Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Being a european citizen, it is very frustrating knowing that pirating is illegal even though being a Netflix, HBO & Spotify customer. Pirating is a much bigger trend in EU & AUS than it is in the US, and I think that it mainly boils down to the US-based movie studios restricting and delaying access to content to non-US citizens. Some may think that this is acceptable, but I can't see how treating one customer differently from another is acceptable just because they have different nationalities. I'm paying exactly the same amount of money as the next US-citizen for the content, yet I am treated differently.
One other thing that troubles me is that there are higher quality content available via torrents than via the legal alternatives. Having invested in a 7.1 surround system and a 4K 3D Android TV, you would expect that the legal alternatives would have content available for such hardware, but they rarely do.
Personally I think it's absurd that the movie studios expect to be on the european market but treat those customers as second-hand customers, and I don't understand why the EU isn't doing anything about it. The EU and US relies on eachothers markets, yet music labels forces the Swedish-invented Spotify to restrict access to certain songs for non-US citizens.
I do acknowledge that some people are pirating because it's free, but I don't think that the general public does so. I'd be the happiest Netflix & HBO customer if I had the same content library as my fellow US friends.
https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-banned-from-using-piracy-and-t....
I prefer the term "sharing".
As you mention, intent is not always to avoid paying. Some people may want backups, may have lost their copy after paying for it, may be frustrated by DRM-laced copies that don't work on their PC/devices, the reasons you mentioned, etc...
Oh man, I used to have to reformat my computer regularly (like 3 times a year). There were several hardware issues, my house was struck by lightning, etc.
I swear every time I'd have to call windows, and be like "hey my key is not working" (I know it's because it was activated previously, but still). They would usually make me call and reset it or what have you.
Eventually, I just got sick of it. I torrented a cracked version and it worked like a charm.
I know people who do the same with video games. They'll get a "shared" copy first, then buy it if they like it.
Honesty, I'd argue most people would pay if they could (at a reasonable price), torrenting just makes all the barriers go away.
Or pay more, even, for a non-DRM-encumbered version; DRM stops people like you, but not crackers or the analog hole.
Thanks for sharing a good example.
punish the paying customer and hope for the best.
Precisely:
>I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
-Jack Valenti (former president of MPAA for 38 years), 1982 congressional hearing
Correct me if I'm wrong---I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited to do so over the weekend.
To me it hasn't been proven yet how the argument for p2p copyright laws is any different than a hypothetical argument for let's say drinking, should we make drinking illegal because some people end up harming others because of it and hence any positive/neutral experience derived from it denied to us and overshadowed in the darkness of legality.
Whether or not copyright systems make sense or not is another discussion entirely. Irrelevant even given it has to be changed via Congress by strong, voter push and/or more bribes than pro-copyright groups. If talking laws and metaphors, I focus on what is rather than should be.
Under this definition loaning a book or movie to a friend is sketchy.
The sharing model is rampant as individuals, it only became a problem when the internet made it so strangers could share without much of a thought that they were even doing so.
But I seriously have to ask myself how borrowing a DVD from my friend differs from torrenting it instead. Perhaps the only difference is that only 1 copy can be watched at a time? Do we need a file loaning service?
I cant remember the specifics on loaning angle. I'd just not advertise that I did. Your comment reminds me that i need to fo a refresher on this stuff's grey areas in case the wording needs to be modified.
Sharing is the first moral many of us are taught.
Such morals should instead incite those who possess them to act as a democracy to reform the complex and corrupt system. Like we did fighting thjngs like SOPA. So far, almost no action toward elected officials backing up alternatives you suggest people want while they put strong effort onto other issues. I think this means majority of the US just doesnt care that much. And quite a few oppose us hoping to be next to get rich with a monopoly or maintain good portfolios.
As you noted, copyright laws respect many legally protected activities, like sharing media and holding local displays. The law is pretty clear and I think that is why we don't see many cases about the topic.
Oh yeah, I can see that. Might help get the laws changed if more people realize how absurd they are. :)
Yeah, not always, but very often. Everyone here is trying to downplay this, but I would say >80% of people (disclamer: pulled from my behind) torrent simply because it's free and if they can easily obtain it free rather than paying, then they will. The argument that people pirate because the paid options are shit, and if they were as convenient as torrents people would just pay for them, is rendered moot with the Steam counterexample. Content distribution is much more well advanced and convenient in games compared to movies, and people still pirate en masse.
Of course, all of us are really just talking out of our collective asses until we can cite figures from a study.
I recently purchased a Google Play Music subscription, despite having 10^6 "pirated" songs on my HDD. Why ? Because they have a reasonable price, cool UI and artwork, convenience of listening anywhere, and the AI bot that helps me find new music I might be interested in. All of those things dont exist in pirate land.
There is also the argument that a large portion of those people would never have paid for your content in the first place even if it wasn't available for free through piracy, that most of them shouldn't even be considered a part of your customer base to begin with because they simply aren't willing or aren't able to pay for it.
So? If you make a product you usually pay a lot of attention to price it in a way that your target market can afford. The people that can't pay for it aren't supposed to get it for "free" (if you everyone accepted this logic capitalism as we know it would crumble). I say this as someone who pirates something every now and then but I don't have to pretend that I'm somehow righteous when I do it. I do it for the same selfish reasons everyone else does even if they like to pretend otherwise.
This is why companies like Valve practically ignore piracy altogether and instead focus on delivering as much value as possible to actual paying customers at prices they're willing to accept (focusing on exactly what you said smart businesses should). Contrast that to those companies that, blinded by the sheer number of people pirating their products, waste money and time in a futile effort to combat piracy by placing draconian DRM schemes on their products, that end up resulting in the pirated versions offering a superior user experience when all is said and done. A sweet irony if I ever saw one.
[1] I used to be a heavy pirate myself when I was in high school, but these days I regularly pay for content that's priced fairly and delivered in a way that's not user-hostile, and simply treat everything else as if it never existed in the first place.
I thought that it has been economically proven that digital goods such as mp3 downloads have zero value, since each additional copy costs the manufacturer 0.
I think standard economic thought defines value in terms of preferences.
Such that the value that something has to me is the supremum of how much I value any of the things I would give up in order to have it.
So, if I am willing to purchase an mp3 for $1, then I value it at at least $1. If I would also be willing to purchase it for $2, then I value it at at least $2.
If I value it at $2, and it is for sale at $1, then I would gain $1 of value in that transaction.
If the seller is willing to sell it at any price over $0.50 , then that is how much they value (not) selling it.
So then, in this transaction I would gain $1 in value, and they would gain $0.50 in value.
I think this is the standard way to think about it.
It's just that they're worth a lot more when corporations lobby governments to make copying them illegal.
How about the first copy? That cost "0" too?
If not, are you suggesting the first buyer pay full price and everyone else get it for free?
Steam is usually used as the example of how better distribution results in less pirating...but not all games are available through Steam or "as easily" obtained as through Steam.
Netflix is also a good example. Most people I knew who used PTP were:
1) In regions Netflix doesn't support or doesn't "properly" support (see: UK above)
2) Watching movies that weren't even available through Netflix.
With the death of "game demos" I pirate most of my games. I also purchase most of those games. If game demos were such a thing - the games I did not purchase were games I'd never have bought. Which is very consistent with the "typical pirate argument of trying to make themselves feel righteous".
There are (of course) people who will download for free because they can but the pirates who actually talk about pirating seem to always have other, "reasonable" motives. Bypassing DRM limitations, removing ads, to demo something/see if it is worth paying for, or because pirating is the only way to even obtain the material. They don't even have the option of paying for it if they wanted to.
How could pirating hurt sales if the person pirating can't even purchase the damn thing?
The problem is that right now the EU isn't one copyright market - each EU country is a separate market, with a tonne of legacy exclusive distribution deals in place. If the EU was a single market, it would be the same size or bigger than the US market and would probably get better attention.
The EU is working on it, it just moves at the speed of bureaucracy (and of course each country has lobbyists in the local media which has those legacy exclusive distribution deals resisting it)
Here's the page on copyright harmonization: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/copyright
And check the "Geo-blocking" and "Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement" headlines here hhttp://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/digital/
Yes, it would. That's the whole point of the Euro currency and the long-term goal of the EU.
And that's the main reason a lot of people thought the quick expansion of the EU towards the east (or even the south) was a mistake - if you have a common market and a common travel area, but wildly differing economies, you create strife.
It's not like they have "spend money on advertising" as a terminal value. They spend money on advertising because advertising makes money.
The problem is that they require a payment method from a country by having residence there, that alone prevents abuse in the overwhelming majority of situations.
For the record, I am one of those cases (technically I'm a resident in three countries, potentially 4 next year), so I'm pretty much aware of the details of it.
I would guess the speed is more limited by 27 governments having to agree on everything.
The largest studios could, in theory, go to the EU with a proposal for how they would like a single market for movies and music to work. They won't because they like the ability to have differentiated prices. Having to sell a movie in Sweden for the same price as in Slovenia translates directly to lost profit. Selling in Slovenia at Swedish prices results in lower sales figures and more piracy. So I doubt the big players are all that interested in help the EU on this one.
So, I just looked up the word "bureaucracy" in a dictionary and it says "a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.". I always thought that was what a technocracy was.
The secondary definition is "excessively complicated administrative procedure, seen as characteristic of bureaucracy" which is the only usage I can remember seeing.
Bureaucracy comes from the French word "bureau", that means office. It names the way things are organized in an office, and was created for private offices, only adopted for governments later.
It came into English in the early 19th century, carrying a similarly negative connotation. The connotations have shifted back and forth somewhat since then.
Still, it seems that it's never been primarily used to talk about private offices in English or French; the primary use has always referred to governments.
I used to be a Netflix/Hulu subscriber before they've banned proxy access to their content. Lately I tried to buy various TV streaming services but they did a great job in banning VPNs. This is where I stopped believing they have a good faith.
Last I was there, Astrill seemed to be the way to go. But the situation evolves.
There also are many smaller details that makes torrent more attractive, like being able to watch the movie offline, HD with low bandwidth, subtitle choice, etc.
Netflix is a good step, and of course the movie industry will use it as "no excuse" argument against piracy. Meanwhile you still have other issues about net neutrality and people using VPN when they can.
Legally, I think they usually make a stricter claim than that: You are purchasing access to the content, but only using the method that you paid for. If you buy the DVD, you aren't licensed to rip it and play the content from files (unless you live somewhere with medium-shifting laws that provide that right).
Further, say that you own a copy in some format, and you torrent an equivalent quality copy. What they'll actually go after you for is the redistribution of tiny chunks of the file to other people in the torrent swarm, because it's easier to prove that you took part in unauthorized redistribution than to prove that you didn't have the right to access the content in the format that you torrented.
Oh, and the ability to keep my kids tablets in airplane mode (triple the battery life!) and still let them watch their favorite shows/movies on a long road trip is definitely worth the extra effort.
Nope, wouldn't expect that. It'll come slowly, and apparently very grudgingly. It took a decade or more to be able to get flac downloads commonly available. For years music downloads were low bit rate crap mp3. Pirate it or buy the CD were the only options for quality. It was like they actively wanted us to be searching for torrent sites.
Nope, it is even funnier because most probably you're paying more than US citizen. 1eur>1usd on exchange market (and it is a long trend) and - correct me if I'm wrong - price levels are the same for US and EU (ie. 9usd in US, 9eur in EU)?
Tax rates on netflix vary, in both rate and whether they are collected at all.
Don't count the taxes as part of what you're getting back, it's very different and beyond the scope of this article :)
[1]: http://www.csn.se/en/2.1034/2.1036/2.1037/2.1038 [2]: http://www.su.dk/english/
CSN money is not conditional based on your family's income, has no relationship with the military, and is not earmarked for any particular purpose. The only requirements are that you can't get more than 6 years total (a relatively recent restriction), that you pass 75% of your courses, and that you don't personally earn more than ~160k SEK/year (the exact amount varies, but has an inverse proportion to how much your study).
During high school you get a smaller amount, but then it's only conditional on attendance, not your academic results.
Wikipedia disagrees: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pell_Grant
> Applicants must also sign a statement certifying that they will use the aid only for education-related purposes,
And
> Males between the ages of 18 and 25 must register with the Selective Service.
Not saying you're wrong, and I'd definitely love it if Wikipedia is wrong on this.
> Pell does not care how old you are, for example
CSN doesn't either AFAIK, only how many times you've been paid. According to WP Pell seems to have a similar policy.
Personal expenses while you are in school (including rent) count as an education-related purpose. See: http://pell-grants.org/what-the-pell-grant-money-can-be-appl...
> Males between the ages of 18 and 25 must register with the Selective Service.
These people are required to register for selective service anyway, though federal financial aid is used as a stick to enforce this requirement. See: https://www.sss.gov/Registration-Info/Who-Registration
> CSN doesn't either AFAIK, only how many times you've been paid. According to WP Pell seems to have a similar policy.
I think I am unclear on the difference between the "student allowance" and "study aid".
On the other hand, however, I don't see how this frustration can serve as a justification for copyright infringement. This seems to flow from one of two premises: 1. the studios made it, therefore I have a right to watch and enjoy it or 2. the studios have made something available to some people, therefore I have a right to see it too. And I don't see how either is even arguably true from either a moral or legal perspective. After all, we're talking about movies and TV shows here, not food and water. (It would be different, of course, if the studios were targeting traditionally disadvantaged minority groups. But I don't think there's any credible argument that there is something akin to, e.g., racial discrimination going on here.)
And let's not kid ourselves, the copyright holders are not stupid. They are very well aware that this is a problem, maybe not the reason, but at least a problem. Yet they keep up with these practices, throwing millions at copyright organizations such as MPAA & RIAA every year to build up some form of scare tactic against normal, law abiding citizens across the globe and creating lots of unnecessary tension between ISPs, governments and enterprises like Google instead of addressing the problem at hand.
There are of course edge cases where I think torrenting copyrighted content is OK. For example, my PC doesn't have a CD reader and I bought the game "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" years ago, still have the CD but no way to install the game on my PC, so... I torrented it.
If I look at content available at these services, I feel more of a third or fourth hand customer. And that is the reason I have left them for good. Scorched earth is what is left for me.
But you would not even have to go to these streaming "services". I really love my classic tv shows. Take for example "Quincy, M.E.". I love this show and would pay good money to have it available at home (in DVD or BluRay format). And for my significant other have the synchronized version. The whole series was synchronized for German TV. But is it available as DVD? No it isn't.
Our only chance i to wait for the reruns on any network, program our HDD recorder and ripp the low quality TV stream.
If I would still be illegally downloading, I would already have the whole show at home, with self printed DVDs and such. But being a good and law abiding citizen I am pretty much fed.
так....
Netflix' official standpoint is that you are paying for access on n screens at a time at x resolution (e.g., FullHD), not for the content.
This is of course complete nonsense — of course we are paying for content — and I have no qualms whatsoever in downloading something available on Netflix US via some torrent if it is not available in my local Netflix catalogue.
I don't and neither does Bram Cohen. Regardless, I agree with your overall notion. The times have changed and customers want a better solution to quality entertainment. Restricting access and content will lead to piracy. Vice-versa will lead to less overall piracy.
Everyone I know who pirates is doing it because it's free. Although almost all of them pay for something (Netflix, Amazon Prime or Nowtv), they just don't pay for all of them. And these are all grown adults in their 30s.
Say you pay for Netflix and Amazon, but they don't have everything. So GoT has to come from somewhere... And movie releases are still over-delayed to streaming services. You see a DVD in the shop? You can stream it for free rather than wait 6 months more for it to maybe turn up on Netflix.
Also if you enter the argument of entertainment being a luxury, and that a DVD should cost around $15, you will have people pirating because they certainly don't want to spend so much for watching a movie at home. There will be people arguing over the holywood money machine and how much a movie really is worth.
The explanation is that distribution rights are sold by territory because most old school distribution channels are by territory. And content is usally financed by the sale of rights (usually before anyone has seen anything).
But streaming is becoming more and more important and those deals will be reviewed.
To give you an example, when Netflix opened in my country, House of Cards wasn't in the catalogue. That's a show produced by Netflix. But that was because Canal + Afrique held the rights. A few months ago, it was added. Most likely because the contract expired or because they renegociated.
Fortunately, Netflix is putting a lot of effort in their own content to prevent exactly this quagmire of regional licensing. They are well aware that it is one of the biggest complaints their customers have.
Oddly enough, the new Star Trek series will actually be on Netflix worldwide except for North America — usually it is only the other way around except for the local-language content.
I am worried though about Netflix (and any competitors) assembling catalogues for each separate country based on what people in that country like on average. I didn't sign up for Netflix to get Dutch soap opera's and reality shows, and I do not like being limited to a catalogue focussed specifically on what the average Dutchman wants. There is whole world out there; so what if I want to watch Austrian cooking television or Japanese game shows? Just fix the damn licensing mess already!
I personally don't think this is true. There are significant amounts of content on Netflix that are only available in regions such as NLD and GBR that are not available in USA / CAN (Orphan Black comes to mind off the top of my head).
The problem definitely goes both ways.
USA: 4100 films, 1154 series
Netherlands: 1475 films, 382 series¹
I can't see how you can imagine that having a discussion about this with someone high up in the movie industry acting like you do would do any good. You'd just be shunned. It's better to be realistic and acknowledge the fact that the majority of torrent traffic is related to copyright infringement, and that it is a problem and the only way to solve it is to make the legal alternatives better and more attractive to the general public. Of course, the BitTorrent protocol is not and should never be illegal, but you have to acknowledge that it is the protocol that currently plays the biggest part in infringing copyrighted content.
It's about updating torrents via DHT mutable items. Meaning that torrent sites could share their public key and simply seed an .rss file containing their indexed torrents (a mapping of infohash -> descriptions). When they want to share new torrents, they simply update their torrent to a new .rss file and consumers will hop on that new swarm.
We need more support to get this into a standard BEP and also into torrent clients.
I know there are other networks (IPFS, I2P, Freenet, ZeroNet, etc..) that do this, but BitTorrent is the most widely used and I think implementing functionality in the torrent ecosystem itself would have much more effect.
I wonder what it would take to transfer a large index from KAT or torrentz to it, and start popularizing it.
The convenience factor is basically, if you want some content (movie, game) it's a simple search and download away (streaming torrents seem to be gaining traction). No legal alternative offers this level of convenience.
I suspect piracy will become harder for the average user due to three letter agencies making life harder for pirates, but it won't stop the determined ones.
Speaking of determined torrenters, Peter Sunde, the founder of TPB had something interesting to say about torrent aggregators being shut down [1]. The idea is that even though downloading torrents itself is p2p, finding the magnet links is still centralized and that is an area that needs to be decentralized.
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-piracy-scene-nee...
I have ALSO pirated everything I ever bought until very recently.
DVDs included region forcing, and forced, unskippable adverts and copyright notices. Netflix, .mkvs and .mp4s just have the programme and titles.
Usually someone, somewhere, has put effort into making a good quality rip saving me the time doing so, along with synchronised and corrected subtitles.
For games, the major studios still feel annoying and restrictive copy protection is the way to go. I don't want a £30 game that requires me juggling collections of plastic disks, or an always on net connection to a licensing server they may turn off in a year or two anyway. So the noCD, no licensing server release is a necessary download for me. I tend to mostly buy GOG and independent studios putting out DRM free things these days. EU IV being about the only exception I can think of in the last 2 years.
I'm not a fan of being data mined on how often and how far I read ebooks, listen to audiobooks. So first thing on buying a new ebook from Amazon is rip the protection to read it on my non-amazon reader. First thing to do with an audible book is convert to mp3. If either of those became unfeasible or impossible I would stop buying.
Finally for music, we've had attempts with copy protections and Sony rootkits, but mostly my music collection is complete and they gave up on silly DRM attempts. I only need to rip new stuff that's not available in FLAC.
Succinctly summed up by this rather old image: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4032/4369403959_fe90464b27_o....
Pirating helps to sell their products, think of it as free advertisement, this is the thing movie studios, music producers and book publishers don't understand. I know folks that for each pirated book they keep buy a physical one, also friends that pirated some movie and by a word of mouth advertise to go and see it in the cinemas, music to buy and go to the concerts etc. If you can't see the product how would you know if it's worth buying? Therefore someone who pirates would never pay anyway and chasing them would make you less money not more!
I don't understand why it is so hard for the studios to offer their whole catalog online and let me download a movie for a buck or two. Add the possibility for user-submitted subtitles and you have an excellent competitor to piracy.
If streaming services had everything, people would pick one based on price and quality of the actual streaming gladly pay more than current prices are. There is no change in hell that customers pay for Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Amazon at the same time.
There is obvious business solution for this. Content producers should provide their shows and movies for all streaming services for same price. Streaming services would just exist to stream data and distribute payments from customers.
Current business model of streaming is working against "the internet" and torrents are way to get around it.
No idea if that is true or how many people are putting that much money for contents on monthly basis. Compared to the streaming services this is quite much and with that money you could get a monthly subscription to several services.
So instead if it's not on Netflix or Amazon (god their TV app just got even worse) I often just fire up the VPN and stream a torrent. I've paid for the shows but I just don't want to rent another cable box or deal with casting from mobile. Programs like Popcorn Time are great in that you can bookmark your favorite shows, see which episodes you've already watched, search for new shows from a Netflix-type interface, and watch in 720 or 1080 on demand.
If there was a legit option like this from Comcast (heh, that'll be the day) I'd gladly pay double what you pay to rent a cable box. It's really just that simple and it works much better than any Comcast gear despite being a hacky program with several forks and questionable approach.
I don't hold any illusions about my entitled attitude. I understand that my convenience and preferences don't get to dictate the business policies of content creators and distributors and I know that just because I pay for stuff doesn't mean it's legal to violate copyright in this manner...
...but I don't feel that what I'm doing is particularly immoral even if not particularly legal. At some point I just take stock of how I do things and keep an eye out for better ways to do them. If I can find a way to improve my spare time and how I spend it, I don't mind finding my own ways to do so.
Nowadays it seems more of a hassle to pirate content, especially here in the UK with torrent sites getting blocked by ISPs (necessitating a need for VPNs or proxy services) along with having to constantly find new sources for torrents as authorities crack down on sites like KickAssTorrents.
I find it easier to just subscribe to Netflix and Spotify, but maybe I have more disposable income now that it doesn't bother me.
I never had a Netflix subscription because I don't have a good enough connection to stream high quality videos - Additionally, I rewatch some series a lot. It's simply more convenient to have them on my hard drive.
The US gov is running around the internet policing copyright for very specific companies, acting like they're doing the world a favour. Calling everybody thieves. Threatening people with fines and prison. "You can just pay for a Netflix/Spotify subscription"... well, no, not everywhere and it's certainly not as convenient for everyone.
Sidenote: Spotify's content bootstrapping was a dump of music from TPB. If it weren't for piracy, we wouldn't have spotify. The system is broken.
I am totally okay with paying a monthly flat fee for films and series (mostly watch once and be done with it).
I am also okay with paying once for a game and not keeping the downloaded files around after I finish it. Rather, I let Steam or the HumbleStore handle that, and if these go belly-up one day, I don't feel like I've lost much; the value I get in hours of entertainment is in balance with what I spend there, and I am okay with the limited risk of losing access to some games.
For music on the other hand, I absolutely want the files on my hard disk. Music is replayed over and over, and losing access to what is essentially the soundtrack of your life is something I would like to avoid. I'd love a service that allows me to download, say, up to 8 hours of music (any genre, in an open lossless format) a month from a universal catalogue for a reasonable flat fee (like Netflix), but this simply doesn't exist. It is either streaming or paying way more than I find reasonable.
Interestingly, for games the existence of reliable, affordable legal channels for digital delivery means that I have not felt the urge to illegally download any game at all for over a decade, and the same seems to hold true for many colleagues and friends. People are totally fine with downloading films, series, and music for a variety or reasons, but why bother with games? The money you pay, say, Steam or the HumbleStore seems to flow back to the developers in a fairly fair fashion, there are good deals to be had, and it is all very convenient — for games it just seems like a solved problem.
However, they aren't solved when it comes to archival. It's getting constantly worse with the rise of online-only games with closed source, undistributed servers. A subject for another day, though.
Sadly it seems to be coming back, with all the recent Denuvo garbage.
IIRC, the cracks for the old always-online UPlay DRM basically contained a MVP implementation of their servers.
And of course, you have MMORPG "emulators", but those take a lot of effort, only come out for ridiculously popular and lasting games, and end up rewriting most of the game logic based on speculation. So the end result is more like Minetest vs Minecraft than cracked Assassin's Creed vs legit Assassin's Creed.
MPAA would prefer we didn't remember that.
"The proponents of this myth seem to want to suggest an analogy: Hollywood was built by “outlaws”; now Hollywood has become the incumbent, seeking to stop the next generation of “outlaws”. But this is a false equivalence. The Pirate Bay (or Megaupload, etc.) isn’t producing its own movies. Recognizing exclusive rights to a creative work doesn’t prohibit anyone from creating their own works. Stopping someone from offering copies, especially complete, verbatim copies, of a work is not anti-competitive."
from : http://www.copyhype.com/2012/05/was-hollywood-built-on-pirac...
I don't know enough of the period to know who's right, but looking at the about page tells me all I need to know about the independence of view: "... representing creators across the spectrum of copyright disciplines. He represents the Copyright Alliance in all copyright and related policy issues in a variety of forums". So choose your preferred flavour of spin?
It's well known Edison was an evil bastard for instance. You've only to read a little, especially on Tesla, to realise that. So there's little doubt that moving to Hollywood and escaping Edison's thugs was a good thing. The fact remains he had the movie industry of the time tied up with patents. I think it was actually Edison who pirated a movie, and ended up putting someone out of business in the process.
Initially I believed in streaming my music, but when they went public I lost half my playlists and has gone back to "files on disk" ever since. It is remarkable how difficult it is to pay for music, I wish we would see more sites like Bandcamp.
This explains why Sailing by Christopher Cross ends with the beginning of Minstrel Gigolo like the rip I downloaded from Napster...
For me, convenience + technical and quality advantages are a major factor. Much more than having it for free.
It's much easier to buy and download games on Steam or watch movies on Netflix nowadays.
I would happily pay a significant multiplier on what I pay for Netflix in order to legally stream any reasonably popular movie released within the past few years, plus a decent selection of older ones. IE, roughly what you would find at your average Blockbuster 10 years ago. (A similar selection of TV shows would be nice too.) Things may be improving, but they're definitely not there yet.
So, it strikes me as odd that people here only consider pre-pay streaming options and ignore other viable options as they rant about their rationalization for torrents.
Feels bad man. Having access to a cracked version of Photoshop at 13 years old changed my life.
Meanwhile, anybody who tried to sell a simpler or even better product at a lower price was forced out of the market by the "free" copies of Microsoft that were widely available.
The same "free" software gave Microsoft an advantage in the platform wars (e.g., Windows vs Mac) as well. Though most of the mainstream software was available for both platforms, people would buy a computer that could run the software that they could get for "free," often by copying the disks at work.
I remember a conversation with a friend. He was buying a new PC. I suggested getting a Mac (around 1996). He said: "The Mac doesn't run AutoCAD." I suggested that he couldn't afford AutoCAD anyway, and he just gave me a wink and laughed.
I don't know how this applies to movies and music, i.e., what a "cheaper alternative" looks like. When I was a kid, we would never see a first-run movie. Instead, we'd have to wait until it showed up at the discount theater, where we could see it for a buck. Today, there may be no reasonable business model for providing a lower priced channel for content, because content competes with pirate content.
I have anecdata to support this, actually, though I won't name names. The company in question prided itself on the fact that bootleg copies were being sold for something like $5USD in (I think) Romania, whereas their competitors software was being sold for a few dollars less. For comparison, a single commercial license could set you back over $1000-$4000.
The way I see it, it's the same as offering free or next-to-nothing licenses to students. Not only can students not afford the software, you're competing for the mindshare and the number of people who put "I know how to use this software" on their resume.
The only guy i knew that had heard anything about Apple before the iPod craze was a hobby musician i grew up alongside. Once he reached college the first thing he did was buy himself a Macbook using the student discount.
Never mind that MS tries to argue that their products have a lower total cost of "ownership" for businesses, as potential employees are familiar with MS products by having used them already. Thus they require less training if hired.
I think there is even a statement from Bill Gates somewhere about how he would rather see people use unlicensed MS products than FOSS alternatives.
Never mind the number of companies that maintain steep student discounts. It sure has hell is not because of the goodness of their hearts.
I'm guessing fully decentralised and I've seen mentions of
* ipfs (https://ipfs.io/)
* zeronet (https://zeronet.io/
* Riffle (anonymous communication)
Couldn't we leverage bits of the blockchain technology?
Since it's a fully distributed shared database where writers don't trust each other and no middleman is trusted either?
(edit:formatting)
There are already magnet links and DHT which is distributed shared database. The only issue is a search function, which is much easier to implement and works much faster when it's done in a centralized form.
Ratings are important indeed, but blockchain doesn't make them not gameable. For this you need some working web of trust and oh how I wish we had one already (yes yes I know the technology is there and it 'works', but it must work like an e-mail works for an average user to really be popular, I want to be warned not to buy from given ebay seller because friend of my friend of my friend had a bad experience and because I assign high weight to this friend opinion, well that went OT a bit..). On torrent sites there's a thin web of trust of website owners moderators and then trusted uploaders, we could do so much better.
Not to make a separate post, small ask HN: any interesting active projects trying to build such user friendly distributed WoT?
When releases are made to the decentralized torrent repository they are signed by the release group.
Whether or not a particular signer is an official member of The Scene is decided by consensus of The Scene. The web of trust is very small. Everyone involved is tech savvy, motivated, and already knows each other.
From time to time updates to the list of known groups and their keys may be posted, authenticated by a multisignature scheme.
Then clients can automatically discover who's trustworthy and filter on that. No technical skill or effort required of the general public.
I think Riffle may be the most sensible option I've seen for sharing magnet links or torrent files. In theory, Riffle doesn't require a large number of servers and doesn't demand unreasonable client bandwidth to deliver protection against a very powerful adversary.
It's just an academic system with a basic proof of concept implementation. Quite a bit of work needs to happen to turn it into a usable system.
For the data itself Riffle is too expensive. Something with a weaker threat model that costs less resources is needed, such as Aqua or Herd. Those systems are also academic at this point.
You can get away with hosting a client-heavy JavaScript interface on ipfs as well, but the URL will be ugly making you reliant on Google not dropping you (central point of failure).
And then there is incentive - even if you manage to anonymously take Bitcoin for ads or what have you, someone will eventually take all the work and strip them. The whole thing will have to be a labor of love. Any lovers out there?
How many people use google to start a search for torrents?
I stopped doing so because the higher results would normally be clickbait links
I did think of another issue: search, sort, voting, etc. Ethereum is too expensive, too slow, and possibly not capable of that kind of large data set computation - not aware of any capable alternative.
A million times this. The music industry figured out how to sell DRM free music files years ago and ever since then I haven't pirated a single album. If the video entertainment industry would do the same, my torrenting days would be over.
But digital piracy, that's amoral. Sigh. I like seeing the contortions of logic people pull off to try and explain how these things are different.
Mice. :)
Starting a torrent site using the HTTP & DNS protocols is a lost cause. HTTP can be worked around, but DNS is very problematic. I think we'll see more and more torrent sites show up that leverages IPFS[1] or ZeroNet[2], but the second the main browser vendors adds support for something like IPNS (decentralized alternative to DNS), torrent sites will have won the battle with MPAA, RIAA and other IP and DMCA enforcers. Considering the grip that the movie studios has around the vendors, it is very unlikely that it will happen.
[1] - https://ipfs.io/
[2] - https://zeronet.io/
Freenet has at least one site that lists magnet hashes and inserts some of the torrent content directly into the network.
People have different views on this of course, but I think we all can agree that it needs a major overhaul to make the majority happy (the legal system that is).
I see the mention of double standards but it seems very odd to me that someone would support copyright infringement (grabbing films etc.) and deem it acceptable yet we'd balk at someone either:
a) not paying for software we were selling, or b) not paying for a software service we were selling.
It doesn't add up.
Whose to say that all the torrents were copyright infringement. Or even that copyright infringement laws applied equally in all parts of the world.
Google also provides links to torrents. That's the double standard.
You mean complying with the local laws? That seems to be something that they have to do.
I pay for content whenever I can but those trackers provide me with stuff I mostly never get anywhere else (and in the format and size I want) even if I want to pay.
looking at google (and any other web search engine)
Copyright in America has been extended beyond reasonable restriction, driven by the MPAA and RIAA who began chipping away at the net as we knew it, and continue to do so today. All of this at the behest of firms which continue to use the most interesting of accounting techniques to show losses, while simultaneously doing everything in their power to make it harder for people to comfortably and easily access media (starting from the time of CDs to today).
All this on top of the fact that studies show that torrenting movies don't indicate lost sales and actually working as a signal to indicate the popularity of a product.
all this on the forum where it's reasonable to expect people to know the value of the network effect.
"Which torrent site with access to popular songs and movies over the past 5 years has been the best, meaning the one you use most?"
My candidate responds and says "Pirate Bay" or "Kat".
If I have several candidates, this guy will be the last possible choice if every candidate is qualified because I'm assuming he's okay with using copyrighted works without paying.
Consider these scenarios -- stealing in your opinion?
- go to a restaurant, eat a meal, then leave without paying (you enjoyed something you were supposed to pay for but you did not pay)
- use public transit and not pay for the ride
- hail a taxi then run away when you arrive at the destination and not pay
If I asked a candidate "would either of these 3 scenarios above be okay?" -- would they expect me to hire them if they said one or more would be acceptable?
If I asked the candidate "how many times have you enjoyed a copyrighted film or recording -- and not paid?" -- 99.99% sure that every candidate would say 'never' even if they'd done so dozens of times.
Why would they lie to me about that? "If I tell the hiring manager I watch, listen to copyrighted stuff without paying, he might think that was wrong and not hire me, so I have to lie."
"It's not stealing, I just disagree with copyright laws/distribution channels/etc."
No it's stealing.
But then again, I wonder why trackers are seen as illegal? They're nothing more than what a router is.
Regardless of whether what Torrentz was doing legal or not; what you do doesn't even have to be actually illegal to be shut down if your opponent has bigger pockets.
Is that not okay?
I'm just playing with thoughts, interested in seeing what people think.
Article 5
Exceptions and limitations
1. Temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process and whose sole purpose is to enable:
(a) a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or
(b) a lawful use
of a work or other subject-matter to be made, and which have no independent economic significance, shall be exempted from the reproduction right provided for in Article 2.
.. explicitly exempts the copies made by routers in the course of their operation.
There is a gray area where you'd host a tracker that serves legal content but some copyrighted material gets through. The DMCA safe harbor should take of that. But most of these torrent frackers are so obviously designed to host pirated stuff that dmca won't cover them.
I suppose you're the admin? How sure are you that "servers never go down"?
KAT and torrentz were both usable without Javascript, let's not take a step backwards in usability.
https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki/Unofficial-s...
Is even that illegal? Publishing hashes of copyrighted material?
Calm down, we're not on reddit. Having a different opinion doesn't make one a troll.
I bet it is not active this time next month.
He's outright telling us that he's a troll.
"I didn't steal any copyrighted material, my site just helped people who WANTED to enjoy the benefit of copyrighted material that was SUPPOSED to be paid for but didn't pay. So I'm in the clear!"
NO. Torrentz "Drove the getaway car", taking thieves to where the crime was committed.