The Open Bay Helps Launch 372 'Copies' of the Pirate Bay In a Week

An anonymous reader writes isoHunt, the group now best known for launching The Old Pirate Bay, has shared an update a week after debuting The Open Bay. The Pirate Bay, the most popular file sharing website on the planet, still isn't back following police raids on its data center in Sweden, but its "cause" is very much alive. So far, 372 "copies" of The Pirate Bay have been created thanks to the project. The torrent database dump, which combines content from isoHunt, KickassTorrents (via its public API), and The Old Pirate Bay, has seen 1,256 downloads to date.

Comments

But the comments are gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes they told people whether the material would work, had malware, or what to do to get it to work.

Re:But the comments are gone

[houstonbofh]

This right here. Finding torrents is easy. Find torrents that are not crap is a bit harder.

Re:But the comments are gone

[Anonymous Coward]

80% of comments where from people who don't know that every AV software under the sun will flag major cracks as a virus.

Nothing of value was lost.

Re:But the comments are gone

[rebelwarlock]

Sounds to me like 20% of comments were actually useful, which is probably a world record.

Re:But the comments are gone

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that was pretty accurate for TPB.
As long as a torrent was alive people who used it would comment if it were crap so a copyright trolls and scammers would typically not have time to follow up and post disinformation. If spambots were used to derail the comment section that too was very visible.
Well, probably less than 20% of the comments were useful, but in most cases the last few comments were useful with the crap being past history.
TPB is a bit like Slashdot that way. Sure, the page is nice and all, but everything of value is in the userbase and the comments.

Re:But the comments are gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you're a complete n00b lamer who doesn't know what an ISO is or how to apply a crack. Almost everything I have ever downloaded from TPB has been virus free and has worked.

Re: But the comments are gone

[Anonymous Coward]

I second this

Not Really

[Anonymous Coward]

Its just ISOhunt with a TBP splash page... useless untill you can add torrents...

Marketing at its best..

Re:Not Really

[TobiX]

The reality is that for every 1 person who creates or gets their hands on some interesting content worth of sharing AND which is not already shared AND has the will, time and knowledge to do it properly, there are 10^N people who just want to fetch something that is already out there.

ISOHunt was a fine and very useful service, while it lasted.

And thus...

[AnotherAnonymousUser]

The Golden Path endures.

Fighting for true freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Kopimism at its finest.
Fuck yeah. Love those guys.

Distributed DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all you need is a distributed DNS setup (P2P-DNS or similar) backed by a self-replicated (between DNS nodes) list of known TPB clones, to make it easier to 'just go to TPB' - not having to know what the currently-up URIs are.

Problem then is you're just offsetting the point of contention (and thus, attack vector for DMCA takedowns/etc) to the DNS nodes and whatever server maintains the list of them.

To really solve this problem, and implement distributed, zero-config (auto-identifiable), DNS - we need everyone to play ball w.r.t. IP multicasting - currently most ISPs and lots of middle-man routers all block multicast, though theoretically it does work 'globally' (with a high enough TTL). Something we've struggled with at work (to the point of getting dedicated VPN routes setup between continents with public endpoints that receive/transmit multicast packets in multiple continents to achieve our needs - not just for us, but anyone who gets a multicast packet to them)

Re:Distributed DNS

[xaotikdesigns]

I wouldn't mind having a million of them available, but they would need to be able to download or distribute each others databases.

It doesn't matter many there are if each of them only has one episode of the show that I want to watch. I don't believe that they are going to be updating the datase that they provide, so my new TPB won't have anything that was uploaded to your new TPB, which also doesn't have anything that was uploaded to Bob's TPB...

Re:Distributed DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of torrent trackers already replicate each others databases... hence places like KAT have public APIs for accessing them.

Re:Distributed DNS

[kesuki]

if copyright just had a sane law that honest people could follow, instead of artificially created scarcity of content. the only reason copyright should ever last more than 5 years is to make the new books -- crappy or not -- the only laymans access to content at retail. out side of public libraries. streaming is cool, streaming works, but an oc-768 line can only cover the internet of about 40,000 streamers. (40 gbit/s) obviously you can throw in a thousands of fiber-optic cables in one line and stream to many many more a thousand oc-768 lines can handle 40 million streamers, but the resources to do this isn't exactly cheap. and $30 a month to the last mile with an additional $8 a month per streaming provider is a lot of money but the companies are crooked and the price once locked in will go up. unless they don't have a choice about it. hulu plus is so hard to cancel you have to click 3 different cancel buttons to cancel the service, and all they have are clips and a weeks worth of crappy tv broadcast videos and the ads are unavoidable and will repeat if you try to slide past them. netflix has some good movies but most of it is the cheap stuff that nobody wants to watch. so what if online streaming has more content than any mortal can watch through, if the good stuff all sells for $20 a disc and never goes to streaming... well it is a first world problem. apparently the only ethical solution is to rely on local libraries for entertainment.

Re: Distributed DNS

[Nikker]

How about if everyone seeds just one torrent to bootstrap? Possibly a list of all available magnet links and use DHT to sort it all out.

Re:Distributed DNS

[Somebody Is Using My]

While a distributed DNS setup would be a point of failure, would it be one that is legally vulnerable? A distributed DNS setup would just be pointing to websites pointing to torrents pointing to servers offering maybe copyright-infringing.

How deep does that rabbit hole have to go before it can't be cited for violating copyright? If there are multiple DNS servers and a website has a bunch of links to them, is that site culpable? What if there are multiple such DNS aggregators, and Google points to those pages? Where is the line drawn?

Because the further down you drill, the more likely it becomes that merely talking about the issue can be ruled illegal, and that should never be permitted.

Re:Distributed DNS

[RockDoctor]

How deep does that rabbit hole have to go before it can't be cited for violating copyright?

In most jurisdictions, it takes a considerably higher standard of evidence to convict one of an offence than it does to cite (i.e. to initiate an investigation by "the authorities") one for that offence.

Because the further down you drill, the more likely it becomes that merely talking about the issue can be ruled illegal, and that should never be permitted.

Will nobody think of the children and jail any people involved in talking about child pornography, as we are doing?

(You may note that I have dleiberately made you a participant in thought crime without involvement on your behalf. Maybe we'll meet on the steps of the gallows? Have a nice day.

The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[TrollstonButterbeans]

They maintained the site. Kept it operational. Improved it occasionally. Made sure it was up. They made some money from advertising, helped cover their expenses and then some. They actually made a profit.

Profit was a motivating factor for The Pirate Bay to provide a relatively reliable service!

What is the purpose of 372 or 5,570,549 unmaintained garbage mirrors of a possibly dead site?

Having a mirror requires almost no skill and there is no motivation to maintain it, improve it and no financial incentive as "Open Bay" is "Open Source".

Is this an achievement? The news article is from VentureBeat.com, and I bet those venture capitalists are just swarming to get a piece of the action? Err. No.

And the mirrors are basically useless.

But this should be celebrated because --- well --- it is sticking it to the megacorps! At least in a your imagination, if that is your dream.

Many of these stillborn mirrors will evaporate as soon as the hoster loses interest, which means by next Monday.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirate Bay wasn't the first torrent site ever. Stop acting like it was. The current #2 will take over, rinse and repeat.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[ganjadude]

well, you could look at it as "there are 372 other clones, what can *I* add to mine to make it stand out, thus encouraging even more competition to create exactly that.

When napster fell there were numerous clones and that worked out fairly well. sure some will fail and go under but thats how things work.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Wrong. My point was The Pirate Bay made money, THEREFORE it was maintained.

A home-job "made it myself" deal is not going to make more, THEREFORE IT WILL NOT be maintained.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Earn your own points or STFU. This "me too!" crap adds nothing to the discussion.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a fantastic argument against piracy.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[greg1104]

Earn your own points or STFU. This "you suck!" crap adds nothing to the discussion.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

I should mod GP and GGP up just to piss you off.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[ganjadude]

which was my point, those who are just on the hype will fail, and fast. some will find a way to add value (even if that value is simply ads, enabling the hiring of an actual programmer)

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

They maintained the site. Kept it operational. Improved it occasionally. Made sure it was up. They made some money from advertising, helped cover their expenses and then some. They actually made a profit.

  Profit was a motivating factor for The Pirate Bay to provide a relatively reliable service!

  What is the purpose of 372 or 5,570,549 unmaintained garbage mirrors of a possibly dead site?

Having a mirror requires almost no skill and there is no motivation to maintain it, improve it and no financial incentive as "Open Bay" is "Open Source".

Is this an achievement? The news article is from VentureBeat.com, and I bet those venture capitalists are just swarming to get a piece of the action? Err. No.

And the mirrors are basically useless.

But this should be celebrated because --- well --- it is sticking it to the megacorps! At least in a your imagination, if that is your dream.

  Many of these stillborn mirrors will evaporate as soon as the hoster loses interest, which means by next Monday.

Wonder where the fuck we would be today if there was that pessimist stepping up to help with your HOSTS.TXT updates back in the day...

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

They maintained the site. Kept it operational. Improved it occasionally. Made sure it was up. They made some money from advertising, helped cover their expenses and then some. They actually made a profit. Profit was a motivating factor for The Pirate Bay to provide a relatively reliable service!

Disagree. They only did the bare minimum to keep the site operational. The code was extremely buggy and not improved often. The advertising was completely off the top and done with a bad taste, with the user having to swim through a pool of popups and banners to get something done in the site. You would fully lose your mental sanity without AdBlock.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what that would be. I only heard it's going to kick ass... ;)

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[houghi]

Sure, many will evaporate. Probably the majority and you could even say 'almost all'. But even if it only two remain, it is double the amount.

And others will step in its place and improve on TPB. I never thought TPB was a good site. I like KickAss much better.

And I realy like how you try to use "Open Source" as an excuse not to make money.
1) Other sites might include adds
2) It ican be used as a basis for something better
3) For many people it is not about the money. Money might just be something that comes later.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[allo]

mod parent down.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a typical "intellectual property" advocate. Not everything in the world must be done for the purpose of making profit, and not everyone in the world is primarily motivated by profit.

Perhaps many of those mirrors will go away but some will stay and some will transform into something even more useful.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[aaaaaaargh!]

You're an idiot.

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[TrollstonButterbeans]

That helps me fit in here!

Re:The Pirate Bay Made Money Thru Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious that you don't understand the pirate mindset...at all. It's never been about making money, it's about bragging rights and being first to get a release. THAT is the real motivation to run such a site.

Just like the Hydra...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut off its head, 372 will take its place.

Willing to go the distence?

[Frosty Piss]

So, with TOR basically compromised, are you willing to personally take on the "rights holders" and their lawyers? Think they will not knock on your door and explaine that the assholes that make the laws are willing to grind you into the dirt?

Go for it. As for me? I haven't seen a movie in years that's worth it...

I know, it's a cop-out.

Reality and all...

Re: Willing to go the distence?

[Anonymous Coward]

This. 1000 times. You can make up any argument you like in defense of piracy and "internet rights" but in the end it's laws that matters. Laws made in the real world that affect you in the real world. And in the real world you do not take on an army of legal and financial juggernauts that can destroy your life without a second thought. They can, and will, run whole families into the ground. The cause is lost. Time to grow up and accept it, painful as it may be.

Re: Willing to go the distence?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the time being. The noose is tightening. But by all means ignore reality and carry on the Just Fight, you Internet Tough Guy. Just try to be a man when you're caught and not rattle out on your "comrades in arms" like all those oh-so-brave Anonymous warriors who turned out to be spineless cowards.

Re:Willing to go the distence?

[umafuckit]

You shouldn't be torrenting via TOR anyway. Get a suitable encyrpted VPN.

Re: Willing to go the distence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the insight Mr. corporate Shill.

Better: distributed search

[Alwin Henseler]

Improved methods of accessing some centralized torrent database (even if one of many)... bleh.

Better is to take the centralized anything out of the equation. Let peers search among each other what's out there. @ That point all you need is a small list of peers to start with, and you're good to go.

If I'm correct that is what Tribler is meant to achieve (plz... can someone get it into Debian repositories! :-). But I'm sure more research & software projects will move in that direction.

ISPs are next.

[Anonymous Coward]

This just proves that taking out the leaves is pointless. You have to tear up the roots. Eventually the ISPs will have to comply, or their IPs will be blocked by the ISPs forced to comply, which will be all the ISPs from first world countries.

Re:ISPs are next.

[allo]

ip blocking is not possible with shared hosting.

Torrent database dump

[basecastula]

So with database available, can I finally make my reseeder utility that connects all my previously downloaded content with the torrent it came from? Does anybody else have the desire for such a tool? It would save me soo much time not searching and reconnecting torrents to folders.

Turn them into a cloud service?

[houghi]

If so many are copies, would it not be possible to turn them into a cloud service? That way if one or 10 get taken out, you still have the service available.

And if this is done in many countries, taking it down would be nearly impossible (till the US abuses their power over the DNS)

(And I can't post within 4 minutes of a previous post? I thought this was a discussion site)

The worst of Slashdot commenters

[DiamondGeezer]

Programmers have enabled thieves to multiply their digital thefts across the Internet. Because some idiots feel entitled to other people's creative works without payment.

The Pirate Bay should stay down. And good riddance.

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[ogdenk]

1.) It's not theft.... more like counterfeiting but even that doesn't quite fit.

2.) Digital piracy has been with us as long as digital electronics. And distribution systems as long as the Hayes SmartModem. PirateBay isn't unique. There's plenty of other alternatives out there. The PirateBay raid also had no serious measurable impact on worldwide piracy. And most likely, they'll be back. Probably with something more distributed.

3.) Are you seriously arguing the folks who wrote the initial FTP client and server "enabled thieves" by not building in rigorous rights-violating DRM from the onset? DRM and BS like it violate the rights of many to preserve the rights of a handful of people. Most of them already pretty well off. It also makes preservation of creative works much harder later on down the road. And in the end, every scheme is broken if there's enough interest in breaking it so it's all wasted effort and money anyway.

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're doing right now is posting on a website that's whole purpouse is to repost other peoples articles. This could be considered a pirate site. Also you're dancing on the line of slander.

Re: The worst of Slashdot commenters

[Anonymous Coward]

That handful of people whose rights DRM protects have the money and the political clout to have things their way. You can complain all you like but until you can muster the money and the connections you need to sway law to your side, shut up. Money talks and shit walks.

Re: The worst of Slashdot commenters

[Anonymous Coward]

No they don't. They can code up all the DRM schemes they want. And they will be broken. They can lobby the govt to spend gobs of tax dollars to unsuccessfully attempt to act as collection agencies for Hollywood. And they have pretty much failed.

We don't need laws on our side. And we never have. The PirateBay takedown was NOT a serious blow to piracy by any means.

All DRM and copy protection does is piss off legit consumers and does nothing to prevent piracy in the long term.

**** SHHHH..... SUPER 31337 TOP SECRET HAX0R TIP *****
Your computer comes with a super-evil, totally unregulated, piracy program called FTP that lets you transfer any kind of file without asking for permission from potential rightsholders or even validating a license! Those evil programmers totally even slipped it past RIAA and MPAA audits!

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[DiamondGeezer]

1.) It's not theft.... more like counterfeiting but even that doesn't quite fit.

Call it theft. Call it counterfeiting. But please just call it what it is. Crime.

2.) Digital piracy has been with us as long as digital electronics. And distribution systems as long as the Hayes SmartModem. PirateBay isn't unique. There's plenty of other alternatives out there. The PirateBay raid also had no serious measurable impact on worldwide piracy. And most likely, they'll be back. Probably with something more distributed.

Call it theft. Call it counterfeiting. But please just call it what it is. Crime.

3.) Are you seriously arguing the folks who wrote the initial FTP client and server "enabled thieves" by not building in rigorous rights-violating DRM from the onset? DRM and BS like it violate the rights of many to preserve the rights of a handful of people. Most of them already pretty well off. It also makes preservation of creative works much harder later on down the road. And in the end, every scheme is broken if there's enough interest in breaking it so it's all wasted effort and money anyway.

No I'm not. I'm also not claiming that Norton Commander enabled theft either.

DRM wouldn't need to exist if there weren't freetards who think that they are entitled to other people's stuff without paying for it.

Oh and nobody makes a claim that it amounts to "the preservation of digital works" unless they are deluded enough feel entitled to rip it off for the sake of future generations.

Call it what it is. Theft. Counterfeiting. But lets call it crime.

And let's not pretend there are innocent motives for replicating TPB because they're aren't any. The desperate reasoning of basement dwellers to get other people's stuff without paying for it looks and smells like the bullshit it is.

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[DiamondGeezer]

Bullshit. Yet again we have the bullshit reasoning of people who feel entitled to other people's stuff without paying for it.

Slashdot isn't passing off other people's stuff as its own, nor encouraging people to rip off other people's work because some bottom feeders feel entitled because they can and do rip off other people's stuff.

Slashdot is a news site which links to original articles and give them credit.

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[JaredOfEuropa]

If you publish a creative work, do you have the right to have that work protected against copying?

The answer really isn't as clear-cut as with physical property. Society / lawmakers recognized that copying someone's creative work or invention doesn't deprive them of anything, and benefits society as a whole. However they also recognized that creators and inventors wouldn't have much incentive to publish if they had no means by which to profit from their work. That's why patents, copyright and the notion of IP exist. Not because it is some natural right, but because there was a need to balance the creators' rights against those of the general public.

Arguably, that balance has gone off. Piracy isn't just people availing themselves of entertainment for free, it is also people consuming entertainment that has not been made available to them in an acceptable manner, for a reasonable price, and in some cases the content wasn't available to them at all at any price, often for arbitrary reasons. Piracy at least sends a strong message to media companies about what people want, and that's not entertainment without having to pay.

I don't know anyone who still bothers to pirate music; there are enough legal alternatives available that are much more convenient. Because of piracy. Similarly e-books: I try to buy these but when a publisher won't sell outside the USA and won't take PayPal so I can fake the address, the it's FU and off to TPB. And it's getting better: buying books right on the e-reader is so much more convenient than pirating them, so who bothers anymore? Series? Still crap. I pirated a bunch of Netflix stuff because it simply wasn't available anymore (remember the "Netflix please take my money campaign?), but I did get a subscription when it became available here. Movies are still bad: poorly available and highly priced, and not available in digital downloads. So I pirate them. And our government backed us up in this, stating that they would not prosecute individual pirates as long as there were no viable legal alternatives available. Sadly they got overruled by the EU (more double secret treaties I wager).

So it's not idiots who feel entitled to other people's creative works for free, it's idiots who feel entitled to lawful protection of an artificial scarcity.

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and nobody makes a claim that it amounts to "the preservation of digital works" unless they are deluded enough feel entitled to rip it off for the sake of future generations.

Call it what it is. Theft. Counterfeiting. But lets call it crime.

If it weren't for piracy, several entire software libraries for many older computers would have completely disappeared. The only place I could find a copy of IRIX for an old SGI Indy was bittorrent. Same with ULTRIX for a VAX. And a lot of early computer games that were a lot of fun but impossible to find physical media for anymore. And there's a lot of older bands whose material is damn near impossible to find because of limited productions runs. Bittorrent allows me to hear this material without being screwed by artificial scarcity when any hope of real profit is long gone.

So honestly, whether you or the govt thinks it's a crime, I don't give a shit. I support artists. I go to shows. I buy albums. I don't feel bad in the least. And often, it was pirating an album that got me to listen to a band in the first place and buy a bunch of their stuff. I even buy movies. Not all of them. But I buy a lot of them. And then I'm forced to rip them and remove the DRM to use them in a manner of my choosing so basically I buy it so I don't feel bad and use a "pirated" copy.

Pirates aren't really the stereotypical basement dweller copying C64 floppies anymore. You're a couple decades late. They look just like everyone else now and the tech is quite mainstream.

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[drkstr1]

Your premise doesn't make sense to someone who doesn't recognize knowledge / information as property. Stop trying to convince us otherwise. It just ain't gonna happen.

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[easyTree]

Somewhat hypocritical given that your *name* is someone else's intellectual property.

Re:The worst of Slashdot commenters

[easyTree]

Bullshit. Yet again we have the bullshit reasoning of people who feel entitled to other people's stuff without paying for it.

Agreed - self awareness is good - you should consider changing your name to something that isn't someone else's intellectual property.

Tribler

[g4sy]

Tribler is an open source anonymous peer-to-peer decentralized BitTorrent client. Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an overlay network for content searching, which makes the program operate independent of external websites and renders it immune to limiting external action, for example, government restraint.