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Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

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

#271

Post by dozzie »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #117
blackflame7000 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AT&T, obviously, as Comcast offers connection measured in millibits instead of kilobits per second.

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

#272

Post by pantaril »

biot wrote: post #134
CaptSpify wrote: post #3

As an American, I wish we would stop doing this. It isn't effective, and it's a waste of time/resources that could be better spent elsewhere. I'd even argue that its counter-effective to progress. Instead of punishing people for making more efficient systems, we should reward them, and try to integrate.

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…

"A person in the US who, for example, wants to watch all but the latest season of Game of Thrones"

This is simply not true. In my experience, only the most mainstream content is available legally on portals like itunes or netflix. If you want to watch something more rare (art film, old foreign film, film with subtitles in different language) you can try to buy very expensive DVD+shipping and wait few weeks for it to arrive or you have to use illegal sources.

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

#273

Post by cmiles74 »

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.

The comments hear regarding IP rights and copyright seem remarkably consistent to me.

In my opinion, copyright isn't a problem in regard to television, films, music, etc. Everyone is in agreement that the people who develop this content deserve to be rewarded for their efforts and that copyright is a reasonable way to enforce this. For sure, some disagree, but I think this is the attitude on the whole and I believe that it's consistent with the way many feel about the GPL, and the outrage when the GPL is violated.

Again, in my opinion, the issue is how this content is distributed (or in many cases, the ways in which it is _not_ distributed). Isolating customers geographically and then (somewhat arbitrarily) deciding not to sell to those customers is a bitter pill for said customers to swallow. Selling media, like BluRay DVDs and then telling customers they've bought a license and can't back up that content or move it to a more convenient device, is another move that seems almost designed to upset customers.

If the content holders wanted to eliminate the effectiveness of torrenting sites, they could do so pretty quickly. They could license their products in ways similar to how music is licensed. They choose not to, in my opinion, out of greed and certain amount of disinterest in what their customers want.

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

#274

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

A gentle reminder that the US can hunt you down and punish you under US law even you have never stepped foot in the country:

>> "According to a Department of Justice press release sent to Ars, Vaulin was arrested on Wednesday in Poland. The DOJ will shortly seek his extradition to the United States."

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

#275

Post by CyberDildonics »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #187
CyberDildonics wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you sell btc for ltc on one site, split up the balances, then sell the ltc for btc on different sites, how exactly would someone piece that back together? The crypto currency exchanges would be transferring to and from their internal addresses. There would be no direct connection without knowing all the addresses the exchanges use, and they can (and should) use a different address for each transaction.

> Crime is impossible.

Lets not get carried away

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

#277

Post by Strom »

belorn wrote: post #276

> KAT does not host individual infringing files but rather provides links to .torrent and .magnet files What is a .magnet file? My understanding is that .magent link is the key hash in a distributed hash store (DHT).

Pretty sure there is no such thing and the author actually meant magnet links.

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

#278

Post by pYQAJ6Zm »

posterboy wrote: post #139
downandout wrote: post #113

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 illega…

Aren't file-hashes derived works?

There is a very improbable risk of hash collision for two different original works, so… no, they aren’t?

Interesting (and somewhat very worrying) proposal, however.

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

#279

Post by Grollicus »

~15 Years ago I went to to Poland on a student exchange. They held a presentation about their school and stuff and in the middle of the presentation theres a popup from emule saying it has finished downloading something. Mind you this was a school computer on their school network.

I suspect this has changed, but back then they were pretty laid back about that sort of thing.

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

#280

Post by Strom »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #274

A gentle reminder that the US can hunt you down and punish you under US law even you have never stepped foot in the country: >> "According to a Department of Justice press release sent to Ars, Vaulin was arrested on Wednesday in Poland. The DOJ will shortly seek his extradition to the United States."

Yes, but it's not exclusive to the US. This is standard procedure among allies, and US & Poland are definitely strong allies. The same thing happens between Germany & Latvia, or Russia & Uzbekistan. Beyond that, this can happen even between non-allies if the pursuer is powerful enough. The US & Russia are probably with the widest grasp due to this.
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