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Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

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Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#211

Post by yoavm »

OzzyB wrote: post #199
josho wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing is just as bad as pirating. Let's call it what it is. Copyright infringement.

> it's piracy > it's sharing > it's copyright infringement How about we call it what it really is, Broadcast . There's a distinct difference between sharing a couple of mixtapes with your friends at school, to broadcasting it all over the internet for millions of your "neighbors" to see. I agree that the term "piracy" has been redifined to be a crime inline with rape or murder, which sucks; but let's not kid ourselve…

I think many of the copy-protection systems during the times of CDs & VHS were made exactly to prevent you from _sharing_ content with your friends & neighbors. I remember times when you couldn't use your own VHS to record television shows because they crippled the signal somehow. That was usually for your personal use only, and still, they called it "piracy" and "copyright infringement".

While putting it all under the label of "sharing" might not be 100% precise, this whole thing was a "problem" long before we could even dream about broadcasting anything.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#212

Post by dxxvi »

Svenskunganka wrote: post #65

Torrents and copyright infringement is related, we can all agree on that. But I believe that pirating is related to a very fuzzy legal system regarding this topic and unfair treatment by the major movie studios & music labels. I'll try to explain as good as I can. Being a european citizen, it is very frustrating knowing that pirating is illegal even though being a Netflix, HBO & Spotify customer. Pirating is a much b…

"Torrents and copyright infringement is related, we can all agree on that": torrent is a technology to share files while copyright infringement is an action that violates the copyright. What is the relation between them??? Then according to you, emails and copyright infringement is also related (I can send a mp3 song via emails). Or the steel industry and crimes are related because steel is used to make knives, guns ... used to commit a crime.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#213

Post by candu »

josho wrote: post #184
mikegerwitz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "piracy" doesn't help the problems any---it's a smear term that tries to put downloading and sharing on the same level as murder and kidnapping. https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-banned-from-using-piracy-and-t... . I prefer the term "sharing". As you mention, intent is not always to avoid paying. Some people may want backups, may have lost their copy after paying for it, may be frustrated by DRM-laced copies tha…

Sharing is just as bad as pirating. Let's call it what it is. Copyright infringement.

Well, your statement is tautological, since those are two terms for the same thing :)

The real question is how "bad" we should consider copyright infringement to be. For many of us, copyright law has lost its moral footing with draconian DRM, extreme examples of RIAA / MPAA litigation, insane Disney-fueled copyright terms, and a corresponding erosion of the public domain. It may not have lost its legal footing, but legality is not morality, and to call something "bad" because it is illegal is disingenuous.

Or should I remind you how many of our modern societal / legal norms were once illegal?

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#214

Post by sctb »

celticninja wrote: post #24

oh look a troll, using a brand new account too, what a great way to add to the conversation.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12230914 and marked it off-topic. If you're right about the account being a troll, then this is feeding it. If you're wrong, it's off-topic.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#215

Post by alanwatts »

mikegerwitz wrote: post #163
Svenskunganka wrote: post #65

Torrents and copyright infringement is related, we can all agree on that. But I believe that pirating is related to a very fuzzy legal system regarding this topic and unfair treatment by the major movie studios & music labels. I'll try to explain as good as I can. Being a european citizen, it is very frustrating knowing that pirating is illegal even though being a Netflix, HBO & Spotify customer. Pirating is a much b…

The term "piracy" doesn't help the problems any---it's a smear term that tries to put downloading and sharing on the same level as murder and kidnapping. https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-banned-from-using-piracy-and-t... . I prefer the term "sharing". As you mention, intent is not always to avoid paying. Some people may want backups, may have lost their copy after paying for it, may be frustrated by DRM-laced copies tha…

>The term "piracy" doesn't help the problems any---it's a smear term that tries to put downloading and sharing on the same level as murder and kidnapping.

Precisely:

>I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

-Jack Valenti (former president of MPAA for 38 years), 1982 congressional hearing

https://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#216

Post by pandler »

analog31 wrote: post #185
ceeK wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I wonder whether this experience with the free cracked version helped make Photoshop any more popular. If it was only used in the legal sense, costing hundreds, would it be so popular?

At one point, I developed a hypothesis that for a big software vendor, turning a blind eye to piracy was like a form of "dumping" on the market. Consider a vendor like Microsoft. They could make their money selling legit copies to businesses, and through package deals on new computers. Meanwhile, anybody who tried to sell a simpler or even better product at a lower price was forced out of the market by the "free" cop…

> At one point, I developed a hypothesis that for a big software vendor, turning a blind eye to piracy was like a form of "dumping" on the market. Consider a vendor like Microsoft. They could make their money selling legit copies to businesses, and through package deals on new computers.

I have anecdata to support this, actually, though I won't name names. The company in question prided itself on the fact that bootleg copies were being sold for something like $5USD in (I think) Romania, whereas their competitors software was being sold for a few dollars less. For comparison, a single commercial license could set you back over $1000-$4000.

The way I see it, it's the same as offering free or next-to-nothing licenses to students. Not only can students not afford the software, you're competing for the mindshare and the number of people who put "I know how to use this software" on their resume.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#217

Post by nobleach »

scrollaway wrote: post #74
djhworld wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the opposite with regards to convenience, but maybe I've been away from the scene for a few years now Nowadays it seems more of a hassle to pirate content, especially here in the UK with torrent sites getting blocked by ISPs (necessitating a need for VPNs or proxy services) along with having to constantly find new sources for torrents as authorities crack down on sites like KickAssTorrents. I find it easier t…

I used to have a Spotify subscription. Then I moved out of Sweden and lost half my playlists. Never subscribed again. I never had a Netflix subscription because I don't have a good enough connection to stream high quality videos - Additionally, I rewatch some series a lot. It's simply more convenient to have them on my hard drive. The US gov is running around the internet policing copyright for very specific companie…

>Sidenote: Spotify's content bootstrapping was a dump of music from TPB. If it weren't for piracy, we wouldn't have spotify.

This explains why Sailing by Christopher Cross ends with the beginning of Minstrel Gigolo like the rip I downloaded from Napster...

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#218

Post by wangchow »

dhimes wrote: post #209
wangchow wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that copyright infringement is: making a derivative work of something and selling it for a profit; or stealing an idea outright and profiting from it.

But you also have to allow for the idea that you are doing harm to the creator if you are making it available for free even if you don't profit from it.

Certainly true.

However, the digital world is a changing landscape. Consider how technology replaces humans in the workplace and displaces jobs. No matter what, change causes collateral damage and the reality is this time it's hitting the bottom-line of the wealthy studios. If they can't afford to come up with a brilliant technical solution to the problem then they are SOL. :)

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#219

Post by odesian »

Svenskunganka wrote: post #65

Torrents and copyright infringement is related, we can all agree on that. But I believe that pirating is related to a very fuzzy legal system regarding this topic and unfair treatment by the major movie studios & music labels. I'll try to explain as good as I can. Being a european citizen, it is very frustrating knowing that pirating is illegal even though being a Netflix, HBO & Spotify customer. Pirating is a much b…

>Torrents and copyright infringement is related, we can all agree on that.

I don't and neither does Bram Cohen. Regardless, I agree with your overall notion. The times have changed and customers want a better solution to quality entertainment. Restricting access and content will lead to piracy. Vice-versa will lead to less overall piracy.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#220

Post by sktrdie »

rakoo wrote: post #203
sktrdie wrote: post #94

Please have a look at this pull request I submitted some time ago to Bittorrent.org: https://github.com/bittorrent/bittorrent.org/pull/35 It's about updating torrents via DHT mutable items. Meaning that torrent sites could share their public key and simply seed an .rss file containing their indexed torrents (a mapping of infohash -> descriptions). When they want to share new torrents, they simply update their torrent…

The real value of sites like TPB and KAT is the community upvoting/downvoting torrents to only keep the correct torrents, and people commenting about actual quality, pointing the problems of encoding or language... This can't be provided by your proposals or anything that relies around an RSS feed, unfortunately

Trusting the entity that they're not updating the torrent with spam is the first step. Discussions about the quality of torrents is a different matter which I think neither TPB and KAT have solved - spam accounts could invade such centralized services and downvote quality content. In my opinion a "community" is better built out of a network of trusted public keys.
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