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! '"
Re:Source code and database? (Score:0, Interesting)
Not sure why any of the slashtard kids think btjunkie or isohunt were somehow freedom fighters. They both made hideous sums in ad revenue.
--first had knowledge at one of the two...
Re:Your right to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Your right to what? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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:2, Interesting)
Re:Your right to what? (Score:2, Interesting)
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: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...
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.
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: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
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)
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, 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, 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:Just once... (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 who was within walking distance of their downtown Chicago computer crime division.
What I hate....more than any other injustice is the double standard. We're all supposed to be afforded equal protection under the law. I could have even understood had there been an investigation and a "sorry, not enough evidence to prosecute" response. However, my complaint was held in the same regard as if I walked into their offices wearing an aluminum hat and complained of being followed by aliens. Adding insult to injury, it was specifically a 5th amendment issue:
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Had the headlines read: HOLLYWOOD TRIES TO TRACK DOWN OWNERS OF MEGAUPLOAD TO SERVE THEM A SUBPOENA, US GOVT SILENT, I would at least have the comfort that the Constitution is protecting us all the same.
Anyway, I could rant on and on. All I would really like to see is a change to copyright law saying that if you publish your works, you have exclusivity for 5,10 or 20 years or maybe only days-to-weeks for more volatile material and then said works enter the public domain with no residuals for platform changes.
I hate to pick on Aerosmith as they're one of my favorite bands (and one of the first to release music digitally for those old enough to remember), but: In 1972 I bought a copy of "Toys in the Attic" on vinyl. When I got my first car with a cassette player, I bought "Toys in the Attic" to have a quality version for the car. When CD's came out I bought "Toys in the Attic" to have a crystal clear version. I've already paid my licensing fees twice more than I should have, however the RIAA wants me to buy "Toys in the Attic" again in MP3 format so I can listen on my iPod/iPhone. When is enough....enough? I even have a Foreigner CD that has a disclaimer about the sound quality not being what one would expect on a CD because it was made from the original unclean-able studio masters. So basically they ripped the album and charged me again for the same quality I could have gotten if I ripped my vinyl copy myself.
Re:who? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 the concept of an analogy, and to make the mistake of thinking this is saying one thing is as evil as the other. Post a message along those lines and you're just being a predictable fool.)