Demonoid Shut By Ukrainian Authorities 178
hypnosec writes "After a prolonged outage that lasted for nearly a week Demonoid has reportedly been audited and closed down by the Ukrainian law enforcement agency. According to reports the Ukrainian anti-cybercrime police division carried out an investigation of ColoCall – the hosting service provider for Demonoid. Servers were sealed after all the data on the servers was copied. According to ColoCall the servers haven't been seized but, they are not operational any more. The hosting service provider is going to end the agreement with Demonoid. 'Investigators have copied all the information from the Demonoid servers and sealed them.' a manager from ColoCall, wishing to stay anonymous, said."
You're a GOOD dog!! Yes you are! (Score:4, Funny)
About time that the Ukraine accepted what most governments of the world have already accepted--that the U.S. is your master and you had goddamn well better do whatever the fuck we tell you to!
Now sit, rollover, and say "We're your bitch!" ....No, SAY IT LOUDER!!
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They probably had a search warrant.
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They probably had a search warrant.
For what? - I'm willing to bet that there isn't a single bit of illegal material on any demonoid server. It's portal and a tracker, not a bitlocker!
Re:You're a GOOD dog!! Yes you are! (Score:4, Funny)
Lord and master. We own their land, too.
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Until you seize Ukrainian carbon units of XX genotype, you ARE NOT THERE YET.
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About time that the Ukraine accepted what most governments of the world have already accepted--that the U.S. is your master and you had goddamn well better do whatever the fuck we tell you to!
Now sit, rollover, and say "We're your bitch!" ....No, SAY IT LOUDER!!
This does raise a worthwhile issue: I couldn't find anything in the article that says that the US requested that Demonoid be shut down for this meeting.
Now, the US Authorities are likely quite happy that it was shut down, but that's a different point. Doing something to please a trade partner isn't necessarily being its "bitch". People, corporations, and countries, the US included, suck up to each other all the time as a sign of respect, deference, and/or good faith and to gain a more favorable status. That
Re:You're a GOOD dog!! Yes you are! (Score:4, Insightful)
At least candied walnuts, unlike serving a public enemy's head on a platter, don't require other people to get squashed.
Catering to someone's likes is ok, but catering to their hatred in a way that hurts others is not.
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About time that the Ukraine accepted what most governments of the world have already accepted--that the U.S. is your master and you had goddamn well better do whatever the fuck we tell you to!
Now sit, rollover, and say "We're your bitch!" ....No, SAY IT LOUDER!!
Because there are so few countries with copyright laws you mean ? At least where I live, the local copyright people + a whole lot of small companies are pushing the government like mad to do stuff like this, saying tens of thousands of jobs depend on it.
Also I've recently visited a very large software company (in America), and the developers were nearly universally in favor of copyright laws and destroying things like demonoid and thepiratebay. I'm not sure if that's typical, and yes, the youngest guy there
Re:You're a GOOD dog!! Yes you are! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there are so few countries with copyright laws you mean ?
No, because websites shouldn't be taken down just because there is some infringing material on them. The US is already seizing domain names randomly. That's bad enough. Other countries don't need to go and do similar things.
Also I've recently visited a very large software company (in America), and the developers were nearly universally in favor of copyright laws and destroying things like demonoid and thepiratebay.
Not exactly the most unbiased group to ask, eh? Ask me if I deserve a million dollars.
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The answer would depend on whose pockets it came from to fill yours.
Color me surprised (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Well if the story is anything to go by, then the site was not closed down over copyright claims, it was shutdown over serving malware adds.
I can see why the Ukranians would shut it down over that.
Russian doesn't give a damn about US copyright claims.
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Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Informative)
Russian doesn't give a damn about US copyright claims.
Ukraine != Russia.
The former Soviet republics that are now independent states (including Ukraine) tend to be friendlier to the US and EU than Russia itself is, because they rely upon NATO support to maintain effective independence from Russian control.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Ukraine != Russia.
The former Soviet republics that are now independent states (including Ukraine) tend to be friendlier to the US and EU than Russia itself is, because they rely upon NATO support to maintain effective independence from Russian control.
Ukraine != Poland, either. The entire northern half speaks Russian natively and, despite the best efforts of the Ukrainian Ukrainians, they appear to have the upper hand in parliment right now. I'd say that the jury is still out, and while Ukraine certainly isn't Belarus, they lean a lot more towards Moscow than you suggest.
In fact, there were plans to join NATO (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations [wikipedia.org]
It's currently on hold because of their current president and parliament, as part of trying to keep Russia from coming unglued at them. However, if their stated intention to join the EU goes through, it's likely they will become a NATO member state (21 of the 27 EU member states are currently members of NATO). Currently, they engage in joint military exercises with NATO.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations [wikipedia.org]
It's currently on hold because of their current president and parliament, as part of trying to keep Russia from coming unglued at them. However, if their stated intention to join the EU goes through, it's likely they will become a NATO member state (21 of the 27 EU member states are currently members of NATO). Currently, they engage in joint military exercises with NATO.
As someone who can speak Russian pretty well and has spent a decent amount of time there and still has friends there, I can provide some insight. Basically when Krushchev took over in the 50s he moved some territory from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR. He was from Ukraine and if you look at a map, the move did make sense as it made the areas in question much closer to their SSR capital (Kiev) than they had been (Moscow). The problem was that when the USSR split up that these areas were primarily Ru
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The former Soviet republics that are now independent states (including Ukraine) tend to be friendlier to the US and EU than Russia itself is, because they rely upon NATO support to maintain effective independence from Russian control.
Not all of them. Baltic states, certainly, and also Georgia. Belarus goes back and forth, but it's not particularly welcome in Europe with its current regime in any case, so it mostly uses the "we'll go to EU" card to force Russia to give some consessions. Most Central Asian states are dictatorships, ranging from mild (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan) to extreme (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan), and as such aren't really very friendly to either US or EU. Additionally, those of them which border Afghanistan and Pakistan ha
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I wonder why they didn't just split the country, with the western half being "Ukraine" and the eastern half staying part of Russia. Then both groups would be happy, except the people right in the middle and in the capitol.
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The eastern part, and especially Crimea (which is most heavily russified) has been raising that point occasionally, not really very seriously so far but more as a stick to get something else - "if you don't do what we ask for, we're gonna hold a referendum to separate" sort of thing.
The problem with this approach is that it's not like the split is clear-cut geographically. Much like red/blue in US, either side has a strong minority residing in it from the other; and in both cases, the split would hurt them
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and the language issue can be solved (right now Ukrainian is the sole official language, which is a major grievance with russophones in the east; on the other hand, many Western nationalists despise the de facto popularity of Russian as threatening their identity). Much the same way as it is in Canada today. Though, then again, Canada is also not exactly a shining example of success in that area...
Maybe I'm misinformed about Canada, but I thought in Canada, almost everyone spoke English, except for the peop
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By "same way as in Canada" I meant making both languages official on the federal level, as well as in the public education system (with reasonable limitations), but otherwise letting the provinces do their thing - Quebec only has French as an official languages, obviously, but most other provinces use English de facto without specifying a de jure official language, and some are officially bilingual. You can always find a place that works best for you, while retaining your citizenship.
I don't know about too
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
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Doubly so since they got hacked into.
I'd bet that the malware was planted.
wtf are you talking about (Score:5, Informative)
they never had malware ads, but they did turn on the ads after being DDOS'd due to the bandwidth bill. Considering that such a thing happened literally in the last two days I can't see why the Ukranians would shut it down that fast or even have the capability to, for that matter.
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I think they got hacked by a copyright cartel friendly blackhat just to give the ukracops an excuse to shut them down.
Kinda like planting CP on your boss's computer then calling the cops on them.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
there's another twist of the story that ". According to one source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the investigation was timed to coincide with Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky's visit to the United States, after he released a statement with the US Trade Representative agreeing to "redouble" intellectual property enforcement. While the ColoCall source says Demonoid has backup servers elsewhere, nothing has been restored at this point."
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/6/3223253/demonoid-bittorrent-tracker-shut-down-by-ukrainian-police [theverge.com]
so they're doubledowning and redoubling efforts. Maybe they won't bother with finding out who to prosecute and for what, but that's not the point of eastern european lipservice police work really.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Ukraine is incredibly corrupt. It's the main factor dragging the country down. A young girl can hitch-hike home in the early hours of the morning after clubbing and be safe. There is nearly no aggression I have seen. Hanging out around the Black Sea on a Friday night is safer than being in London. The people are really friendly, and sometimes even charge the real price! However the police patrol the streets and if they see a drunk tourist they will drag him down a side street and kick the crap out of him before taking his watch and wallet. Even simple paperwork at the police station means bribes for everybody you come into contact with. Scams from "law enforcement" officers are rife. If one top guy decides Demonoid is out, don't expect them back. Certainly there will be no appeal. Wonderful country with fantastic people, but don't expect real justice.
Phillip.
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after he released a statement with the US Trade Representative agreeing to "redouble" intellectual property enforcement.
That reminds me of the scene in Star Wars (or was it RotJ?) where Darth Vader visits the Death Star and talks to the commanding officer about how unhappy the Emperor is with the progress on construction, and the officer nervously promises to "redouble" their efforts.
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So maybe someone friendly to the MAFIAA poked a black hat into planting malware on it, and then blew the whistle on malware.
It's almost like calling the feds after hacking CP onto someone's computer. Which has been done btw.
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And I bet you whoever planted those ads was paid off by copyright lobbies.
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Kinda fishy since they apparently got hacked into.
You'd think that cybercops would be going after the hackers.
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Kinda fishy since they apparently got hacked into.
You'd think that cybercops would be going after the hackers.
You'd think a lot of things. (This is probably going to sound racist, deal with it) Eastern European politics aren't exactly known for their transparency and willingness to divulge information about the basis for its decision-making.
Oh and it's often corrupt as hell, so make of that what you will.
The malware thing was probably just an excuse to go after them for whatever reason they had behind the scenes-
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(This is probably going to sound racist, deal with it) Eastern European politics aren't exactly known for their transparency and willingness to divulge information about the basis for its decision-making.
"Eastern European" is not a race, so the phrase you're looking for is "xenophobic stereotyping based on ignorance and prejudice".
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"Eastern European" is not a race, so the phrase you're looking for is "xenophobic stereotyping based on ignorance and prejudice".
I could have used "Slavic", would that have made a difference? Politics in the FSU has a long and storied history of corruption, I guess western politics have too, so there you go.
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The way to do it is to live in the USA (or other western nation better yet), but keep your servers in Russia. Then you get the best of both worlds.
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If your shit's not safe in the Ukraine, it's not safe anywhere.
Kramer 1, Newman 0
Huge victory for content industry! (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations! It will now take people an additional 3 clicks to find the movie, game or song they want to steal!
Keep up the good work, guys, people will stop making unlicensed digital copies any day now!
Re:Huge victory for content industry! (Score:5, Informative)
When Doctor Who started up again Demonoid torrents were the only way us USAians could see it *at all*. It probably helped Who and many other BBC shows get their American deals.
There is definitely advantages for content owners here whether they want to admit it or not.
Re:Huge victory for content industry! (Score:4, Informative)
If you think demonoid was the only place to get Doctor Who, you're hilariously incorrect.
Re:Huge victory for content industry! (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean except for all of the other torrents that existed in other more actually private private trackers? And probably also public trackers.
I'm not arguing with your main point (New Doctor Who is exactly how I got introduced to the wonderful world of illegally stealing tv shows too), but Demonoid wasn't the only place you could go (I've only ever used it for a few things.)
NNTP (Score:2)
first rule about fight club (Score:2)
if you keep saying that they will notice it and kill it to, as an afterthought mind you but they will do it. Usenet would be fairly easy to kill due to it not being as distributed as p2p, i mean i cant fire up google in a tor browser type a hash of my download find 50 usenet groups with the and add them to my peer finding pool like i can with torrents.
what we need is free usenet server system living in a .onion or a torent over tor system
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No, shut up. Ixnay. Sssh.
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When Doctor Who started up again Demonoid torrents were the only way us USAians could see it *at all*.
I got all my Doctor Who needs adequately satisfied by www.thebox.bz who specializes in British TV. That they were proud of Doctor Who was evident in the fact that for a long time their main logo was the TARDIS and the name itself is also a reference to the TARDIS Police Box. These days, it's a slang reference to a tv set and both the main logo and favicon is a pictogram of a classic tv with a rabbit ear antenna. It's fast and the rips are always flawless (and often exclusive), and they treat their users dec
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As a user, you may love having free content, but at some point it all has to be paid for, unless you want to get rid of professional quality work and just have random people shouting on YouTube.
And now the slashdot "well it is up to you to make money by other means such as selling action figures" idiots will reply, and I will get down-modded, and lah di da.
OTOH, US Law Enforcement could take a lesson... (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, US Law Enforcement could take a lesson on how to conduct a raid on a datacenter. Go in with a forensic team, isolate, copy, preserve, and leave the shit in place. You don't go in with bolt cutters to cables, wipe out businesses of a dozen other bystanders in the facility, seize stuff for months, or prevent businesses from starting back up.
Re:OTOH, US Law Enforcement could take a lesson... (Score:5, Insightful)
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wipe out businesses of a dozen other bystanders in the facility, seize stuff for months, or prevent businesses from starting back up
You're assuming that this isn't the entire point of a raid: Send a clear message to all businesses on the planet, "don't come in contact with anything near copyright violation, if nessessary, we'll nuke the site from orbit, if that's the only way to be sure."
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Depends on what your goal is.
Shocking! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Funny)
Not only is there a law enforcement agency, but he's a pretty good guy, too.
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Don't be silly, of course they have a law enforcement agency. It's a very effective one too. For a sufficient "donation", they'll enforce any law you want enforced, whether that law is on the books or not.
well.. crap (Score:5, Insightful)
I know its been said before.. but I think itd worth saying again..
A lot of stuff on demonoid wasnt in print anymore, and there was a big focus on books/other things that arent readily available anymore.
I think that it brings up a big point that we miss when the whole debate of copyright infringement and pirating the newest movies is brought up in relation to these torrent sites.
These places are in some ways the last place to easily access important parts of the culture of the world.... Is it so important to protect the newest blockbuster films at the cost of so many people losing access to bits of global creative culture that they cant access legally ?
Re:well.. crap (Score:5, Insightful)
One area that is constantly ignored are the grey-area copyrights (where no one knows who owns the copyright because a copyright holder has gone bankrupt) and the stuff in torrents that is not even in print. Trading that stuff doesn't hurt anyone and, as a matter of fact, often gets them noticed again and brought back into print. Has anyone ever heard a greedhead from the *AAs even acknowledge this?
Re:well.. crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:well.. crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they won't acknowledge this. The **AAs are not advocates of the artists, they're advocates of the distribution companies. By definition, they couldn't care less about grey-area copyrights because those don't have anything to do with their business.
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Actually they do care.
It's unwanted competition for our eyeballs.
Re:well.. crap (Score:5, Interesting)
One area that is constantly ignored are the grey-area copyrights (where no one knows who owns the copyright because a copyright holder has gone bankrupt) and the stuff in torrents that is not even in print. Trading that stuff doesn't hurt anyone and, as a matter of fact, often gets them noticed again and brought back into print. Has anyone ever heard a greedhead from the *AAs even acknowledge this?
You don't understand. If you're consuming entertainment material that isn't available legally anymore, you're STEALING from the makers of content that is legally available. How can this be? Simple. You have X hours of entertainment time in your week. If there is no free entertainment available, you will purchase entertainment that is not free. By going back to out-of-print material or by dipping into TV/movies that are no longer available, you are wasting your valuable entertainment dollar-hours that should have been invested in Big Entertainment. For shame.
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Funny...
If they are my entertainment hours, how does anyone but me get to decide how they are spent?
Contrary to what the mafiaa goons want everyone to believe, it's MY calendar, MY clock, and MY wallet.
I will use them as I fucking see fit, and I will start by punishing anyone who tries to convince me otherwise by not patronizing them.
News flash to the mafiaa: Trying to control my purchasing decisions with DRM and region locking and other crap is the fastest way to piss me off and make me not watch your stu
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A lot of stuff on demonoid wasnt in print anymore, and there was a big focus on books/other things that arent readily available anymore
The files themselves were not hosted on Demonoid, just the index, comments, and tracker. The "stuff" still exists on everyone's hard drives. I'm sure a lot of it will pop back up on other locations. One lesson to learn from this is a big central site is not so good from a security standpoint, it makes too attractive a target. 100 specialized sites catering to different interests would be more resilient, since it makes the work to take them down 100 times harder.
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The files themselves were not hosted on Demonoid, just the index, comments, and tracker. The "stuff" still exists on everyone's hard drives. I'm sure a lot of it will pop back up on other locations.
AFAIK, torrents tracked by the Demonoid tracker were not required to be exclusive to that tracker. At this point, it's pretty much all tracked by other trackers or DHT. The only real issue would be the torrents that are not indexed anywhere else...they will still live on, but you won't be able to search for them.
Oh it's just the Ukraine (Score:3)
If it were the U.S. I'd be worried they'd come after the stored user data & put people into indefinite detainment (under NDAA 2012).
Re:Oh it's just the Ukraine (Score:5, Interesting)
The data is being delivered to the US as a gift. [torrentfreak.com]
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Why I'm not worried: Do you think, as a matter of policy, that a site like Demonoid would have long retention of IP logs?
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If it were the U.S. I'd be worried they'd come after the stored user data & put people into indefinite detainment (under NDAA 2012).
For the moment, that provision is blocked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012#Indefinite_detention_blocked [wikipedia.org]
I am as disgusted by Obama as much as I was embarrassed and ashamed by Bush. The only reason I am keeping my American citizenship (I no longer live in the US) is so that I can vote for anyone that might possibly be better, though I am starting to have real doubts that it will ever happen.
DDOS (Score:5, Interesting)
So, are we comfortable with officially labeling the DDOS from which Demonoid has been suffering these past few days an act of officially-sanctioned vandalism on the part of law enforcement, local or otherwise? Because this is damned coincidental, if not... and should be terrifying to businesses the world over if true.
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My guess is the DDOS was to prevent users from updating their details while **RIA via some (government) agency went about shutting the site down.
Email addresses could identify users. Demonoid does keep a history of upload & download stats, but I'm not sure if they maintain a list of torrents downloaded.
yikes, I hope not. I can't remember which (if any) email address I used to register.
Good thing I never registered for an account there, eh? But I did search for a torrent within the last 2 years...
Cue jackboots [vimeo.com] in 3... 2... 1...
Disadvantages of 3rd world countries (Score:2)
The country that tolerates you one day can turn against you the next, and you have little or no recourse.
At least in the United States, if you have enough cash you have access to the courts.*
*Pissing of the feds in ways that invoke National Security(TM) are, sadly, excluded. But as far as copyright violations go, any American has as much access to the courts as he has money to pay lawyers. This is not true in some other countries.
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That's why it's a good strategy to keep everything separate. Don't live in the same country you're hosting questionable material in (even if it's just links and there's no copyrighted material there at all); live someplace nice, and keep the questionable stuff in someplace that doesn't care. And keep regular backups, so if they suddenly do care, you can start up an identical site in a different 3rd-world country that doesn't care. And make sure to keep your association with these sites secret.
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Tell that to the owner of the megadownloads...
The US freezes assets of accused people exactly so you DON'T have access to good defense. That's been true since Bush-I signed the zero tolerance and forfeiture laws in back almost 20 years ago.
The owner of the site who the US tried to have deported from New Zealand -- who didn't entirely cooperate...offered to come back to the US for trial if they unfroze his assets so he co
Please educate me (Score:3)
/me admits to knowing.
Why couldn't someone setup a site like Demonoid on Tor, but direct people out to the public internet to actually transfer the torrents? The tracker would exist on the Tor network, but the file sharing would be done on the public network and therefore not saturate the limited bandwidth available via Tor.
Is there something inherent in bittorrent that requires the tracker and the transfer to take place on the same network? Is it so inherent in the application that it could not be separated into two separate components?
Re:Please educate me (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically you don't even need a tracker anymore as magnet links are enough for distributed hash tables, and magnet links can easily be distributed anywhere, while DHT is a builtin component of the transfer network. TPB already operates that way and would work fine on Tor (as far as I know there could already be several such tor sites, can't say I've checked).
After that it'll probably go to i2p or turn over to the various f2f networks available. Sharing technology is already several generations ahead. The only question is really how far the pressure will go to push people towards an utterly unmonitorable network.
Of course, ending up with an evolved completely opaque network has advantages once We The People will be forced to start lining people up against the wall.
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"Of course, ending up with an evolved completely opaque network has advantages once We The People start being forced to line up against the wall."
FTFY
Obvious answer (Score:2)
Find a country to host these things in that wont bend over to the interests of the USA and its corporations.
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No, you just can't trust any one country or entity. Instead, find multiple countries to host these things, and keep the sites mirrored. If one country pulls a Ukraine, you have a handful of other countries still running the site.
I smell a setup (Score:2)
According to torrent freak:
http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-united-states-government-120806/ [torrentfreak.com]
>>> Shortly after [the DDoS] a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators,” the source added.
Smells like a plant to me.
What if the hacker was someone paid off by a MAFIAA friendly contact, and the hacker was paid to plant malware ads on the servers, just to give Ukrainian authorities an excuse to shut them down?
It's just as devious as hacking someone,
update (Score:2)
http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-operators-face-criminal-investigation-in-mexico-120807/ [torrentfreak.com]
More information for the editors.
Re:Bout time (Score:5, Informative)
Demonoid was a torrent site, not a storage service.
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Sadly, it's theft because the powers that be say it is.
Re:Just like the war on drugs, nobody ever learns. (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I agree that Obama is part of the problem (he's a huge corporatist, allowing banks to get off the hook like he did) he's running against Romney who will do NOTHING except what corporations one. There is no candidate standing that will curb corporate abuse. It's not a party issue.
Re:Just like the war on drugs, nobody ever learns. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no Democrat or Republican candidate standing that will curb corporate abuse.
FTFY.
Third parties don't get enough notice in this nation to be included in such a generalization (which, if all third parties were included, would become false anyway).
A quote I've been trying to spread around: "The only wasted vote, is the one that goes to a Democrat or a Republican."
Here's hoping it catches on...
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You actually believe that if a third party achieved a significant voice in government, that they wouldn't sell out to corporations just as the two main parties have?
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You actually believe that if a third party achieved a significant voice in government, that they wouldn't sell out to corporations just as the two main parties have?
Not necessarily, and FYI, I never said anything to that effect. Learn to read what's written, instead of inferring what you want to think is there.
What about you? Do you actually believe it's better to be a good little wage slave who doesn't challenge the status quo, rather than at least attempt to cast off your shackles?
If not, why bust my balls over pointing out that which has the potential to change the political landscape for the better?
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The only way a third party will ever get in office is when the electorate starts to give a flying fuck, and if that ever happens (we can dream, right?), some degree of accountability might actually take place.
Then again, considering the majority of the stuff that gets blamed/credited on/to the President is actually the legislative branch, I hold very little hope for the U.S. to do anything but continue its downward spiral towards irrelevancy.
You can do it folks, but you're gonna have to do it 1 congresspers
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You actually believe that if a third party achieved a significant voice in government, that they wouldn't sell out to corporations just as the two main parties have?
No need to buy them out when you can just do the Beria routine on them and frame them for kiddie porn & child molesting. Scratch Yet Another 3rd Party Politician. Rinse and repeat as necessary, provided the election boards just don't bother to disallow the candidates on the ballot and toss any writeins for them on the grounds that they're not a 'legal candidate'. Remember, most of the election board members are either Republicans or Democrats, very few 3rd Partyers onboard.
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As a Libertarian, thank you. I live in NH and get a lot of calls from presidential survey companies, "In the upcoming election will you vote for the Republican X or Democrat Y." And I respond with "Neither, I'll be voting for the Libertarian candidate Z" They don't seem to ever like that since the little boxes they use don't have that option. I'll be told, "Sir, that isn't an option" and then I get on my soapbox....
Part of why I became a Libertarian was to have an impact. The phrase "The only wasted vote,
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Good luck getting any of that reversed when elected politicians eyes are like looney toon cartoon characters with dollar signs rolling and a cash register caching. They won't ever vote to strip themselves of unlimited secret campaign funds and a third party candidate would just take a seat at the trough with the 600+ other pigs.
Who do you think passed McCain-Feingold before the Supreme Court struck down the provision? It wasn't a referendum.
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They are not layers, they are flat out barriers.
For what it's worth though, I *did* vote.
Assuming that
A) it doesn't get lost in the shuffle
B) drowned out by sheeple that are drunk on political koolaid
C) doesn't get hacked out during counting by a mitm attack
I plan to have it do something. At least now I have earned the right to bitch if things don't go my way.
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sad you think voting is anything but smoke and mirrors to keep the proles busy.
Well, personally I feel that the soap, ballot, and jury boxes have all failed us, and thus we are left with but one more box to open in defense of (what's left of) our Liberties.
However, I also tend to get lambasted by Uncle Toms when I posit that particular ideology, so I figured I'd at least make an attempt to appease the status quo.
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The difference between Republicans and Democrats? There isn't one.
Wrong.
The Republicans are obviously big fans of corporatism, and all their followers have bought into their rhetoric about "job creators", and how the ultra-wealthy need tax breaks.
The Democrats make a lot of noise about how they'd like to fix stuff; their speeches sound good to people who aren't in the right wing. But then they never actually bother to DO any of the things they talk about, and when questioned, they blame it all on the Repub
Re:WTH is Demonoid? (Score:4, Informative)
Here you go
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonoid [wikipedia.org]
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Can't you see It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollars and cents,
Pounds, shillings and pence
Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense
aaaah Roger Waters... great song... great album also well fitting to place here ;)
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So we need a p2p system that maintains and distributes the comments that users make on torrents. Any proposals?
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Emphasis on "had"
Honestly, after the trouble they had in mexico last year I'm surprised they didn't beef up their redundancy.