He was stealing more than intelectual property.
First off, they steal your time trying to trick you into porn sites - earning "click money" themselves - it's not about sharing, it's about luring people and earning money! Their sites are ridden with misleading links and finding contents is extraordinarily hard. Then they steal bandwidth. They don't host on their own sites. They either use free hosting services (what forced using the anti-bot protection from scripted account generation there), they use private people's PCs too. I personally found some warez on my very own FTP in Incoming directory, just because I forgot to set it write-only. And to that, they put people on legal risk - how would Iprove it wasn't me who hosted that warez?
That's them who make the net harder to use.
I've talked to a man who projects such sites. They have hidden 24/7 surveilance everywhere, and even if the site is taken offline, the cameras and sensors aren't. Some of them, unmaintained, die, but most of them, well hidden in various places, send signs of any activity within the complex to other, active centres. As long as the only activity is some junkies or rats, it's fine, but just in case someone tried to use the facility as a base for their own military/terrorist activity, they check it. So it doesn't matter if you own the place or if you are a visitor or what, you are on cameras 24/7, just in case you tried something illegal.
So, whoever thought of using this as their supervillain operations base, forget it. They will know immediately.
Just examine the effect and move it to macro scale, i.e. you drag lighter-than-air baloons down, pick them and release them up in normal conditions, creating energy (i.e. lifting small amounts of water up and releasing it onto a turbine). Free Energy!
Of course there ain't no free lunch, but in this case it comes at cost of earth's rotation momentum, after several megawatts of energy produced our day will be some fraction of second longer.
Slashdot Mirror
He was stealing more than intelectual property. First off, they steal your time trying to trick you into porn sites - earning "click money" themselves - it's not about sharing, it's about luring people and earning money! Their sites are ridden with misleading links and finding contents is extraordinarily hard. Then they steal bandwidth. They don't host on their own sites. They either use free hosting services (what forced using the anti-bot protection from scripted account generation there), they use private people's PCs too. I personally found some warez on my very own FTP in Incoming directory, just because I forgot to set it write-only. And to that, they put people on legal risk - how would Iprove it wasn't me who hosted that warez? That's them who make the net harder to use.
I've talked to a man who projects such sites. They have hidden 24/7 surveilance everywhere, and even if the site is taken offline, the cameras and sensors aren't. Some of them, unmaintained, die, but most of them, well hidden in various places, send signs of any activity within the complex to other, active centres. As long as the only activity is some junkies or rats, it's fine, but just in case someone tried to use the facility as a base for their own military/terrorist activity, they check it. So it doesn't matter if you own the place or if you are a visitor or what, you are on cameras 24/7, just in case you tried something illegal. So, whoever thought of using this as their supervillain operations base, forget it. They will know immediately.
Just examine the effect and move it to macro scale, i.e. you drag lighter-than-air baloons down, pick them and release them up in normal conditions, creating energy (i.e. lifting small amounts of water up and releasing it onto a turbine). Free Energy! Of course there ain't no free lunch, but in this case it comes at cost of earth's rotation momentum, after several megawatts of energy produced our day will be some fraction of second longer.