BTJunkie No More?

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?

[Osgeld]

n/t

Re:Your right to what?

[king neckbeard]

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.

Re:Just once...

[wizeman]

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:Your right to what?

[sjames]

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.

Re:Record companies said radio was piracy too

[SethJohnson]

Nobody much says this, but when moving pictures came out, it literally crushed the livelihoods of thousands of live vaudeville performers [wordpress.com]. Instead of traveling their acts all over the country, one act would get filmed and then that would travel the country being projected for screens set up on stages in the same theaters that used to host the live performers.

Seth

Re:Your right to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

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 find due to limited print runs.

Re:who?

[cffrost]

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:

• https://eztv.it/ [eztv.it]
          Prompt and fast English-language TV shows.

• https://isohunt.com/ [isohunt.com]
          Simplistic, low-frills meta-search.

• https://thepiratebay.se/ [thepiratebay.se]
          A honeypot for IP-profiteers... A pot o' honey for cultural buccaneers.

• https://www.kat.ph/ [www.kat.ph]
          KickassTorrents, an aptly named site. Voluminous metadata and effective presentation.

• https://torrentz.eu/ [torrentz.eu]
          A good alternative to btjunkie. =)

I hope this is helpful, and I hope that you seed, UL>DL.

Re:Your right to what?

[brianerst]

This drivel was rated Insightful +5? You have got to be kidding me. Kennedy's inaugural address is available on Youtube. So is MLK's "I have a dream" speech.

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.