MPAA Goes After More Bittorrent Site Operators 698
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."
I don't download this stuff... (Score:3, Interesting)
The more I read about this, though, the more it pisses me off...so there's little seed in the back of my head that tells me not to waste my time with movies...and I don't. Gouging for a ticket is bad enough, but the additional gouging for food and beverage just adds insult to injury anyway.
RE: I'm just waiting for someone to find a way.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And? (Score:1, Interesting)
I feel I am allowed to commit copyright infringement because I think the people holding the copyrights, and the government itself, have broken the "deal" that is copyrights. Copyrights are supposed to be temporary. They have abused their position, so it is not one to respect.
But I agree with your position on pop culture icons.
However, I also note that the movie industry makes and loses money on tons of movies each year, in the hopes of a handful of blockbuster films. Frankly, this is a really shitty business plan, and I feel no compassion for their loss.
Re:Color me surprised... (Score:2, Interesting)
Or else google is in deep shit...
Running tracker = Bad
Re:p2p torrent (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted, this was 2.0. 2.1 may be different. I stopped using Shareaza because it felt pretty slow. I suppose a similar way to do this would be to use eMule to download the torrents and then run them in whatever torrent client you use.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
Last I checked, pirates used cannons and cutlasses, had beards and a bad accent.
"unauthorized distribution" is the proper term, and I'm not nitpicking for the heck of it. A chinese proverb says "Calling things by their proper name is the first step of wisdom." I think they got that right. As long as you don't see it for what it is, but instead mix it up with images of bloodshed and destruction, your judgement is clouded.
Re:Where does it end? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the problem with doing this is a lot like the problem with antibiotics. If you use them too much, the target adapts.
Centralised .torrent distribution does not work ! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think its becoming very clear that centralised torrent distribution isn't going to work.
If you are going to host a popular torrent site then you are going to need bandwidth (for the site alone, no mention of trackers yet). Most bandwidth providers (a.k.a ISPs) are getting very paranoid about letters like these arriving. In fact I'm guessing that most ISPs have terms and conditions stating that they can switch you off faster than a light-bulb if they get such a letter.
The problem with these ISPs is that they need things like credit card details for payment, etc. etc. etc. This trail will eventually lead to a physical person who paid for the hosting - and thus someone the MPAA can put the rap on.
Lets just rewind here a sec. First there was FTP/HTTP for downloading "stuff". This worked while demand was average, and no one was paying much attention. The head came on, people (read: lawyers) took notice. Letters were sent, people abandoned FTP/HTTP for P2P networks.
Everything was good so far until it came to delivering large content (read: Movies, Apps, whatever). The P2P networks simply scale well to delivering this content well. But they still provided a reasonable amount of privacy.
Next (roughly speaking) came BitTorrent - it fixed the P2P bottle necks of gnutella & co. But it now depended on a centralised infrastructure for informing people on where to find the Trackers.
More experienced hands at BitTorrent and Gnutella might be able to help out here:
What if the
This could be taken to the next level then - if the content is coming from multipe sources, and if individually the "copyright" material does not arrive from a single source - what can you prosecute the individual sources for - serving up a fragment ? If the data is interleaved between 10 hosts and every 10th byte is stored on one host, it would be very difficult to prove that the host contains the material.
Just my $0.02
Re:And? (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, do give over old fellow. (Score:1, Interesting)
Raising the bar... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Install BitTorrent
2. Click on link
They don't really care how it works. There's no ratios, no shares, no slots, no configuration, nothing. And it was fast, at least with popular content (which is, by definiton, what the common user wants). Many of these will find other P2P apps too complex.
Kjella
Re:Color me surprised... (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes me think about this: How is having a page with a bunch of
The site is linking to a file, that has the location of a server. That server distrubutes copywrighted material illegally, but not the website. It is not giving the user anything that belongs to the MPAA/RIAA.
Now I know in this case that the site was also running a tracker, and that was violating the MPAA's copywright. But what about sites that down run their own tracker? Could they not win protection this way?
Re:Centralised .torrent distribution does not work (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if every client was a tracker, that might be different.
Re:Can any swedish lawyers comment? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Color me surprised... (Score:3, Interesting)
Your average soccer mom buys her Dell with Windows installed and is good to go for the next three to five years, at a cost of about $45, or roughly the price of a single pair of ink jet cartridges.
It is not worth her time to spend hours or days retrieving a blocky, artifact-ridden, low-res DiVX rip of a movie she'll be able to buy for $20 or rent for $5 in all it's wide-screen, surround-sound DVD glory next spring.
Re:Color me surprised... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does something like affect search engines like Google or sites with BitTorrent links? I don't know, maybe. I guess we'll see. Personally, I would consider it analagous on a book describing how to break the law. Telling people where to go to get copyrighted material illegally doesn't seem to be copyright infringement in itself to me, but then there are strange aspects to laws and theories of violation that crop up from time to time (contributory and vicarious liability) and some explicit inclusions for some acts that are not directly the violation (accessory to ..., attempt to commit ...).
part of the battle.... (Score:1, Interesting)
IRC is the supply lines.
Napster/Kazaa/Bittorrent is the battle grounds.
The AOL users are the green soldiers sent into battle not knowing what faces them.
If the pressure keeps up, the MPAA/RIAA will eventually crack. They can only keep fighting this losing battle for so long. Since our soldiers never die, they just move onto new battle grounds.
That's right - a new form of class struggle.
Those with the IP, and those without it.
Maybe... (Score:1, Interesting)
This process continues, with the primary, disposable indexing sites rising and falling as the need arises with meta-indexer site coordinating the whole show. New torrents would enter the system through one of the primary indexers and be uploaded to the database for distribution when that indexer goes down.
This would achieve the nice feature of having torrents publicly available but not so available that the **AA gets wise and sic their legal minions on them. Additionally, since the system provides for the inevitable (indexers dying), it would be much more robust and nearly impossible to shut down.
Theoretically, the **AA could also monitor the meta-indexer, but since the primary indexers could rise and fall within hours, it would be infeasible to try to attack them all, and they cannot shut down the primary indexer.
Just an idea...
Stupidity is inversely proportional to idiocy...
Can't these sites be used legally? (Score:2, Interesting)
So then, what if my dvd gets stepped on? Then I can't watch my movie anymore. I could then go onto one of these sites and download the movie, which I already own the rights to watch, and then make a personal use copy with a dvd-r.
It seems to me that this is legal. If, therefore, the content of the site (torrents) can be used legally, how can the site be held responsible for illegal use?
Isn't that like holding a rental place responsible for people copying their movies, a gun store for armed robbery, or a car dealership for illegal drag racing?
Re:How have they missed this? (Score:1, Interesting)
And don't you guys deny it, SA goes out of their way to find people, write up a long "humorous" flame to inspire and work up the SA "troops," and then give their email/forums/im/etc just so that you can spam the hell out of them. When ever directly addressed about how they encourage this, the sites runners weasel around it, and yet they still present the links in a "nudge nudge wink wink, say no more" kind of way.
People claim they ban those on the forum who do this, but you have to give it to them that none of them are stupid enough to do it under their name. They claim no responsibility about those SA readers they encouraged to spam/DDos. I know one recent rant piece that got featured on several sites(including slashdot) encouraging their readers to spam the hell out of one place because they couldn't get their way.
I was a visitor of the place they attacked, and lets say things didn't work out as SA had planned. At least it is nice to know that sometimes you pick a target that is bigger then you, and you get the slap down you disserve.