TorrentSpy Ordered By Judge to Become MPAA Spy

PC Guy writes "TorrentSpy, one of the world's largest BitTorrent sites, has been ordered by a federal judge to monitor its users. They are asked to keep detailed logs of their activities which must then be handed over to the MPAA. Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney responded to the news by stating: 'It is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users. If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise.'"

Re:Neat move

[bishiraver]

Interesting point.

Both europe and asia have more users online than north america at this point. When it comes to the internet, populationwise we are shrinking in power.

Anecdotally, most of the innovation I see in web design recently comes out of Sweden. I actually think that other countries might (if not already have already) surpass the US in terms of net export of brainpower, invention, and developmental progress (as opposed to hardware progress). Not only with our national deficit, but with this trend.. Well, I'm not an analyst.

Anyway, actions like the MPAA's (if indeed TorrentSpy decides to cut access to the US), while relatively minor in the scope of things (there will always be other trackers) is evidence of a trend of self-sanctions. Instead of us putting economic sanctions on other countries (iraq, cuba), our actions are causing other countries to effectively sanction us...

Re:Quit Crying!!!

[gravij]

Before bittorrent most people had no idea where or how to download movies on the internet.

Sure they did, it was called Kazaa lite and it was the greatest thing ever. The only problem was that they were on dial-up or something similarly slow. Bit torrent is great, but the fact that you need to find a client and a tracker and a torrent file puts it out of reach of a large group.

Re:Awww

[janrinok]

Firstly, not everyone is downloading illegal material. I accept that this might account for the majority of torrent traffic but it appears to me that everyone will be penalised for the actions of a smaller group of people, however large that group might be. And it goes someway to explain how you think if you believe that ONLY illegal traffic is moved by torrents. I can download more linux isos by torrent than I would wish to do by http/ftp. There are many books - legally released in electronic format - that I have downloaded than I could ever afford to have bought.

Secondly, we are not all in the USA or bound by US law. Servers in other countries will undoubtedly become far more attractive to US citizens as a result of this ruling. BUT, it will not stop torrent traffic, so what has actually been achieved?

Re:well

[cshake]

Example: A friend of mine sets up a DC++ hub on our college campus to get around the off-campus bandwidth caps. Entirely through word of mouth, we have 20TB and 200 people at any given time logged in. (out of 3500 students). Everyone who shares any decent amount and/or can call themselves a geek is on it.

The new content is provided by those of us with accounts on private sources, such as newsgroups, ftp, or private torrent sites. It's also provided by the incoming freshman class each year that has new things to share. We've provided for at least 80% of the campus' filesharing needs.

There will always be ways around any specific source that gets nerfed.

Re:The Pirate Bay

[tomstdenis]

If you read the article ... they were importing cheaper copies of records that were sold domestically. E.g. they were region shopping. I won't comment on the legality of that [hint: I'm against the ruling], but it's not the same thing.

Tom

Re:Quit Crying!!!

[Lazarian]

Being modded funny doesn't boost one's karma. Lately more people have been modding insightful or informative to help boost fellow contributor's karma points.

Either that or someone is really digging a hole in their garden.

Re:The Pirate Bay

[Kandenshi]

I have a ... friend, who's totally not me, who pirates music. I often call him by the nickname "me" or "I" *cough*

This friend also buys music, either directly from the artists or in CDs. The fact is, I've never heard the vast majority of those bands played on the radio, or locally(since, y'know, they're from entirely different continents and I don't live in a major metropolis).

Most of this stuff is pretty difficult to find to buy anyway, but if I decide I really really like that new Architecture In Helsinki album and I can find it, I've no problems paying for it. I'm not going to buy the music blindly though either. Just because Jeph Jacques says it's good. I'll theive it visciously because he says it's good, and then keep it/pay for it if I agree.

Pirating is my radio, it's a way for me to learn about new bands that have arguably little appeal to my peers, but I think are awesome.

Re:The Pirate Bay

[init100]

If you don't want DRM then stop pirating, you can't have it both ways.

No, DRM won't go away even if suddenly all people stopped pirating music and movies. DRM is an effective* way of preventing format shifting and personal copying, so that you have to buy the same content several times if you want to have it available in several places at once, like in your computer media library, in your portable player, in your car, on your phone, etc. If everyone just stopped pirating, the content companies would simply say "thanks for all the extra money" and keep the DRM in place.

*= Effective against casual copying and format shifting, not uncrackable for the determined cracker.

Re:The Pirate Bay

[Chandon Seldon]

Relakks is an excellent solution to this class of problem. TOR is not - It'll be dog slow, and you'll be slowing down other people who have interactive tasks they're trying to accomplish over TOR, like web browsing.

Re:Self-incrimination

[phantomlord]

From the Fourth Amendment "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."

You have the right to not testify against yourself. However, if you go down to the police station and brag that you just committed a crime, your words will be admissible in court against you. Similarly, if you keep a ledger of all the people you shake down, that ledger can be used as evidence that you committed extortion. Also note that you only have the right to not testify against yourself in a criminal case. If you're involved in a civil case and refuse to present evidence that the judge ordered for discovery, expect to go to jail for contempt of court.

What is Unconstitutional is if the police refuse to let you have a lawyer after you've requested one, forcing you to sign a confession you didn't make, forcing you to take the stand against yourself in a criminal case (though if you opt to take the stand to defend yourself, you open yourself to cross examination and can be compelled to testify against yourself which is why many defendants will opt to not take the stand (for example, Scooter Libby)).

Re:The Pirate Bay

[AeroIllini]

That seems fair, fuck the sound engineers, recording studios and EVERYONE ELSE who actually works in the recording of music

No one is leaving out this group of people. They were all paid for their time at the creation of the album, and do not earn royalties on future sales. Their relationship to the music is as contractor only; their income does not depend on me buying the album.

I suppose an argument could be made that if the record companies don't make any money, then they won't be able to afford to pay the sound engineers and other such people for future recordings. To that, I say bullshit. If you can show me even one single shred of evidence that the recording companies are losing money (reports of declining sales of a specific format like CDs are misleading, since more and more people buy music online at places like iTunes and Napster), then you might have a case. But all the studies I've seen show that sales numbers of all new music in all formats is at an all-time high. (Also keep in mind that much of the sales numbers of the past couple decades included sales of music people already owned and are now being purchased in a new digital format. This will artificially inflate sales numbers. If sales of that format are delining now, it's probably because people are finished upgrading their collection.)

Additionally, if sales truly are down *and* correllated in a statistically meaningful way to piracy (evidence of which I have not yet seen), then it means that the record companies are not offering products that the market wants to buy at the price they are offering it for sale. I'm not going to cry myself to sleep over this; it's how the market works.

You are not guaranteed success just because you created a product. If I start a news service website and charge $50 a day for access, I can't complain that my business model is in danger soley because people are getting the same news from Google News for free. Those filthy news freeloaders! All it means is that I have a failing business model, and it's time to do something else.