Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested • Hacker News Board

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#111

Post by 6nf » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:04 AM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #81

ikeboy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone doing things that affect the US is automatically subject to US jurisdiction. But whether they can be extradited depends on the particular treaty the country in question has with the US.

Are there any good examples of when this works the other way around? A US citizen being extradited to another country for non-violent crimes? Something in tune of computer hacking or hosting a website? Other than drugs and murders, I have a hard time believing US govt to give out its citizens to third parties...

The USA will not extradite someone for a crime that is not also a crime in the USA itself.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#112

Post by mcyukon » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:13 AM UTC

2bitencryption wrote: post #101

ekianjo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you can't, all the content there is DRM'ed. I believe many people care about running their videos where they like. For example, Amazon video does not work at all on Linux because there is no DRM support there.

You're confusing streaming (renting) with purchasing. On iTunes, EVERYTHING is DRM free. If you purchase it, you get a mp4 (or mov), and that's it. No DRM. So nothing is stopping you from paying for much of this content legally.

Not quite, Music you buy on iTunes does not have DRM and will play anywhere you copy it too. However it has your name, Apple ID, and email embedded into the MP3 file and anyone you share the file with can use a tool like exiftool to look at the embedded info.

Movies are another thing, they appear to be DRM free as long as they are on a machine that is authorized with the purchasers Apple ID. Once copied to a computer that isn't authorized, the movie will either refuse to open or ask you to authorize the computer with the purchasers Apple ID because once again all your info is embedded into the file. And if that wasn't bad enough, if you try to play a iTunes bough movie on a external device that does not support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection) it will also refuse to play.

I got burned by this once. There once was a way to remove all the crap Apple puts in their movies, but the software that could strip it out hasn't been updated for ages now.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#113

Post by downandout » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:14 AM UTC

This will be interesting to watch. Torrent sites only host torrent files; I'm sure he'll argue that the DMCA requests were invalid because the people filing them didn't own copyright to the torrent files, which were the only thing that the site distributed. Where do we draw the line? Do we prosecute people for posting a magnet link? If a movie studio puts an MP4 of a not-yet-released film on its servers, is it illegal to link to it?

It will be an interesting case to watch if he takes it all the way to trial. I don't think it's nearly as open-and-shut as the DOJ would like everyone to believe every case it files is though.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#114

Post by tyjy011621 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:16 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #72

chj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean that Apple basically feeds every transaction information to Feds so that they can find this match?

Unlikely. KAT apparently had a Facebook page, so step one was serving Facebook with a search warrant demanding the list of IP addresses used to administrate that page. They likely then went to major companies like Apple, Google, etc. with search warrants for any billing activity (valuable as it comes with a cardholder name and address, usually) matching those IP addresses.

So he may have been fine by simply using a VPN?

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#115

Post by youngButEager » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:21 AM UTC

"Do you have a legal right to distribute this content?"

"No."

"Do you respect the people who spent their personal time and their money to make the content you distribute?"

"Yes of course."

"No you don't or you would get their permission first."

"I don't think whether I respect the creators or not has anything to do with making their content available, which is what I want to do."

"Will you please get their permission to distribute what they spent their time and money -- part of their life -- to create?"

"Nope, sorry. I'm distributing it for free. They can take a hike."

Real sad, these modern morals. Real sad. If you don't respect others, they ain't gonna respect you.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#116

Post by banana_giraffe » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:22 AM UTC

tpm wrote: post #35

msie wrote: post #22

So Bittorrent is decentralized but you need a centralized index of the available torrents? Is this correct? Can you find anything without a site like KAT? TIA.

Well there was btdigg, a DHT search engine, but it stopped working a few weeks ago. In theory, everyone connected to DHT could run queries himself, however I am not sure there is software to do that comfortably.

DHT doesn't support a keyword query. btdigg likely worked by looking for some large percentage of all DHT traffic and using BitTorrent to grab metadata of each torrent and running queries against a local database. Others could do it, but it requires bandwidth and time.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#117

Post by seanp2k2 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:24 AM UTC

blackflame7000 wrote: post #51

josho wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll bite. What makes you feel they are extorting consumers or price gouging?

Because they bundle 200 channels of crap with the 5 channels that you actually want forcing just about everyone to overpay for what they're receiving.

Hence the popularity of HBO Go. Showtime, Discovery, History, BBC are also working on theirs and have launched them in some countries. Sadly, Comcast refuses to make deals with most of them, so we can't e.g. Get a Discovery account because we already pay them through Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon despite a similar deal with nearly every other provider: https://www.discoverygo.com .

At least where I live, we get a choice between AT&T or Comcast, where AT&T is over land line DSL @768k not guaranteed, plus I'd have to pay for a phone line vs Comcast at up to 300mbit. Guess which I went with

Anything that accelerates the downfall of the toxic incumbents in the US is a win in my book.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#118

Post by seanp2k2 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:27 AM UTC

cm3 wrote: post #102

Is there a legal lesson to take from this when it comes to using cloud services hosted in the US where you can be affected by US laws just because you hosted a site with links to PDFs from Elsevier in an S3 bucket which itself happens to be pointing to a US datacenter? I haven't read it all, but there must be more to it than having used a US hoster that made the guy an easy litigation target.

Sounds like he "does business in the US" in that case. The laws haven't exactly kept up with modern times and the Internet, but DAs are happy to apply them liberally to Hoover up more cash whenever they can.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#119

Post by deftnerd » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:32 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #24

msie wrote: post #22

So Bittorrent is decentralized but you need a centralized index of the available torrents? Is this correct? Can you find anything without a site like KAT? TIA.

Distributed discovery is possible, but you quickly run into spam/noise problems. Centralized communities generally have features such as curation and deduplication (duplication is bad for torrents, as it causes peers to be spread across multiple slightly-different packages of files, reducing the available peers for both). It's not a technical problem, it's a social one.

The new steemit.com alternative to reddit is entirely powered by Ethereum on the backend. It works remarkably well and I think a similar system could power a decentralized torrent site.

It might even allow for benefits like people who post torrents get tipped every time someone upvotes.

It wouldn't stop the domain name wack-a-mole, but it would allow a server hosting the domain to just host static files that pull in data from a distributed ethereum based API.

It would also allow for local applications to operate that work off the same chain so people could still use the service even if the servers powering the HTTP based interfaces are shut down.

Re: Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

#120

Post by kayman » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 2:38 AM UTC

simbalion wrote: post #104

kayman wrote: post #5

The cat and mouse game continues. Remember The Pirate Bay? Why don't studios have their own similar sites where they allow free torrents of some shows and offer paid torrents. As a busy person, I'd much rather pay for something which guarantees: - high quality - no subtitles - no buffering issues - no viruses - click and play

Because the people who run those companies are literally extremely old, very ignorant about technology, and they do not care what people want, only what they perceive as the best money-making investment. They don't want change, they want business as usual, but their business model is dead, it's dead and rotting and they are going to accept that one of these days. Meanwhile pirates will keep stealing their worthless p…

I think you hit the nail on the head.

There is big generation gap on how the execs view the business model vs how their teenagers are using the product.

And as the new generation slowly takes over, the model will evolve.

Evolve or die right!