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TorrentBits.org and SuprNova.org Go Dark
Posted by
michael
on Sun Dec 19, 2004 12:49 PM
from the last-one-out-turn-off-the-lights dept.
from the last-one-out-turn-off-the-lights dept.
Numerous people wrote in with similar stories: "Without providing a reason, both of these sites have shut down: SuprNova.org and TorrentBits.org." We mentioned a few days ago that the MPAA was going after Bittorrent sites.
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suprnova t-shirt (Score:5, Funny)
Suprnova Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
As everybody should be able to figure out... (Score:5, Informative)
Greetings everybody, As you have probably noticed, we have often had downtimes. This was because it was so hard to keep this site up! But now we are sorry to inform you all, that SuprNova is closing down for good in the way that we all know it. We do not know if SuprNova is going to return, but it is certainly not going to be hosting any more torrent links. We are very sorry for this, but there was no other way, we have tried everything. Thank you all that helped us, by donating mirrors or something else, by uploading and seeding files, by helping people out on IRC and on forum, by spreading the word about SuprNova.org. It is a sad day for all of us! Please visit SuprNova.org every once in a while to get the latest news on what is happening and if there is anything new to report on. As we wish to maintain the nice comunity that we created, we are keppig forums and irc servers open. Thank you all and Goodbye! sloncek & the rest of the SuprNova Team
Reply from Admin? (Score:5, Informative)
-------
AT LAST!
I've got a chance to reply to some of these rumours and wild speculation!
(YES - this is going to be one of the Puppy's long boring posts,
but if you don't read it all, don't bother replying - NO CRIB NOTES AVAILABLE)
Firstly, I have to say,
I am extremely dissapointed with the response from some of the members of the TB community.
Scare-mongering and spreading rumours is not the most helpful thing to do in a situation like this!
I know everyone is unhappy about it, but don't burn your bridges with insults or by playing the blame game!
Secondly,
I am extremely delighted with the reponse form some of the members of the TB community.
Members like DeeJee, and Warlok, who are trying to keep us all together,
to get the correct information out. There are probably more that I don't know about yet....
and all those working behind the scenes.... Thanks guys
OK lets get down to it.
A few facts:-
- I am extremely sad to report, that I have just found out that, TB, as we know it, is DEAD.
- The full reason why Rb choose to close down is still not yet known
- Rb was "on holiday" when the site went down, and is in no position to put it back up again,
or explain anything, until he gets back
- There was a Ddos attack - After the site went down!
One more fact:-
Nobody, REPEAT, nobody, except Redbeard knows what Redbeard is planning to do.
Keep watching torrentbits.org for a statement.
It's the ONLY place to get the full facts
Re:Reply from Admin? (Score:5, Funny)
-There was a Ddos attack - After the site went down!
Bye bye SuprNova (Score:5, Interesting)
Now talking in #suprnova.org
Topic is 'SuprNova is from today on DOWN. It will not be returning in any way that we know it now. We are very sorry for this, but it is not possible any other way. Thank you all for all your help! SuprNova crew '
* Set by sloncek on Sun Dec 19 16:08:10
I knew it was serious as sloncek is the owner of SN and doesn't fool about with the topics much (unless its April 1st).
The thing that affects me most is that we at TLMP [tlm-project.org] get a large portion of our traffic for Linux ISO torrents from SuprNova's listings.
Anyway, there are other sites, and much like when SR was taken down a couple of years ago, one of them will likely take the traffic and fill the void. Where there is demand, there is supply.
Anyone have any more information as to why this happened? Is it anything to do with the developement of Exeem? I can't see it being as simple as the MPAA taking legal action, as AFAIK they have little influence in Slovenia where it is hosted, and they have whethered alot of copyright group's actions fine until now....
Trackers or Indexers? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like asking a bartender about the street corners where the girls hang out late at night. If he responsible for how you use the information; ie, if you engage in prostition?
It's a sad, sad day when information is made the scapegoat. If anything, they should be applauded, and kept as a means for getting to the real criminals.
Check out the definition of "conspiracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like asking a bartender about the street corners where the girls hang out late at night. If he responsible for how you use the information; ie, if you engage in prostition?
The big point that you are missing (and most people running torrent trackers) is that if you have a reasonable suspicion that the information you are providing to someone is going to be used for criminal purposes then you are treading dangerously close to the definition of "conspiracy".
Let's take your example of the helpful bartender a bit further. You wander into a bar and over several drinks proceed to tell the bartender about your sleazy business partner and how he is cheating you. The bartender tells you that "he knows a guy" who can take care of your problem for a bundle of cash. You take the number he gives you, meet with a contract hit man, and pay him a wad on money so that your business partner meets a rather violent demise.
Is the bartender a participant in your conspiracy to commit murder? According to the law he is. A reasonalbe person would have no problem conecting the dots here and information that was provided had a purpose...
To drag this back in to the real world, you might want to take a look at how the law deals with flea markets and swap meets where counterfeit goods are being sold. The person organizing the swap meet can post as many signs as they want saying that they have no idea what you are selling and are only providing a place for people to put their goods on display, but the law treats that claim like the BS it truly is. The people running the torrent trackers know what is being provided and what their role in the game is, and if they try to claim that they are shocked that people are trading pirated music, software, and videos on these services they will be bitch-slapped by the law.
Stop Posting Links (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop Posting Links (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no point in having a web site that no one links to, because no one will ever go there. Furthermore, if people like a particular site, they tend to talk about it, and link to it. That's just the way the net is.
In other words, you're advocating doing something that makes it IMPOSSIBLE to do the other thing you're advocating doing.
So which do you want? Pick one, dammit, and be consistent.
Re:Stop Posting Links (Score:5, Funny)
BitTorrent's big weakness (Score:5, Insightful)
DC++ seems to have the same weakness, with the hosts, but as long as host lists are legal, it will remain pretty easy to find new hosts. Gnutella seems pretty safe, but they've managed to pollute the network enough to make it almost unusable.
alas, it is only a matter of time before something comes along that perfects this problem and leaves the MPAA/RIAA with no option but to come up with a new business model. Free music seems to me to be a fine way to advertise a touring artist who is making money off of the shows. Movies may have to resort to product placement, or something.
This time with breaks! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Forget chasing 'pirates'. This will save a lot of expensive legal bills. Cut back drastically on advertising too, as you don't need to whip people up into a frenzy to get them to theatres in the first week.
2. Make film (Citizen Kane: starring Adam Sandler or something).
3. Make a VCD cut and make unlabelled cheapo vcd's. Using the economies of scale, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate vcd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies. Your margin is the difference between a bulk pressed cd and a small scale burned copy.
4. Simultaneously sell the film as a download for the same price as you get for the vcd.
5. Make a nicer, longer dvd cut of the film and, again, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate dvd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies.
6. Sell the dvd cut of the film online at the same price as the DVD wholesale price.
7. Theatre release of film in lovely THX/35mm
8. Boxed set dvd release with extra everything.
By doing this you make money from the guys currently selling 'pirated copies' of films and money from people who can't be bothered to find a torrent of your film. The money saved on lawyers and advertising would probably pay for setting up the servers.
At stage 3 you are the sole supplier of vcd of your film, it is uneconomic to burn copies so you own the market. People may share your film over the internet but the hassle of finding a torrent and/or running P2P software is competing against the paid download (4) which is priced as low as a blank cdr.
This is simple economics. Cut back on expensive things like lawyers and advertising, then put out bargain bin priced product to soak up the sales to misers and the poor. You can still make bigger margins on the nicely packaged versions to people who want to buy them.
Re:This time with breaks! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the idea behind cost of production and supply/demand. Hollywood filmmakers will NEVER be able to sell as cheap as pirates for the simple reason the pirates do not pay anything for the material. Making movies is a costly venture, advertising or no advertising, lawyers or no lawyers.
While I do agree Hollywood is approaching this the wrong way, your idea is fundamentally flawed. Besides, this has nothing to do with cost of production--this is simply supply/demand economics. The market will set the price, and right now it has done so very efficiently for DVDs. Hollywood needs to embrace the Internet, not implement artificial methods of stopping Internet piracy--remove the demand for pirated movies, not the supply.
Closing in advance of raids (Score:5, Interesting)
People have said that these sites are closing voluntarily before they get raided. The site owners seem to have solid information about the raids. I doubt they'd close down without it.
The best community sites kept track of ratios to encourage people to upload. Suprnova didn't, but torrentbits did. Unfortunately, that means that the sites maintained databases of everything users downloaded.
Without those databases, the MPAA would have to join swarms and try to collect as many IPs as possible. With such a database, they could look up everything everyone had downloaded through that site.
So it was a very good thing that the site admins pulled the plug on those sites before the databases could be seized.
It seems likely to me that the old model of the bittorrent community site, which depended on such databases, is dead.
Perhaps some old cypherpunks could come up with a better way to incentivize users to share and participate in the community, without leaving data behind in a database. Maybe something with blind signatures, similar to a digital cash protocol.
But the old model is probably dead.
Settlement? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it is possible that Suprnova and a number of these other sites reached an agreement with the MPAA or whoever was threating to sue them that they just disappear quiety into the night and they can save them self from a lawsuit.
It strikes me as odd that they would not heve mentioned it, but I can easily see the reason for this. If your the MPAA you have two options, either make an example of these sites so people are too scared to fuck with them, or just make them go bye bye. I think the first won't discourage enough people, because the law is on suprnova's side, so a number of people would rise up just to defy the MPAA and take up the cause. However, if the MPAA were to tell suprnova that in order to avoid a lawsuit they need to tell people that the site was just too much work, it prevents them from being martyrs and other people won't be so quick to jump in and fill the vacum left.
What a relief (Score:5, Funny)
I use google anywayz (Score:5, Interesting)
the ultimate torrent search [google.co.uk]
are they going shut down google now ?
nick...
Re:who else? (Score:5, Informative)
This is going to be a huge issue for all the new/small torrents sites - how do they work with the load that millions of new users demand?
BTW: If you have an IRC client, you can join #bt, #bt-gm and #tvtorrents on efnet. #bt and #tvtorrents serves TV show torrents and #bt-gm serves torrents for games and movies.
Since it's IRC it stands a somewhat better chance of surviving.
Re:Damn it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ouch! Mrtwig.net is down as well. No South Park for slow children this christmas.
Try the TV torrent sites. (Score:5, Informative)
btefnet.net
The MPAA and RIAA have little reason to go after them.
Re:Damn it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reason (Score:5, Informative)
A "we know we probably can't nail you properly, but our lawyers can make life tough on you for years to come - so just leave town, and do it tonight" - deal?
Re:Not only SN and TB (Score:5, Informative)
LokiTorrent is still around, but who knows for how long?
Interestingly, Suprnova posted torrents for Firefox, Thunderbird and other legal software. They helped share the load for legal software developers, regardless of what warez was shared by their users.
All these sites will be sorely missed by many.
Re:Can't say I'm sad (Score:5, Insightful)
That is all that Suprnova ever did. Now, if its illegal to post a list of files, it must also be illegal to print one in a newspaper, or write one on a piece of paper with a pencil anad photocopy it.
If you go a google search for "index of" apache *.dmg* "port 80" [google.co.uk] you get lots and lots of links to copyrighted software. By your flawed logic, Google "is just plain illegal" because it provides lists of files just as Supernova did.
Printing a list can never be an illegal act. At least not in a free country it cant.