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Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested

arstechnica.com

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

#331

Post by milesokeefe »

jjnoakes wrote: post #252
seesomesense wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a professional acquaintance ( my profession, not his) in the anti-moneylaundering division of a large national, non-US bank. He mentioned that their default assumption is that if an account or a transaction involves bitcoin, it is connected to criminals. They log the details and pass it on to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

The same thing happens where I work (a restaurant). One of my professional acquaintances assumes that if meal preparation involves a knife, it is connected to a murder. He writes down the wielder, date, and time, and sends the information to the police each day.

Was it a very niche brand of knife that is the nearly exclusive choice of criminals?

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

#332

Post by biot »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #149
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…

As an American living in Australia, I'd say your perspective is kind of skewed by the American market. A large number of torrenters aren't cheapskates or thieves but are from outside the U.S. and unable to even get ahold of this stuff due to the way licensing overseas works. Or if they do, it's at 1.5x-2.5x the price. We have a 21st century distribution model tied to a mid-20th century legal framework and business mo…

That was my point though -- excluding people who are in different markets, have special language needs, etc. etc. you're left with 95+% of the US market who have very efficient ways of legally licensing all but the very latest unreleased or specialty content. Yet still a huge number of those people pirate that content. So I just don't buy the argument that it's a lack of efficient systems that leads people in the US to pirate stuff. I suspect they do it because it's become socially acceptable and they'd just rather not pay for stuff they can get for free.

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

#333

Post by analognoise »

joering2 wrote: post #316
CaptSpify wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure he sponsored the roads, but the government implemented those roads. Planning, buying, organizing, maintaining, etc are all part of the work that the government does.

I still don't get it. Who do you think paid for planning, buying, organizing and the cost of maintaining of all that??

All those things (planning, buying, organizing) are...work.

I was saying the government does lots of work. It doesn't always function great, but it does a lot right too.

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

#334

Post by ht85 »

gambiting wrote: post #235
ht85 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The motivation of people can vary a lot. For a big part of the world, the price of digital content is just not realistic at all. For other people, like me, it's the lack of a reliable, convenient, well done solution. I won't touch iTunes with a 50 feet pole. All the on demand services I've tried have a limited catalog, reliability problems, stupid policies, try to push a bunch of stuff down my throat. The torrent flo…

The problem is that where I'm from, $100 is a weeks pay. An average Blu-ray costs a full days wage. VOD solutions exist, but they are expensive, poor quality, and are usually not in configuration I want/like(no subtitles/forced subtitles/forced dub). The internet is a global thing - a US or UK citizen can easily afford a brand new film. But move slightly further away from 1st world countries and new media is either t…

I used the $100 to express that I would be willing to spend a decent chunk of cash on a great service, I agree the price would need to be adjusted depending on the country.

I've lived in South America for quite some time, and paying $20 for a movie is completely out of the question for 95% of people. Piracy is completely open here, everywhere you have shops burning and selling bootleg DVDs for around $1.

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

#335

Post by dmix »

antisthenes wrote: post #321
dmix wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prisons, lawyers, judges, social workers running drug rehab programs, feds (DEA, FBI), local police, defense industry selling helicopters, airplanes, surveillance technology, etc, etc. An unthinkable amount of money has been spent and made from the drug war for highly questionable ROI to the public. What type of reduction in police work would take place if the drug war was ended today? 20%? 30%? The war on drugs is a…

> highly questionable ROI to the public Only if you exclude people working for the public sector from you know, the public. Those things create jobs for voting constituents. That's the main ROI here. Reduction in crime, drug use and increased security are just beneficial, but not necessary side effects of these initiatives.

Creating jobs for creating jobs sake is such a terrible justification. Especially because in this scenario (like many others) it's not a controlled economic stimulus but an ongoing money drain. Milton Friedman is turning in his grave seeing this idea become mainstream. These are highly skilled people too: lawyers, judges, and highly technical law enforcement who could be working on dealing with real crimes or protecting honest hardworking citizens. Not futile show trials to appease the copyright industry.

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

#336

Post by blacksmith_tb »

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

My son liked Fishtronaut / Peixonauta [1] which was made in Brazil and released in Portuguese, Spanish, and English simultaneously, I think (it's on Netflix in the US).

1: http://tvpinguim.com/peixonauta/

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

#337

Post by superuser2 »

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.

A very, very small number of the people who work on films, television, and music are rich. Let's at least be honest here: to the extent that they're cutting studio revenues, the people who are going to feel it most are tradesmen making even shittier wages for sporadic project work as it comes even less frequently.

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

#338

Post by tinus_hn »

robotkilla wrote: post #284
akavel wrote: post #14

ArsTechnica seems to have the most detailed and best linked (PDF + DoJ press release) article as of now: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/kickasstorrents-a... Somewhat more/complementary details seem to be available on: https://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-kickasstorrents-domains-... — e.g. regarding methods: [...] The complaint further reveals that the feds posed as an advertiser, which revealed a bank acco…

> investigator cross-referenced an IP-address used for an iTunes transaction with an IP-address that was used to login to KAT’s Facebook account The article implies that the investigator had a FB and iTunes IP address and THEN Apple gave the rest of the user's details but that doesn't really make sense. I'm guessing that they gag-ordered and subpoenaed FB for account info, but how did the investigator get the iTunes…

My guess would be they got the IP address from Facebook and looked that up in a database that shows all connections made by an IP address, then noticed one of the connections was to Apple and based on that got Apple to reveal the user behind it. I doubt Apple would cooperate willingly with dragnet-style inquiries.

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

#339

Post by robotkilla »

dmix wrote: post #304
robotkilla wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> investigator cross-referenced an IP-address used for an iTunes transaction with an IP-address that was used to login to KAT’s Facebook account The article implies that the investigator had a FB and iTunes IP address and THEN Apple gave the rest of the user's details but that doesn't really make sense. I'm guessing that they gag-ordered and subpoenaed FB for account info, but how did the investigator get the iTunes…

The FBI found out his bank account information from buying ads. He probably bought something on iTunes and that would be sufficient for Apple to be given a search warrant for any data related to x IP address, billing info, email address, or name. Any identifying details they collected at that point. Not hard to connect the pieces once you have a money trail. That's an investigative gold mine.

> The FBI found out his bank account information from buying ads. He probably bought something on iTunes

This actually sounds the most believable to me, excellent point.

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

#340

Post by jerrac »

Const-me wrote: post #107
jerrac wrote: post #52

Does anyone know if there is data somewhere on how much money has been spent by governments (specifically the USA) on attacking copyright related stuff? My main complaint about this is that I'd rather my tax dollars be spent stopping crime that causes physical harm.

Governments also collect many tax dollars from companies who profit from that IP. That’s exactly why US government is most active in that area. They collect taxes from US-based film studios (all mayor are US-based, five of them are in California, NBC in NY, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_film_studio#Current ) and software companies.

True. But I'd still rather law enforcement focus on crime that might kill me, than on crime that might take a few cents out of a rich persons pocket. I mean, are my tax dollars only spent on issues that directly effect my business?
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