Illegal File Trading Draws Two P2P Raids In Europe 816
had3l writes "Police in Finland raided the operation of a popular Bit Torrent site and arrested 34 people, 30 of which were volunteers who helped moderate the site. This comes right after the MPAA reported that it would start suing tracker servers." An anonymous reader points to a story (currently at the top of RespectP2P.org's homepage) about the raid yesterday morning of Dutch eDonkey sites Releases4u and Shareconnector.
Tin Foil (Score:2, Insightful)
Why spend days downloading movies (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just lucky, but where I live I can get 14 movies delivered a week with Netflix's 8 movies at a time plan.
Re:What a haul... (Score:5, Insightful)
TV Torrents (Score:5, Insightful)
A recent example is that a friend of mine missed last week's episode of her favorite show, ER. I got a torrent the next day and burned her a DVD.
I wish that type of usage was considered "fair use" but it's not.
The Wild West (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree.
This represents the wild west nature finally becoming complete.
Previously the internet was a place of lawlessness.
Now it's still a place of lawlessness, but on top of this we have little tyrannies, where those rare people with lawyers can make anything they want happen just by issuing threats and governments can take things out at will without having to worry about pesky things like jurisdiction, right or courts. Like the wild west, where on top of the chaos it was overlaid that if whatever self-appointed lawman felt like it you would get hanged or shot for no reason at all.
Perhaps this comes down to how you define the word "laws"; after all, there have been many times throughout justice where "law" meant nothing but the imposed will on a subjugated populace of a bunch of armed thugs. But I think laws imply justice. I see none of this coming to the internet, only the raw exercise of naked power.
Re:Why spend days downloading movies (Score:1, Insightful)
works great, better quality, and certianly saves time.
Reporting in the media. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, he's blowing his karma to hell. No, he's not talking about legal P2P, only illegal, which most
Had you ever created or accomplished anything worthwhile, you'd likely understand.
I should register an account so know-nothings can mod me down and dock my karma, too.
Re:Why spend days downloading movies (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no problem paying a monthly payment plan as long as I'm getting movies that I want. 66 cents per movie is cheap whether it is paid monthly or not.
"Netflix's commercials annoy me."
All commercials annoy me. But I still buy products regardless.
"Downloading movies is free. 66 cents each still costs more than downloading them."
But you're downloading crap. I'm getting the actual movie and can rip it myself, with all the menus, audio tracks, and bonus material intact. You never know what you're getting when you've wasted the time to download.
"They come in a format that is all ready to be played on your computer (if you so desire) instead of having to wait to convert the 4GB to that format yourself."
You don't consider the time spent downloading it waiting?! It' takes me about ten minutes to rip the DVD to my hard drive. Can you really download an entire movie in ten minutes?!
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. And Nelson Mandela was wrong to disobey the apartheid laws.
A bad law is a bad thing, and civil disobedience is one way to protest it.
I download TV shows (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a special circumstance though. I live out in the middle of no where. I don't get broadcast TV except on one station...I do on the other hand get high-speed DSL.
Now I COULD get Comcast cable, but since I only watch 4 tv shows a week, I'm not going to be paying 50 bucks a month (yes, 50 bucks here even for just plain basic). Not to mention Comcast likes to raise their rates at the drop of a hat.
Dish services are also out because the number of trees they can't get a good signal, I've tried. SO that leaves me with downloading these TV shows.
But what the TV networks are missing out on is that THEY should offer torrents of their shows right from their web pages. If they throw in the regular commercials how is this different than just watching it over the airwaves? I would download them in a heartbeat and gladly watch their commercials if they did this. Why are so uptight about this? They should be like "hell, download all you wish and trade them with your friends...as long as the commercials are still there we're still making our money...and we could also target advertising better for people that download and that could generate even more money blah blah blah..."
Movies though, I don't download at all. Never have, never will.
Find a way to sue the the advertisers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:2, Insightful)
incase you haven't noticed code can/is considered to be 'intellectual property'. yet for some reason so many people don't love those laws and so something weird, they *give the code away for free*.. how strange..
Re:What a haul... (Score:2, Insightful)
Using the same logic that you just did, there's nothing inherently wrong with stealing anything. You didn't pay for it, so it has no value...
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything, people using these sites are engaging in the most peaceful form of resistance I can imagine-- nobody is getting physically harmed by someone downloading a movie or an MP3. Nobody is being threatened with a weapon. Nobody is being deprived of physical property.
Ghandi would be proud.
Re:What a haul... (Score:1, Insightful)
Love this quote.
"Police say the site had 10,000 users, all Finnish, who downloaded illegally-copied content worth millions of euros. The site featured 6000 torrents, including film, videos, music and games."
I always thought something was worth whatever you actually paid for it. These downloaders were paying zero.
So if I steal a TV and thus pay nothing for it, no one loses out? Get it right. I know what you're trying to say - that technically no money has been lost - but you didn't express it will
The problem isn't that people have stolen the record industry out of $15 worth of music, but that they have $15 worth of music that they didn't pay for. It's not like stealing a TV, which results in a store and company losing money. The nature of digital music means that it can be replicated at ~0 cost (excluding stupid things like the power used when your PC is doing the ripping and so on) so you're right to some extent that the record industry doesn't lose $15 of music, as nothing leaves their inventory. However, people do acquire things that they haven't paid for, which does strike me as wrong.
It's a difficult issue, because in many ways no one loses anything, but people certainly gain something. And, if extrapolated to a potential conclusion, people do lose out in the long run because if everyone got their music from P2P and didn't pay for it, and the record industry only sold the initial CD from which all rips were taken, then they would be losing out.
Re:The Wild West (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a great future for the internet.
Re:Downloading is not free. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:2, Insightful)
#73 : compare the struggle against the MPAA in your attempts to download motion pictures from the Internet with the emancipation of a race of people from racist oppression.
Don't get me wrond, I do understand your point (i.e. that the original post was a massive overgeneralisation) but you don't do yourself any favours comparing what are basically selfish goals with the one of the great heroes of the 20th century.
Re:Tin Foil (Score:3, Insightful)
The things I download are definitely NOT things I would go out and buy, even if I couldn't download them. For the small number of things I have downloaded and particularly liked, I have actually bought. If I didn't find them on the Internet I would have never been exposed to them.
The reality is, trading files, downloading media for personal entertainment does not really hurt business, it's within your rights under fair use of copyright law, and simply put does not violate any morality standards. The industry has tried to influence the societal standard by lobbying government to change copyright laws (WIPO in USA and EU) and has been successful.
Don't let them brainwash you. Keep downloading, swapping files because there is nothing wrong with what you are doing. They are fscking with the laws and the media to confuse society.
Re:Privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
They will also be much less effective. Someone's DSL or cable connection isn't going to be nearl as effective as the corporate T3 when it comes to searching out file swappers.
LK
Re:Why spend days downloading movies (Score:5, Insightful)
That's fine, use the video store like you said you do.
2. Netflix's commercials annoy me. Standing in line at a store? Who the fuck does that? I have never waited to rent a movie and honestly, putting them into the mail takes longer for me than does going to the video store that's less than two miles away.
Most people live closer to a mailbox (usually their own mailbox) than a video store.
3. Downloading movies is free. 66 cents each still costs more than downloading them.
You missed the key point... Netflix is legitimate and legal, but downloading (for free) almost never is. Plus depending on your internet connection speed and the server's download speed, it could take a lot of time or effort to download the movie. You could work an hour fixing someone's computer and charge $20 and rent 4x $5 movies, but I doubt you could find and download good quality versions of 4 movies in an hour. Plus if you're looking for unpopular movies, it would be very difficult to find them.
4. They come in a format that is all ready to be played on your computer (if you so desire) instead of having to wait to convert the 4GB to that format yourself.
Your computer can't play DVD's? Why not? If you have a DVD drive to rip them, then you have a DVD drive to play them. (and yes Linux machines can too [digital-digest.com]).
Re:that certainly answers one question (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll want to ask him if he is or not, it's not that hard - I set up a BT tracker on my campus LAN, and restricted IP access to only those from campus. Result: Very fast, semi-trusted file sharing network.
--J
Re:What a haul... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are MANUFACTURING.
Pirates merely exploit the same characteristic of "intellectual property" that Media Moguls do: production costs are trivial.
Re:What a haul... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are going to do the crime, be ready to do the time. It's well known that the charge of the crime is going to be based off the retail rate for the product. They are being charged with avoiding paying that known retail value. I don't see what's wrong with listing that.
Re:Right... (Score:1, Insightful)
So giving owners copyrights over their own work is a bad thing, eh? You're ready to throw out the GPL as invalid, then?
Yup. Read up on the history of the GPL sometime. If it weren't for copyright there wouldn't even be a *need* for the GPL. Hence it's jab at copyright in coining the term "copyleft".
The GPL is fundamentally an anti-copyright weapon that uses copyright laws to fight it's battles. The day copyright laws are abolished is the day the GPL has won it's final battle.
Kids these days don't seem to understand this...
Re:I download TV shows (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, if they were just to provide them on their websites, more people could view them...AND they could even get an accurate figure of how many people are watching these shows then a "Nielsen Family".
But hey, guess I'm a criminal...lock me up.
just buy a mac :-) (Score:1, Insightful)
just buy a mac
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:4, Insightful)
As the grandparent suggested, you have almost certainly never been involved in the creation of anything that can be pirated. But I bet you're utterly outraged at GPL violations, too. Those damn copyright infringers and license breakers... oh wait.
Re:This is for the best, really (Score:1, Insightful)
What we are talking about here is THEFT. It doesn't matter if you shoplifted a DVD from Best Buy or download it. You're stealing. "Oh, these movies suck! I wouldn't pay for them!" Then DON'T WATCH THEM.
Illegally downloading copyrighted materials discourages the creation of high-quality materials. It reduces the overall value of the knowledge base our society can develop and provide access to. If that access has a fee, then pay it. Or don't access it.
Slashdot's comment boards would be a WHOLE lot better if each poster was accurately marked with age, employment status, and whether or not the poster is living with his parents.
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically the reason people steal music is that the industry has failed to provide the service to us adaquately. Its not the users fault, they aren't evil. Greed is the only reason why we have suits and arrests right now, the RIAA refuses to address the problem and instead is fighting a war they can't win(sound familiar see: War on drugs). Furthermore everything seems to indicate that music and film piracy has little effect on overall sales and honestly I don't see metallica starving, maybe if they bought less coke they wouldn't need the tiny bit of extra cash... You can come back and say what about the indie artists all you want, if anything this increases exposure and sales...
Re:Privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Judging by any number of past gaffes [slashdot.org] - like C&D notices going out for Professor Usher's lecture, OpenOffice tarballs, etc. - it's obvious that nobody at the C&D farms is actually downloading the material to see if it really infringes. They're just doing searches, correlating filenames to IP addresses, and pumping out warnings. DSL or cable is more than sufficient for this.
If RIAA/MPAA aren't doing some of their scanning over consumer broadband lines, they're even more daft than I thought.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
But my reply was more directed toward the parent posters scorn about blaming the actions of other countries' MPAA on the US body, even when that is obviously the case. The MPAA is certainly pulling the strings on this one.
Re:The Wild West (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Last frontier" is just about over. This Wild West as you put it is now becoming the new medium for corporations. Again.
The last nail will be when censorship laws (to protect the children) and Palladium authenication becomes law. Or even the bit-tax. It won't take long until doing anythign worthwhile online will cost through the nose, and the content bullies finally push away their 'competition'. Maybe it'll take a $1000 license to own a web site, much like trying to do anything with radio waves.
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't call supporting the free flow of information purely selfish. Our society has the technology to almost freely distribute any kind of information. Big corporations try to prevent this progress, because they are scared that they lose their grip on people. Information is what advances our society, it's the essence of all progress. Making a sharing of information a criminal act is a very slippery slope towards totalitarism and intellectually poor society.
Small European
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. If a law is Immoral, it is everyone's Moral Responsibility to break that law.
And I bet you would just love intellectual property laws if you had any intellectual property.
Wow. This just goes to show that you have no concept of how anyone can have Morals.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is for the best, really (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you there. But...
What we are talking about here is THEFT.
No. We are talking about copyright infringement, which---despite publishers' propaganda---is not even remotely the same thing. Copyright infringement ought to be a purely civil (not criminal) matter.
Illegally downloading copyrighted materials discourages the creation of high-quality materials. It reduces the overall value of the knowledge base our society can develop and provide access to.
Maybe, maybe not. The privilege (not right) of copyright was created to encourage authorship, but it is not necessary for high-quality works to exist, as demonstrated by all of human culture from prehistory until 200--300 years ago.
Slashdot's comment boards would be a WHOLE lot better if each poster was accurately marked with age, employment status, and whether or not the poster is living with his parents.
35, yes, no.
Re:What a haul... (Score:2, Insightful)
The rise of the corporation in this world and their subjugation of governments around the world is an issue worth debating; however, as it currently stands they hold all the leverage legally speaking.
Devil's advocate...sorta... (Score:3, Insightful)
Two things - early access and TV (Score:3, Insightful)
But the other good reason to use trackers is for TV shows. Here you really have no recourse, since some shows are seemingly never going to come to DVD... plus you can get HDTV versions of shows you might not be able to get using HDTV locally, or if you just can't watch it at the time it's on watch it later (how am I supposed to record HDTV today without some pretty expensive equipment?)
Especially in the case where I have already watched a show with commercials and they are not selling episodes, I have no qualms at all about downloading TV shows.
Re:In 100 years... (Score:4, Insightful)
In 100 years, who says you will be allowed access those history books?
Re:This is for the best, really (Score:4, Insightful)
I own over 300 DVDs.
and so, I say to you, get off your high horse.
I download from time to time, but I see more movies in the theater and buy more DVDs than any 5 people I know combined. Do I always buy/go see what I download? Hell no. Sometimes the movies suck. But I do if they're worth it.
Re:In 100 years... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Ideas CANNOT be copyrighted, only the expression of an idea can. This is a VERY important distinction to understand and clearly you do not. Once I've fixed my expression of an idea in a tangible form it's mine. You can still express this very same idea in a different way and not violate my copyright. A great example of this is the way Pixar and Dreamworks both did films about ants. A Bug's Life and Antz both told the story of how a single ant was able to save their colony from disaster. The core ideas of the film were very much the same but the expression of this story was very different. A Bug's Life could even be a tribute to the old ant and the grasshopper fable, once again proving that there are still valuable works in the public domain even if copyright lasts as long as it does.
Re:In 100 years... (Score:4, Insightful)
All of these ideas have a cost generated with producing them and real people, rather than faceless entities, that earn a living from their production. Anyone can have an idea, to dismiss all things as mere ideas once work is done to convert them into something more tangible, de-values the work of the people that carried it out.
The logic conclusion of your hypothesis is that the distribution of idea and derived works should be free regardless of the wish of the creator. I am assuming because of some right of the individual to those ideas and derived works. What of the rights of the creator?
Re:I have said it before and I'll say it again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I download TV shows (Score:2, Insightful)
But they won't. This isn't about losing money. This is about control over what you watch and how you watch it. With broadcast tv, the entertainment cabal has a reasonable guarentee that you will see the commercials. However, with the idea you are describing, they have no way of knowing if you are watching their DRM'd sealed and approved subpar real video file, or a h4x0r3d high quality commercial free divx file based on what they sent out. They fear the distribution potential the internet offers not because of potential revenue losses from "piracy", but because they lose a degree of control to the *gasp!* unwashed masses, whom they don't consider rational human beings, but rather as a valuable resource to be exploited to the highest degree.
Re:I download TV shows (Score:2, Insightful)
When a law is bad, yes, it's ethically ok to break it. Certainly when a law is in itself illegal (and many copyright laws go well beyond Congress's enumerated power to provide copyright to authors for a limited time), it's ethically ok to break it.
Everyone breaks laws, let's not pretend otherwise. Have a beer before you were 21? Report that $20 Grandma gave you on your taxes? Drive 60 mph in a 55mph zone? Welcome to the vast criminal underground.
They're not attacking BitTorrent (Score:2, Insightful)
BitTorrent has many legal uses. Illegal trackers have exactly one, thouroughly illegal purpose. And those who host them have control over hosting them. It's not a common carrier issue. People who host illegal trackers are directly and deliberatly assisting people in a crime. It's not "just a pointer." If I started going around telling people very publically where to go buy drugs I'd get myself arrested. A pointer is telling people where the gas station is. A criminal pointer is advertising and assisting in finding and aquireing illegal goods.
I don't know where people get this rediculous idea that going after people who publish illegal trackers is an attack on BitTorrent itself. It's not illegal to tell people where the gas station is and nobody pushing these cases is pretending it is.
I guess it just makes it all the more sensational though when people say they are.
Re:I download TV shows (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:that certainly answers one question (Score:3, Insightful)
File swapping on eDonkey is not the same thing as running an eDonkey server. The network uses an architecture similar to napster, where there are numerous central servers that hold a cache of the list of files their clients are sharing and send back IPs that match any request they receive. There's about 1 server to every 10,000 or so users. I doubt you have much to worry about until they start prosecuting the sharers (as they have been doing for kazaa users in the past).
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem as the RIAA/MPAA sees it, with regards to file sharing, is not that you are depriving them of profits or that you have broken copyright law. They take issue with the fact that long-term use of file sharing to distribute their media will curtail their plans for purely subscription based services.
The RIAA, MPAA, cable companies, and other media companies are looking towards subscription based services where you are locked into a particular service. Right now, we have to pay a subscription fee to watch cable television. Its a steady, consistent form of income for the companies providing the service. The RIAA and MPAA would LOVE to migrate to subscription based services. Netflix and others are the beginning of this. Eventually, instead of getting DVDs in the mail, you will simply be able to punch it up on your TV for a monthly fee without the ability to copy it. Without an actual physical medium to distribute the content, copying becomes more difficult.
The real problem lies with the fact that a company (MPAA) can make a threat, and half way around the world a police force raids some place and arrests 30 people for an offence that is actually a civil matter, not a criminal one. The fact that the police and government forces are butting into civil matters is extremely frightening. It is one more nail in the coffin for civil rights and for freedom.
Call me crazy, but to me, this is the same thing as being arrested for slander. Sure, the person that I have slandered has every right to take me to court and work to receive compensation for my lies. But what right does the government have to come in and arrest you for it? There is a big difference between a civil offence and a criminal offence. It is a line that must be well defined in order to preserve individual liberties.
Re:This is for the best, really (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously. All that would do is make it easier to seek out people that are more likely to agree with you. It would have the benefit of you not having to read things that you might not agree with. Which is really what it looks like you're asking for. And that does not belong on any intelligent forum.
Re:If the RIAA were smart, here's what they'd do. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is for the best, really (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm.. I don't think there's anything artifical about ownership of physical things. People have things that they consider theirs, and if anyone challenges them then they will fight for it. That's about as natural as it gets..
Our entire system of laws is based around artificial constructs. For example, "rights" are an artificial construct.
Ah, yes. I completely agree with you. Some people way back when decided that hey, lets not go around fighting with each other, and instead agree on some things that we all shouldn't do! Rights are just what we came up with,as a list of things that you shouldn't do to someone..
Copyright law benefits the copyright owners. That's abundantly clear. However, in the United States, commerce benefits us all.
Well.. to recap, it was Disney that lobbied to have the copyrights extended as far as it has been. Disney based a large portion of their work on works from the Public Domain, and then lobbied to have it killed.
Logicly, the point of extending copyrights was to keep those works in the marketplace -- it creates jobs and tax revenues and allows for government funded infrastructure.
Was it? Really? Or was it to prevent those ideas from becoming free, as they should have been?
Re:What a haul... (Score:3, Insightful)
They have a right to charge for their work if they want to. Just because they made it, that doesn't give you a right to it.
A statement from a Finn (Score:4, Insightful)
As a citizen of the Republic of Finland, I have to say that I would feel a lot safer if the police would concentrate on catching real criminals (murderers, rapists, thiefs, muggers) and public nuisances (drunk drivers) who harm real people instead of going after a bunch of nerds whose only crime is that they may have lowered the potential profits of some media corporations by an undefinied amount.
The police is hopelessly underfunded and understaffed as it is. They should be thankfull that someone is sitting in the front of their computer playing a warezed game, as opposed to driving over little children while drunk.
Yes, I'm annoyed; it's my tax money that's being wasted here.
Re:Translations for parent (Score:2, Insightful)
This is only true for the crimes listed in Ch. 15, Sec. 10 of the Finnish Criminal Code. These are serious crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, high treason, terrorism. Copyright infringement is definitely not one of them.
Re:What a haul... (Score:3, Insightful)