a few protest signs I might agreee with.
I think it might be called fair use; but whatever it is, it's not stealing.
I point out the examples of small children understanding this because it really is very simple. IP lawyers have tried to make a simple concept seem complicated by equating the two, but the vast majority of Americans know that making a copy of a cassette tape or CD just is simply, fundamentally not the same as walking into a supermarket and ripping off a candy bar, no matter how they try to spin it.
Open the installer with 7-zip, extract and run $TEMP\PrivitizeVPNInstaller.exe. No adware.
No, what he's saying is that the two things are different, he didn't say that they were OK. Let's try another analogy: Someone burns your couch while it's outside and you go to the police saying that someone stole your couch. The police is now looking for a couch thief and not an arsonist because you don't know what words mean. That doesn't make it OK to burn your couch, it just means that you are not communicating properly by calling arson theft. When you call copying stealing you are doing the same thing. When you say that someone stole software, what you are saying is that they went into a store and shoplifted a physical thing thereby depriving the store of something physical - you are not talking about copying.
I expect that the reason you resist using words to mean what they actually mean is that we all already agree that stealing is bad in almost all cases, while it is not as clear that copyright infringement is bad, so by equivocating the two you end up not having to make an argument - you can just say "it's stealing, you don't support stealing, do you?". It's obfuscation that serves you, so I expect that you are using words wrong not because you don't understand that you are doing it, but because you do understand that your case benefits from the obfuscation.
the riaa has been a horrible failure and instead of embracing technology to make their Customers happy and maximize their profits they have been dragged kicking and screaming pissing off everyone in the process. If Apple had not saved them from themselves they might have been dissolved by now. As a business, if I looked at what the riaa has accomplished for me I would certainly end my association with them.
can you end your association with them if you're a musician? with the german GEMA and a lot of other regionals YOU CAN NOT. that's bullshit government granted fucking over of artists license right there.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'm an advocate of piracy myself - I believe that enforceable copyright law is incompatible with fundamental freedoms of the internet - but I still have to point out that 'potential sales' are a widely-accepted concept in economics. A dollar not earned is in many ways equivilent to a dollar lost: The effect on a company bottom line is the same.
Should have made = potential sales, which is handwaving puffery; it does not exist. Liek the poster above said, posting a bad review of a product causes a loss of sales; should they be sued for loss of "potential sales"?
"If person B copied the App from person A, person B' actions cause me to have 5 shells instead of 10."
This is true only if person B was going to otherwise buy the app; you have no idea if he would do so. You are assuming he would, but you can't base a definition of stealing around what COULD have happened in this alternate universe of yours.
You have 5 shells less than you should have only if person B was going to otherwise buy the item. Perhaps he just wanted to demo the app to see if he wanted to purchase it.
to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
Copying isn't that either. That second definition deals more with plagiarism.
Copying is appropriating WITH acknowledgment. Most file sharers don't claim to be the original creators of the book/movie/song/game/etc.
Rights don't come into play because copyright is not a right, but a temporary monopoly/privilege granted by government.
The first one is the legal definition - which is all that matters.
In common language usage, yes 'stealing' can mean many things. Such cross action labeling is used when you want to impart the seriousness of taking something physical on to the significantly less important transfer of ideas or other non-tangible concepts.
i.e. it's used for effect, rather than substance.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
This. Exactly.
I'm not advocating copyright infringement by any means. I'm pointing out the difference between the two. I have a real issue with a movement by politicians, IP Lawyers and others to equate the two for exactly te reason you mention. Calling the copying of a song the equivalent to theft suddenly makes millions, literally millions and millions of people THIEVES.
I have an issue with that. The vast majority of those people would never walk into a supermarket and take a product there without paying for it. Most people know that the two actions are simply not the same.
Around 70 years ago it was illegal for black people to enter places and use buses in US. That was the law, and, thanks to people who defied those laws, sometimes at great cost to themselves, they changed. That is called civil disobedience and is many many times the only way to change things, especially against corrupt governments that have the power to perpetuate themselves, like US government, for example.
Furthermore laws are not absolute. Laws are only obeyed in 2 situations:
- When people agree with them
- When they can be forced upon people
A lot of people do not agree with IP laws, and those laws can't be really forced upon them. Add that to the fact that IP law can be very different from country to country and you will see the futility of fighting for IP in our world.
This is not a Pirate Bay project at all.
It's an advertising campaign, and a damn good one since it made it onto Slashdot...
I still have to point out that 'potential sales' are a widely-accepted concept in economics.
Yet there is no evidence that a given incidence of copying results in a lost sale or even a lost "potential sale" since in some cases copying IS followed by a sale.
A dollar not earned is in many ways equivilent to a dollar lost
Except it is impossible for me to steal from you something that you have never obtained.
The effect on a company bottom line is the same.
Publicly protesting the company's unethical behaviour might have the same effect on sales too, but that doesn't make it theft.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Bad reviews are theft then?
A dollar not earned is in many ways equivilent to a dollar lost: The effect on a company bottom line is the same.
In many ways it is equivalent. In many ways it is not. I am completely that punish people who steal, for example, a macbook instead of buying one. I'm not for punishing people who choose to not buy a macbook. The effect on Apple is mostly the same (mostly because in the second case, they can sell the macbook you chose not to buy to somebody else, but let's assume we're talking about them having a surplus of macbooks and having to get rid of them Atari E.T. style, which would make the effect on their bottom line the same).
Things get a little more iffy with data. You can download a song / movie / game / whatever without paying for it. So you choose not to buy it without actually having to do without. But the point is that you're still not stealing something from the company. The company can still sell the music / movie / game you didn't buy to somebody else. Assuming that the piracy actually cost them a sale (which is a big, provably incorrect assumption. From another widely-accepted concept in economics, demand is going to be higher when the price is zero than when it is higher), it might affect the company bottom line the same way as stealing, but it also affects the company's bottom line in the exact same way as someone who simply chose not to buy it and go without, which we all agree is behavior that should not be punishable. That makes the argument of "how does this affect the company's profits" irrelevant. We either decide the behavior is acceptable or it is not. The company doesn't have a right to make money.
My personal opinion is that copyright law is important, but it is currently ridiculous. How many people are still using Windows 2000 today? It's obsolete, and it should have already reverted to the public domain. If you can't profit in 10-15 years, it's not our responsibility to help you out any more. The whole intellectual property movement is about conflating something that is not property with property. The creators don't have any intrinsic rights to their creations precisely because they can't be deprived of anything that is not physical. It's simply that society agrees to give up our rights to those creations for a limited time in exchange for encouraging further contributions to society. So if we don't get it back in a reasonable time, we're not getting what we bargained for.
A customer makes bad review of a bought product. The IP owner has one less potential sale because he deprived them of earning potential. Theft?
https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-did-not-launch-a-free-vpn-120827/
Slashdot broke a story earlier today claiming that The Pirate Bay had launched a free VPN service called PrivitizeVPN.
Interesting, except for the fact that itâ(TM)s not a Pirate Bay project.
The Pirate Bay team informed TorrentFreak that they have nothing to do with the service.
They are just running it as an ad next to the regular download links.
That does not mean that a free VPN isnâ(TM)t a good deal, if you donâ(TM)t forget to bypass the ad-ware installers. However, when we tried it the service didnâ(TM)t work at all.
According to people close to PrivitizeVPN they are working on the connectivity issues. Those looking for a more stable and high bandwidth VPN are probably better off looking for a paid alternative.
How about competition? If I record a better album then you and release it, causing potential customers to buy my CD instead of yours, isn't that also loss of potential sales? Should I get raided by the FBI for that? No court should ever rule in favor of someone claiming damages for loss of potential sales as there is no way to prove that those sales would have actually happened. Such should only be used as a basis for a settlement if someone committed some crime or damage against the owner that could be reasonably shown to result in loss of sales. Bottom line: loss of public sales by itself does not prove criminal activity or civil damages as there is no way to really prove in a court why the loss of sales occurred. Discalimer: IANAL
Could you be sure that some other backdoor wasn't installed with the VPN software?
Tortius Interference
Tortious interference with business relationships occurs where the tortfeasor acts to prevent the plaintiff from successfully establishing or maintaining business relationships. This tort may occur when a first party's conduct intentionally causes a second party not to enter into a business relationship with a third party that otherwise would probably have occurred. Such conduct is termed tortious interference with prospective business relations, expectations, or advantage or with prospective economic advantage.
Basically, interfere with the business of someone richer than you and there will be heck to pay Just Because You Got in the Way.
Yes, this includes bad online reviews if they can find you. Yes, it's an oppressive idea right up there with "All game animals in the wilds belong to the King."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
So what you are saying is a musician should only be able to sell their music once?
I am a musician/artist/songwriter/composer.
I sell my music every time I'm paid to perform.
I give away recordings. They promote my performances.
The CDs all have "Please feel free to copy and share this music with anyone you'd like if you enjoyed it." printed on them and the jewel cases. I also provide free high quality downloads.
Trying to make income selling recordings is a dead business model from the last century. Recordings are a promotional tool, nothing more.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
> However, DESPITE EXPLICITLY SELECTING NOT TO INSTALL BABYLON, it still installed. Regardless I'm not bothered, easy enough to uninstall.
You know if Sony or MS tried this I imagine your response would be completely different.
fundamentally unethical
Woah... full stop, where does "fundamentally unethical" even originate in your fabricated world? We're talking about laws here that people have invented. You can wave your hands all you like, but randomly injecting terms like that doesn't make you right about anything. Breaking a law does not have some kind default automatic ethics association.
Fear is the mind killer.
Your searches will still go through their servers even if you select something else.
Unless their servers go down that is, in which case you'll be stuck without any search functions.
No sig today...
That's pretty awesome. I'm suddenly very interested in hearing your music. What kind of music is it? Could you link me to your website, or a source for your tracks?
Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
Thank you for your adding your experience. Look, I am not strictly against downloading / copying music. I do it sometimes and if the music is great then I will gladly pay for a CD or go to a concert. I understand the alternative revenue streams. But I know many people who only download -- they don't go to any concerts, don't even throw in a dollar for one measly MP3. And it bothers me when they wonder afterwards why the band sends out a newsletter about being broke and breaking up or when they 'sell out'.
In other news, self righteous nerds think that because a product is created/distributed on a computer that they can either use the product for free or demand to only pay an amount they feel is appropriate. Infinite are these nerd's excuses and rationales.
Ok... i gotta ask... how much bandwidth are you getting for that price? How much latency? Can you stream through it or is it choppy as shit?
I see these VPN services out there, and I've got to figure that if they have even a few 10s of thousands of users they'd need some pretty heavy duty infrastructure to deliver useful service... so what is the business model? How does it really work? Can they really turn a profit, deliver the service they claim to deliver at a level of performance that is actually impressive?
I can totally see a web proxy being able to do it. But netflix and hulu steaming? major torrenting? etc... that sucks down the bandwidth.
You want ridiculous? I work at a school. A couple of months ago I had to delete a copy of MLK's "I have a dream" speech from a teacher's area on the server and inform her that the video is copyrighted and I cannot determine that we have a license that covers playing it, therefore I cannot permit the use of school IT facilities for infringeing purposes.
Yeah, that's another level of ridiculousness. Not only did it happen long enough ago that it should no longer be under copyright, but it's a historically significant event. It doesn't make sense to deny us the ability to view and copy at will something which has literally helped shape the society we live under today.
I pirate like crazy in personal life, but when at work I am the Copyright Nazi. One problem with knowing anything at all about copyright law is you start to see infringement everywhere.
I used to do some pirating back in my younger days, but honestly pretty much quit altogether once I graduated from college, got a job, and had some spending cash. If there's one thing that would make me go back to the pirating days was if I still had to time to play lots computer games. I refuse to buy games with the DRM that is standard in modern games. As it is, I don't have that much time, and when I do play, I'll either get something cool from a Humble Bundle I've learned about, or take a trip down nostalgia lane and dig out an adventure game from the 90's, so honestly, I'm perfectly fine with doing without and have no need to pirate.
Sometimes the cynic in me thinks that's the reason for the modern DRM. "You mean people can play games they bought two decades ago and be satisfied? What can we do to ensure they won't be able to? I know, let's make them log in to a server every time they start the game. In two decades, that server address won't exist."
For someone in such a position, you should know that such a work is covered by "Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians"
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Hey, stop using English/Math/Logic, as that is all learned/copied/stolen. Someone else created/discovered them, you should be paying royalties!
It appears to just be PPTP, with the credentials generated dynamically from a JSON HTTP endpoint. There's a required ping URL the client has to hit every 900 seconds in order for the credentials to stay alive. Shouldn't be too hard to make an open source client.
Interestingly, the JSON config endpoint contains a list of IP address ranges that should be excluded. Haven't started investigating these yet, but here are the ranges if anyone wants to look:
ZX2C4
Maybe they can develop a *nix version that doesn't require the adware.
Then it wont be free. Bills have to be paid somehow.
No worries there. Someone will create an ad free version and post it on The Pirate Bay!
No keyboard detected. Press F1 to continue.
That's pretty awesome. I'm suddenly very interested in hearing your music. What kind of music is it? Could you link me to your website, or a source for your tracks?
Thanks k3vlar.
I play high-energy electric blues along the lines sound-wise of Joe Bonamasa, Smokin' Joe Kubek, Bernard Allison, etc. I also design/build/repair/restore vacuum tube guitar amps. I do the amp thing strictly locally. Generally play bluesfests, clubs, openers for major blues acts, etc mostly in the lower-MI/IN/OH/IL area.
I swore when I finally created an account here back in '02(?) I think, that I would never spam or pimp my personal music or business on this or any other non-music-related forums, etc even if asked.
This isn't the place for that, this is "News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters". I hate it when discussions all over the 'net are full of "buy my dope beat-tracks"-"buy my CD/Ringtone"-"visit my website" crap, and I refuse to add to it in any manner whatsoever even with good intentions, as that's what the road to hell is paved with.
However, you can hear me on the regular playlists, and other indie artists like me as well, on streaming stations like Kansas City Online Radio (KCOR) and KOQX/San Jose.
http://www.kconlineradio.com/
http://www.koqx.com/
There are tons of artist links. If my music is worthy, as long as you hear it on stations like the ones above it should speak for itself. Blues artists, blues music, and the blues community needs all the support they can get.
Thanks again for your interest.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Sometimes it's not even infringement. It's just timeshifting and formatshifting.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
If the guys too cheap to run Windows he's certainly to cheap to understand the role of money.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"