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Kickass Torrents' KAT.ph Domain Seized By Philippine Authorities
hypnosec writes "Kickass Torrents hasn't been accessible since sometime yesterday, and now it has been confirmed that the domain name of the torrent website has been seized by Philippine authorities. Local record labels and the Philippine Association of the Recording Industry said that the torrent site was doing 'irreparable damages' to the music industry and following a formal complaint the authorities resorted to seizure of the main domain name. The site hasn't given up, and is operating as usual under a new domain name. The government of the Philippines has confirmed that the domain name has been seized based on formal complaints and copyright grounds."
Apparently, since you couldn't be bothered to do it either.
http://kickass.to
http://kickass.to/
No https yet.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
I should perhaps added that legality is a matter of jurisdiction "in the 2004 case of BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe, court decided that both downloading music and putting it in a shared folder available to other people online were legal in Canada." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aspects_of_file_sharing#Canada
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
I'm not making a legal defense. I'm saying that the law itself is bad, and strictly speaking, it doesn't pass a strict Constitutional muster. The law as it stands is clearly following a different philosophy than the only justified one (public benefit), so it should not be respected, and if anything, should be actively defied. Believe it or not, the law can be wrong, and often is. Also, your broken latin phrase doesn't apply, since the law is not harsh, but injust. It is often grossly disproportionate to the extent that there have been Constitutional challenges to statutory damages, and the harshness of the law is a major concern, but the bigger flaw is that it's based in medieval economics, and has no place in the modern world. The relevant terms are themselves quite telling. 'Copyright' originated from the right to copy, back when it conveyed a positive right to make copies, because it was part of a censorship regime in which proliferation of unsanctioned knowledge was forbidden. If you are ignorant on the matter, look up the Stationer's Company. 'Royalties' are another big hint that the system is antiquated, although a number of prominent organizations calling themselves 'guilds' doesn't help the matter much.
Sweat of the brow arguments are legally invalid in regards to copyright law, per Feist v. Rural. And ethically, sharing information is generally a good thing, with only a few exceptions. I do no oppose supporting the arts, and I likely have done more towards that end than you have.
You've also thrown out the term 'freeloading,' yet another sign of an incompetent copyright proponent. Are you TRYING to fill up your bingo card on that? I would direct you to read Mark Lemly's paper on the subject.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
1560 hits to, presumably, mostly illegal torrent files, as found by Google and directly linked to the .torrent file:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=rick%20astley%20filetype%3Atorrent
Big nasty illegal downloading site: 61 hits, presumably a small subset of what Google finds.
http://kickass.to/usearch/rick%20astley/
Neither site hosts the actual .torrent files.
Please explain why one should be considered illegal and the other not?
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