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'Tor and Bitcoin Hinder Anti-Piracy Efforts' (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the odd-ones-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A new report published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office identifies a wide range of 'business models' that are used by pirate sites. The organization, which announced a new collaboration with Europol this week, signals Bitcoin and the Tor network as two key threats to ongoing anti-piracy efforts. According to the research, several infringing business models rely on encryption-based technologies. The Tor network and Bitcoin, for example, are repeatedly mentioned as part of this "shadow landscape." "It more and more relies on new encrypted technologies like the TOR browser and the Bitcoin virtual currency, which are employed by infringers of IPR to generate income and hide the proceeds of crime from the authorities," the report reads.

103 comments

  1. Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No one I know has ever paid money for pirated media. That's kind of the entire point. What is this drivel about business models?

    1. Re:Sharing is a business now? by dnaumov · · Score: 3, Informative

      No one I know has ever paid money for pirated media. That's kind of the entire point. What is this drivel about business models?

      Advertising and/or malware distribution. Don't be dense.

    2. Re:Sharing is a business now? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      You need to expand your world view more. Piracy is common in China.

      * http://www.techrepublic.com/ar...

      BitCoin is a red herring.

    3. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Sax+Russell+5449D29A · · Score: 1

      Probably they mean the usual business model of the websites. You know, advertisement revenue, Gold Accounts and such.

      --
      -SR
    4. Re:Sharing is a business now? by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      IDK, banning TOR or bitcoin might be a bad idea, but piracy has been a business for some people beyond doubt. Or how did kim dotcom get rich? he wasn't paid by the content owners to stop, was he.

    5. Re:Sharing is a business now? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Informative

      Speaking of the obvious, this would be more interesting if they just admitted that trying to stop pirate sites is impossible and artists should just try to compete by offering a better product.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Think on private torrent sites: I pay to buy upload ratio, or to freeleech. I can also gain the ability to doubleseed torrents that I mark if need be. It's quicker than buying and running a seedbox.

      I can place bounties and request rare music albums, or that one old film in my collection that isn't a higher quality rip yet. You fill my bounty, you get points and you can spend them on the above.

      Or you can buy a seedbox and get points that way by seeding thousands of torrents day and night.

    7. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Advertising and/or malware distribution. Don't be dense.

      Yes, please, kill off the malware distributors! Then I can be sure what I download isn't a trojan.

      Dense? I think you're sinking much faster than the OP.

    8. Re: Sharing is a business now? by WarJolt · · Score: 2

      All those proxy/vpn services that people pay for directly market to torrent users. Some are paying for anonymity for the sole purpose of pirating.

    9. Re:Sharing is a business now? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How do you offer a better product at better than free? People obviously want the artist's product; and a rational person wants that product for the lowest price.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    10. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I did, once. The product? A bootleg recording. Of course, bit coin and tor had nothing to do with it (cash transactions only, in-person purchase). It was expensive, too, but the only option. Which is something to consider with "piracy" -- how much of it is purchase of goods not otherwise made available (region restrictions, etc.)

    11. Re:Sharing is a business now? by PatientZero · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A rational person also wants to be able to consume said content easily. The content producers are doing their damnedest to make it as difficult as possible. Why can't I type in a movie name and watch it on my Tivo? Oh sure, it searches Netflix and Amazon and Xfinity and Hulu and . . . but then when you choose your provider (you can't always see the cost so it's hard to choose) you still have to search again in the actual app to watch it.

      But then you can't download it to pause/rewind quickly, or you have to watch commercials, or you only have 24 hours to watch it, or you can't watch it in Bumfuckistan, or . . . WTF! I am happy to pay for content. I would be happier if the content providers got their shit together instead of fighting content sharing and wringing their hands over Bitcoin.

      --
      Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
      I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
    12. Re:Sharing is a business now? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Malware free, easy download without fake download buttons, extras like artwork, lossless encoding...

      How do you think Amazon and iTunes sell anything if The Pirate Bay constantly undercuts them?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    13. Re:Sharing is a business now? by PCM2 · · Score: 1

      No one I know has ever paid money for pirated media. That's kind of the entire point. What is this drivel about business models?

      I've seen pirated media distributed as encrypted RARs. To get the key, you typically have to click along through a whole bunch of advertising sites, maybe answering surveys or something similar, possibly picking up some malware along the way, who knows. I'm sure some people are naive enough to "pay for" their media that way, particularly young people who see it as being free anyway.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    14. Re:Sharing is a business now? by PCM2 · · Score: 2

      I've been to what looked like a legitimate video store in a mall in Malaysia. By "legitimate," I mean the employees were all wearing polo shirts with the store logo embroidered on them, the product was all neatly arrange on shelves in alphabetical order, the whole bit. There was one shelf right inside the front door offering "imported" DVDs for something like $40. Everything else in the entire store were Asian bootlegs. When I told one of the employees that you couldn't buy the original Star Wars Trilogy in the US (as you couldn't at the time), he seemed legitimately baffled. He'd probably personally sold hundreds of them.

      That's a little different from claiming pirates are building businesses based on BitTorrent, though.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    15. Re:Sharing is a business now? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1, Insightful

      While that's true, Napster and Gnutella were easier than anything I've used, and probably easier than anything possible. Spotify is about as easy, except I have to pay for Spotify.

      Do you think anyone today outside a few eccentrics would buy music online if Napster hadn't been stopped? The music industry never stopped piracy, but they stopped the spread of such simple tools as a household item. Don't tell me Bittorrent is anything like opening an application, punching in something (Metallica, Avengers, Windows Enterprise Cracked), and downloading; I've used Bittorrent and The Pirate Bay and Google and Nutorrent and all the rest, and it's nice when you try to download Ubuntu and they give you a .torrent to use, and horrendous if you're hunting for something specific.

      That's the victory they achieved: they stopped the ubiquity of free music, swapping from person to person, on every phone, on every tablet, on every PC, everywhere, with services like iTunes and Netflix being universally met with confusion at why such a thing would exist. They're now trying to stamp out what amounts to an underground coal mine fire: out of sight, irrelevant to 99.999% of the world, and impossible to stop with any amount of force.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    16. Re:Sharing is a business now? by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Isn't that the MafIAA's business model?

      * Sony Rootkit
      * Unskippable ads on DVDs
      * etc.. etc...

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    17. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Freedom+Bug · · Score: 1

      If you read the Napster business plan from 2001, it seems very similar to that of Spotify: $10 for unlimited music streams. If they would have jumped on board everybody would be using it and the studios would be making money hand over fist.

      Instead most people listen to their music on Youtube or ad-supported Spotify, which pays a pittance compared to the paid Spotify.

    18. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've never had to pay for any torrents or zips on the darknets.
      They're all free in big torrent swarms.
      Just install I2P, Tor, or whatever and sometimes onioncat and just point your torrent client at it once you find a tracker.
      You don't even ever touch clearnet, no 'exits' required at all, so the MAFIAA never sees you to come after you or hurt the vital exits.
      It's fiendishly brilliant :)

    19. Re:Sharing is a business now? by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

      Just as important, BitCoin is about the most public form of transaction that you can have. All transactions are recorded in the block chain and supposedly available for inspection by anyone. If I wanted to fight piracy (and in all honesty I'm more anti-Disney than anti-piracy, the pirates are doing less to subvert the Constitution) then I would insist that all pirates use completely traceable transactions like BitCoin.

      --
      I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    20. Re:Sharing is a business now? by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      Piracy isn't free. For just one example, many people feel a tiny bit of guilt over not supporting the creators, enough so that some will buy the product after testing it, or will even buy a legal copy first and then pirate the improved quality (DRM-free) version. Another example is the time spent searching and other conveniences that are worth more than $1 per song to people, and for practical purposes unavailable to pirates.

      Neither of those are absolute, of course, and people might be unwilling to support an author for ideological reasons (evil company, hate IP, fear of supporting a crap product), or it might be difficult/impossible to purchase something legitimately but easy to pirate.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    21. Re:Sharing is a business now? by DanielRavenNest · · Score: 2

      > All transactions are recorded in the block chain and supposedly available for inspection by anyone.

      Yes, they are. But they only record the sending address, receiving address, and the amount being sent. No names or other personal information. Here, look at a transaction from the most recent block, and tell me anything about the people involved:

      https://blockchain.info/tx/ce1...

    22. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No one I know has ever paid money for pirated media. That's kind of the entire point. What is this drivel about business models?

      Advertising and/or malware distribution. Don't be dense.

      Uhm, isn't pretty much all of the malware on pirate sites spread by the media companies to fight piracy?

    23. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Russia once had a very strong market for pirated music, movies, games, software.
      Wonderful quality - I remember buying an official Half-Life 2 disc and not being able to play it because of region locking, while buying a pirated disc would have been 5 times cheaper and no problems playing it anywhere.

    24. Re: Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Some are paying for anonymity for the sole purpose of pirating.

      True.

      And some (most?) of them would be more than happy to pay several times the amount they pay for the VPN service for commercial services for various media, provided said services provided said media in reasonable (read: non-encumbered) ways, and with close to complete catalogues.

      At least I would.

      Instead, I pay directly to musicians (using Bandcamp, for example) that I like, swear about the limitations of Netflix et al and torrent what I can't easily get via the current ilk of paid services. I'd be happy to pay twice as much (at least) for Netflix or similar if they (vastly) increased their inventory.

      But the studios don't want that. So they get piracy instead. Go figure.

    25. Re:Sharing is a business now? by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      Malware free, easy download without fake download buttons, extras like artwork, lossless encoding...

      Malware in pure data like flac, ogg, opus or mp3, how? Use a reputable site like The Pirate Bay. Most music torrents include artwork. If you want lossless encoding, you're far more likely to find it in a torrent rather than a pay site.

      Plus, try to find actual music on a pay site -- all you get is corporate prolefeed apparently indeed made with a versificator, because that's what sells. Most music I prefer was made in 80's-90's and it wasn't mainstream even then, so good luck finding the copyright holder, as the band disbanded and so did the label.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    26. Re:Sharing is a business now? by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

      No need to. If one wanted to find out how much the pirates were taking in, they should only need to find some way to pay them a small amount. Then look at that transaction, get the receiver and mine the block chain for all transactions to that receiver. You now have a lot of information about what your accused pirate is doing. Repeat and built up enough evidence for prosecution, much easier than any other payment system. Want to go after the other people who paid that receiver? Sure it is harder, it should be. Bit it isn't undo-able. Mining the same data for each of their transaction records should give you enough information that many of them could be pretty accurately located.and in some cases identified.

      --
      I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    27. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > How do you offer a better product at better than free?

      Ask Netflix, Crunchyroll, Steam, GoG, etc.? I certainly *could* pirate the same stuff, but they make me not want to do that by being convenient and reasonable. Might even get the mini NES thing for nostalgia, though it's dead easy to get NESticle and every single NES ROM ever.

      Anyhow, what I wonder is how long until the key bitcoin devs will be alleged to be rapists of some kind so they can be replaced? They already got tor and others and even Linux is clearly on the list if they can make something more than 'Linus swears at bad code' actually stick. It's a bit harder there as they can't simply get people to vote him out or whatever.

    28. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's actually no sending or receiving address, that's just something websites do to put transactions into a context that people can understand. For instance, what's the sending address for this transaction?

      https://blockchain.info/tx/4fea28ca023cae8498cf10541826f5da8e06eabf0d9cc03c8cdc4b91cb0c49e2?show_adv=true

    29. Re:Sharing is a business now? by bug1 · · Score: 2

      Copyright infringement happened before there was websites, and it will continue to happen even if there is no business model.

      And how about you grow up, no need for insults.

    30. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you offer a better product at better than free?

      Netflix offers one answer. Over 75 million subscribers can't be explained away as "they just haven't figured out that they could pirate the same content."

      a rational person wants that product for the lowest price.

      Wrong.

      Markets only work when the provider of the product makes enough profit to make it worthwhile to continue providing the product.

      A rational person recognizes this and will attempt to balance their desire for the lowest possible price with their desire for the provider to continue providing the products they want. Paying a fair price so that both parties benefit from the transaction is the rational decision, even if many people succumb to greed and don't make it.

    31. Re:Sharing is a business now? by DMFNR · · Score: 1

      No one I know has ever paid money for pirated media. That's kind of the entire point. What is this drivel about business models?



      I don't know how big a thing it is anymore, but selling pirated DVDs was a pretty big thing in lower class communities. Usually they'd have a binder with discs and inkjet printed sleeves you could choose from. I've seen it at quite a few swap meets too where there will be a stand selling pirated media, some of these much more elaborate, in cases with counterfeit inserts, sometimes even a sticker on the disc or Lightscribe. I guarantee it's still probably a pretty common hustle among parolees, as it's viewed as more "legit", your average big city parole officer is not going to give a flying fuck about pirated DVDs.

      I can't speak to how common it is in 2016 as I'm about a decade removed from that scene, maybe iTunes stamps on Obama phones have eliminated this practice, but I highly doubt it. The person you would want to ask would be your neighborhood drug dealer, his brothers layin low on them papers, stayin outta the game for a bit, but he's got that latest Coo Coo Cal mixtape for you.
    32. Re:Sharing is a business now? by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      How do you offer a better product at better than free? People obviously want the artist's product; and a rational person wants that product for the lowest price.

      Bottled water. For most people in the US, tap water is free. (Essentially) And bottled water is tap water most of the time. And it is a $6.6BILLION business! http://www.statista.com/topics...

      And since many pirates are paying for VPN services and seed boxes, it ain't even competing with free!

    33. Re:Sharing is a business now? by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      No one I know has ever paid money for pirated media. That's kind of the entire point. What is this drivel about business models?

      Advertising and/or malware distribution. Don't be dense.

      Uhm, isn't pretty much all of the malware on pirate sites spread by the media companies to fight piracy?

      And sometimes on CDs... cough... cough... Sony... cough...

    34. Re:Sharing is a business now? by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      Someone who put a lot more effort into being anonymous then most. And the receiving address is still there... Says nothing about the much larger group of low hanging fruit that just send it from there android app.

    35. Re: Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since when was HL2 ever region locked?

    36. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I made the transaction, Which address was this one sent to? https://blockchain.info/tx-index/63454893/0?show_adv=true

    37. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most music torrents include artwork.

      Totally not my experience. Maybe 20 % contain the cover (often low resolution) and nothing else, the quality ones that have full booklet scans are around 5 % of torrents.

    38. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      CORRECT A MUNGO!!!!! I have to pay for Fibre coz I got 2 boys that love watching media. They have both each paid for Lovefilm, Netflix and Amazon Prime however that all starts to cost a lot of money having multiple subs with various media places so they begged me for a VPN so they could watch better stuff and MORE content on Netflix and that lasted a year until Netflix had to bow to the entertainment industries and block VPN access. Now my 2 boys have a Kodi Android box linked to their TV's. They paid £35 from Amazona and thanks for them being Prime members the boxes were delivered they very next day, they then put my VPN connection onto the boxes and happily watch all they want now. There motto is we tried to pay for content but their money was not good enough for the entrainment companies and made difficult to watch. Now they get it all for free. Who are the suckers here??? Not my boys!! Beside why is it that someone in some swanky office decides that kids on one side of a street can watch one thing and the kids on the otherside can not. If someone is offering to pay, take the money and give them the product. That's business....

    39. Re:Sharing is a business now? by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      Malware in pure data like flac, ogg, opus or mp3, how?

      Some vulnerable software can be exploited with media files, a well known case is the stagefright bug in Android. I don't think it is common on filesharing networks though. Much more common are files that aren't pure data. The goal is to trick you into launching an executable, like "music.mp3.exe".
      Also many tracker sites are riddled with ads and malware, even some of the most popular ones. If you don't notice it, it is probably because your adblocker is doing a good job.

    40. Re:Sharing is a business now? by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      The goal is to trick you into launching an executable, like "music.mp3.exe".

      Crap, I got both wine and wine-binfmt installed, I'm vulnerable! Not sure how the torrent will chmod +x it, though.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    41. Re:Sharing is a business now? by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 1

      Then look at that transaction, get the receiver and mine the block chain for all transactions to that receiver.

      And here you hit your first major roadblock: There is only one such transaction, yours, because the address you sent your payment to was unique to you. You see, it's cheap and easy to use a different Bitcoin address for every transaction, and this is both the recommended mode of operation and the default for every modern Bitcoin wallet.

      You can try to follow the trail further; you might get lucky. Then again, the funds might change hands several times before you manage to link them to a real-world identity, who may be out of your jurisdiction and/or may not know any more than you do about the sender.

      --
      "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
    42. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rational people also want some of the products the artist will produce in the future if he/she earns enough money to be able to keep producing. So rational people want to pay for art they like if they can afford that.

    43. Re:Sharing is a business now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That a malware doesn't target your OS doesn't mean that said malware doesn't exist.

    44. Re:Sharing is a business now? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Most modern music players can ID songs, determine the relevant album, and provide cover art. Rhythmbox can even supply lyrics; I think e.g. Banshee does similar. Amazon is selling MP3s without other crap attached.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    45. Re:Sharing is a business now? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Napster was originally a robust, decentralized p2p network for sharing entire directories full of individual files. Unlike bittorrent (sharing a torrent context), Napster would find a file of the same size, name, and content and transfer that. Its demise spawned Kazaa, Limewire, Gnutella, Edonkey, and such.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    46. Re:Sharing is a business now? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      That twinge of guilt is normalized out after a decade. We don't feel guilt about eliminating 97.78% of American agricultural jobs; today we talk about manufacture a lot, but 10 years ago NOBODY CARED. It's now a political issue; 10 years ago, we were jabbering a lot about STEM college degrees, and 10 years from now we'll have forgotten about the manufacture thing (because it's an artifact dredged up from the past) because the standard American job is IT--racking servers, running cables, the fast food worker of the future. In a world where you grew up just downloading songs while looking confusedly at people expecting you to pay for music (what, where does a 9-year-old get money to pay for music?), you'd feel the same tiny bit of guilt you might feel for all the lost American farm jobs.

      Hell, look around you. People use Spotify free tier, Pandora, and Youtube, and refuse to buy music. Normal people. They're tangentially-aware that the service is supported by ads, and what they want most is for the ads to go away--so much so that anyone who can use an ad blocker blocks the YouTube ads which are theoretically paying for the music they consume. Many of those videos don't even have ads, don't show them all the time, or offer a Skip button in 5 seconds (which everyone clicks--enough that Skip Ad is a minor cultural phenomena and gets mentioned in any media playing on frustration with streaming services in general, not just YouTube).

      People don't care about that shit.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    47. Re:Sharing is a business now? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      That's because bottled water is perceived as better water--a purer, more natural, healthier alternative to tap water. People have a belief that tap water is toxic. I filter my tap water because it turns porcelain surfaces yellow with a biological film suffused with an iron-sulfate pigment.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    48. Re:Sharing is a business now? by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      Clementine, Tomahawk, and Amarok do all of these things as well. I personally recommend Clementine.

      If you have music files that are not well named there is MusicBrains Picard. It can do renaming, lookup based on tags, lookup based on filename, and it can do lookup based on fingerprint matching, which is far more accurate than you would expect. After you have the correct information it will save the file in the directory you specify, with the naming convention that you specify, and saves all the tag information including artwork.

    49. Re:Sharing is a business now? by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      Bad proofreading... MusicBrains ==> MusicBrainz

  2. Translation: Payment processors were our lever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Working as intended.

  3. Think of the terrorists! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why would anyone need a truck with large-capacity fuel tanks?

    Sensible truck control now!

    1. Re:Think of the terrorists! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I need my gun to drive to work everyday because I'm a fucking retard and don't understand nuance!

  4. We get it already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    patent trolls don't like any new technologies unless they invent it and monetize it to their advantage immediately.

    please fuck off and die already

  5. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Honestly most corporations are misusing laws to over charge us for virtually everything and stifle innovation ... nice when something hinders that.

  6. Boo Hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe they can cry about the plight of homelessness or how every dollar they claim is "stolen" would have benefited the unemployed instead. Of course there is no net loss from piracy despite their efforts to prove otherwise.

  7. In other news; water is wet, the sky is blue... by Penguinisto · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Wake me when the EU starts demanding a ban on knives because criminals use them to stab people, thus hindering anti-assault efforts.

    Urgh. Sometimes governments really get stupid when it comes to translating common sense to any concept that happens to be "...on a computer."

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:In other news; water is wet, the sky is blue... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

      Urgh. Sometimes governments really get stupid when it comes to translating common sense to any concept that happens to be "...on a computer."

      Actually, they are floating plans to ban cash too. Bitcoin is just online cash, so the impetus to ban both would be largely the same.

      And, yes, this means they want complete control of every aspect of every piece of commerce that happens among their subjects.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    2. Re:In other news; water is wet, the sky is blue... by friesofdoom · · Score: 1

      https://www.gov.uk/buying-carr...

      The maximum penalty for an adult carrying a knife is 4 years in prison and a fine of £5,000.

    3. Re:In other news; water is wet, the sky is blue... by Threni · · Score: 1

      They've started banning cash in France already; you're not allowed to use cash to pay people for work unless it's under 1000 Euros or so.

    4. Re:In other news; water is wet, the sky is blue... by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

      or perhaps "Criminal's refusal to turn themselves in hinders anti-crime efforts"

      --
      This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    5. Re:In other news; water is wet, the sky is blue... by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      That's UK not Europe.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    6. Re:In other news; water is wet, the sky is blue... by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      You know that did not instantly leave the second the vote came in, right?

    7. Re:In other news; water is wet, the sky is blue... by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      The Brits didn't behave like Europeans even before the vote.

      For one, they blocked most initiatives which would make the EU consistent and united. If not for their interference, we'd have means to deal with neo-nazi governments in Poland and Hungary (who now can block any "unpatriotic" legislation).

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  8. Misleading topic by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 1

    I thought that actual pirates might be using Tor and Bitcoin. Turns out this is another story about copyright enforcement.

    If you're using Tor instead of something like Freenet, you deserve what's coming.

    1. Re:Misleading topic by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      If you're using Tor instead of something like Freenet, you deserve what's coming.

      Freenet, where once quantum computing breaks commonly used encryption algorithms, everyone is going to be revealed to be hosting child porn (unwittingly, but still) on their computers. Yeah, sounds like a really worthwhile network. :rolleyes:

    2. Re:Misleading topic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean like every proxy user (almost everyone on the web, since ISPs use proxies) unwittingly *pays for* temporary hosting of child porn?

  9. Misused? Hell no. by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 0

    The laws are bought and paid for, written specifically for their benefit at the expense of all others.
    Make no mistake, for-profit organizations wouldn't be making campaign contributions if there isn't benefit to be had.

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
  10. So do PCs, and writable media. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe we should ban everything to please wealthy copyright holders. Or we could ignore them because they're hopelessly biased profit-seekers who want to be the toll-taking gatekeepers of our own culture.

  11. That's a feature by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

    I thought that's what those technologies were actually designed for.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    1. Re:That's a feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly, these people are talking about it like it's a bad thing.. Maybe they are trying to lull people into thinking that Tor and Bitcoin are secure, when they really log into the NSA data center in Utah

    2. Re:That's a feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bitcoin is the opposite of anonymous. Every transaction is on every node. Not designed for privacy at all.

  12. Shortsighted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Pushing to ban something with many legitimate uses only because it MIGHT be used illegally is just shortsighted (and probably vote-seeking).
    Encryption, although it's needed for MANY things, is used by pirates. Better ban it.
    Automobiles/trucks can be used in robberies (or even murders, as in Nice yesterday). Better ban them.
    Planes can be crashed into skyscrapers. Better ban them.
    All criminals rely on food, so food should be banned. ... ad infinitum, ad nauseum...

    1. Re:Shortsighted by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      This is why the police supercomputer that we'll build to destroy all crime will nuke earth from orbit when it becomes self-aware. It won't care that it itself will be destroyed in the process, as it has accomplished its task to destroy all crime and is therefore not needed anymore.

  13. Tor and bitcoin hamper evil by Hagaric · · Score: 0

    Good.

  14. Foreign content by mrops · · Score: 1

    Well, I am here in Canada often looking for DVDs of Bollywood movies. The only place I can buy then are $1 DVDs at ethnic grocery stores.

    So yah, I have paid in the past, now its more online, some sudo legit IPTV/streaming providers stream movies netflix style, but its grey as a lot of streamed movies have no Copyright registration here in Canada.

    1. Re:Foreign content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pseudo?

  15. They forgot the internet by Trachman · · Score: 1

    Piracy of intellectual property existed before the internet.

    They forgot to mention that not only tor and bitcoin, but also internet hinders anti-piracy efforts.

    Well... even if there is no TOR and Bitcoin, there is always a roster of shadowy less know payment services that will still accept and process the payments.

    1. Re:They forgot the internet by John.Banister · · Score: 1

      I was thinking that same thing - also: converting live performance into electrical signals; recording electrical signals digitally in a manner amenable to transmission over a packet switched network; the whole concept of exchanging currency for goods and services instead of having to barter. And, lets not forget the artists themselves. If they wouldn't produce a desirable performance, no one would want to pirate it, and so anti-piracy efforts would be much more successful.

      What they need to do is have each person desiring a copy of a performance attend the live performance and only encode the electrical signals in the brain of each listener, so that playback only works if it's played back into the brain from which it was recorded. Then, piracy will be more challenging - at least until the telepathy brain-mods that allow direct brain-to-brain sharing come out. I'm sure it'll eventually be illegal to even remember a copyrighted performance without paying an additional fee. In fact, this could be the reason people think elves and fairies don't exist. It's not that no one's encountered them, it's just that no one can afford the fees for remembering the encounter.

    2. Re:They forgot the internet by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      It's all those damn computers... Back in my day... grumble grumble... :)

  16. So does cash by gurps_npc · · Score: 1

    Why people can pay cash and be totally untraceable!

    Tor, bitcoin and cash also hinder government oppression based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, politics, economics, etc. etc.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  17. News at 11 by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

    The MPAA / RIAA and various overzealous governments have a tendency to erode privacy efforts in an effort to sustain their current methods of doing things.

    Thus, it should come as no surprise to anyone that new technology / ideas are used to help regain some of what was lost.

    Instead of trying to buy laws via your local corrupt politician, perhaps you should put some effort into figuring out WHY folks resort to such measures instead.

  18. Same hammer, new nail. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So now its Tor and BItcoin to blame for 'IP' copy-theft rackets. Yea. That's a VERY effective way to transfer pirated content. With Tor. Much less Bitcoin payments... Rather than, you know, without Tor or Bitcoin.

    I guess legislation, wrangling in Big Tech/ISP, didn't get as far as 'Big Media' had hoped. In this case, their appropriated Government mouthpiece. Good to know they can at least be creative with the blame game...

    Whack-a-mole continues... You have my sympathies, Europe!

  19. It's been a business for ages. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Plenty places outside the west where "big" content nonetheless chooses to charge western prices so a legit CD can easily cost a month of local wages or more. Piracy is big business there. The obvious fix is to drop your prices for the market. People who do that make much more money through actual legit sales than does "big" content does by being stubborn. Apparently they think it's good to extend the same backward narrative and try and sink tor and bitcoin with it.

    What, you thought the EU came up with this idea?

  20. Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People are getting run over by trucks, shot at, killed, starved to death and they worry about feeding the RICH and GREEDY.

  21. Fifth Amendment Hinders Prosecution of Criminals by alzoron · · Score: 1

    Also Eighth Amendment proves our country is soft on crime!

  22. Neither Tor nor Bitcoin are "new" by gweihir · · Score: 1

    It seems these people continue to be decades behind the times...

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  23. Bitcoin? Yes. TOR? NO! by kheldan · · Score: 1

    Targeting the TOR and any other onion-routing network is completely unfair and an attack on human rights; it's used to enable people living in oppressive countries to have a voice, and I'm all for it.

    Bitcoin on the other hand is guilty as charged. It's been a natural from Day One for being an instrument for money laundering and illegal activity.

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    1. Re:Bitcoin? Yes. TOR? NO! by DanielRavenNest · · Score: 2

      Actually, Day One for Bitcoin was buying two pizzas for 10,000 BTC, and that was 18 months after the network first booted up. Until then it was just a cryptographic curiosity. The Silk Road prosecution revealed that only 4% of bitcoin transactions were used on their black market to buy drugs and other nefarious purposes. That's not much higher than the ratio of illicit drugs to GDP worldwide (3%), and is far less than the total underground economy in the US (20%). The underground economy = black market (illegal) + off the books economy (nominally legal but not reported).

      Good old cash is still by far the preferred choice for illegal activity. That's why over 70% of hundred Dollar bills are overseas:

      http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...

    2. Re:Bitcoin? Yes. TOR? NO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Targeting the TOR and any other onion-routing network is completely unfair and an attack on human rights; it's used to enable people living in oppressive countries to have a voice, and I'm all for it.

      Bitcoin on the other hand is guilty as charged. It's been a natural from Day One for being an instrument for money laundering and illegal activity.

      Tor is a totally apolitical technology which simply makes it difficult for a third party to learn one's identity as one sends/receives information.
      Bitcoin is a totally apolitical technology which simply makes it difficult for a third party to learn one's identity as one sends/receives money.

      Your opposition to Bitcoin but not Tor tells us that you have a problem with money itself. If we cannot trust governments treat us fairly as we use information, why can we trust them to treat us fairly as we use money?

      Bitcoin can be used by people living in oppressive countries to trade illegal items and evade taxes in relative safety; to have an economic voice. I'm all for it.

    3. Re:Bitcoin? Yes. TOR? NO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut up, faggot.

  24. Logic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cars hinder the fight on drunk driving as well, let's ban those.

  25. Arr by fluffernutter · · Score: 2

    It is probably more accurate to say TECHNOLOGY hinders anti-piracy efforts.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  26. Shit's getting real ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... because, before, that stuff was only used for child porn, sex slavery, and snuff films.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    1. Re:Shit's getting real ... by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      ... because, before, that stuff was only used for child porn, sex slavery, and snuff films.

      Well sure, but that's just CNN's front page today. Chinese users will be reading and watching something else tomorrow.

    2. Re:Shit's getting real ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is like saying that is all the Earth is used for.

      you are demonizing it.

      It is smart to encrypt because governments take your taxes for granted, it came to them freely for just being dicks. That is why you have them trying to spy on everything you do. They try to, but nobody can spy on the whole fucking Earth so it's just a futile fantasy. It is the one nobody in the public likes so they have to hide. Then they get found out who they are, they lie and deny and move someplace else.. or die.

      It used to be you would never think you needed to encrypt harder than https because nobody cares what you see in the world. Do you really want to see others while they look at the world? Why not look for yourself... But since people tried to rip people off... "protection" became the scam of the spies.

      Fuck some spies, defund them.

  27. Anti-Piracy and anti-semite are similar in source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They are a bullshit way for Jews to connive you.

    No boat no pirate. It is a buzzword pumped by the media for long enough to go OK we get it mother fuckers just stfu.

    Anti-semite is also a lie because Semitic is a race, Jew is a culture, and Palestinians are more Semitic than Israelis.

    In other developments, bitcoin has more value than the USD, thanks to the US government.

  28. "Piracy" by jmcvetta · · Score: 1

    "Piracy" is a euphemism for "equal access to cultural data".

  29. "Freedom hinders anti-piracy efforts" by rickb928 · · Score: 1

    At least get it right, k? Thanks

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  30. ur doin it wrong by Falos · · Score: 1

    I see you're trying to shut something down. Would you like some help with that?

    [_] Because terrorism
    [_] Because drugs
    [_] Because for the children
    [X] I'm going to use some other shit that won't work as well as those

  31. This alone is reason to fight copyright by zedaroca · · Score: 1

    If copyright owners are actively trying to stop freedom and privacy, we should do everything in our power to reduce theirs, both politically and with our wallets.
    If not getting any money is the price artists have to pay for partnering with censorship lobbyists, so be it. I'll pay only for concerts and DRM free independent content.
    Good thing is that some game developers are already getting the hang of it and fighting piracy the right way: with decent prices and a better service.

  32. Questionable source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please stop posting torrentfreak links. That site serves no purpose other than to generate clickbait that allows its operator to live large, and has a history of putting out straight up bad information. Stop feeding the troll already.

  33. How appropriate by jenningsthecat · · Score: 1

    My quick scan of the title of TFS had it as "Tor and Bitcoin Hinder Anti-Privacy Efforts". I guess my sub-conscious brain is smarter and/or more aware than the European Union Intellectual Property Office. Not that that's a very high bar to clear...

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.