Kickass Torrents' KAT.ph Domain Seized By Philippine Authorities 122
hypnosec writes "Kickass Torrents hasn't been accessible since sometime yesterday, and now it has been confirmed that the domain name of the torrent website has been seized by Philippine authorities. Local record labels and the Philippine Association of the Recording Industry said that the torrent site was doing 'irreparable damages' to the music industry and following a formal complaint the authorities resorted to seizure of the main domain name. The site hasn't given up, and is operating as usual under a new domain name. The government of the Philippines has confirmed that the domain name has been seized based on formal complaints and copyright grounds."
You know (Score:5, Insightful)
You "editors" could spend all of two minutes to link to the new domain. Or is that too much to ask?
Re:You know (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, since you couldn't be bothered to do it either.
http://kickass.to
Re:You know (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for posting. Any site that has a link taken away from it by any authority should be linked to by everyone in retaliation for the censorship.
The editors should have linked to it in the summary. They should fix the oversight and link to it now.
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You wont be able to find any illegal content hosted by the site no matter how long and hard you look, what you will find however are .torrent files and magnet links. Big difference but not one I'd expect you to be willing to accept.
There's no practical difference. You clicky the linky at KickAssTorrents website, warez flows to your computer. My point being, the torrent files and magnet links are the only way to access the illegal content behind them after all. They are essentially a complete description, a virtualization of the files. It's silly to say that a torrent site "does not host the files" because they still make the sharing possible in first place.
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See what I did there?
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1560 hits to, presumably, mostly illegal torrent files, as found by Google and directly linked to the .torrent file:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=rick%20astley%20filetype%3Atorrent [google.com]
Big nasty illegal downloading site: 61 hits, presumably a small subset of what Google finds.
http://kickass.to/usearch/rick%20astley/ [kickass.to]
Neither site hosts the actual .torrent files.
Please explain why one should be considered illegal and the other not?
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Please explain why one should be considered illegal and the other not?
He wont because he doesnt understand the technology. He doesnt understand that a torrent file is about 12KB in size and contains absolutely nothing even remotely illegal.
Re:You know (Score:2)
You didn't even mention youtube. Massive infringement there.
But that's owned by the big boys and they are trying to figure out a way to monetize it so infringement is okay.
Of course youtube also has a TON of legal useful files.
It's sad but I think the end is coming for torrents, the internet, etc. Less than a decade most likely.
You kids will be back to sneakernet and small private sites.
Re:You know (Score:2)
By your logic, the Internet is illegal, since you can access all manner of illegal content in as few as three clicks. Hell, illegal pron viruses sometimes flows to your computer without you even doing anything.
Heck, by your logic, people are illegal because they enable piracy. We should ban those annoying buggers.
Re:You know (Score:3)
You wont be able to find any illegal content hosted by the site no matter how long and hard you look, what you will find however are .torrent files and magnet links. Big difference but not one I'd expect you to be willing to accept.
While technically true. KAT.ph has served up malicious malware-infecting ads and solicitations for what are obviously scams for a long time. It's not like they are saints.
That said it was a good site.... I am not going to bother with the "alternative" domains, those sites always go down shortly afterwards anyway.
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I'm not making a legal defense. I'm saying that the law itself is bad, and strictly speaking, it doesn't pass a strict Constitutional muster. The law as it stands is clearly following a different philosophy than the only justified one (public benefit), so it should not be respected, and if anything, should be actively defied. Believe it or not, the law can be wrong, and often is. Also, your broken latin phrase doesn't apply, since the law is not harsh, but injust. It is often grossly disproportionate to the extent that there have been Constitutional challenges to statutory damages, and the harshness of the law is a major concern, but the bigger flaw is that it's based in medieval economics, and has no place in the modern world. The relevant terms are themselves quite telling. 'Copyright' originated from the right to copy, back when it conveyed a positive right to make copies, because it was part of a censorship regime in which proliferation of unsanctioned knowledge was forbidden. If you are ignorant on the matter, look up the Stationer's Company. 'Royalties' are another big hint that the system is antiquated, although a number of prominent organizations calling themselves 'guilds' doesn't help the matter much.
Sweat of the brow arguments are legally invalid in regards to copyright law, per Feist v. Rural. And ethically, sharing information is generally a good thing, with only a few exceptions. I do no oppose supporting the arts, and I likely have done more towards that end than you have.
You've also thrown out the term 'freeloading,' yet another sign of an incompetent copyright proponent. Are you TRYING to fill up your bingo card on that? I would direct you to read Mark Lemly's paper [ssrn.com] on the subject.
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However, even if this wasn't the case, the only thing that matters in copyright policy is the benefits the public gets out of it. They waive their freedom to copy, share and use works for a short while in order to have more works to copy, share and use. Balancing these two public interests is the only legitimate consideration in copyright policy. The only reason to be concerned for the welfare of authors is in regards to their output. Copyright is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. People who lose sight of this are dangerous and destructive forces against human progress.
The particular word doesn't matter. You'd be only slightly less of an idiot if you were complaining about free riders. The problem is that your underlying economic argument is deeply flawed and throughly debunked.
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Unless you're suggesting that Congress shouldn't be able to regulate the sale of goods and services within the United States, I think your argument is shit.
Ah, the catch-all argument that the government loves using so they can feel justified in doing just about anything they want with regards to such matters. That said, the constitution does say "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," so if that's not happening, something is indeed wrong.
Naturally, this means that any law you disagree with is thus no longer enforceable and you don't have to worry about the consequences.
That part just seems like a straw man.
Re:You know (Score:2)
No, copyright is not covered under the commerce clause. If it were, then Sonny Bono could have legitimately gotten his wish of explicitly eternal copyright.
I'd love to: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." It's so firmly entrenched as the reason, that the promotion of progress is the actual power given to congress, with copyright being simply the means of doing so.
Strawman argument. Also, other Congressional powers are not as strictly bound as copyright. That's why, for example, trademarks can last forever, while copyrights can not.
Yes, certain laws are valid and certain laws are invalid. One of the Supreme Court's roles is to assess whether those laws are valid in regards to their Constitutionality, although a law can be Constitutional and still unjust. Exercise of a power not given is as blatantly illegitimate as a legal process can be. In regards to the legal theory of copyright as rooted in labor, this has been correctly ruled as not within the bounds of copyright law.
As have I, although I still have my day job as well.
I see no point in differentiation relevant to this argument. Sharing music is good. Sharing knowledge is good. Sharing visual art is good. Sharing film is good. There are some exceptions, such as privacy, but they are completely unrelated to copyright. Sharing copyrighted works is itself good. The justification for limiting such sharing is that it will ultimately lead to having more or better works to share. If that fails to pan out, then this exception is not justified.
No, we had a system of censorship and cronyism that was slightly modified for a nominally benevolent cause. It's pretty well established fact that this was the purpose of the Stationer's Company's
Re:You know (Score:2)
Yeah right, it is soo typical of this entitlement generation to find excuses like that.
I won't waste time and effort arguing my points with you, not due to my inability to do so nor due to lack of car analogies or all the studies that would blow holes the size of the media industry lies into your arguments, it is all out there for you to find on your own accord. What I will do however, is thank you for kindly lumping me into a generation that is decades younger than I am. What was it that fooled you? It can't be my stunning youthful looks, or... *double checks webcam*
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I wouldn't think there was anything wrong with it. It's also bad taste to try and make the argument a personal one. Many industries have suffered far worse things due to progress, but those that stand in the way of that progress are Luddites. You've talked about entitlements, but it is people like you that think that someone is entitled to make a living in a particular field. That's not true. You can be the greatest buggy whip maker in the world, but that doesn't mean the world owes you a salary. If the niche you fill disappears. you adapt or you die.
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I also think that when you create something, it is your right to ask money for it or not.
I think you would have a hard time to find anyone here that dispute that, but creating something does not make you entitled to dictate what people do with it after they have paid for it.
On a side note, I think that I should be entitled to a refund on the 23.60€ (+30€ for drinks and snacks) I paid for myself and my wife to watch Star Trek last night as it utterly failed to deliver the experience I expect from Star Trek. /toungue in cheek
Re:You know (Score:3)
And there's strike three. 'Compensation' is a term that doesn't make sense in this context. File sharers are sharing amongst themselves, so there is no new labor and no new product. There is nothing be compensated for because there is nothing lost with additional transactions. It has nothing to do with them, so why should they have a say in the matter? You are exposing yourself as someone who can just parrot a bunch of sound byte talking points. If you don't show signs of rational thought soon, I'm done wasting my time with you.
And I can assure you with equal validity that it was the result of the Reptilian Illuminati thwarting him because he is too close to exposing their web of lies. I can also assure you, again with the same validity of your statement, that it's the result of the Tohoku earthquake.
She can not like it all that she wants, but that doesn't change anything. Realistically, your friend has a far greater enemy in obscurity than filesharing.
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That's not relevant. A hypothetical where they could have made more money doesn't mean that they've lost money. There is no product loss and no additional expenditure or time, therefore there is no loss to be compensated for. The same kinds of losses happen when another business is in the same market and has a product that is in some ways superior, but we call that competition, and generally regard it as a good thing.
Whether or not a price is good or not is relative to a number of factors too numerous to list. One of the simplest of which being that the price is disproportionate to the quality. It's not unlikely, given that Sturgeon's law pretty much applies to every medium and genre.
That might be a key right there. The changes in environment have been a major competitive disadvantage to major labels. They generally employ more or less brute force techniques, which are less effective in this environment. However, their loss has been largely a gain for independent labels and self produced musicians. Another factor might be that the model of selling CDs has gone out of fashion. Major label commercial music had one or two songs, maybe three per album that sold the 12 songs on the CD to 98% of the audience. With iTunes and the like, artists that don't produce an entire album's worth of worthwhile material are only making money off of the singles, so the income is something like a fifth of what it would be otherwise. Cutting the cruft means that there is less fat, and there is less fat on his plate.
Obscure is relative. Unless your friend's last name is Rowling or Meyer, then filesharing is not hurting her. Those are the people that there's some degree of evidence that she's affected by. For basically everyone else, being popular on filesharing translates to very few lost sales, and a large number of sales gained by greater notoriety.
Again, that's not relevant. You can think a number of things are right or wrong to do, but that doesn't matter. And again, you make it about the authors, which is a mistake. Copyright law cares fuck all about the authors. The reason to be concerned is if the creative output or quality falls, which we've seen no indication of.
Re:You know (Score:3)
I'm just not seeing causation in your story.
1) Is this broadly representative of the record business, or is it like my arguing for lower pensions across the board by citing the example of some rich London pensioner who lives in a palace and has loads of dogs?
2) Really, all of this decline is due to file sharing? Nothing else happening there? Is he reliant on a segment of the market that's being disproportionately affected by file sharing? Is he a drinker? Is he almost entirely focussed on disco music, and for some odd reason has seen his revenues steadily decline since the 80s? How about 9/11? Oddly enough my income in the IT industry has more than doubled since 9/11. Thanks, Osama!
I agree with you that creators should be allowed to assert control over their works (for a way shorter time period than we currently see). I just think your story of this producer is a bit "my cousin Billy said..."
Re:You know (Score:2)
Yes, I understand that, mathematically there is "nothing lost with additional transactions". But, I think that we both agree there are some sales lost, some people would have bought the work if they couldn't get their hands on them for free.
I don't know what the studies show on this (it's kind of hard to find an unbiased study), but I would guess just offhand that the number of truly lost sales due to downloading and downloading alone are small. High prices (relative to what a person can afford) cause lost sales (and possible acquisition by downloading). (Ridiculous DRM restrictions also cause some lost sales. I won't buy iTunes stuff for this reason.)
How many people do you know say they'd love to buy X or Y but they just can't afford it? I am not saying that makes downloading "right" but I am saying that this isn't a true "lost sale" due to downloading. I think music industry prices and policies cause many more lost sales than simple illegal downloads. They are their own worst enemies by far.
Re:You know (Score:5, Funny)
Camembert (2891457)
'Yeah right, it is soo typical of this entitlement generation to find excuses like that. '
Please cease and desist from using the Camembert name.
Camembert was granted a protected designation of origin in 1992 after the original AOC in 1983.
If you're not in Normandy, France and a Cheese, you are not entitled to that name even if you're old enough to be a bit runny. It's a copyright violation.
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Camembert was granted a protected designation of origin in 1992 after the original AOC in 1983. It's a copyright violation.
It's only a matter of time before the Germans catch on to this, and McDonalds are forced to sell "American beef-byproduct sandwiches" instead of hamburgers.
That is until the British lay claim trademark rights on that. [wikipedia.org]
Re:You know (Score:2)
It's not a matter of entitlement, it's a matter of freedom. I am, by default, free to do anything I want - in this case look at what I want and tell other people about it. It's those who want to limit this default freedom in a particular case who need to come up with a reason. It is they who are claiming an entitlement for wielding power over me, not me.
The issue is that exercising power over the site owners and users needs a better justification than helping media company profits.
Re:You know (Score:3)
Copyright, in its current form, is entitlement. Many people infringe nowadays as "revenge" against media conglomerates who want to lock up our culture.
Re:You know (Score:2)
Count me as one. I view sending any money to that industry as an immoral act. I believe the world would be a better place without them. I'd rather no one watch or listen to their output at all, but if it's going to be consumed I'd much rather it be pirated than purchased.
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Yeah right, it is soo typical if this entitlement generation to find excuses like that.
If you accept that the material itself can be illegally acquired by simply clicking the links, what is the issue with taking the site down?
If you accept that the drugs can be illegally acquired simply by approaching the undercover cop and offering them money, what is the issue with the sting operation being disbanded?
NB: In case you were wondering, me linking or not linking does not make my site illegal; you clicking or not clicking in a jurisdiction where you clicking would be illegal is an illegal act by YOU, not an illegal act by me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier [wikipedia.org]
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Please don't give me the excuse that, if you look long and hard enough you may find a handful of legal torrents on the site.
I'm not sure what an "illegal" torrent is, but you might be interested in this: Law and Order SVU S14E24 720p HDTV X264-DIMENSION [kickass.to]
Re:You know (Score:2)
I don't care what it's hosting. Censorship of any kind is unacceptable.
Re:You know (Score:5, Interesting)
The editors should have linked to it in the summary. They should fix the oversight and link to it now.
The editors are now owned an operated by a corporation. As a corporation they can be sued. As they can be sued, they aren't going to partake of legal action that might jeopardize their profits. This isn't like Digg or a dozen other sites that, upon hearing from their users they had caved to political pressure mounted a massive PR campaign.
The slashdot of years past no longer exists. It won't take the chance anymore. In other news, what I really want to know is why torrent sites aren't going to .onion domains ... which can't be taken down by any government order. As a 'hidden service', they're just a new tor circuit connection away from restarting... no DNS, no jurisdictional issues... not much chance of finding out even where they really are. And the .torrent files and magnet links don't take up much bandwidth, unlike the P2P transfers, which don't involve the site anyway...
I really don't get why they're sticking with blockable technologies... maybe they're just stubborn or trying to prove a point.
Re:You know (Score:0)
Why aren't they using .onion domain websites/urls?
Because they don't work with 99.999% of web browsers installed today.
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Right, and there is no way users would download and install a client in order to continue to pirate stuff? Technologies like torrents, DC++, IRC, ez-news etc. will utterly fail for that one reason.
Re:You know (Score:4, Interesting)
Accessibility. There are some people who pirate for a hobby, who would love any excuse to go cloak-and-dagger. There are also many, many more casual pirates who are just thrifty or lazy. If accessing a torrent site requires spending an hour researching and configuring new technology, they'll just find a different site - or go buy what they want legitimately.
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Any more I only seem to torrent things that I already own. Often it is faster to just download an 'illegal' copy than to find the disk in a box somewhere. Other times I opt to just re-buy via steam. If they sold movies and mainstream software I would re-buy those too.
The only time that it at all becomes morally ambiguous for me is when I download something that is cracked merely because the proper version does not work as expected. It is against the law to do so, but then again shouldn't selling a license to something that does not work as advertised also be illegal?
Re:You know (Score:2)
Any more I only seem to torrent things that I already own. Often it is faster to just download an 'illegal' copy than to find the disk in a box somewhere.
I know what you mean. I have downloaded albums which I own due to it being easier than going to my CD archives and ripping the original. With software though, ain't you scared of malware?
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It doesn't take a PhD to use the TOR Browser bundle [torproject.org], you could also direct users to a TOR gateway service like onion.to if you only care about protecting the anonymity of the site. I think the main reason it's not happening is because the current whack-a-mole game is not working very well. Search for any popular item + torrent on Google and you'll find plenty sites, public torrents usually refer to many independent trackers and on top of that there's trackerless peer exchange. It doesn't really matter where you get the torrent/magnet link, you'll be part of the same swarm. They can't win unless they shut down that down and if they shut that down moving the torrent sites to TOR wouldn't help.
Re:You know (Score:1)
What? Someone linked to the site directly above. /. staff do have the ability to remove posts and as such are every bit as liable for links in the comments as for links in the summary.
Re:You know (Score:4, Informative)
"What? Someone linked to the site directly above. /. staff do have the ability to remove posts and as such are every bit as liable for links in the comments as for links in the summary."
No, they aren't. This reflects ignorance of how the law in the US actually works. (No insult intended. A great many people don't know how it works.)
First, the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA -- the only good provisions in the DMCA -- free them from liability from any content uploaded by their users... as long as they don't mess with that content.
Another important legal precedent says that if they DO mess with that content, including editing, censoring, or even top-down moderation, then they DO become liable for that content. Because then they are controlling that content, and if they control it they become liable for it. (Question: if you remove one "illegal" post but not another, why would you NOT be responsible for leaving that other post up? The law says you are. You made a choice.)
There is an exception: if a DMCA take-down request comes from an outside party, then they may be obligated to take down that post. That's one of the many BAD provisions of the DMCA, because it imposes a sort of "prior restraint": forcing people to act before there is any proof or court determination of illegal conduct.
So the upshot is: except for stupid parts of the DMCA (that is to say, most of it), they are far better off just leaving content alone, and not trying to censor it. They stand a much lower chance of running into legal difficulties.
Re:You know (Score:2)
Possibly a dumb question, but does that mean any site that removes spam or has a profanity filter becomes liable?
Re:You know (Score:2)
"Possibly a dumb question, but does that mean any site that removes spam or has a profanity filter becomes liable?"
That's not dumb at all, it's actually a pretty good question. I don't know for sure but I don't think that has really been established yet.
But we do have a general legal precedent that says if you attempt to control the content, you assume liability for it. And it's actually a pretty reasonable concept, if you think about it.
Re:You know (Score:2)
A great many people don't know how it works, including you.
The Communications Decency Act provides a safe harbor for editing/moderation. The section 230 immunities [cornell.edu] include an immunity for "any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." This section 230(c) immunity has been interpreted by the courts to include essentially any editing decision short of creating content.
Thus, if a service provides choses to "mess" with content, they will not automatically become liable for that content. Instead, they are only potentially liable for any content that they might add. When you combine that with various exceptions to the DMCA user-generated content safe harbor, most particularly "red flag" knowledge of infringement, most service providers have an incentive to moderate. They are usually not obligated to do so because proving that they knew that content was infringing is difficult, but they certainly are not biased toward leaving user-generated content "as is" in order to avoid liability.
Re:You know (Score:1)
There must be plenty of .onion torrent indexers, not that I've checked because you can still access all the largest indexes quickly and easily with DNS.
They're just playing a game of whack-a-mole.
Re:You know (Score:1)
Define hard work. Define ownership. IP law does neither. It defines means for which corporations can abuse either case. It has been proven time and again in history and argued for and against. The experiment has run. And what we currently have now is what is causing the "hobbyist abuses".
We, upstanding, law abiding, participating citizens of whatever countries you live in are not responsible for the current state of affairs in regards to this issue.
We did not create the utter lack of respect for human creativity and dignity. For commerce and free trade. For sharing distribution networks. No we monetized it. Created slavery. And pyramid schemes.
For that we will all pay. And it is our DUTY to voice our opinion. It is best to do it by pointing out the problems and disobeying authority until we change the status quo. Were long past ignoring it and trying to hope some politician will voice our will.
The end result will still allow people to earn money for creative work. But it will not be in the hands of the few. It will end up in the hands of the many. This is not your choice to inflict on all of humanity. We do not agree to your terms of service.
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already blocked in the UK
Then try one of it's many proxies! [torrentproxies.com]
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Either way, hasn't screwed with their service, still working great. SickBeard Torrent version might need an update, maybe Couchpotato too. - HEX
Re:You know (Score:2)
New Domain (Score:5, Informative)
http://kickass.to/ [kickass.to]
No https yet.
Re:New Domain (Score:0)
LATEST SEARCHES
1. Donald Fagen
2. Games of Thrones, Season 3, Episode 4
3. Porno
Not sure whether Donald would be pleased that he outranks porno...
Re:New Domain (Score:0)
thanks best site in Asia
Re:New Domain (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone who just want the encryption https provides, you can enter https manually and accept the "wrong domain" warning; I've done so, and confirmed that the kay.ph certificate is compatible.
KAT has been pretty diligent about their certs, so they should have one for .to soon.
Re:New Domain (Score:0, Offtopic)
Re:New Domain (Score:0)
Thanks man I'am a very big fan of torrent traffic and this domain makes it a lot more at a glance to my find.
"take what u can and instanly leave no trace behind and vanish like the wind" it's a harsh world for the poor toys
Re:New Domain (Score:3)
Tis is great, Ive never heard of this site untill now. As our local riaa branch cut me off from the pirate bay, this place is brilliant! Thanks MPAA!
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yeah but they are ridden with porn popups, to such an extend that they are actually unusable on ipad
Re:New Domain (Score:2)
http://kickassproxy.info/
Censorship bitch.
You're just going to make DNS obsolete (Score:0)
DNS is one of the few old protocols still in use, but it's not irreplaceable. If you keep pissing of the people who grew up breathing the internet, they'll make sure that you'll have no say in whatever replaces DNS.
Re:You're just going to make DNS obsolete (Score:0)
Steven Hyde?
Re:You're just going to make DNS obsolete (Score:3)
few? really?
ok chief
Re:You're just going to make DNS obsolete (Score:1)
tcp, ip, http, https, ftp, smtp.... you get the picture?
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The .PH domain administrator, a certain fellow named Joel Disini [wikipedia.org] whom I once met several years ago, has been known to have treated the domain as his proprietary interest. He has vigorously resisted several efforts over the years to redelegate the domain to the agencies of the Philippine government and other interested organisations, ever since it was granted to him by Jon Postel in 1990, and he has taken a dim view of attempts to control the registry ever since, so I wonder what might have gone down behind the scenes to make this happen.
Re:Interesting (Score:2)
They just went over his head? It doesn't matter if the guy was listed as the domain administrator or not, the real control is at the DNS servers themselves.
Re:Interesting (Score:3)
Maybe they gave it up and the Government are now taking credit for it after the fact. Either way, hasn't screwed with their service, still working great. SickBeard Torrent version might need an update, maybe Couchpotato too. - HEX
The damage must be incalculable (Score:2)
Well... actually it's is calculable: https://www.dot.ph/services [www.dot.ph]
Re:The damage must be incalculable (Score:2)
Wait their currency is actually called... "PHP"? O.o
Re:The damage must be incalculable (Score:3)
Wait their currency is actually called... "PHP"? O.o
And their terrorists are MILFs. [wikipedia.org]
This is getting annoying, let's go to Tor (Score:2)
For someone who just needs a torrent every 3 months or so, this cat-and-mouse game quite annoying. How about making a Tor hidden service for things like thepiratebay, just like the silk road? ( https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en [torproject.org] ). I am wary of suggesting it, because it will turn the powerful media lobby against Tor, but someone is going to have a fit about Tor sooner or later anyway. In fact, Tor is quite extreme, because it allows hosting of *anything* without any possibility for censorship. Most people (excluding me of course) would want to be able to censor some kinds of (more or less extreme) information, be it porn, exploits, national secrets or copyrighted material.
Culture (Score:1)
It Would Be Great Fun... (Score:1)
...to see such magic that everyone who acquires something of value against the wishes of those that created the value go directly to jail for, say, 90 days. Don't want to pay for movies or music? Then make your own. Oh, wait, whats that? You're a talentless slug that can't find middle C on any instrument? Well... that's the point - you pay people who know things and can do things to do them for your benefit.
Re:It Would Be Great Fun... (Score:2)
You must work for the industry for suggesting something as stupid.
1. You're asking the government to waste an average of USD$5887 [wikipedia.org] to incarcerate someone for 90 days
2. 90 days is extreme for something like copyright infringement
3. The real losses are nowhere near what the MPAA and RIAA wants you to believe. If they can sell a song for 99 cents then the actual damage for downloading a song is 99 cents, not thousands of dollars. You really need to watch this [ted.com] and get back to reality.
Insane people like you are the reason why the USA is in rapid decline and under so much debt.
Re:It Would Be Great Fun... (Score:3, Interesting)
3. The real losses are nowhere near what the MPAA and RIAA wants you to believe. If they can sell a song for 99 cents then the actual damage for downloading a song is 99 cents
Actually, copyright infringement causes no real losses; all it does is cause someone to not gain something, and even that is not certain. Yes, it is not even certain that copyright infringement causes someone to not gain money, and that is because it is also not certain that the person would have purchased the product if he/she could not download it.
Re:It Would Be Great Fun... (Score:2)
Well, yeah, we can debate wether or not there is actual losses because there's a lot of "IFs" involved, but if we take for granted that there IS losses, it should be the same as the sticker price. In the case of songs, it's an average of 99 cents on almost all Internet music stores.
Re:It Would Be Great Fun... (Score:1)
Music industry? I don't have a thing to do with the music industry, beyond being an occasional customer. Naw, I'm just some guy that had parents that taught him that stealing is WRONG, and should be punsished. And 90 days would be insanely light punishment for STEALING - should be more like 1 - 5 in the state pen. But between that, and having my car broken into by thieves so many times I lost track, and losing 10's of 1000's of dollars of tools, ham radios, CB radios, and various optics, there's nothing that p's me off as much as thieves. Hate 'em. And you just try to picture yourself working 2 weeks per track on an album, and then recording it and polishing it and expecting to make maybe $5M on it, which would maybe be $800K per band member, and then a bunch of termites downloads the thing for free, and sales amount to $20K per band member, and you're getting paid less than auto workers for your time. Imagine that? Why would you make music for sale?
Re:It Would Be Great Fun... (Score:1)
Its stealing, termite. You take something that doesn't belong to you, its stealing. Duh...
Impact on torrent traffic? (Score:2)
I wonder if there's any visible impact on torrent traffic from this. Obviously torrents will continue working and many people will just go to another website, but there could still be a small short-term impact. Would be interesting to see.
Re:Impact on torrent traffic? (Score:3)
I wonder if there's any visible impact on torrent traffic from this.
If memory serves, kat.ph doesn't have a tracker, or if they do, they're one of several trackers per torrent. Also, because they're a public tracker, even if the tracker went down, most swarms would be able to continue for a while using DHT and other trackerless technologies. If kat.ph went down and remained down, by time the people who had files all had them seeded, the masses would move on to the next major public tracker, as was done with suprnova, mininova, demonoid, and depending on where you live, the pirate bay.
Why the open internet? (Score:1)
Why do we continue to use the open-net for things like this? All sites should be moved to I2P or free net. The transfers could be done via regular net, but the sites not. Doing this would solve the problem of a single point of failure for the 'list' and the constant whack-a-mole game that is placed, and solve the problem of traditionally slow speeds thru these types of anonymous proxies which would put off all but the hard core paranoid..
Its 2013, not 2003. It's time to change tactics.
A better solution needed (Score:3)
It now seems obvious that downloading torrents from a centralised website has had its day.
Countries all over the world are blocking access to trackers and taking away the domain names, and the centralised nature of trackers has always been a weak point.
What we need is for a major player, e.g. TPB, to step up the game and go TOR only (for website access - actual data transfer would still be over clearnet). By providing access via a TOR hidden service, you reduce or remove the possibility of the site being taken down, you provide a degree of anonymity for website operators and you have the added effect of educating the wider public about the private browsing benefits that TOR allows.