Torrentspy shutdown | Hacker News Reader

Torrentspy shutdown

torrentspy.com

15 pointsriobard34 comments

Friends of TorrentSpy,

We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.

The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.

Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.

It was a wild ride,

The TorrentSpy Team

"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like." - Justice William O. Douglas

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Huh. For one that goes down, ten will go up. Say what you want about copyright infringement, but too many people think that either it's OK to download or that they won't get caught. There's too big of a 'market' for illegal downloads.

The majority of downloads are things people would not have otherwise bought, for whatever reason. In those cases, no one is being hurt, and someone is being helped. The reason torrent sites keep popping up is the vast amount of good they do.

I think the exact same thing about GPL software. When I secretly embed it in my products, I'm using code that nobody was going to make money on anyways. But by putting a shiny UI on top of it, I can! Nobody loses, and I win.

i see this is a comparison of some kind, but it's not very clear. in the movie downloading case, who is being hurt when they wouldn't have bought it anyway? or if no one, why is it bad?

In the GPL case, who is being hurt, when the (a) the GPL violator wouldn't have contributed to the project anyways, and (b) the GPL provider wouldn't have collected any money?

It's not a vague comparison; it's a cliche, about copyvio apologists tending to want it both ways.

maybe the competition who followed the law. maybe no one. i'm not sure.

regardless of my opinion of who is hurt in the GPL case, i do have one in the movie downloading case. you seem to too, but you still won't say who is being hurt.

I don't accept your premise that the content downloaded on Torrent networks would otherwise not be paid for. So I'm going to go with, "the producers of content are hurt".

i said when it wouldn't be paid for anyway, then it doesn't hurt anyone.

this is obviously common because people download more stuff than they could afford.

So your argument is, even though a significant fraction of the market acquires a movie for free (the "vast good" the torrent networks do, in your view), the downloads don't depress the market value of the movie. In other words, when supply goes to "infinite", demand is unaffected.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

you still haven't answered the question and now you're sarcastically insulting me. that's called trolling.

You haven't asked a question since I answered your last specious one [1], but if you do, you can expect a response in the same tone.

[1] Specious point: because we cannot pinpoint the parties harmed by our unauthorized use of other people's content, we should assume, until proven otherwise, that any such use is harmless. So, because you can't reason through who is harmed by GPL copyvio (hint: the developer and the community), by your logic, we should stop enforcing the GPL.

the question is, quote:

In the movie downloading case, who is being hurt when they wouldn't have bought it anyway?

You haven't answered that.

Note also that I didn't say any of the stuff you are calling a specious point.

My answer remains as it was before: the producers of content, who sell to a dwindling number of honest buyers as a result of a growing number of dishonest freeloaders who believe content should be priced at its marginal cost. That's an externality of downloading and using content you would not otherwise pay for.

But I think this argument is a red herring. Fewer people today buy DVDs, now that they can be easily downloaded. Ten years from now --- barring the success of BD+ --- it will be trivial to download DVDs, and fewer people still will buy them. I don't think reasonable people dispute this fact.

The drop in content revenue comes directly out of the hide of the content producers. The issue isn't "the people who wouldn't buy the content anyways". The people who gorge themselves on content they wouldn't otherwise buy don't buy any content. It's ironic that they excuse themselves by taking yet more illicit content.

You keep bringing up things I haven't said, and not answering the question directly.

The fact is, if I download a movie that I would not have bought or rented if downloading was not available, then the producers do not have a dwindling number of buyers. They have the exact same number of buyers as if I didn't download it. I say this means no one was hurt. You still seem to disagree, but still have not pointed to an actual way anyone would be hurt.

I don't understand your argument. You seem to be saying that nobody is "hurt" by your download, because the marginal cost to the copyright owner is zero. But that's true of all downloads, not just yours. By your logic, how are producers ever compensated?

The answer to your question is, everybody is hurt, because every illicit download robs content creators of the incentive to create, and content producers of the incentive to distribute.

It's clear that in your case, when you download a movie you have no intention of buying, the stolen incentive is not great. But it is not zero: your download clearly helps establish the climate that facilitates other downloads (for instance, by drawing ad revenue to torrent search engines, or simply by creating the social proof that enables otherwise honest people to rationalize downloading).

In the end, even insults to the market as small as yours can become overwhelming when multiplied by the tens of millions of actors.

Suppose I don't tell anyone I've downloaded. Then it wouldn't create a climate. Let's assume for now, for clarity, that I do nothing to contribute to a climate. I never post to torrent forums, never help people get torrents, I never seed, I never upload, I never encourage anyone else to download, etc... I have not said anything to defend taking actions like those to create a climate that legitimizes downloading.

A download only "robs content creators of the incentive to create" if it prevents a purchase (or chance of a purchase). I am not defending all downloading, but I am saying there is a possible way of downloading that doesn't do this. If the condition I specified holds (would not have been bought either way), then the content creator isn't hurt. He gets just the same benefits an incentives as he would have in a world without that kind of downloading.

He may be hurt for a different reason, but not for lack of a purchase because, by premise, that purchase wasn't going to happen in any case.

What conclusions should be drawn from this is not obvious. Agreeing it is true is an important starting point before drawing conclusions.

I concede that you can define an arbitrary set of circumstances where, in a vacuum, you download a file without perturbing the universe in any measurable way. This isn't a starting point for drawing conclusions until you answer the question of "how those circumstances could ever occur".

Furthermore, it's not persuasive. You're avoiding the obvious fact that these innocuous downloads --- those that not only involve people who would not pay for content, but who are also so hygienic in their downloading practices that they do not contribute to the climate --- are a tiny minority of all downloads.

Finally, if we've really arrived at the crux of your argument --- that you can personally define one form of illicit download that imposes no costs on society --- then you've already lost the "debate" (such as it is). We're talking about Torrentspy, a huge contributor to the climate you're meticulously and artificially trying to avoid helping.

I didn't say anything about Torrentspy. Do you have any suggestions for what I can do in future discussions so that people listen more to what I actually say?

As for how common this type of downloading is, do you think if torrent sites didn't exist that even half of the downloads they facilitate would have been purchases instead? I don't think most downloaders have enough money to buy that much stuff.

Respectfully, you might start by remembering what you originally said, considering the plain meaning of your words, and the context in which you say them. In this case, you begun this thread by referring to the "vast amount of good" that "sites like" Torrentspy do.

Your other argument seems to be that we shouldn't concern ourselves with the costs inflicted by torrent sites, because they are small --- "not even half of the downloads" directly rob producers of revenue. I don't care to chase that argument down. If you believe your argument is persuasive, I have good news for you: you needn't bother paying your taxes, either. The marginal cost to the government of losing Bruce Lewis' tax revenue is very nearly zero. In fact, if everyone like you stopped paying taxes, we'd be no worse off. Under your argument's rubric, I can see no reason for us to trouble ourselves with the task of collecting taxes from Scheme web developers at all.

The downloads which hurt someone, and the ones which don't, can be separated.

How?

An individual user can think about what he would have bought without torrents, or not, and only download things he would not have bought anyway.

How do they do that without contributing to other infringements by people who would pay?

Contributing how? You can turn off seeding.

You ignored the other ways in which one illicit downloader contributes to other downloaders, and ignored the original point, which is that torrent sites like Torrentspy do not obviously do "vast amounts of good", as you originally claimed. Do you feel like your arguments are convincing?

>that torrent sites like Torrentspy do not obviously do "vast amounts of good"

Sure they do. They spread information for free, which is vastly good for the people that get it for free.

All freeloading is vastly good for the freeloaders, Kevin. Do we need to go through the pointless excercise of demonstrating all the instances of freeloading that you aren't comfortable with?

>Do we need to go through the pointless excercise of demonstrating all the instances of freeloading that you aren't comfortable with?

Go for it.

In the end, I am comfortable with the damage done to content producers. Since there appears to be no solution that will maintain the status quo, there's going to be dramatic change in the information industry. Already, smart commercial software developers sell a service rather than a binary executable. I love live music, soon I will be able to see more of it. There will be less uber-produced studio music, but I'm fine with that. I don't care for Hollywood blockbuster movies. They're ok sometimes, but I can handle a future without them. I watch TV with advertisements when it is available online; generally there are far fewer commercials than in the cable/broadcast version.

What do you think the solution to the problem is? Or describe your idealized where content producers are fairly compensated when technology allows for their works to be freely copied.

Which way could a careful user not avoid contributing to that kind of climate?

The "vast" good is the over 50% of downloads (my estimate) that wouldn't have been purchases anyway. Even if it's 5%, that's still a lot of value of movies/etc that people get that is good.

How is it "good" for people to get things they place a value of zero dollars on? How does that "good" outweigh the damage they do by disincentivizing content creation? If infinitessimally small costs are OK in the case of torrents, as you say they are, why vaccinate your children? That, too, imposes a tiny cost on everyone else. Why pay your taxes? Why not send spam? Your spam messages impose a tiny cost on everyone, compared to the major spam factories.

It's not a value of zero dollars. People don't buy (or rent) things when the price is higher than the value to them. If the price is $10, and the value to them is $3, they wouldn't buy it.

Your argument is incoherent. It observes that, at $70,000, a BMW M5 is priced too high for me to buy it. So, I should simply take it, blaming BMW for mispricing it.

If you take a BMW, now the car dealership has one less BMW. That's harm done.

If you download a movie, no one has one less movie afterwards.

It's like using a Star Trek replicator on a BMW, not stealing one.

The entire point of copyright is to prevent freeloading; see Posner. Without protection, a rational market bids the price of content down to its marginal cost, which is zero. In a market that prices content at zero, no content is created. Freeloaders hurt everyone.

The GPL case and the movie case are identical. The same argument can be made for both that a single marginal case of infringement imposes negligable costs.

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