BTJunkie No More? 328
First time accepted submitter AWESOM-O 4k writes "It seems like the popular file sharing site BTJunkie.org is gone. On btjunkie.org you are greeted with the following: '2005 — 2012 This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best! '"
who? (Score:3, Informative)
n/t
Re:who? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like your right to equate assisting in copyright infringement to rape, yet not be sued and banned from the internet.
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Actually, the rejection by the pirates of the analogy of "theft", does pose the question of what other crime is closest to piracy.
The rapist wants pleasure (sex and power) for free.
The victim has what the rapist wants.
The rapist doesn't care about the victim's right to give permission or not.
The victim doesn't lose anything physical.
What the victim loses is virtual (self respect, feeling secure) and potential (future happiness).
(Note: I'm expecting the intellectually challenged not to be able to cope with t
Re:who? (Score:5, Informative)
While I'm disappointed to see btjunkie go, at least they're (seemingly) closing voluntarily; not smashed up by a militarized police squad.
In response to your question...
Torrentz [torrentz.eu] matches btJunkie's characteristics and features better than any other site I could name. Torrentz: Public, non-US, meta-search/aggregator, full HTTPS, tracker validation/display/uTorrent-formatted list d/l, category tags scraped from source sites, configurable "home page," and user-initiated account deletion.
Below are all of the the .torrent sites I use which are both encrypted and public:
Prompt and fast English-language TV shows.
Simplistic, low-frills meta-search.
A honeypot for IP-profiteers... A pot o' honey for cultural buccaneers.
KickassTorrents, an aptly named site. Voluminous metadata and effective presentation.
A good alternative to btjunkie. =)
I hope this is helpful, and I hope that you seed, UL>DL.
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10minutemail.com
1. Go to 10minutemail.
2. Get email address.
3. Sign up with torrent site and give them the email address.
4. Check 10minutemail in 30 seconds.
5. Complete registration on torrent site.
Done.
Note: don't lose your password, or you'll have to make another account.
Your right to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your right to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a very high price compared to cost of distribution, and copyright has gone far beyond the scope required for it's nominal purpose of promoting literary progress. Also, there are lots of things that are out of print, but copyright still covers that.
I don't know about cost - if you have a monopoly on a unique work (regardless of how that monopoly is secured), then you have a right to charge whatever you want. I agree with you that copyright has gone too far in favor of corporate rights with excessively long time periods and too unbalanced in policy. But I also think you would have difficulty defending BTJunkie as a place to find "out of print" copyrighted works.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about cost - if you have a monopoly on a unique work (regardless of how that monopoly is secured), then you have a right to charge whatever you want.
Given that it flies in the face of the intended purpose of copyright, it's an issue that should be addressed. The people aren't obligated to offer copyright at all, the Constitution merely permits it, and then only for the promotion of science and useful arts.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
And you're not obligated to sing 'Happy Birthday(C)' at birthday parties. Now that copyright needed to expire 40 years ago, but somebody's going to make money off that til the Sun dies.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but I'll bet they would still do so with a 20 year copyright. For movies, I'll bet they'd do it with a 10 year copyright. They make most of their money in the first year or 2 anyway.
I am absolutely certain that no amount of extension in copyright will cause Walt Disney to rise from the grave and create more.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
also consider the fact that people in the past have made all kinds of published work before without any kind of copyright protection at all.
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also consider the fact that people in the past have made all kinds of published work before without any kind of copyright protection at all.
Sure, but the majority were either impoverished (Van Gogh) or had a mentor (Salieri). ...and if you were someone like Charles Dickens you didn't have to worry about mass free distribution of your works. For most it was cheaper to buy a copy of his books than to attempt to duplicate it.
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Lets take Shakespeare as an example. He predated copyright laws. He wrote his works as a work for hire. He was paid a lump sum, and then the theatre company owned the play, and Shakespeare would get no royalties. The theatre company may in turn have sold the play to a printers for a lump sum. However that would be a dangerous thing to do, as once published, the theatre company and the printers had no further control over it. Other printers could print it, other theatre companies could perform it.
People who
Re:Your right to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Van Gogh wasn't impoverished because people were copying his paintings, he was impoverished because like many artists, his work wasn't very well appreciated in his lifetime. Nobody was clamoring for the original, much less copies.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
And I am absolutely certain that MORE people would be creating derivations of classic, public domain works if Disney hadn't started raping the public domain and then trying to sue everyone who used the same public domain works that they'd ripped off.
No amount of extension in copyright will cause Walt Disney to rise from the grave and create more. A de-extension in copyright WOULD cause a host of new creators to start creating works "derivative" of classic Disney movies, of classic novels (think Lord of the Rings, or Animal Farm, or a thousand other novels and characters from the 1920s-50s).
Society is poorer, not richer, for the monster that Copyright has become today.
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And I am absolutely certain that MORE people would be creating derivations of classic, public domain works if Disney hadn't started raping the public domain and then trying to sue everyone who used the same public domain works that they'd ripped off.
No matter how thin you slice it....
Search IMDb for any familiar fairy tale, legend, story or character in the public domain and you most likely discover hundreds of motion picture and video productions from the silent era onward.
The quintessential Rags to Royalty story, the best known versions in the western world are based on the one written by Charles Perrault in the 17th century. If, on hearing the name Cinderella, you think of fairy godmothers, glass slippers, and a pumpkin turned into a coach, you're thinking of Perrault. In 1950, Disney adapted Perrault's story into a movie, cementing it in people's minds as the story of Cinderella.
Seven years later Rodgers And Hammerstein adapted [Perrault's tale] into a musical for a television broadcast, starring Broadway royalty Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney, Edie Adams, Kaye Ballard and Alice Ghostley (as the King and Queen, Fairy Godmother, and stepsisters, respectively) and Jon Cypher (of Hill Street Blues fame) as the Prince. One particular young lady took a week off from her starring role in the most popular play on Broadway at the time to play Cinderella - Julie Andrews in her on-camera debut.
Cinderella [tvtropes.org]
The Jim Henson version aired in 1969.
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No amount of reduction in copyright will cause piracy to cease either.
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No amount of reduction in copyright will cause piracy to cease either.
Cease, as in "completely disappear", no.
But it will be significantly reduced if the public domain becomes rich enough to provide people alternative content form their generation .
Re:Your right to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The people aren't obligated to offer copyright at all, the Constitution merely permits it, and then only for the promotion of science and useful arts.
And the creator isn't obligated to create at all
That post was moderated flamebait but it isn't. It is a valid point that should be addressed.
Here's my take on it.
True, the creator isn't obligated to create. However, it is society's choice whether to offer the creator incentives to create and the decision should be based on cost/benefit considerations. In the 21st century, the life+70 copyright terms can provide absolutely no benefit to society over the original 14+14, or even a flat decade. The cost (to the public domain), on the other hand, has skyr
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I also think you would have difficulty defending BTJunkie as a place to find "out of print" copyrighted works.
Actually Bittorrent sites are a great place to find scans of all kinds of out of print gaming books.
The old Battletech stuff, Rolemaster, previous editions of D&D, previous editions of Warhammer/40k, Paranoia, and other lesser known settings, campaigns and source books, scenarios and what not that appeared in magazines...
All out of print. All under copyright. Some of it notoriously difficult to
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Just to back up your argument: a little while ago I wanted to play Mechwarrior 3 again. I have no working CD of it. Guess what my only option was? ... Hell, when I bought Dungeon Keeper 2, the original CD started getting all weird on me after maybe a year. So, what... am I supposed to stop playing the games I love when they're past their expiration date, maybe buy some new shitty shovelware to amuse myself until the next Skyrim-minus-DRM thing comes out?
Oh wait. Wait. That is EXACTLY what they want me to do
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What's interesting is that no one here has the same argument for books. I have paperbacks that are falling apart. My only option is to buy another copy.
Just because you bought it before doesn't mean you have it in perpetuity. If you don't maintain your copy you lose it. What is bad is restrictive DRM keeping you from backing up
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"No, now you're just being ridiculous (or trying to justify infringement just because you don't like the publishers). There are no editions of D&D that cannot be had from the copyright owner directly [wizards.com]."
I see a memorial first edition of a couple core books but hardly all of them. Elsewhere I see 4th edition. Where is the 3.5 ed books that the copyright owner recalled from bookstores before releasing 4th ed.
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4th ed wasn't even D&D anymore its a new game. There is a reason 3.5 was forked and called Pathfinder. Scanned book pdf's can be taken to staples and printed. Thus recreating the actual book. Some people don't just want something that allows you to figure out how to play, they want the books.
There are dozens of out of print game modules and books that you can only get via P2P sharing like torrents. It's a fact and not open to debate. People want them, nobody cares if you think what wotc makes available
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, it is stupid for a company to expect the same amount for a CD with packaging and a downloaded file. I know servers cost money too.. but come on!
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say at least HALF of the original NES library of games are like this as a quick example....
And for arcade game PCB's, then that number is off the charts....
Most of our past culture would be inaccessible if it weren't for the internet.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:4, Interesting)
NES? Heh, try stuff even as recent as the Playstation. Good luck finding one of the (seemingly) dozen copies of Suikoden II they seemed to press for the entire North American continent...
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
>Also, there are lots of things that are out of print, but copyright still covers that.
This is what the real problem is with current copyright law. Stuff that would go to the public domain is simply locked up, never to be seen again.
There is no balance anymore between the right to culture and the right to earn a living. The right to culture has been obliterated. Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled that yes, Congress *can* pass copyright laws that rip culture out of the public domain.
The powers that be are now stealing from the public, far more so than they are losing to "piracy."
--
BMO
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled that yes, Congress *can* pass copyright laws that rip culture out of the public domain."
Bravo.
I propose that we limit not just the Executive and Legislative branches back to their original Constitutional limits, but also the Judicial, so they can't keep ruling themselves more and more power.
And yes, they were supposed to have limits. As historical evidence, see Madison's Report of 1800.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, because that is vague and open to interpretation. For simplicity, copyright should be a fixed term. Then, when you buy something, and see it says right on the package that "This item is Copyright 2006" and you know that after X years you are free to copy it and distribute all you like. You can keep that original work as reference and if somebody comes to you with a lawsuit saying that you are copying their derivative work (with a later copyright) then you show it in court and the judge tells them to leave you alone.
Vague laws with loopholes are bad
(I favour 10 years, its a nice round number and most people can count that much on their fingers)
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I favour 10 years, its a nice round number and most people can count that much on their fingers
For similar reasons, I'm in favour of 1 year :)
At the very least some sanity is needed in maximum copyright. Not more than a year beyond the lifetime of the creator, and no amount of rights transfers should change that. This could still be abused in a Mickey Mouse-like case, with constant spin-off products being created. Somebody smart finish this train of thought. I'm getting off at this station.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem for me with your suggestion, is that anything depending on "lifetime of creator" is vague and open to twisted interpretations. If I have a work that I wish to copy, it would be better to have all the information available in that work as to when its copyright is expired, not have to research if the person is dead or not (which is not always clear, especially if facts have been obscured). Also, it requires a separate law for "works for hire" where an corporate entity who cannot die owns the copyright. It is far better to have a single rule that applies to all copyright than it is to try and cover works depending on who owns the copyright. That way lies confusion and when it is unclear when anybody owns a copyright (cf. "Happy Birthday") then people can be harassed endlessly.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate that term, "rights holder". No one has more rights than a citizen of the United States. That term alone is justification for a revolution.
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WTF is 24? Forget that, I don't give a crap. Did I suggest that a citizen of another nation should, could, or would have fewer rights than a citizen of the United States? No, I didn't. I stated that no one has MORE rights than a citizen of the United States. Most certainly not some self-proclaimed "rights holders". That shit is for the old world aristocracy, for whom I have nothing but contempt.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
hairyfeet blathered:
Except you can't use "I have a dream" or "Ask not what your country can do for you" in a video without cutting a big fat check. PBS had a great special years ago on the civil rights movement...yet you can't see it, why? because its all behind paywalls now. This isn't just about the latest titney spears pop song you know, this is about media cartels locking the entire history of modern society behind paywalls. Nearly every spoken word of any note is now behind a paywall and all for Walt Disney, a man whose been dead longer than many of us have been alive, so that his first works which were made when planes were made from cloth and antibiotics were but a dream, all so his works can stay behind a paywall.
This drivel was rated Insightful +5? You have got to be kidding me. Kennedy's inaugural address is available on Youtube [youtube.com]. So is MLK's "I have a dream [youtube.com]" speech. And Kennedy's address to the nation cannot be copyrighted. It's public domain by law.
You want something to have one of those petitions for on the White House website? demand an end to the sonny Bono act, and demand that copyrights take sane terms again. watch how quickly our media shill of a POTUS tells you to go fuck yourself, he knows whose paying his salary and it AIN'T you. It is time we really start voting third parties across the board, its obvious to anyone with eyes that the two party system is simply no longer functional. We frankly need four five and six parties but lets start with three and work from there. I urge everyone to vote green across the board, they have already made gains in many states, lets give the shills a reason to fear for their jobs again!
Yep, waste your time petitioning the President to do something he has no power to do. Congress passed the Sonny Bonehead Act, and only Congress has the Constitutional power to repeal it.
And simply voting Green is an equal waste of time - and your vote. Want to do something that will actually make a difference? Contact your local Green party headquarters, and volunteer to campaign. Then, put your time and effort where your mouth is and actually DO that. Bone up on the talking points for your local Green Party candidates, then go canvass for votes the old-fashioned way: door-to-door. It's not sexy and it's definitely NOT easy, but it wins hearts and minds in a way that posting drivel to /. simply doesn't. That's how the wingnut right took over the Repugnican party back in the Reagan administration, and those inmates have been in charge of that asylum ever since. (Ever wonder why obvious loonballs like Santorum and Gingrinch seem to have such appeal to the Repubs? It's because EVERY state-level Republican central committee is absolutely dominated by "social conservatives" and evangelicals. Reagan got them fired up to do the grass-roots organizing necessary to, for instance, actually field a slate of candidates for local and state Republican central committees - and that gave them control over the party's MONEY and its endorsements at a state level. That's why Schwartzenegger had to run without their endorsement in California's gubernatorial races - because he's a moderate, pro-choice Republican, and the California Republican Central Committee HATED him for it. It's also why Romney is pretending to be a super-conservative right now - because Nixon's advice to Reagan still holds: "Run as hard to the right as you can, until you get the nomination. Then run as hard to the center as you can until the election.")
But NONE of that will help in the upcoming Presidential election. It's far too little, and far too late. Vote Green, and the Republican party will take over all three branches of government again. Look at how well THAT worked out in 2000 and 2004. Nader voters in Florida handed the 2000 election to Bush - and that got us th
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http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/opinions/the-mpaa-must-die-and-how-you-can-help-make-that-happen.php [filmschoolrejects.com]
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Informative)
King's "I Have a Dream" speech has rather famously been the source of numerous copyright lawsuits by the King Estate. See here [vice.com] for example.
The PBS special the OP was speaking of was "Eyes on the Prize", which was out of print for years until the producers got nearly $1 million in grants in order to pay off copyright holders [wired.com] after their original five-year rebroadcast rights had expired.
I would think that most everyone here knows that just because something can be found on YouTube doesn't mean that it's there legally. The vast majority of music on that site violates US copyright law.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
"he knows whose paying his salary and it AIN'T you."
That merits a minor correction. Yes, it is still us, the little people, who pay all their wages. The problem is, we've overpaid the entertainment industries for so long, that they have amassed some of the biggest fortunes in the world. That money permitted them to draw up laws, which effectively allow them to tax us, so that they can pay those salaries in our place.
If people would just wake up to the fact that they don't need what Hollywood and the other entertainment cartels have to offer, they could be brought to heel in a few years.
Black March would be a good start, if enough people get on board. If Black March doesn't get their attention, then maybe we could have a Black Summer, then a Black Autumn, and a Black Winter.
How many seasons of no sales could those cartels survive?
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you can't buy it if it's in "the Disney vault" where they use copyright to accomplish nearly the opposite of it's intended function. Especially for works now out of corporate favor.
Many other works are similarly locked up where they're out of print but still under copyright. In some cases nobody is really sure who to contact even if interested.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
for little money
What are you thinking? The average college kid today has cultural data stored on their computer that would cost tens, in some cases hundreds, of thousands of dollars if licensed (you can't really purchase copyrighted data) at current retail prices.
In the age of the Free Internet, a backward nobody in any insignificant town has cultural horizons orders of magnitude broader than than those enjoyed in the Bad Old Days by the most privileged record store geeks in the biggest cities. Do you really want to undo that historically unparalleled cultural advance just so a handful of greedy media execs and has-been ex-popstars can continue to cash fat checks?
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The right of the common man to appropriate and adapt stories goes back perhaps to the second campfire, if not earlier. The notion that this is something that should be prevented is a rather recent invention. It is also quite absurd since a modern work that isn't derivative of Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy in 420BCE is ridiculously rare and it's well known (and obvious) that Sophocles' work was a fusion of all the trends of popular art of the time - that he condensed everything into three plays is his signal contribution.
We don't even think about these things much any more, and we should because it has become absurd. That lie your sister told you in an email about her one-night stand gone bad with megafail dweeb photo attached? That email is a creative work of fiction, her own work protected by copyright - and though she owns the rights to the photo megafail dweeb owns the rights to his likeness. Your repost to Facebook or Twitter or Reddit of the attached image (even photoshopped) is a derivative work proscribed by law without permission, and a violation of the law. In reality she's an attention whore and she's hoping you'll leak the megafail dweeb story to get her Facebook friends - but Megafail dweeb still has rights to sue you under the current ridiculous system.
Modern copyright is saying "here, I have stood on the shoulders of giants as have the 200 generations before me, but my addition to this work is special above all works that came before, and none who come after may stand on my shoulders ever until my work is lost to time. No more art shall pass." It is also saying that all other authors from ages past must be included in the enforced forgettery, whether or not it was their wish. It also means that something as simple as a textbook on mathematics, physics or chemistry published 80 years ago - long since the authors are dead cannot be reproduced to teach our children now even though so little has changed in those arts and sciences that they would still be far more useful works than the crap that passes for primary education today. My own son's high school world history texts omits the inventions of gunpowder, firearms and cannon as forces for social change. His chemistry texts omit so much they may as well be "Alice in Wonderland" - and that's for fear he might use them to discover how to manufacture explosives or drugs. Civics? That's not meaningfully taught at all, as the responsibility of the citizen to correct his government is entirely omitted.
That's what this is: an establishment of enforced forgettery for the purpose of selling us new lamps as old. The whole thing is a fraud and a theft of our intellectual property. The Commons is a property owned by all and removal of a work from the Commons is a theft of each work from each citizen whether it's sanctioned by the US Supreme Court or not. The extension of copyright is the theft from each citizen the right to read each of the works so stolen from the public domain, whether he would have read the work or not. If an incidence of a work is worth a mere $1, and we are 300 millions, then every single work so stolen is $300 million. For the theft to be a mere Trillion dollars fewer than 4,000 texts must be so stolen. In the aggregate this theft must be many $quadrillion at least and growing every day, and this very post is included in the theft because the presumption it's my property until 80 years after I die (until copyright is extended yet again to forever less one day) prevents others from using it. It beggars belief. The extension of copyright beyond the reasonable 14 year term is a taking from each of us of the millions of works that are rightly our culture. It is wholesale IP theft on the grandest imaginable scale, Piracy institutionalized in law for a privileged few who had the money to buy the law. It's also a way to prevent our children from learning things our great-grandparents knew before they finished primary school. That scares me because it by necessity creates a dead-end know-nothing consumer cultu
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Funny)
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Bittorrent is fine, sharing files with your friends is fine, but I'm somehow saddened that slashdot will defend those who profit from it. It's no longer an altruistic activity when someone is making 6-figures a month in banner ads. Honestly.
These jokers just got out before they got busted, something Megaupload should have likely done with their 8-figure revenue some time ago...
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one think their money was well earned.
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Communication (which is to say, unidirectional data transfer from a non-human entity via a billion-dollar computer network) is human nature!
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. It is also human nature to invent things to facilitate our nature. Thus, as a communicative species we invented the telegraph, radio, television, the telephone, and the internet to facilitate our communicative nature.
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> Copyright is an artificial construct whereas communication is human nature.
According to the copyright creation myth, copyright came into existence when free men, who could freely talk and exchange every information freely with each other, agreed that it is better for everyone to allow creators to censor free information exchange of their works in exchange for creating those works and making those works available. That wide and far agreement between free men, that we have to tolerate a bit of culturally
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Communicate. Yes. That's what it was used for.
When what you're doing is illegal, people are often tempted to cloak it in idealistic terms, i.e. "music wants to be free".
Note: yes, I know that torrents in and of themselves are useful and not illegal. But come on. We know what the vast majority of stuff that places like BT Junkie link to, and it's not Linux ISO's. It's mainly copyright material.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
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You seem to think they don't already purchase some of it.
I guess they don't, and that means Justin Bieber and the music industry must be robbing banks - where else would they get all their money since nobody's paying them?
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Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sharing copyrighted material is not illegal or immoral. Linux and Wikipedia are both copyrighted. If something is not copyrighted, it's public domain. Just because you have permission to distribute something doesn't mean that the author has renounced copyright.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
When what you're doing is illegal, people are often tempted to cloak it in idealistic terms, i.e. "music wants to be free".
Yet, 99% of people will see murder as illegal.
And file sharing of copyrighted material (unlimited good, basically) as legal.
Do you think people will change their opinion on what is legal/illegal, just because some corrupted cronies pushed the law through?
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Well, if it's illegal in their country, and they think it's legal, then they would indeed be wrong about that. But whether it's "immoral" or not is a completely different matter.
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The government may unleash ridiculous laws upon the citizen. It can force the citizen to obey those laws (or be jailed.) However it cannot make the citizen believe that those laws are fair (short of a massive brainwashing [wikipedia.org].) People are guided by moral norms far more than by laws. People don't even know about most laws; even lawyers can't claim to know them all.
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
We know what the vast majority of stuff that places like BT Junkie link to, and it's not Linux ISO's. It's mainly copyright material.
Same for Google.
BTJunkie was nothing more than a search engine with a comment and results rating system (not unlike ./). It hosted no torrent files and was not a torrent tracker. You could get almost the same results by entering your query into Google and appending "torrent".
So, what, exactly, makes a site like BTJunkie "illegal" while Google doing the same thing is OK?
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think Google is in hot water with Congress and the MPAA/RIAA? It's precisely because of this. Make no mistake: RIAA and MPAA will kill any search engine for the sake of the protection of their content
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damn I knew I shouldnt have downloaded that freebsd iso from torrent =)
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Before starting up a website, your first question to yourself should be this: "Will my website enable someone to... copy something?"
If the answer to that question is yes, cease all operations immediately. Copying will bring about the apocalypse.
Re:Record companies said radio was piracy too (Score:4, Informative)
Seth
Nooooooo!!!! (Score:3)
WTF? FBI breathing down their neck?
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Not really, but [the Feds] did put on a big PR stunt where a big, popular file-sharing site, seemingly out-of-reach on the other side of the world, were shut down and the operators arrested. I'm not convinced that is was anything but a scripted reality show, but it seemed to have convinced the operators of BTJunkie that they should quit while they're ahead.
Yes indeed, just after the Megaupload circus Btjunkie removed all the latest torrents [yahoo.com] from their home page - it became Google style, with basically just a search box. This was before Rapidshare restricted their functionality. Btjunkie were obviously being very cautious.
Source code and database? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Making money off of advertisements is just awful! No one should be allowed to do that. After all, what if someone uses your website to... infringe someone's copyright?
Not a huge loss (Score:2, Insightful)
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??? you don't have to log into BTJ for anything other then profile management.
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Well they did have a few spidered private torrents, but that is all about logging into the private website not btjunky (to be fair I never used those torrents, maybe you had to log into both or somehow add your external private torrent site to your btjunkie account?).
My best guess was, if you are logged into the private site those links will just magically work.
Best (Score:5, Insightful)
Best torrent site ever.
I don't know if anything new one has come up in the last few years but it is the best torrent site I have ever used.
Pirate Bay and Demonoid got nothing on btjunkie.
Or at least they didn't.
R.I.P old friend, or better yet go all zombie and come back to life.
Suprnova 4 lyfe bitches (Score:5, Interesting)
Best torrent site ever. I don't know if anything new one has come up in the last few years but it is the best torrent site I have ever used.
I can respect your opinion, but nothing will ever match suprnova in my eyes. It didn't necessarily have the best features, but it had that glorious time when it seemed like the entire freaking pirate world (you know, outside of the pirates who actually originate the content and only use private ftp servers) used the same site. I don't think I ever looked for something on suprnova that I didn't find, and I can still remember the amazement of leaving kazaa and seeing a dozen torrents with tens of thousands of people a piece the week Doom 3 came out. No scrounging around in some shitty internal search engine or anything; just out there, on a regular searchable website like God intended.
Man, I'm getting all misty eyed.
Crickets (Score:5, Interesting)
The comment features and such were better than average, I suppose, but the time for public search engines passed years ago. There are so many private trackers with open signups. So many wonderlands where all of the comments are in comprehensible English and your download takes off immediately instead of slooowwwly ramping up.
So I guess I don't miss it, and don't recall that it was ever a big deal. But maybe I'm wrong?
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, it was that good - BTJunkie had a much larger index than any other site because it indexed private trackers (they appeared with a lock icon, and a portal page let you log in and get the torrent from those sites). Even excluding the private torrents it had a bigger selection than other sites such as Mininova or TPB.
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Something needs to give (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of Gutenberg's first bibles were burned as work of the devil. I suspect that this was the Church not liking their loss of bible creation control. I doubt that any of the upset priests thought the devil had anything to do with their printing.
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you bother to spout this in the year where "digital" (god I fucking hate that term, I guess all those CD's of music and software I have purchased since the early 90's were god damned analog) sales have surpassed physical sales
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"Just once I would like to hear from genuine copyright holders on slashdot who both make a living from their creative works *AND* support un-regulated torrenting and file sharing"
Im sure there are lots of programmers here that make a living from creating software (a creative work) and support file sharing.
Or are you only interested in hearing from copyright holders that dont write Free software ?
Re:Just once... (Score:5, Informative)
Check out Paulo Coelho, a brazilian writer who has sold more than 100 million books in more than 150 countries:
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/01/28/promo-bay/ [paulocoelhoblog.com]
Re:Just once... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just once I would like to hear from genuine copyright holders on slashdot who both make a living from their creative works *AND* support un-regulated torrenting and file sharing
Sir or Madam,
I apologize for the length and I know some will feel this is irrelevant, but I feel the background is important to the point.
I am a professional software engineer of 25 years ( AST-Cons @ http://www.sco.com/support/docs/openserver/506/rnotes/ipxrnC.install_configure.html [sco.com] & many other non-published works) and a semi-professional musician of 30 years ( http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=7&ti=1,7&SAB1=Chuck%20Fletcher&BOOL1=all%20of%20these&FLD1=Keyword%20Anywhere%20(GKEY)%20(GKEY)&GRP1=OR%20with%20next%20set&SAB2=&BOOL2=as%20a%20phrase&FLD2=Keyword%20Anywhere%20(GKEY)%20(GKEY)&CNT=25&PID=wKzqQlM4-haqA4MgAO7ElXsllTO36&SEQ=20120206023617&SID=1 [loc.gov] , http://www.soundclick.com/ChuckFletcher [soundclick.com] & http://www.musicpreview.com/ [musicpreview.com] )
I am 100% behind the free sharing of all content and for searching out alternative methods of payment.
The most blatant and egregious circumstance that has helped form my opinions are my own experience with copyrighted works and infringement of said works.
In 2006 my company did extensive work for a law firm. The firm had a service agreement in place (since 1996) with my company, under which they purchased time at an hourly rate & licensed our proprietary technologies for which they paid a monthly fee. They purchased a new server for about $15,000.00 and requested our expertise to configure the new server, and their network of about 80 workstations, in order to replace their current 5 or 6 varied-platform servers with this huge AIX-based server. What they forgot is that $15,000.00 was the price of the server & Informix software. When they received a bill for $65,000.00 for time, they proceeded in typical lawyer fashion to sue my company and myself personally for incompetence and a slew of other trumped charges (which were eventually dismissed) in order to avoid payment. For 10 years we provided outstanding performance and overnight became incompetent?
After installation, my company maintained the 'admin' passwords and continued to provide support for the new configurations. During this time there were a few issues which were resolved and their systems were otherwise working flawlessly with 100% access to their data. After three months of non-payment from them, their workstations began displaying a simple non-repeating license non-compliance message upon reboot. They perpetrated a fraud on the courts and acted like their data was inaccessible due to our maintaining the admin passwords. I could really go on, but the main point that I wanted to make is in regards to the proprietary email/firewall extensions, custom Samba Active-Directory extensions & custom tools which were all protected by the admin passwords and the subsequent handing over of said works. The lawyers proceeded to bring us into court under a mandatory restraining order and the judge compelled my company to turn over the admin passwords and in turn all of our protected works. They then proceeded to give that admin password to one of our competitors, in turn giving that competitor access to all of our protected configuration & administration tools including sources & binaries.
My next move was to hire a copyright attorney in pu
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Sad story, but it sounds like most of this is from dealing with the lawyers, law firms and the court system, with probably a far greater dose of contract law than copyright law. And "trumped up charges", "perpetraded a fraud on the courts" and a lawyer that wasn't actually filing a counter suit doesn't sound like a problem with the laws on the books. Here's the short, brutal facts of it:
The worst possible opponent you can have in a court of law is a law firm.
It doesn't have anything to do with what law you'
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with most of your post but I would hate for folks to lose sight of the point of my post which was not so much about the law firm nonsense, though they did perjure themselves when they claimed they could not access their data.
The point was about the same government who traveled to the other side of the world to capture someone who was "hurting" Hollywood ( though I haven't seen any Hollywood exec needing foodstamps) and yet literally laughed at me about the exact same type of theft with a perpetrator
I found it on the commons. (Score:3)
For a community which seems so passionate and open about free communication, it certainly seems to shut down people who don't agree with the majority pretty quickly.
Depends on the veracity of your point and how you word it. At worst you will get modded down, which is very different to shut down, and the complete opposite of the insightful tag your post is currently displaying. Sure there are plenty of immature black/white posts on slashdot, my guess is most of them are from people (say) under 25 who still have not outgrown the belief in silver bullets.
However, I disagree with your entire premise, in fact I would go so far as to say that most slashdotters who earn a
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Having said that, the nuking of megaupload has sent a political chill across the net like a cruise missile hitting Al-Jazzera, they've demonstrated they don't need SOPA or the ISP's to start a 'war on pirates', I expect more sites will have received that message via more explicit private channels and will 'voluntarily' close down in the near future. OTOH, the whole thing is yet to be tested in court and I can't see how the search giants will lay down and let the MAFIAA and Murdoch steam-roll them with a "linking is theft" precedent set against a weak competitor.
What you've described, and what we're all witnessing, is the online version of Darwinism
The principle of "Survival of the fittest" does apply, and we will see who will be the ultimate winner.
If the media/MAFIAA/murdock camp wins, it'd signify the begin of the end of the Western civilization - for valuable knowledge that might benefit younger generations will be locked up behind security vaults
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Free Speech is about letting people talk, not acknowledging any retard opinion backed by counterfactual, flawed, aging arguments who feel like a repost of a repost just because you posted it.
You can voice your opinion as much as you like here, just don't expect people to agree with you just because you're saying something, and don't expect either that people will let you say something and not respond if they think you're wrong.
Or to make this shorter : You're entitled to
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you have been challenged properly by the guy you responded to, dude. now reply to him.
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They'll find a way to call a file hash a derivative work and sue anybody hosting a hash. In their eyes: the hash corresponds uniquely to a particular file they claim infringes their copyright, and it is derived from 100% of the file and therefore cannot be fair use. Long bows are the best (aka most profitable) bows in legal circles.
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