MPAA Goes After More Bittorrent Site Operators

Just another Coward writes "DSL Reports grabbed a copy of the lawsuit threat letters sent by the MPAA to the bittorrent website owners. This latest document was sent to a Torrent site called 'demonoid.com', which is now offline."

Color me surprised...

[SoTuA]

...it took this long to start.

Remember the napster trial? Saying "I just post links" doesn't cut much cheese against deep-pocket *AA's lawyers.

And?

[tomstdenis]

Last I checked piracy was still piracy. What gives you the right to faciliate piracy?

It's wrong to draw from this that "MPAA is making BitTorrent illegal". That's just stupid /. pandering.

What the MPAA is doing is cracking down on people who pirate and help people pirate movies. Big whoop.

Though I have my own ideas on how the movie studios could save money. STOP PAYING THEM SO MUCH. I mean how many studios are there? A dozen at most? If they all colluded and salary capped the stars to say 50,000$ per movie [give or take] we wouldn't have "multi-million dollar movies" where most of the money goes to the actors and not the actual crew behind the scenes WHO ACTUALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN.

You think Keano made the matrix? No it was 100s if not 1000s of "much lower paid" crew that did the CG, the sets, costumes, makeup, lighting, cameras, editing, etc...

I'll never understand how they can get off and say things like "oh the Olsen twins are worth 20 million dollars"... um to who? They're a pair of uneducated no-talent actors who ride their "being twins and decently good looks". Let's see what they're upto in 20 years shall we?

Same goes for all the other little "artistes". They poperzize their music, everything is staged, etc, then think they're worth a couple million per performance...

Well hate to break the news to ya little gal and guys. Most people work their entire lives and don't see a couple million. They "earn" a million dollars for a day long shoot then blow it on a rave and some diamonds... Then they have the audacity to wonder why people [other than brainwashed puppet teenagers] despise them... Hmmm... .../rant

Re:And?

[lordfener]

And there are plenty of reasonable uses for systems like bittorrent--for example downloading RPM isos. If they go after the pirates, I couldn't care less--they deserve it. But going after the technology would be like suing car manufacturers because their products are used as getaways in robberies. Pure genius...

Somewhat Misleading Title

[TrollBridge]

It should read something like "Bittorent Site Operators Invite Lawsuits". Seriously, who could have predicted that posting so many links to copyrighted works would draw the ire of the MPAA?

Filesharing to Fair Use?

[saterdaies]

I think it's a bit of a pitty because BitTorrent has/had such potential to revolutionize how the internet worked, but in the end it just became a place for illegal file sharing. Everyone talks about filesharing and the terrible things that the RIAA and MPAA want to do to stop it, but they act like illegal filesharing is a good thing - like it is a pious act. The EFF has kept defending it as if they have a righteous cause. Filesharing technologies do have legitimate uses. At the beginning, the EFF was telling the RIAA/etc. to go after indivivuals who were using it for illegal purposes. Now, the EFF has decided that those illegal actions need to be defended too. I think that someone needs to create a movement around real fair use. Nothing more, nothing less. Not stealing and not totalitarian MPAA/RIAA crap. Something that would allow me to use my music in the ways that I should be able to and for a fair price without resorting to stealing. Something that the majority of people in America (and the world) could agree with.

This really Ircs me

[F7F7NoYes]

Well, when mp3's became hip, I downloaded them off sources on IRC. Then napster came out and every moron with an aol account was downloading mp3's. Then napster was shut down. Then connection speeds improved and I started downloading movies and apps from IRC. Then Kazaa/Fastrack came out. Then every moron with an aol accound was on Kazaa. Then they started suing said morons that put their email address in. THEN I started using bittorrent to download Linux ISO's, the pirating started with Bittorrent, and before I knew it, more morons with aol accounts were talking about suprnova. Then it died. Meanwhile I'm still on IRC and still no problems.

TV Shows

[Anonymous Coward]

This is silly. I can't see any problem downloading any of those TV shows. I have personally downloaded 4 of the LOL rips of Desperate Housewives, and they are great (the rips not the show- it's for my wife, honest.). They are HDTV rips at about 650 Megs for an hour long show.

By downloading episodes my wife missed, she was able to keep up with the story and now she watches the show on a regular basis. Had I not downloaded them, "Disney" would have one less viewer... not that it really matters to them I guess.

Re:And?

[rhsanborn]

I agree with you. They are simply taking care of the people who are trading things illegally. But, learn how to argue and make your point without being such a prick. Address the issue, not the person.

Re:p2p torrent

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Peerguardian is a joke. When it comes time to sue you, the MPAA or their BayTSP minions will simply use a consumer broadband account to gather the evidence. Duh.

If we knew every single employee of both companies, adn we have our spies working at all major ISPs on the lookout for those names (and assuming they don't use other names), we *might* be able to have some level of protection. Maybe. That's assuming that "our guy" isn't out sick the say they sign up, or the day that their cable modem gets a new DHCP lease.

P2p still sits on the internet, and for that reason, it's no safer than anything else. You have to build your own network, and it has to have moderately strong anonymity. Nothing else will work.

!= Large repositories of pirate material

[nurb432]

These sites don't have any repository of any pirate material. They are a repository of LINKS... What the links are, ore are not, is not their responsibility. As is how you use them. In court, the *AA would loose, but of course these cases will never get to court as the people running the sites cant afford to fight. Its "justice" for the one with the most money. So if I link to some where else that has something offensive to you, does that make me the bad guy? No its your fault for going to the link.. Not mine.

Re:And?

[tomstdenis]

I disagree. ISPs and their providers should be common carriers. All they're responsible for is providing the bits [and making sure asshats don't find ways to stop the bits].

Sans that we would have to have our ISP inspect each packet to make sure it was "legal". You could also kiss encryption bye bye [or use escrow...]. Then at the same time we could limit mail to postcards only so that they can be readily viewed, etc. etc. etc.

I think it's not too much to hold the invididual users accountable for their actions. Of course this is the USA, home of the blameless. I didn't get fat because I have no self-control, McDonalds did that too me. I didn't get stupider on my own, the unteaching teachers did it to me. etc...

The buck stops at the asshat hosting the torrents and the users providing the content. The fact that the MPAA has only gone after the torrent host [at this point] isn't an argument against the MPAA it just means they want to cut the source off at the head.

Will that work in the long run? Really doubt it. Is it wrong though? No.

Tom

Re:And?

[Ann Elk]

Last I checked piracy was still piracy. What gives you the right to faciliate piracy?

Yes, and murder is still murder, but AT&T is not responsible when someone uses a telephone to conspire to commit murder. IANAL (nor do I want to be), but I would think the "common carrier" laws that protect the phone companies should also protect these sites. But then again, the MPAA has More Money than I, so they are obviously More Right (in the US, at least).

I believe they call those Direct Connect Hubs

[Anonymous Coward]

And what's this about piracy is only for the elite? That has to be the most half-cooked concept I've heard on piracy to date. I'm just as frustrated as the next nerd by 12 year old 1337 h@>0®5 and soccer moms downloading with abandon, but I don't think one can justify taking a stance against someone's "right" to piracy based on their level of computer literacy.

Re:frist post

[EasyTarget]

I have a 1.5 down/128 up DSL

Well.. that's not DSL, it's very ADSL.

Bittorrent is a system that rewards you the more you upload. If you're on an asymmetric line it will probably max the UL even if the DL is not so good. If most users in the swarm are on massively asymmetric lines, well the total upload bandwidth available will be terrible. And you'll all be maxed UL while throttled DL.

The real issue here is greed, bittorrent is a co-operative system. Do you let torrents run to a share ratio over 1:1? I leave them until I've shared twice what I downloaded. I Contribute. If you are not willing to pay for the upload bandwidth to contribute properly, don't expect sympathy from those of us who do.

Oh, and you have to be willing to -wait- (yep, strange concept to most people I realize) for the torrent to complete. Of course you can always try to find a ftp, or whatever, site that can match your awesome download bandwidth. But I bet you want that for free too.

Basically, Bittorrent is socialist, greed is not a attribute that it rewards. But it's in a capatalist system, so you can have an alternative. Try Kazzaa.

Alais-Revisiting Old Arguments.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It Begins."

The constant repeating of the same arguments counter-arguments that we had the last two times this subject came up. There are no listeners, just a bunch of people all trying to out shout each other.

At least with a college/ university education they teach you to listen and debate in a reasonable manner. Rather than the "he who yells loudest wins" that the YRO and Politic section currently represents.

Re:And?

[Comatose51]

I think BitTorrent, not the websites, would be closer to telephones. Those sites are made explicitly to facilitate privacy using BitTorrent. Both BitTorrent and the telephone have uses other than crime.

Comply with demand, Exactly As Written

[Alien54]

As noted by the users on the message board, the IP address for the website cited by the letter (66.250.450.10) doesn't/can't exist, a mistake repeated throughout the letters.

What does this mean for the owners of the domain? they can comply with the request, exactly as written.

"Your Honor - we had not destroyed or tampered with any evidence associated in anyway with the IP address 66.250.450.10. - No. Really."

If they are gutsy, they'll wipe anything associated with all other IP addresses, and encrypt the data file and to secretly send it to the free 1 terabyte storage online folks [hriders.com]

Not quite as bad as the recent email virus redirecting people to 192.168.2.153 (or whatever it was), but really.

Re:And?

[Long-EZ]

First off, piracy is still stealing.

No. The truth is, in this context, "piracy" is an emotionally charged word used to make copyright infringement sound a lot worse than it is.

Piracy involves stealing, raping and murdering innocent people when caught in remote locations where society can offer no protection. Copyright infringement is illegal, and should be punished appropriately. But calling it piracy is ridiculous. So are the ridiculous "you're punishing the gaffers and set builders" propaganda commercials.

At the heart of this is money, like everything else. this is about the MPAA and RIAA executives making a LOT of money for making the stupid executive decicisions that Michael Eisner apparently makes every day.

When something is stolen, something is missing. When a copyright is enfringed, the original work remains. Does that help clarify the difference?

If you call it piracy and stealing, you are a tool of the MPAA and RIAA viral marketing campaign.

We should all insist on the correct term "copyright enfringement" as society deals with these intellectual property issues. The illegal behavior is being made a lot worse by the RIAA and MPAA who cling to outdated distribution methods to try to maintain a profit margin that is normally only seen in organized crime and illegal narcotics. There are laws against what the RIAA does, and the major companies in the recording industry have all been found guilty of collusion and price fixing. The settlement? After consumers fill out forms and other high-hassle jumping through hoops, they get a discount on their next CD purchase. So, who are the REAL criminals here?

There is plenty of behavior among RIAA executives and those enfringing copyrights that is both illegal and immoral. I say we start calling the record company executives "rapists".

Sick to death

[g0bshiTe]

Personally I'm sick to death of hearing about the MPAA sueing everybody and their brother over illegally trading music. Why do people trade in the first place?
If they would address that issue and rethink their production and distribution of media then maybe people would be more likely to goto the record store and purchase it.

Until they rethink their business model and do a radical change of their whole system, I for one won't buy shit. If everyone stopped buying music and didn't download it, artists would start to beg us to download and trade their music. How long is a record label going to back an artist that can't sell one ticket to a concert?

Re:This is what happens when...

[Kosi]

No, this is what happens when certain people take "protect artists's works" and pervert it to "control, rip off and then criminalize the customers".

Re:66.250.450.10 - www.demonoid.com

[jlgolson]

66.25.045.010

(sorta)

Re:And?

[shark72]

"We should all insist on the correct term "copyright enfringement" as society deals with these intellectual property issues."

"Piracy" is also a correct term. If you're using Firefox or Mozilla, type "dict pirate" or "dict piracy" into the address bar.

The word "pirate" is a homonym, one of many, many words that have multiple meanings. Slashdotters manage to not get dogs and trees confused when they use the word "bark," so it's interesting to see folks selectively forget their elementary school education.

"There are laws against what the RIAA does, and the major companies in the recording industry have all been found guilty of collusion and price fixing. The settlement? After consumers fill out forms and other high-hassle jumping through hoops, they get a discount on their next CD purchase. So, who are the REAL criminals here?"

If I had to pick a "criminal" here, I'd say Wal-Mart and Best Buy. A quick primer for those who've forgotten the details of the price fixing suit:

1. Wal-Mart and Best Buy began selling CDs at the front of the store at or below cost, as a loss leader to bring people into the store to buy the higher margin, higher ticket stuff.
2. Independent music stores, and chain music stores that sold only CDs (one of whom was Tower Records) complained to the record companies that Wal-Mart and Best Buy were putting them out of business.
3. The record companies set up a MAP program (which is very common in other industries, such as the PC industry) in which the record labels gave Tower Records and a few other chains funds to run ads, in exchange for agreeing not to display prices below a certain price in those ads. MAP stands for "minimum advertised price" and if you've seen or heard an ad where the price is listed as "call" or "too low to advertise," then you're likely seeing a MAP program in action.
4. Best Buy and Wal-Mart, ineligible for the MAP program because they were selling CDs at a loss, complained to the government.
5. The government stepped in, hilarity ensued, you know the drill here. Tower Records declared bankrupcy because they couldn't compete with Wal-Mart and Best Buy, who continue to sell their crappy selection of music and enjoy the last laugh. Meanwhile, many othe industries (including, as I've mentioned, the PC industry) happily continue MAP programs.

As you can guess here, my opinion is that Tower Records was fucked on this one. Many Slashdotters, when they hear "price fixing," think that this had an effect on the price that the record companies sold their CDs into the channel, and thus the profits they made -- it did not. The record companies made the same money whether you bought your CDs at Tower or at Best Buy. In my opinion, the price fixing suit was a win for behemoths like Wal-Mart and a big loss for the indie and chain music stores. It should make no difference to Slashdotters, who are smart enough to know that if Tower Records has a CD for $16 an Wal-Mart has it for $12, they can make their own choice of where to buy it.

The claim that it is stealing comes from...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Theft, according to the criminal code in my country is defined as:
"The taking away of a moveable thing owned by someone else."

Note: "taking away"

The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed.

It's similar to the doctorine of "partial taking". Courts use that to force payments to landowners out of zoning/land-use planning agencies when they drastically reduce an owner's property values by changing the rules to reduce the things that can be done with the property. "Partial taking" applies the fifth amendment prohibition on "private property be[ing] taken without just compensation". Even though the property is still there, some of the value has "been taken".

If the Supreme Court applies this interpretation of "taking" to GOVERNMENTS, you can bet it will apply it to individuals as well. And other people than judges can grasp the concept easily, as well.

So splitting hairs with dictionary entriesmight make you feel good. But it isn't going to convince any judges, anyone leaning toward the other side, or bring any significant numbers of fence-sitters around to your position. Instead it makes you look like you're disconnected from economic reality, making it counter-productive.

IMHO the thing to do is avoid this argument and concentrate on the Founders' original one: That copyright is a TEMPORARY PRIVILEGE intended to INCREASE the amount of creative material FREELY available in the middle-distant future by letting authors and their publishers make money on it without competition from copiers for a SHORT TIME after its creation.

Re:And?

[idobi]

You donate slightly less than you earn in interest so that a foundation can continue to give money for (theoretically) eternity...

Re:Centralised .torrent distribution does not work

[sgtrock]

No, centralized torrent distribution works just fine for what it was designed for! At no time was the capability of providing anonymous services for warez a consideration.

Don't like it? Solve the problem yourself. Bram Cohen has stated time and again that he has no interest in solving it for you. The BitTorrent code is readily available in several languages, now. You are free to use that as a starting point if you really care that much about it.

Re:How have they missed this?

[AstroDrabb]

No, they go after the free sites because they are far less likely to try to fight this out in court. A quick "victory" for the **AA. The **AA surely do not want a judge to say it is OK to just host the .torrents as long as you don't actually host the REAL content. This is exactly what all these torrent link sites do. I don't know of any that actually host the content, which would be pretty stupid.

It would be nice to see one of these sites get the EFF on their side to fight this out. I am not sure how a judge would rule. For example, is it illegal for someone to tell another person where to go and get illegal drugs or where to go to get stolen goods? I don't know since IANAL.

One other thing I think some of these sites that have closed shop should do is stay open and just allow legit .torrents. For example, .torrents of tons of OSS software. Obviously this wouldn't attract all the warez kiddies but would give strong proof of the benefits of P2P.

If any lawyer reads this, I have a Q? Is it legal to share a TV show that you recorded on P2P? I can record my favorite show and give it my friends to watch, so how would doing the same thing electronically be illegal?

How are .torrents illegal?

[schroedinbug]

Before you flame me on my headline, I am talking about the .torrent files, not what can be downloaded from them.

I feel a .torrent file is just like a movie review. Both contain information about the movie, the only difference being that a computer reads the hashes and a human reads the review. This make be a bit of a loose analogy, but go with me here.

You can't figure out the whole movie just by reading one review, just like a computer can't figure out the file based on what hashes it recieves from the tracker.

But with the same information, you can make sure you are going to see the right movie by reading a review, just as a computer can make sure you are downloading the right file by comparing hashes.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think any defense will stand for making torrents illegal. If they declare them illegal, they will have to make movie reviews, and everything else that even describes a movie illegal.

Re:The claim that it is stealing comes from...

[dissy]

The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed.


Under that logic, I am a pirate simply because I don't like an authors work and made the choice to not purchase it or have it in my posession under any circumstances.

After all, my god given right to not want something clearly is out ranked by an IP owners government given right to make a profit on it at all costs.. right?

Re:The claim that it is stealing comes from...

[Anonymous Coward]

The use of "potential profits" is laughable.

Do you even understand what you're typing?

Aren't I "stealing" "potential profits" when I borrow a book from a friend to read?

Better send me to jail!

OMG even worse -- better send all those evil librarians to jail!

Obviously it's all a large grey area. People need to stop looking at it as black and white.

What has happened is the abuse of legislation by the enormous intellectual property rights holders has put pressure on society to justify sharing that IP as an act of civil disobedience.

Re:The claim that it is stealing comes from...

[maximilln]

The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed

In your fifth amendment example there is no potential profit. Real estate and physical property have real value.

In the prosecution of copyright violation (or theft, or piracy) the most flawed assumption is that the intellectual property has unlimited worth. This is a laughable assumption but one that no one has been able to bury in the legal field.

Of course, you did address all of this in your final suggestion which I'm quite impressed with and will probably spend more than a few minutes pondering over the holiday weekend.

**AA Parrots

[iamwahoo2]

It seems that the majority of people seem to agree with the current state of our copyright laws, and they think that the actions of the **AA is just, yet damn near everyone has commited copyright infringement at some point, and those that haven't surely have freinds or family that have. So why aren't more people turning themselves and others in and paying their $10,000 fines so that copyright holders can recoup their losses? Personally, I have always felt that those in glass houses should not throw stones, but the 'Holier than thou' group seems to think that breaking the law is okay so long as you do not get caught.

Re:And?

[GinjaMonkey]

"Murder" is also defined in Webster as slang for "something difficult, uncomfortable, or dangerous." Thus Windows XP is murder, and Microsoft a gang ("a group of people who socialize regularly") of murderers. Connotations are more important, sometimes, than denotations.

Re:The claim that it is stealing comes from...

[RedWizzard]

The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed.
...
So splitting hairs with dictionary entriesmight make you feel good. But it isn't going to convince any judges, anyone leaning toward the other side, or bring any significant numbers of fence-sitters around to your position. Instead it makes you look like you're disconnected from economic reality, making it counter-productive.

That's all very well, but the media industries are not just claiming that copyright infringement is theft because of lost potential profit. They are claiming that it is identical to stealing a physical good. In my part of the world every movie in theatres is prefaced with an advert saying:

You wouldn't steal a car

You wouldn't steal a handbag
You wouldn't steal a movie (showing someone taking a DVD package of a shelf)
Movie Piracy is Stealing.
Stealing is Against the Law.
Piracy. It's A Crime.

No amount of reasoning based on the doctorine of partial taking is going to convince me that the media industries are not attempting to deliberately confuse physical theft and copyright infringement, in exactly the same way they previously usurped the term "piracy". If they want to take the moral highground (which they have every right to), they might want to start acting honestly themselves, rather than trying to introduce this sort of spin. Then again this is the industry who routinely arrange for movies like the Matrix to show no profit so they can screw over investors, so I guess they aren't big on morals.