News - Demonoid BitTorrent site removed, another one bites the dust

[Agent]

protecting copywrite holders.... but copywrite holders have a right to protect their work, their investment, their livelyhoods, thats a simple human right. If you disagree with that then try making your own creative work (Which is your only income in life) and then watch as millions of people enjoy your thousand hour piece of work, without paying you a penny.

Then try and tell me again that "This IP nonsense has gone way too far".

http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-keeps-s...-money-080228/

Despite collecting an estimated several hundred million dollars in P2P related settlements from the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt, prominent artists’ managers are complaining that so far, they haven’t received any compensation from the labels. According to a lawyer, some are considering legal action.

http://torrentfreak.com/music-pirate...otests-120520/

Despite protests from the band All Shall Perish, the identities of 80 alleged file-sharers of their music are set to be handed over to a Panama-based copyright troll. The manager of the band says he is shocked and angry that the troll had obtained the rights to All Shall Perish’s music and has ordered the band’s German-based label to call off the dogs. “The band, their attorney and myself have and will continue to take any steps to protect fans, yes, even those who file trade,” he told us.

http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-co...mpaign-111201/

Anti-piracy group BREIN is caught up in a huge copyright scandal in the Netherlands. A musician who composed a track for use at a local film festival later found it being used without permission in an anti-piracy campaign. He is now claiming at least a million euros for the unauthorized distribution of his work on DVDs. To make matters even worse, a board member of a royalty collection agency offered to help the composer to recoup the money, but only if he received 33% of the loot.

And there are so many more.

The problem is that the current system is not 'protecting' artists. Industry lobbyists are fining people (mostly through threats and not evidence) and then keeping the money.
Which part of this exactly is protecting the artists? and what is this protection giving them? More money?



There is your problem - the industry is broken by corrupt people who use the laws they have lobbied for for personal gain. $0.09 from a $0.99 sale on iTunes? Come on....

I'm not claiming it makes it any less right - I'm simply pointing out that the wrong thing is being targeted.

[Spud1]

I feel so sorry for the multi-millionaire's artest's who are losing their livelyhoods and million doller houses because people are not buying buying their songs.... oh wait, they still buying them and still making millions per year.

Silly me.

I'll ignore your troll comment. I feel passionate about piracy as someone who was once heavily involved in it, who then moved into the software industry and then became a victim of piracy..and yes my opinion that the law is correct and that copyright infringement is a serious issue that affects real people is at odds with many (one or two on hexus in particular), but there you go.

It's a very silly thing to say that it's only millionaire etc that get affected by this problem - in fact they are not really affected in terms of day to day life..morally of course they are but financially the impact won't really be felt. It shows a naivety really - I have no desire to "have a go" at you but sorry, it's a daft thing to say.

It's not the millionaire labels/publishers that I care about though - it's those that create the content and deserve to be fairly rewarded for their work, and even mores those smaller producers who depend on their creative output to pay the bills and have a fair chance in life - we need to get away from this completely false assumption that it's only the big companies that are affected, it's not! Even if it was, just because someone is already making lots of money doesn't make it right to infringe on their copyright - society may appear broken in this regard but that is a whole other debate.

NB I talk mostly around software piracy here as the situation with regards to say music and film is a little different due to how the licensing is done and how artists are compensated, but most of what I say does apply.

<lots of good, interesting stuff>

Agent - yes w/r to music and the RIAA etc you are right..as I have said before I don't agree with the methods, I am talking principles here and crucially PREVENTION - after the fact things like fines/inprisonment etc is a completely different issue imo. This thread started about the removal of Demonoid which in my mind is purely to prevent future problems caused by that website - I couldn't give a stuff about punishing those that made the mistakes in the first place..that doesn't help anyone. Recouping the money won't work due to the reasons you set out above (most of it swallowed in the legal system)..we can't solve the past problems but we can do something about it in the future.

[aidanjt]

Rubbish, that's like saying that a Bookshop that has 10000 books on "how to be a terrorist" and 10 books on "how to grow tomatoes" is 100% legit and indifferent because they have 10 books on Tomatoes. Or I suppose the same analogy but with a software shop instead, if you want pure like for like as software is licenced rather than sold in 99% of cases. You get my point though.

Who cares if a bookshop focuses on books on terrorism? This is the problem with copytards, they're obsessed with controlling and restricting knowledge. Do you know what that is? Self-inflicted brain damage. And if we're going to keep the analogies analogous, the shop would only be a stack of index cards on where on the planet you can go to get the atlas map to all the pages, so you can go pick them up, all free of charge, oh and there might be some advertising posters up there on a few walls, which you may or may not look at which is used to keep the place open.

g'damn t'rr'sts!!!1!

Even the names..."The Pirate Bay", "ISOHunt" and so on..ok so those are just two examples but its blatently obvious what they are there for.

The Pirate Bay was started as political opposition in Sweden, where there was no personal non-profit copyright infringement legislation, but a copyright lobby was working hard to make downloading illegal. And an ISO is a file container format. What you're doing here again is establishing a strawman that all ISOs are bad, thus all torrenting of ISOs are bad, so torrenting is bad. Both sites provide search indexing torrents of all kind, type, and legality.

It's a fine line between destroying the internet and protecting copywrite holders

No, there isn't. They're mutually exclusive goals. You're either for free unfettered exchange of knowledge, or you're for censorship and crippling legal crap.

but copywrite holders have a right to protect their work, their investment, their livelyhoods, thats a simple human right.

No it isn't. It's a government granted right, one delivered through bribes and cronyism. There's no human right to assume exclusive ownership of an idea.

If you disagree with that then try making your own creative work (Which is your only income in life) and then watch as millions of people enjoy your thousand hour piece of work, without paying you a penny.

If you can't convince people to voluntarily pay for your services, then either your business model, or your work is rubbish, or at least excessively priced. You have no business staying in business if you can't make it work without government thugs kicking in people's doors to keep you flush with cash. Go find something with which you can serve people competently.

Then try and tell me again that "This IP nonsense has gone way too far".

I'll tell you again, this IP nonsense has gone way too far.

[Agent]

Agent - yes w/r to music and the RIAA etc you are right..as I have said before I don't agree with the methods, I am talking principles here and crucially PREVENTION - after the fact things like fines/inprisonment etc is a completely different issue imo. This thread started about the removal of Demonoid which in my mind is purely to prevent future problems caused by that website - I couldn't give a stuff about punishing those that made the mistakes in the first place..that doesn't help anyone. Recouping the money won't work due to the reasons you set out above (most of it swallowed in the legal system)..we can't solve the past problems but we can do something about it in the future.

I also just literally stumbled across this, which seems rather fitting: http://gizmodo.com/5934611/this-is-why-people-pirate

For me, the biggest issue is the fact that piracy can offer a superior product to an original. Take DRM for example - pirates rarely have to suffer with it, while my legally brought software feels the need to phone home and quit my game if my net gets interrupted? That's unacceptable.

I'm also not convinced on the prevention bit either. We've seen time and time again what happens when you try and suppress information - within the next few years there will be a torrent replacement that handles the problems with the current system. If anything, history of the net shows us that the tech will evolve to a point where preventing it becomes impossible without switching the net off - something I'm very sure Hollywood would do in a heart beat.

As for sentencing - it's a horrible issue right now.

A website with links (no content) to TV shows - 4 years in jail: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19253359
Raping an 8 year old boy as a baby sitter - 4 years in jail: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...ester-19199319

The entire system needs fundamental change, without it, nothing else will change.

[Spud1]

aidanjt - I won't bother to come back against all your points as we both know we'll never agree on this, and I don't want to get down to chucking insults

Suffice to say I think you are wrong in all that you say above, but that's OK

Only thing I will comment on is my analogy - in my head I was thinking of the Anarchists Cookbook which - although *I* and no doubt you know well to be everything but a terrorist handbook - at least one version has been made an illegal text in recent months. Anyway it's a fictional example which was written to try and stop people pointing out (rightly) that copyright infringement is not theft in the legal sense

@Agent - fair enough, and I agree w/r to sentencing. But don't get me started on that anyway or I'll type for hours Since when was "Life" 10 years....Why people pirate? Different for everyone but the DRM situation is only a small part of it imo (most people wont even know what it means)..and in any case, if people didn't pirate in the first place there would have never been a need for it - so it's not the cause of piracy, even if it is an aggravating factor these days. I would put down greed as the number 1 reason but hey that's my opinion.

w/r to prevention I see what you mean - the key is (I guess) what's information and what is someone's creative work that they own..you clearly have to have control of your own work/content in order for capitalism to work, so it's a tough one. Abandoning capitalism and copyright like some people appear to suggest is clearly unfeasible in one move without changing the rest of the world, and human nature..but there must be a compromise between the two.

I don't have an answer though!

[Noxvayl]

As mentioned earlier torrents are a solution to a problem, and piracy is no exception.

[Topperfalkon]

Rubbish, that's like saying that a Bookshop that has 10000 books on "how to be a terrorist" and 10 books on "how to grow tomatoes" is 100% legit and indifferent because they have 10 books on Tomatoes. Or I suppose the same analogy but with a software shop instead, if you want pure like for like as software is licenced rather than sold in 99% of cases. You get my point though.

Well, no. That's a really bad analogy. They're essentially a specialised Google. Google don't filter results unless they're forced to by law, the same tends to go for these torrent sites.

Even the names..."The Pirate Bay", "ISOHunt" and so on..ok so those are just two examples but its blatently obvious what they are there for.

Much like I should expect to get authentic Indian food from a 'restaurant' that calls itself 'Taj Mahal'? I think not. On the latter name, I would add that there are legitimate purposes for seeking iso files.

It's a fine line between destroying the internet and protecting copywrite holders (and I agree this should be done within the realms of the law, and much of the activity from the US organisations has gone against this completely and is wrong in it's own way!), you will not get an argument on that one from me, but copywrite holders have a right to protect their work, their investment, their livelyhoods, thats a simple human right. If you disagree with that then try making your own creative work (Which is your only income in life) and then watch as millions of people enjoy your thousand hour piece of work, without paying you a penny.

Yes, they do. That's quite right. And if they don't believe their product will sell in it's own right they can 'protect' it by not publishing it. If you don't give people a reason to buy your product, it doesn't deserve to earn money

Then try and tell me again that "This IP nonsense has gone way too far".

But it already has...

[Spud1]

Well, no. That's a really bad analogy. They're essentially a specialised Google. Google don't filter results unless they're forced to by law, the same tends to go for these torrent sites.

hang on - massive difference - sites like TBP don't sit there and crawl/index the internet - they rely on user submissions. Completely different - google just gives you everything, the TBP is filtered/targeted and user generated. Massive difference.

Much like I should expect to get authentic Indian food from a 'restaurant' that calls itself 'Taj Mahal'? I think not. On the latter name, I would add that there are legitimate purposes for seeking iso files.

You are really clutching at straws...yes a name can be misleading, but you know full well why those sites picked those names

Yes, they do. That's quite right. And if they don't believe their product will sell in it's own right they can 'protect' it by not publishing it. If you don't give people a reason to buy your product, it doesn't deserve to earn money

This last point is the scariest - its the same that Adianjt made earlier and it's one that I really can't understand. Because you don't think something is worth paying for, you can decide not to and just take it? Maybe if you run the Russion Mafia but in civilised society? It's simply disgusting.

[Topperfalkon]

hang on - massive difference - sites like TBP don't sit there and crawl/index the internet - they rely on user submissions. Completely different - google just gives you everything, the TBP is filtered/targeted and user generated. Massive difference.

What about YouTube then? What about all the legal battles over the difficulty it has in (wrongly) censoring itself? Even with tools tailored to make copyright infringement easier to combat at the cost of the YouTube community the sheer volume makes it a never-ending battle.

You are really clutching at straws...yes a name can be misleading, but you know full well why those sites picked those names

You mean taking a light jab at terms the media industry invented to intentionally muddy something considered a civil infringement and morally murky with something criminal and altogether morally wrong?

This last point is the scariest - its the same that Adianjt made earlier and it's one that I really can't understand. Because you don't think something is worth paying for, you can decide not to and just take it? Maybe if you run the Russion Mafia but in civilised society? It's simply disgusting.

Because if you release something in a digital format, you make it available to everyone, or at least everyone with the means to access the content within that format. That's an intrinsic truth of the nature of computing and the way our online technologies today work. If you put something in a digital format and release it either online or to someone who has the ability to copy and upload it, then you are essentially making it public. If you don't want people to look at your works, don't publish them. Otherwise, don't complain about the platform you've chosen to publicise your works.

Then, if you want to make money from these works, make it something your customers will be willing to pay for, rather than attempting to make them jump through hoops to get at it.

Let me be clear about this, Western culture stagnated after the fall of the Roman Empire because the Church hoarded all literature and only gave access to the elite of society, it was only once their grip on literature and therefore study was broken that Western culture got back on track to become what we are today. Giving the publishers and copyright tyrants the ability once again to dictate who has access to our cultural heritage and our learnings is far too damaging to consider. Making copyright far shorter, more flexible, and creating schemes to help creators profit in spite of their works being shared freely is the answer that helps us keep building.

Yes indeed, I would see that those that actively contribute to our culture and the advancement of the sciences be adequately rewarded, but it certainly shouldn't be at the cost of bleeding everyone else dry.

But let's leave aside the wrongs or rights of copyright for now, the real issue we face now is that we are coming to a place where websites can be censored or simply erased with no due process, and where people may be disconnected from the greatest technological achievement in modern times with no trial. We had laws that were supposed to protect us from such tyranny, yet we seem to be able to ignore those when it seems fit.

This is what our country has been driven to, a mere puppet of obsolete industry that constantly reinforces the message that we're too lazy, too fat, too greedy, and expect too much from the government that bleeds us dry that we give up only the most feeble of protests when vital services are destroyed, or private companies are allowed to tighten the screw further on services that should be in the public's hand, whilst charging us more and more for that very privilege.

I realise this has diverged somewhat from the topic of conversation, but maybe you will realise that the current fight over the over-reach of copyright is merely another thread in the battle to return the country to the people.

I hope this makes some sense to you.

[bill hicks]

Any news of a come back, I do hope so, it was great for old & obscure content.

[Spud1]

What about YouTube then? What about all the legal battles over the difficulty it has in (wrongly) censoring itself? Even with tools tailored to make copyright infringement easier to combat at the cost of the YouTube community the sheer volume makes it a never-ending battle.

I hope this makes some sense to you.

If these sites took the approach of YouTube then I would have no problem with them legit sites that do the best they can (Or the best they can be expected to do within a commercial environment) is totally different to a site that actively encourages (and at the same time does not discourage) copyrighted content. Big difference

The rest of your post does indeed make sense - I completely disagree and the fact that it's digital doesn't mean that it should be free for all (its no different to a book - I can copy a book out, or read it and absorb the knowledge..doesn't mean I should take it for free [steal it]). The argument about the elite of society and the church doesn't hold much water either..although no doubt your justification would be centered around the financial side - i.e. that the fact only those with money can afford these things is inherently restrictive.

At the end of the day this is the twisted capitalist way of the world that we live in. I happen to like it, probably because I have been fortunate enough to get a good job that I enjoy, and I fully appreciate that many people do not like much of capitalism, or the idea that everything has a value; even an idea. I would argue with you until my dying day and when I think of how much anger these opinions stir in me, I can quite easily see how some people go to war over much sillier/less serious things lol.

It is incredibly frustrating but I can agree to disagree on this one, no interest in fighting to the death with anyone on Hexus, we all get along well enough

The whole privacy/censorship argument is one that I find really tough to resolve. On the one hand I 100% agree that the internet only works because it's largely censorship free. The fact that it's free and dynamic makes it what it is..it means I can write this post and not be arrested for it..and I really don't like the idea of that right being taken away from me..it scares me! At the same time though I don't want the Child Pornography, pirated content, blatent lies, terrorist/mass murdering organisations, open drug selling, racisim etc etc that the freedom brings. Where to draw the line is difficult, mainly because the methods used to block those items gives the authorities the power to do so much more that we don't want..such as monitoring everything else that we do on the internet. It's not necessarily that we have things to hide, but most of us value our privacy.

I don't have the answer - I know that open censorship is not the right one though, and neither is blatant piracy - both of which stifle competition/innovation/amount of available content, albeit in different ways.

Maybe I should be a politician..it's easy to point fault at the opposition and explain in great detail why they are wrong - but I can't provide a credible alternative..just like the Labour party ;D

[Topperfalkon]

If these sites took the approach of YouTube then I would have no problem with them legit sites that do the best they can (Or the best they can be expected to do within a commercial environment) is totally different to a site that actively encourages (and at the same time does not discourage) copyrighted content. Big difference

YouTube does what it does because the DMCA requires it to. In other jurisdictions, rightsholders would have to undergo proper proceedings via the courts, which is the whole point of having legal processes. With legal processes, the chance of making a mistake over ownership (which happens all the time on YT) or vindictive and unjustified takedown claims (again, common on YT) would be far smaller.

The rest of your post does indeed make sense - I completely disagree and the fact that it's digital doesn't mean that it should be free for all (its no different to a book - I can copy a book out, or read it and absorb the knowledge..doesn't mean I should take it for free [steal it]).

So you understand there's a distinction between copying and stealing? Copying is always taking something for 'free', and it's fundamental to the way modern technology works. The webpage you see in front of you is a copy of a page held on a server that's been downloaded and displayed by youe browser

The argument about the elite of society and the church doesn't hold much water either..although no doubt your justification would be centered around the financial side - i.e. that the fact only those with money can afford these things is inherently restrictive.

It's not about money, it's about control. It always has been. Those that are in power are frightened of losing it. And that's what we see with the big publishers pushing for greater copyright restrictions.

At the end of the day this is the twisted capitalist way of the world that we live in. I happen to like it, probably because I have been fortunate enough to get a good job that I enjoy, and I fully appreciate that many people do not like much of capitalism, or the idea that everything has a value; even an idea. I would argue with you until my dying day and when I think of how much anger these opinions stir in me, I can quite easily see how some people go to war over much sillier/less serious things lol.

Yet you don't ever question the point of it all? Or get angry at the thought of formerly public services being squeezed dry to appease some company's shareholders at the expense of those who rely on those very same services?

It is incredibly frustrating but I can agree to disagree on this one, no interest in fighting to the death with anyone on Hexus, we all get along well enough

Very well. I'm not entirely sure a fight to the death would be possible anyway.

The whole privacy/censorship argument is one that I find really tough to resolve. On the one hand I 100% agree that the internet only works because it's largely censorship free. The fact that it's free and dynamic makes it what it is..it means I can write this post and not be arrested for it..and I really don't like the idea of that right being taken away from me..it scares me! At the same time though I don't want the Child Pornography, pirated content, blatent lies, terrorist/mass murdering organisations, open drug selling, racisim etc etc that the freedom brings. Where to draw the line is difficult, mainly because the methods used to block those items gives the authorities the power to do so much more that we don't want..such as monitoring everything else that we do on the internet. It's not necessarily that we have things to hide, but most of us value our privacy.

The whole part of being an adult is understanding the boundaries of your freedom. The whole part of being a member of a civilised society is expressing your own freedom without infringing on others. And the whole part of governing said society is resolving infringement on others freedoms without affecting anyone else's. The internet as a whole has almost formed its own society (or a variety of separate societies is probably more accurate), and some of these are quite effective at 'governing' the internet when required to. In terms of Child Pornography, 4Chan/Anonymous have been waging a war against it in the darknets for years, with greater success than most (conventional) law enforcement bodies. We all want to be part of the Internet, so the Internet should be allowed self-governance. It's not any given country's place to dictate what's in everyone else's interest.

I don't have the answer - I know that open censorship is not the right one though, and neither is blatant piracy - both of which stifle competition/innovation/amount of available content, albeit in different ways.

The problem is that there's no middle ground. No place where consumers aren't treated like dirt and are given a product or service with genuine value where the consumer has incentive to further said product or service's development. Penalising the consumer (as a large number of companies currently do) only increases the reward of 'criminal' behaviour.

[Spud1]

OK so skipping over the detail for the moment - lets go back to two "reality" questions.

1) If you take away the right/ability for people to charge for the creative work that they do, what is the driver for people to create and release content?
2) Similar to the above - there are millions of people that rely on creative content in order to live - it's their only income. What happens to these people when they suddenly can't sell their work or charge for it?

When i have discussed this before, the typical answer is "well people will still pay/donate etc if the work is good enough and they enjoy it" - but that is total rubbish. A few might, but the vast majority will not. It's just a poor excuse for piracy. In any case, you couldn't build a business or life around that sort of uncertainty. It might be a nice idea, but it's not reality.

I will come back on one point though - the whole theft/copy debate. I agree that *in law* there is a very muddy differentiation between theft and breach of copyright - but morally they are no different. In both cases the criminal is acquiring an item/product/something without paying for it. In both cases the owner is deprived of something - in traditional theft it's the item, in copyright infringement they are deprived of their income. It's a point that comes up every time this is debated, but it's just something that muddies the waters.

Copyright theft is wrong and immoral regardless, that much is exceptionally clear.

[Savas]

OK so skipping over the detail for the moment - lets go back to two "reality" questions.

1) If you take away the right/ability for people to charge for the creative work that they do, what is the driver for people to create and release content?

What...? Are you like talking to yourself and coming up with arguments that are easy for you to rebuttal to?

Who said artists or people shouldn't charge for their creative work?

The irony when you quote "reality" and come up with such a statement.

Do you know who owns Youtube and how much it's worth? You think the big guys are not going to settle on something as long as everyone gets their share? That's what's happened, Youtube is with the big boys and has paid for its seat. Demonoid was probably getting too mature and they probably thought it's time it was taken down and not turned into a brand like The Pirate Bay.

[chuckskull]

Robust debate is always welcome, but stick to the facts and arguments. Personal attacks are not acceptable.

[Spud1]

Who said artists or people shouldn't charge for their creative work?

I admit I am reading in to this a little - but isn't that what everyone who is saying "it's OK to pirate" is saying?

Isn't that the only way the "it's OK to pirate stuff" argument works? I'm probably losing it a bit now (should turn off email notification!) but I can't see how anyone can say:

"Yes artists should charge for their work, but it's my own choice whether I pay them when I consume their content".

And then claim that it's justifiable and doesn't take money directly out of their pockets.

Chuckskull - agreed and apologies if any of my posts appeared that way!