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

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

#181

Post by blowski » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:21 AM UTC

c4n4rd wrote: post #179

blowski wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give some more examples of use cases where the torrent system serves users better than the legal distribution, but has nothing to do with money. My wife is Brazilian and I'm British, so we're trying to bring our son up as bilingual. Trying to find legally distributed mainstream kids films dubbed in Portuguese is incredibly hard. Sure, you can buy them in Brazil... and then they don't play on hardware in the UK.…

Note: You can find some shows on youtube. Cheers and abraços

Obrigado! We found a few kids shows - Palavra Cantada has a great channel on there, and there are a few Turma da Monica episodes.

But not films like Toy Story.

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

#182

Post by pmlnr » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:26 AM UTC

MrQuincle wrote: post #175

biot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person in the US who, for example, wants to watch all but the latest season of Game of Thrones can go to iTunes and, within seconds, purchase and start watching. And it will be in better quality than the torrent which was ripped off some TV broadcast and re-compressed. iTunes is available for both Windows and Mac (plus various iOS) and is super simple to use. And the one purchase lets you either stream or download…

I'm a person in (1) the Netherlands, who wants to watch the (2) latest season of the Game of Thrones, runs (3) Linux without Apple-software like iTunes, and who does not want to buy (4) single items but has subscriptions on a service like Spotify. The solution is not to educate the public, but to fix the distribution model.

This.

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

#183

Post by akerro » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:33 AM UTC

eggy wrote: post #145

Aside from the legal technicalities here, I mostly ponder the future of IP. I think Napster positively affected the music distribution world in the long run. I am not very black-and-white on this issue, however, since there are many contradictions by both sides. I read the majority of comments here on HN about dated business models, big corporation dislike, the old executives don't understand the new market, etc...,…

> I have not inquired directly, but I am guessing a number of the indie artist's supporters have downloaded a torrent or two. How do they morally distinguish the two, or how does anybody who is against copyright or property rights of IP?

I leach and seed a lot, I send a lot of donations and bug-fixes to opensource projects, indie developers and small music bands, buy indie games on gog and steam. This year I spend on voluntary donation ~£400 (in BTC). Does it count?

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

#184

Post by akerro » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:37 AM UTC

josho wrote: post #18

I find it interesting that a Polish man was charged by US laws, rather than under Polish law. I think he opened himself to US law by hosting the servers at one point in the US. Regardless, it is rather fascinating that his first visit to the US could potentially be from extradition.

> Artem Vaulin

Not Polish name, rather Ukrainian or Russian.

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

#185

Post by benbristow » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:39 AM UTC

bathory wrote: post #8

blackflame7000 wrote: post #2

If you think about it, torrent sites are like a modern day robinhood. They take profits from the rich and bring enjoyment to the poor.

i don't remember robin hood lining his pockets with truckloads of money he made off of the dodgy ads that all these torrent sites serve. and if its not ads, then it's the donations.

It's not cheap to supply all the bandwidth and infrastructure required for sites of KAT's magnitude. Also, the owners have got to eat as it's likely their full-time day job.

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

#186

Post by benbristow » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:40 AM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #143

So that's why KAT's been down all day. Two things: If you're going to build a torrent indexer, don't profit from it. Keep it alive yourself, with NO ads, just plain HTML and JS and images. Second: This is why I vastly prefer usenet.

But you have to pay to access Usenet - sort of defeats the point. And the whole retention thing sucks.

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

#187

Post by UweSchmidt » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:44 AM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #125

aerovistae wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't help much once the bitcoin is exchanged for another currency, thus linking the bitcoin address to his personal information if the authorities compel the exchange to provide the info.

Not only can bitcoin be tumbled, but think about the scenario where it is exchanged for another crypto-currency like litecoin then exchanged for bitcoin at another site, then exchanged for cash. Good luck tracing that.

But that's just more data, you just JOIN another table - the exchanges have a list of transactions, left column BTC adress, right column litecoin adress.

The difficult one-time work will be done when chasing terrorists. Everyone can be compelled to hand over data.

Crime is impossible.

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

#188

Post by olalonde » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:48 AM UTC

eggy wrote: post #145

Aside from the legal technicalities here, I mostly ponder the future of IP. I think Napster positively affected the music distribution world in the long run. I am not very black-and-white on this issue, however, since there are many contradictions by both sides. I read the majority of comments here on HN about dated business models, big corporation dislike, the old executives don't understand the new market, etc...,…

Lots of cognitive dissonance on HN regarding IP rights. Also, see any previous post where a Chinese company is accused of stealing IP or cloning apps.

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

#189

Post by Sacho » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 7:54 AM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #188

eggy wrote: post #145

Aside from the legal technicalities here, I mostly ponder the future of IP. I think Napster positively affected the music distribution world in the long run. I am not very black-and-white on this issue, however, since there are many contradictions by both sides. I read the majority of comments here on HN about dated business models, big corporation dislike, the old executives don't understand the new market, etc...,…

Lots of cognitive dissonance on HN regarding IP rights. Also, see any previous post where a Chinese company is accused of stealing IP or cloning apps.

Is it cognitive dissonance, or simply different people commenting? HN is not a hive mind.

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

#190

Post by youngButEager » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:01 AM UTC

ank_the_elder wrote: post #148

youngButEager wrote: post #115

"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…

"How much did Return of the Jedi cost to make?" "$32.5 million" "And how much was the revenue?" "$475 million" "So you had a $442.5 million profit!" "No, no. We had no profit - we use Hollywood accounting" Repeat for Forrest Gump, Spider-Man, etc. Real sad, these modern morals. Real sad. If you don't respect others, they ain't gonna respect you.

You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone. Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing from them.

You folks are young. If you're lucky enough to learn some of these things, the fact that a lot of bad karma will suddenly disappear from your life and things will go shockingly smoothly -- will only be the dessert. The real banquet will be knowing that you went through a time when you made bad decisions but by a stroke of genius, realized you were actually hurting someone (financially in this case) and were able to set aside your selfish wants on their behalf.

One of the best things you will discover is this: when a person is making bad decisions in one part of their life, they're rarely able to confine that bad decision making to just one part of life -- they're making bad decisions across the entire spectrum of their behavior.

That was a cool lesson to learn. I had to become in charge of a lot of young techies to discover it. A near-karma-free life is waiting for you guys. Shalom.