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Project Free TV, YIFY, PrimeWire Blocked In the UK
hypnosec writes "The movie industry in the UK is having a ball, as far as blocking of sites allegedly involved in piracy is concerned, as courts have asked UK ISPs to enforce a blockade on Project Free TV, YIFY, PrimeWire and others. Getting a torrent or steaming site blocked in the UK is a mere paperwork formality, since ISPs have completely stopped defending against these orders. As it stands, a total of 33 sites have been blocked in the UK, including The Pirate Bay, BitSnoop, ExtraTorrent, Torrentz, 1337x, Fenopy, H33T, KickAssTorrents, among others."
Personally I'm not a big user of these kind of services, but it's only a handful of the "big" ISPs who are doing the blocking. I prefer a more personal service so I use a small ISP which offers special geeky extras (full class C, reverse NS delegation etc) and they perform no such blocking. But even if I didn't it's trivial to bypass such blunt instruments.
The thin end of the wedge has become slightly thicker...
They've started blocking searches that can lead to kiddie porn, and thus accepted the linkage.
The next step in that is mandatory reporting of any IP addresses that does those forbidden searches. Having accepted the searches are bad, it follows that surveillance of this badness will be the next step. Thus they've accepted the surveillance principle.
Copyright lobby already wants Google to block all copyright infringements from search results. (and read the New Zealand Kim Dotcom indictment, it talks about 'selectors being tasked' i.e. PRISM talk, meaning spooks are now copyright enforcers).
Likewise ISPs blocked these torrent search engines as being equivalent to torrents and in turn equivalent to the copyright infringement, thus it follows that they'll keep being asked to block ever more tangential stuff. For example, sites that list torrent search engines. Sites that discuss torrent search engines. VPN sites, and so on.
These companies exist because the public allows it. The public is getting nothing but censorship out of the bargain, giving these companies carte blanche to do whatever they please to the internet. The world is caving to the slightest whims of an industry that we would survive just fine without.
When I suddenly realise that I'm using my 'Tor browser' more than my 'normal browser' to access the internet, as I'm increasingly suspicious of what the 'Great Firewall(s) of Britain' is filtering/blocking/modifying on the fly...
[And I'll probably be auto-flagged as a 'subversive' for both using Tor and making this comment..]
I don't know about the streaming sites, but I know the blocking of torrent sites has had little effect or the more (or less) tech savvy people who use them. People get around not being able to browse for their torrents by subscribing to torrent RSS feeds (for TV), and by using things like Tor if they absolutely need to browse the Pirate Bay or other sites.
The trackers are not blocked, and therefore the torrents still work fine.
Kinda pointless.
I just pooped your party.
I'm in the UK and I use O2 (currently being migrated to Sky).
I use a digitalocean.com droplet (virtual machine) to access these. I have the bottom end droplet which costs $5/month.
On this I install apache, php and phproxy (google it) and that is it.
I won't use the public proxies that seem to have popped up as they all have nefarious bits of crap installed in them or are very overloaded.
Because only a trivially small proportion of the population cares. Few have even heard about these services.
If you care about free TV in the UK then you could start by not watching or recording live transmissions, and you then have no obligation to pay the TV license -- they only waste it on extra redundancy payments for senior managers, and politically motivated nonsense stuff like moving programming oop north.
I get by on BBC iPlayer delayed transmissions, streaming to my TV through Chromecast. Possibly ITV and Channel 4 have compatible streaming services, but sadly their programmes are not compatible with me.
Most ISPs have stopped defending against these orders and just add anything the BPI wants to their filters.
Some UK ISPs don't apply such filters. AAISP for example not only promises that it will give users 12 months notice should they ever decide to use filtering, but you have to explicitly select "unfiltered internet access" when signing up or you'll be shown the door.
It's the slippery slope. Once you start slipping, you've lost static friction, and start slipping faster.
Google have already started slipping. ISP have already started slipping. It's the same thing.
Also you ignore the most significant point in my comment: the spooks spying on Kim Dotcom for copyright infringement. That's a mark of how far its gone.
http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1304/AFFIDAVIT_OF_DISCLOSURE.pdf
Page 17: "Secret//Comint/Rel to NZL,AUs,Can,GBR, USA", i.e. 5 eyes spooks network.
Page 19: "selectors of interest"
Page 19: "Kim (unreadable) not tasked due to US domain"
Page 21, "Kim Dotcom selectors - all tasked"
It has nothing to do with monarchy, this is a US corporate thing. They believe they can fix the economy by creating more IP rights to sell, in place of actual goods and services, hence insane patent laws and the NSA & it's five eyes buddies involved in a minor copyright case.
The less I see, the less I buy.
I used to download entire runs of stuff like Babylon 5 and Stargate back then, bought the boxed sets when they came out.
We get very little TV exposure of newer shows on Freeview and I can't be bothered to kludge past the blocks so I don't even know what shows are out there worth watching.
I think the last thing I warezed&bought was Firefly...
I'm not going to buy a bunch of DVDs blind so there goes more sales...
We will see in a few years or even less if big content providers make more or less money than before in the UK. I'm of the opinion that blocking free content leads to discontent, less visibility, and ultimately less profit, because people will not want to reward what could be construed as oppression.
As I read the comments, it looks like people are missing a bet on what the practice that the cariers are doing can provide.
People are noting that techincally competent people can easily bypass the restrictions, and others are noting that the vast majority of the public is not sufficiently technically competent to work around it.
I'm reminded a bit of the drug dealer situation in most places. It's trivially easy for most people to find a supplier for nearly any drug that someone has an interest in getting. Most people don't go looking for them for whatever reason, but it's not because they don't know where to go, or at least if they thought about it a bit they could figure it out. The same is likely to be true of media content.
So, user George doesn't know how to get around these filters, but it's likely that one of George's friends does, or one of George's friends knows someone who can. If this ever became a significant issue, I suspect that people would set up secure chat servers (or even a https based site) where they let their neighbors know they can request whatever movie they are interested in, and through a bot on the server they get back a link to the file already downloaded, or to the file being downloaded, and they can start watching. The link may be to a torrent proxy that goes and gets the bits of the files from other people offering the same sort of a service, and none of the people providing this service actually have copies of the files maintained on their systems either. (Yes, that somewhat defeats the purpose of a torrent, but the idea is to provide a service to end users, not necessarily be a good torrent netizen.) To reduce the likelyhood that the person providing the service is adversly affected, he or she may require that the 'customer' run a torrent proxy on their system that the load of torrent traffic gets distributed across. Better operators will do something like build their software package to prevent spam bots from running on the customer's computers. That may even be all that the customer is asking for from the service provider, and the torrent operation may be going on completely transparently to them.
I know, that seems complex. But from an end user perspective for the movies, it looks like I log into a secure web server, identify the movie I want to watch, and get a link to that movie. I click on that link, and I start watching the movie. Perhaps George texts or IMs a movie title to Bill, who texts back a URL that George then enters in their web browser, or even follows right on their phone or pc.
In time a network of providers of the service will exist, or several networks. It might be done through something like IRC, and the various providers will check to see who's closest to the end user and get a link close to them.
You never know...
Guess they'll have to route around this damage in the network.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, that took all of thirty seconds.
Trackers *are* blocked and taken offline all the time. That is, if there were any trackers left, most are gone. BitTorrent has different methods now to discover peers. PEX, DHT and LDP for peer discovery, Magnet links to replace .torrent files. You essentially can't block bittorrent without extremely "expensive" Deep Packet Inspection, essentially eavesdropping on every consumers internet traffic 100% of the time.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Yup. Thousands of taxpayer pounds well spent.
Royal Dutch Shell is not British. It's Dutch. They have a royal family too.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
We gave them an inch, and ... the results were as expected.
No sig today...
I'm glad YIFY was blocked. No one deserves to watch such shitty rips.
There isn't one!
Yup. Thousands of taxpayer pounds well spent.
Yes, and if only the taxpayers were smart enough to realize this.
In their defense, it is rather difficult to ascertain the situation with your head up your ass.
http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/at-a-glance.html
Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies. Our headquarters are in The Hague, the Netherlands, and our Chief Executive Officer is Peter Voser. The parent company of the Shell group is Royal Dutch Shell plc, which is incorporated in England and Wales.
The Netherlands is a taxhaven for multinationals in the EU, that is why the headquarters is in NL.
Further Royal has nothing to do with the royals themselves. It is neither linked to Dutch or British royalty, a Royal (or Koninklijke) prefix is awarded to companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koninklijke
To qualify for a nomination, the company or organization has to meet the following conditions:
it has to be leading in its field of expertise;
it has to have national importance;
it has to be in existence for at least 100 years (in principle).
As a rule, the Monarch will award only one Royal title per branch of business. Medical and financial corporations are excluded, as are organizations with political or religious goals.
The public is getting nothing but censorship out of the bargain... The world is caving to the slightest whims of an industry that we would survive just fine without.
Then why is the geek so obsessed with his free comic book movie fix? The big budget Hollywood production?
The paying customer is the censor here and he is getting exactly what he wants: The final say on future productions and budgets.
The projects which will be green lighted because they are reasonably likely to be profitable.
The paying customer gets "Gravity" into the IMAX theater, the director's cut on Blu-Ray and malware free downloads and HD streaming through Amazon, Netflix and others. The P2P geek whatever scraps that can be swept off the table.
They are doing everyone a favor, blocking this low-bitrate crap.
One owns the other...
Steaming site? James Watt would be so proud...
Yep - I hate thieves in all their forms, and this screwball idea that downloading other people's work and just using it isn't stealing is insane. They shouldn't simply be blocking sites, they should be sending a few hundred thousand people to jail until the public gets the idea that this is a bad idea. Fer cryin' out loud, large groups of people spend months or even years of their lives producing wondrous entertainment, maybe something like Avatar, you can get it for a mere $20 at the store, and... you're so cheap that $20 is too much for you? Get a life, pony up, and be a citizen instead of a public enemy.
they give you 7 inches, while you're contemplating your toes.
Might go with A&A instead..
Come.in
Problem solved.
The biggest problem I have is that they are using the cleanfeed system (which was originally used to block child porn) to block these sites.
Problem solved.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So taxpayers should pay to put people in jail to protect the entertainment industry's outdated business model?
The same group who often book their sales in tax favourable jurisdictions should also get to put people in jail at your and my expense? I thought jails were for real crimes? Isn't copyright violation a civil matter in most nations?
Speaking about putting people in jail, how many times have the various recording industry's been charged with abuse of monopoly, price fixing, etc?
Those examples on the other hand are not CIVIL matters and the penalty can include jail time (again in most nations) but no one has ever served it.
Here (canada) they were charged with selling compilation CD's without paying the royalties. Now if a person does this it is considered piracy and in the US they charge you $20,000 per song but what do you think happened to them?
So yeah, lets jail people because laws to prevent people from doing some things always work (cough)Prohibition (cough)... Even the government realized it needed to update its business models....
In their defense, it is rather difficult to ascertain the situation with your head up your ass.
True, but I'm told it feels pretty good to vigorously shake you head back and forth...
that may be distracting them...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
*This* Industry however is not necessarily the source of all entertainment. There was a time when the industry did not exist, but entertainment still existed.
The entertainment industry in the states dates back to Stephan Foster.
In 1850, P.T, Barnum paid Jenny Lind $167,600 in advance for her first American tour, plus expenses. That is $4,557,076 adjusted for inflation. The contract would be renegotiated upwards as Barnum's promotion machine built up steam.
There would be profits from sheet music sales, product endorsements and so on.
Barnum's share would come to about half a million good-as-gold tax-free dollars. In the first decade of the telegraph, The first quarter-century of the railroad, Everything essential is in place for the evolution of a mass popular culture rooted in professional entertainment.
This is a stupid waste of time. People will make hundreds of forums dedicated to simply posting the torrent file itself. Or people will resort to pastebin or something since it's a glorified text file. Blocking the torrent conglomeration sites is useless because the torrent file itself can be posted anywhere else. People can simply e-mail them to each other even.
Capabilities and patience are two things that software can be very, very good at, easily outperforming dumb non-technical layman humans.
When "Six Strikes" came out in the US, I responded by simultaneously "going dark" and automating. I now spend a lot less of my time on pirating stuff. And yet, I'm pirating a lot more stuff than I was a year ago. That's what happens when the bar gets raised: the harder they make it, the more powerful the tools needed. And using powerful tools doesn't require smarter operators. It's all just about pushing a button, and anyone can do that.
Every time they push the people, the peoples' computers push back harder, because it only takes one person to come up with a great idea that millions of people can use.
Dude, you totally don't get it. We used to buy they movies, back when the DRM (CSS) was trivial to break, allowing us to play the movies.
Then Blu-Ray came along. Playing bought movies (and digital cable, no longer compatible with standard tuners) became too much of a pain in the ass. Bittorrent (and some other things) solved the problem, by letting someone else go through all the pain-in-the-ass stuff, and I get the easy-to-work-with file. As a bonus, we save money that would have been spent on the purchases.
Add patches to mplayer/xine/etc which always work to play any Blu-Ray in spite of its DRM, without me needing to get updated key lists for every damn new release, and "buy the movies" could possibly be back on the table. Until then, though, I simply am not going to buy something I can't play. Furthermore, even if you give me what I'm asking for, I'm still going to resent the fact that laws like DMCA make it a crime to obey copyright law by watching a bought movie. What it really comes down to, is that as long as there's DRM, piracy is going to be the path of least resistance for consumers. DRM is the greatest threat to the IP industry, ever, and it's already wreaking plenty of destruction upon their profits.
I don't like thieves much better than you do. I can't stand the thieves who run the entertainment industries. Unreasonable copyright laws that last beyond the authors lifetime are insane money grabs, that should have been killed thirty years ago or more. Take down notices for works that never did belong to any corporation. Refusing to recognize fair use. Moving works of art from the public domain, into corporate control. Multi-million dollar settlements against common users (as opposed to industrial grade pirating and distribution operations).
I don't know if you've ever read this article:
!Alles in ordnung!
http://striderweb.com/blog/tag/books/
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If you're going to rant about how this block list is the debil, you're going to have to pick something other than sites that deal pretty much exclusively in stolen content to point out as the blocked examples.
No sane, right minded adult gives a shit that TPB and its related friends are blocked. Its expected. These sites are FOR THEFT OF CONTENT. Thats WHY they exist. Just because someone uploaded a Linux ISO torrent doesn't make them any more legit than the ice cream truck that sells cocaine on the street .... but occasionally sells an ice cream cone.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? Why are any of you acting like this is a bad thing? Are you seriously trying to say that these sites AREN'T for theft of content?
You need to save your crying wolf for when they block something that actually shouldn't be blocked. Raising hell when they block obvious ones that should be blocked just makes your entire point look childish and no one listens to you any more.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Also you ignore the most significant point in my comment: the spooks spying on Kim Dotcom for copyright infringement. That's a mark of how far its gone.
Ignoring the other ignorance in your post ...
So the NSA was spying on someone in another country, who was actively promoting distribution of stolen American property ...
GUESS WHAT? THATS PART OF THEIR FUCKING JOB YOU MORON.
The FBI does the same thing for people IN our country.
Its not 'gone that far', its ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY.
Do you know anything about how police operate?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Why people want to watch mangled sound audio and the worst rips on the net is beyond me. I think its mostly people with shitty 2 speaker systems that like YIFY rips, but that guy is everywhere!
Every time I go to download a movie, I am cursing YIFY because his releases dominate! I think YIFY really works for the film industry and is releasing low quality rips on purpose.
-
see, Royal Dutch Shell is the 'Saxon' in the Anglo-Saxon aristocratic alliance ;)
Thank you Dave Raggett
You hit the nail on the head. If blocking sites does become a problem, there are a ton of VPN providers in other parts of Europe that are usable.
Yes, the UK can block sites, but the blowback is that people's connections will go dark, making it a lot harder for the local police to do police work, because at the minimum for access to any traffic, either the endpoint on the user's side is compromised, or every day stuff would involve having to deal with a foreign company.
The last thing any country's LEO organizations want is for people to flock to offshore VPN servers en masse. It means that all police work becomes international incidents, or it means the government will have to ratchet to not just blocking VPNs, but to have to play cat and mouse. Even China who has unlimited capability in the terms of blocking when it comes to international resources and staffing still fights a daily battle.
Hello,
I just wanted to say that I'm on AAISP and it does not block anything. It does not use IWF filters, nor any blocklists as far as I know.
And most of the big ISPs that block stuff do that because of "gentleman's agreement", not because of explicit court orders. So basically they do it because they didn't have the balls to contest/refuse the requests by special interest groups.
And AAISP is the only ISP I know where you can get support via IRC channel. They do limit internet usage, but increasing your non-working hours limits is very cheap, and I never max them out anyway. Other than that, I'm very happy with AAISP. Oh, and they have IPv6!
--Coder
The really powerful monsters love the 'slippery slope' principle. It is the main mechanism 'TIPPING POINTS' are reached in all significant Human events driven by the 'will' of the people.
No-one in power in the UK cares about file sharing, and I really mean this. However, the media bodies in the UK are powerful, mouthy, run by really stupid, lazy and malicious people (no-one thinks the world owes them a living more than these guys). Given a nudge, these organisations will never stop pushing.
So, Blair creates a free-for-all mechanism of Internet censorship, rubber-stamped by the courts, eliminating access to a whole sector of the Internet. This sets up a fundamental principle in the minds of the UK sheeple. And, of course, the more sites the media lobby groups get banned, the more sites they want to ban in the future. They have stated bluntly that ANY site supporting ANY aspect of the process by which users have access to UNREGULATED (NOT illegal, NOT infringing) uploads MUST be a target for banning.
A few seconds of thought shows that Blair's phase one is to encourage a conventional corporate take over of the Web, so that site operators have a positive incentive to ban user comments and uploads as too 'risky' and 'expensive' to monitor, check for legality, and take responsibility for. Blair wants the 'user' created part of the Internet to follow the model of 'letters from readers' sections of old school newspapers. Highly vetted, highly censored, and frequently fake content written by members of the paper's staff.
Blair has his people dribble "RESPONSIBILITY, RESPONSIBILITY, RESPONSIBILITY" to the sheeple, to generate a 'guilty unless proven innocent by some corporate entity' mindset. Remember how the vile shills here always say "it isn't censorship if it is done by a company"? Well, Blair's Internet has EVERY point of access under the direct control of a corporation with a legal DUTY to oversee and censor user content BEFORE it is available to other users. Then, Blair educates the next generations of sheeple at his ACADEMY SCHOOLS (like US Charter Schools, but near universal across UK public education) to believe that any other form of Internet would be sickeningly irresponsible.
-You can't say what you like on the Internet, cos you might say something 'bad'.
-You can't upload what you like on the Internet, because you might upload something 'infringing'.
-sites that do NOT pre-check user-created content before granting wider access to that content are going to be illegal in the UK under the above two 'principles'
-corporate sites that take full legal responsibility for all user content will be the only sites legal in the UK, but these sites will represent the established mainstream media.
You already have Blairite propaganda sites BANNING user comments under every excuse under the Sun. What media outlet wants its vicious, bent, malicious editorial comment ruined by critical user comments beneath? Tech sites have been taking massive pay-offs to promote the dreadful (and NSA spying) Xbox One, and do not enjoy the negative responses of their users that call them. Are any of you so stupid that you do not see the conflict between user freedom and corporate interests?
However, some of the biggest, most successful new companies in the World have been formed on the back of mostly unregulated user content. There is a clash of ideologies that Team Blair is determined to win. Blair KNOWS the future must SEEM different to gain acceptance amongst the younger sheeple, but must, as far as possible, replicate the controls and restrictions of the past. Persuade sheeple that 'freedom of speech' means freedom to say anything that DOES NOT offend anyone, for instance- the principle brainwashed into pupils in Blair's Academy School system.
Anyway, the banning of file-sharing sites in the UK will soon move to the banning of all kinds of other Internet sites. And the vile shills who tell you this does not matter, cos you can always access such locations via proxies or VPN or Tor pu
http://mikew.github.io/ss-plex.bundle/
Another classic. Disney raiding the public domain for movie ideas, then fighting to have the terms extended over and over again.
"Fair use" is a one way street for these guys.
It's the slippery slope. Once you start slipping, you've lost static friction, and start slipping faster.
Watch out, or the nutters will be along to tell you that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy, so it couldn't possibly ever happen.
are you being ironic and sarcastically making fun of the fact that Brit rights have been stolen to build a money vacuum for sucking pounds & pence from limey wallets into yank coffers?
are you being ironic and sarcastically making fun of the fact that Brit rights have been stolen to build a money vacuum for sucking pounds & pence from limey wallets into yank coffers?
What rights have been stolen? None.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Go on, governments, movie industry, music industry. Keep on demanding everything you don't like be blocked. Contimue to mess with the Internet, making it less and less useful.
Go on and help us all discover that we can live without the Internet. We can always share CDs, DVDs, and memory sticks. And you cannot track them. We have shared hard media for decades, and you cannot do a thing about it. But just keep on messing up the Internet, and someday, you will find yourselves alone on it.
Has anybody noticed just how many modern western countries have censorship in place? Some of them are 'voluntary' (like in Canada) and the ISPs were pressured (ie threatened by fringe elements with a law to force it if they didn't implement it, as the groups had a lot of political muscle). The original system started out as something called clean feed (if I recall correctly) to prevent access to child pornographic web sites. That then expanded to other types of content. It varies from country to country although much of Europe has mandated it (written into law) and subscribed to this system. It's that system which is now being abused to censor political speech, disgruntled employees, whistle blowers, sites that groups like the MPAA don't like, and more.
None of these countries can truly be considered free. The United States surprisingly doesn't have such a system in place as far as we know although for all the bullying the US does it might as well. The country does censor although it does so by going after individuals and even companies (the executives/employees of overseas gambling sites, employees of file sharing companies, companies/people corporations don't like via legally mandated 'take down' notices, etc).
We need a decentralized project to clone Mozilla Firefox and tie in decentralized sites (maybe using Tor or similar). Something that isn't necessarily the Tor Browser Bundle. Just something thats quick and prevents effective censorship of the masses.
I guess that is sort of what the pirate bay's Pirate Browser was trying to accomplish to some extent.
I think the main difference between this project and the Mozilla Firefox project is that Firefox is too centralized to resist legal forces and this project would be such that you can't easily identify the authors and even if you do you'd have a hell of a time forcing each and every one of them to cooperate (ie due to the requiring of the cooperation of the majority to make changes). The Pirate Browser is still centralized to some degree or another although it at least resists that censorship via a hidden site (I assume) or similar.
who was actively promoting distribution of stolen American property
Citation? Or example?
Overcoming censorship of free speech of this variety is just like overcoming censorship in any other country, such as China's great firewall. Usage of VPNs and other proxy services are necessary.
I stopped paying attention to copyright when the Disney extension was approved. It was robbery in broad daylight
On one hand, the EU got to screw over the Third World by keeping agriculture subsidized and tariff walls alive and kicking - leading to higher food prices in the EU and lack of a market outside of it - and on the other hand the US got to screw everyone else by AGAIN extending the copyright time up to a gazillion years after the author died "because of the children", or in reality, because of the copyright on Disney's moneymakers.
In both cases entertainers still got the short end of the straw. Disney doesn't really need it, and the people who need it are unlikely to profit from extended copyright *after their death* but still suffer all the extra provisions in copyright law. Like sampling - just ask the Verve.
Copyright was dead to me when it was no longer either fair, or reasonable. The government can try to enforce it's (in this case, literally) corrupt laws, and I will encrypt everything and give them the finger.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I guess that's why the talking heads on TV are always disagreeing.
Well, i now use http://yify.tv/ and its better because here i can watch the movies (yify torrents encodes) online.
Te quality is almost the same and all videos are uploaded in HD quality
I recommend use now Yify TV http://yify.tv/
Actually it's worse than that.
There are real threats to a country's economic, political or other stability. People who actually want to harm a country or companies in said country. Terrorists as well as people embezzling or laundering money, tax evaders and other criminals that actually cause a noticable, real harm to your country. Who in turn do have a pretty good reason to mask their traffic and route it through various means of VPN and other techniques to shield it from surveillance.
Now, these people are few and far between. A sensibly staffed police force with some background in online security can easily spot them, pinpoint them and ferret them out. Why? Because there is very little reason for Joe Randomuser to have a lot of VPN'ed traffic running. You can actually take a quick look at most "odd" connections and examine them.
This option goes out the window when everyone does it. Yes, they're all actually breaking a law. But a law that has close to zero impact on your economy. And yes, even if you're the US. Compared to embezzlement and tax evasion, the loss to the country due to torrents is negligible. But now you have a LOT more people who will act like criminals and you can't easily spot the real, dangerous criminals anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
distribution of stolen American property
That is not true in any way, shape, or form. The AC has a really damn good point that you can't simply negate by saying it's within the NSA's job description.
Having law enforcement involved in simply copyright disputes is highly concerning. The NSA being involved brings it to a level or ridiculousness akin to the President going door to door collecting unpaid dues for the paper boy. "How far off the mark have we gone". Indeed.
No such thing as theft involved and you're continuing to perpetuate a myth that is quite dangerous to freedom and our society. Specifically, that ideas and their expressions can be owned, and that by not complying with the explicit wishes of the owner you are engaged in acts of "theft".
I'll be real simple here. A copyright in of itself is just a container for legal entitlements (aka rights) granted by the people to the creator. Only the creator can ever exercise those rights. It's called legal standing. To "steal" the "property" one must in fact steal the legal standing. That can be only done with fraud and contracts negotiated under duress with the creator. Not from some pimple faced teenager on bit torrent. All that ever happens is copyright infringement . This, the vast majority of the time, involves cases that belong in civil courts. Only the mass duplication, distribution, and profit over copyrighted works is worth the intervention by law enforcement for society's behalf.
What part of copyright law being used the way it's now being used doesn't scare the crap out of you?
- Weak, and often proven absolutely falsified and incorrect, reports and statistics attempting to show direct fiscal damage of epic proportions to justify changes in the law - DMCA, copyright enforcement, CISPA, treaties and negotiations with other countries being examples.
- The creation of laws curtailing our freedoms in ways that were never agreed upon by society at large. Who the fuck thinks they can tell us we can't skip over commercials
with technology in our own homes? How dare they tell me there are Prohibited User Operations on my DVD player? It's my fucking DVD player, my fucking DVD, my fucking money that left MY wallet. Yet, they have the unmitigated gall to stand in my living room by proxy through technology paid for with my money telling me what to do in my own home. Make a televised skit of that shit and see how many people you can get to agree with you to let that happen.
- The dramatic loss of privacy and anonymity through the unprecedented and largely unchecked grabs for mass surveillance capabilities. All of it for.... yep.... terrorists. Yet, not being used against a single terrorist. More and more they use these tools to come to the aid of a single side in a copyright dispute and in some notable cases, arrest and detain people only interested in actions that were damn well known to be fair use .
You bet your ass I'm just as concerned as the AC is about a US intelligence agency being used unfairly in a civil dispute. It may not affect you directly now, but you just wait, keep that line of thinking up and you will have the government you deserve. Then after some time, you will have the country you deserve.
One bereft off a middle class anymore. Just the ruling elites and the slaves. A country run with the abhorrent idea that an idea and expression can be owned forever and that all must prostrate themselves before the elites for the right to use advanced technologies. One where no single person, or group of persons, in a garage could ever hope to build a multi-billion dollar company from nothing since the barrier to entries are so damn high. How could they be low? Over a half million patents in a smart phone these days. Ridiculous software patents will run a muck in your country inhibiting, or outright preventing, innovation by the "small guys". You already have your "who files first" bullshit in the USPTO. That har
Law has to reflect the general consensus on what's "right". People have to understand and support laws for them to be a foundation of stability. Laws that are unjust and not supported by public opinion are not only very hard, if not impossible, to enforce, they're a danger to the stability of a country in itself.
And I'm not even talking about unpopular laws like tax laws. Nobody likes to pay taxes. But we do. Because we somehow understand that the country needs money. And while we certainly don't really like that WE have to pay that money (why can't someone else?), it's something we do understand. Or, at least most of us do. And most of us also support the idea of a country or nation running certain businesses like military or police force.
So we're not talking about unpopular. Many laws are unpopular, but we accept their existence and we understand that they have to be to make living together possible. I'd sure like to take my neighbor's car, but I understand that he would probably not like that, and I sure as hell wouldn't like someone else to take mine. It's an understandable law that I can't simply take whatever belongs to someone else just because I want it.
Such laws are supported by the population and that is also why they are enforceable. If you see someone breaking into a house, you probably call the police. And even if it's your best buddy that you find killing his wife, you will probably even then inform the police and tell on him. Simply because laws against burglary and murder are something that you probably understand and support. At least if you're like the majority of the population. Of course there are those that don't think such laws should exist (or apply to them), but in general our sentiment seems to be that killing someone or taking something away from him is wrong.
Such laws have a stabilizing impact on our society. We support them, because we understand their benefit to us. And we see the state, nation or country as our ally in our strive to make sure nobody breaks those laws.
It's exactly the opposite with laws that are not rooted in the general sentiment of the population, laws that are not something people understand immediately.
Take prohibition. Prohibition was one such law that had a very negative effect not only on how people react to this law, but how people react to THE law in general. To the law and its physical manifestations, police, politicians and judges. Prohibition was one of the laws people didn't "understand", and worse, one of the laws that they did not support. It was something a very vocal minority pushed for and the quiet majority didn't want to get in the way of. But there was no broad support for it. The results are known. Not only did people ignore that law, but they started ignoring laws altogether. Since, well, if you already broke the law, breaking another one becomes less of a problem. Not to mention: Everyone does it!
This is, btw, also one of the core reasons why the real socialism in the East broke down: People saw a very distinct difference between what they thought was "right" and what the state dictated as "right".
And if we start doing the same, we should prepare for people to act likewise.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No you see the porn filter got confused with yify, thought it was a misspelling and two f's were intended.
"actively promoting distribution of stolen American property ..."
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this wasn't actually the case, which is why (so far) every ruling that matters has come out in Mr. Dotcom's favour.
" THATS PART OF THEIR FUCKING JOB"
In reality the NSA's "job" is not law enforcement, nor even copyright enforcement.
Hope this was able to clear up some of that "ignorance" you seem to find so upsetting. Hope you feel better soon!
Yes, how nuts of people to acknowledge when logical fallacies are used in arguments and thus not a good contribution to a discussion.
If i was to download 10 movies from yify a day would i get in trouble? The movies would be older dvd movies from 2012 and below.
I have to say, it's pretty funny to read a bunch of highfalutin' rhetoric like this applied to a post about the following sites being blocked:
"Project Free TV, YIFY, PrimeWire"..."The Pirate Bay, BitSnoop, ExtraTorrent, Torrentz, 1337x, Fenopy, H33T, KickAssTorrents"
Yes, this is clearly about high principles of legal fairness and not about watching Thor without paying.
There is nothing wrong with expecting all TV and movie entertainment to be free. This is the future and companies that do not understand this are destine to meet newspaper companies, book stores and video rental shops in the afterlife.
Paying for entertainment is a thing of the past. Especially paying for simple delivery. There is no need to pay for distribution since all citizens now pay directly for that bandwidth through their ISP.
Any system of delivery that delivers their content with 30% advertising mixed in and cannot figure out how to do this for free is destined to DIE.
Currently, there is a limitation on quality video and music due to channel limits that are funnelled through the paid distribution network. This allows the distribution companies to milk the consumer for far more then it is worth. This system is supported by a huge waste of marketing and advertising used to brainwash young minds into accepting the concept of a "blockbuster" or "superstar", that is sanctioned by the distributors.
Once the public finally wakes up and lets go of paid distribution entertainment, the flow of quality media will be far greater. Only then can we begin to discuss what is fair for consumers to pay back to producers for their work.
In the meantime... dont accuse consumers of stealing. The only ones stealing today are the commercial distributors.
To help clear up your ignorance, BitZtream (this just came through today, so I thought you might like to catch up):
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/25/mega-kim-dotcom-copyright-baboom?CMP=twt_gu
Read some of the related articles to clear up your ignorance 'about how police operate'
And yeah, no, you clearly don't know what the NSA's job is. Yes, it has 'gone that far' and it's not 'ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY.'
Your comment here is so many levels of wrong (FBI prosecuting Dotcom, the NSA only tangentially involved - and completely beyond their scope, etc, etc) I don't know why I'm bothering. Perhaps I just want some more of your comedy gold, you're pretty amusing. Sad, pathetic even, but amusing.
I'm not saying that's the motivation of people. I only say that's what will happen out of it. Essentially, I see it as a mix of a poker and a bait and switch game that fizzled and backfired. The content industry got people used to easily accessible content and now that the cat is out of the box, it proves to be harder than anticipated to get the back back in. So now laws are supposed to fix this, and laws are a very bad vehicle for fixing a social problem.
Of course, these thoughts are not what motivates people to download content. They are simply used to easy and convenient access to content and are not willing to put up with the hoops the content industry wants them to jump through. They also don't understand why something that used to be the norm should no longer apply, and frankly, the copyright law has left the grounds of sensibility and balance a good decade ago. Every verdict of insane amounts of money awarded to the content industry that should have the effect of driving people away from copying actually has the contrary effect: It is seen as a justification rather than a deterrent.
People do not understand copyright laws. And once you're at the point of "heck, no matter what I do, I'll probably break that law" it's not a long step to "then why bother trying to uphold it".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I’m very happy to see that on this occasion both SolarMovie and TubePlus have been blocked by the UK’s major ISP’s. A quick browse of those sites reviles they allow free viewing/streaming of copyrighted material. I’m glad my taxes are helping to prevent illegal activities. I only wish that the site owners and regular users of these sites weren't so selfish. I’d rather my taxes were used to benefit the UK in other ways, rather than Policing society’s freeloaders. So in summary, don’t blame the UK Government, the Law Courts or the IPS’s. Blame the people who want to enjoy content they have no legal right to.
Only the mass duplication, distribution, and profit over copyrighted works is worth the intervention by law enforcement for society's behalf.
Inclusion of "profit" in that clause is unjustifiable, and probably ideologically-derived. The harm to the victim is unrelated to whether or not the violator turns a profit. You may as well say murder is a social problem for certain motives, and not for others. Let's remove the word "profit" from the equation:
Only the mass duplication and distribution over copyrighted works is worth the intervention by law enforcement for society's behalf.
Now, are you going to argue that a million people violating copyright once is less bad than one person violating copyright a million times?
And are you going to argue that a million people violating copyright once is less bad than one person violating copyright ten thousand times?
Because those are the kind of figures we're looking at. The biggest mafia-sponsored DVD duplication operation can't hope to make as many illegal copies as a million people with net connections. Of course intervention is required.
Nobody owes me anything. But neither do I owe anyone anything. And most certainly I don't owe someone to prop up his failed business model with accepting my liberties being removed to protect it.
If you cannot survive with your business without buying laws that affect far more people than your potential customers, you're supposed to die.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
just b/c your company has some piece of paper saying it's a 'corporation' doesn't mean it's not controlled by **someone**
those people are the majority stock holders...**the Dutch Royalty**
you acknowledge yourself that the Monarchy still has a role:
OH OK...nothing to see here...move along!
everything I said is true, and reading between the lines of your comment proves it
PR commentors are the scum of the earth...
Thank you Dave Raggett
I download music/movies/games (rarely, but happens): ...and I'm a thief that should be locked up? I probably have a bigger collection than you do. I'd tell you to go fuck yourself, but I'm afraid you'd find it satisfying.
- when I want to listen to it first. If like it - I buy it. I won't buy anything I haven't tried first (esp. after seeing Avatar; what a steaming pile of dysenteric crap on a foggy morning; Cameron, kill yourself; sorry, got carried away);
- when I'm just too lazy to go rummage through my entire collection for a song on a specific disc;
- probably some other reason I consider which I can't think of right now.
Yep, go directly to jail, pirate. Play by the rules, and that won't happen. That is all...
I remembered the third one:
- when a song/movie/game/book just aren't available for purchase.
The United States of America is not so fucking weak that copyright infringement is a threat to _national security_. Let me give voice to your unspoken meme: "What's good for Apple is good for the country". Fuck that and fuck you.
Excellent post, doubtless it's fallen on deaf ears though.
Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking when I replied to you. It's obviously a waste of time.