Mininova Starts Filtering Torrents 267
Dreen writes with this snippet from TorrentFreak: "Just a few days before their court appearance, Mininova, the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, has started to filter content. The site is using a third-party content recognition system that will detect and remove torrent files that link to copyright-infringing files."
Lol. (Score:4, Insightful)
Coming up next (Score:5, Insightful)
Mininova collapses. How Mininova went from being the largest BitTorrent site to being the smallest.
Why Bother (Score:2, Insightful)
They're still going to end up in court.
Big Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
aha (Score:1, Insightful)
so that's why my tvrss links ain't working no more
Isn't that a bit like... (Score:3, Insightful)
... hiding the body after you've been accused of murder, hoping that you'll then not be convicted?
Re:Why Bother (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Mininova can not technically be an alternative to a Bittorrent tracker (like TPB etc.), since Mininova is not a tracker - it's just an indexed repository for .torrent files.
Re:Isn't that a bit like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Alternative? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why Bother (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between the Mininova defense and the TPB defense:
Mininova: "These are copyrighted, yes, but we do our best to remove content when flagged and we've even installed a filter to remove it automatically. It's not our fault if people still try and get around that."
TPB: "These are copyrighted, yes, but we don't fucking care. Ahahaha, losers."
I'm sure you can pick up the subtleties...
Victory! (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event being able to bully torrent sites into submission through legal means isn't what I'm worried about. I'm much more worried about them coercing ISP's into their little self-regulation schemes, as if it's somehow an ISP's responsibility to protect Sony BMG's copyrights. It strikes me as being just as misguided as expecting the people who maintain our roads to be responsible for people smuggling drugs across the border. Sorry guys, if you want to cling to the old IP system in the information age you should be prepared to do all the hard work yourself. If you don't like it I'm sure we can come up with some new, fairer systems to try.
Or, you know, just bribe politicians until you get your way. I guess that works too...
Are there any torrents left? (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the open source stuff will still be there, and any software that is in the public domain. How about those e-books that are nowhere else to be found, except on torrents?
Re:Why Bother (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a difference between the Mininova defense and the TPB defense:
Why is this modded +5 insightful!? The trials take/took place in different countries, which naturally don't hold the same laws. That is the only difference that matters as equal crimes will be treated differently in different countries.
-1, self centred.
Re:I've browsed through a lot of the comments (Score:5, Insightful)
If I say that Google shouldn't have to actively search out and filter content (which they don't, nor do they have to by US law), does that mean Google is predominantly used for copyright infringement? I don't think so.
Your argument is a straw man anyway. I don't think anyone would deny that bittorrent is mainly used for copyright infringement, but the issues are whether search engines should be liable. Also consider that even though something is copyright infringement by law doesn't mean it is unethical - e.g., someone downloading something they already bought in another format, or a BBC licence payer in the UK downloading BBC produced content, and another example would be using it as a form of timeshifting, downloading a show you just missed on TV you pay for. Consider, in the UK it's copyright infringement to copy a CD you've bought onto your own mp3 player. So it would be accurate to say that "MP3 players are used almost entirely for copyright infringement" - however that's not really a fair statement, and doesn't mean people are downloading things they haven't paid for.
Re:Why Bother (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's right. The behaviour of the sites in question has a huge impact on the outcome... Mininova is at least attempting to appear as though they're cooperating with copyright holders. TPB, by contrast, has a long history of replying to C&D letters by telling them things like "This is Sweden, you've got no jurisdiction, silly American coroporation, so fuck off" and then posting said takedown notice on their site so that everybody can read their ridicule.
There's a slight difference. And the copyright laws aren't really *that* different in Sweden when compared to the Netherlands.
Re:Why Bother (Score:3, Insightful)
The trials take/took place in different countries, which naturally don't hold the same laws.
He was pointing out the differences in the defense put forth by each, not the difference in the laws of the country in which the trial took place.
His point stands, I think. A big "Fuck you guys" is gonna get you on the shitlist of pretty much any judge, court, or (probably) jury.
Mininova goes Supernova (Score:4, Insightful)
That will prove to be 99.9% of their traffic, and revenue... .....have you seen any ISOs around here lately?
well it was fun while it lasted, now on to the next one!
(crouches down as if on a hunt)
Re:Why Bother (Score:5, Insightful)
His point stands, I think. A big "Fuck you guys" is gonna get you on the shitlist of pretty much any judge, court, or (probably) jury.
I'm sorry, you're wrong. The attitude of the person has to be kept separate from the crime commited. The crime must be treated unbiased. The law doesn't say "It's illegal to break copyright laws, and if you're a bit of a middleman it's illegal if you have a nasty attitude, otherwise it's ok". In Sweden (which I guess differs from the states in this sense as you seem to think that everything works as it does in the US) you should be able to flip off the judge and shit on his desk if you want. You'll get sentenced for indecent exposure but this should have absolutely no impact on the initial trial. That's called a fair trial.
Re:It makes them useless (Score:2, Insightful)
So that move makes mininova useless for me (and presumably a lot of their users), because they plan to start removing the very content that I'm looking for. I realise they might still have their place, but I wanted to point out that when a torrent site starts filtering and removing, it doesn't slow down piracy, it just makes people use other sites instead...
Re:Why Bother (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, you're wrong. The attitude of the person has to be kept separate from the crime commited.
It "has to"? Are you certain? Did you write those laws, or are you merely providing your opinion? Well, obviously you either have no understanding of the pragmatics of law, or you choose not to agree with the way laws are carried out. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it less true.
Pretty much every criminal trial encounters the word "remorse" at one point or another, which shows that courts do take attitudes into consideration.
Re:HOW do they do it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Big Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
In the United States, yes. The Robed Nine wanted a way around a few irritating constitutional restrictions, so they reasoned that by brewing beer and drinking beer at home, you were impacting the market for commercially-produced beer and therefore were subject to regulation as a commercial beer producer.
(Really? No. The real case was about growing wheat, not brewing beer, and the subject was "interstate commerce", not "commercial". But the reasoning was the same.)
Whether the Dutch have followed that sort of tortured reasoning is another question, but I'm sure the US doesn't have a monopoly on it.
Re:Encrypting solution for torrent sites... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Coming up next (Score:5, Insightful)
You win the prize for today.
One of the big strawmen foisted by the pro-piracy community is that Big Media thinks they can stop all piracy. The reality is that Big Media simply wants to keep it from going truly mainstream. By picking the low-hanging fruit, the goal is to scare people away from starting new trackers. If enough people are scared off, then the theory is that there won't be another TorrentSpy or Mininova in the USA -- just a number of smaller sites that stay under the radar.
It's very much like anti-theft measures at retailers and built into cars. The folks who put them in place know darn well that they won't stop everybody, but if they stop the bottom 80%, then it's a worthy investment.
try bt.etree or legaltorrents (Score:3, Insightful)
There's bt.etree.org [etree.org], which shares live concert recordings of taper-friendly bands, and which tracks the shifting of petabytes each year. (It is, IMO, a much more useful site if you click on the "hide Grateful Dead and Phish" button at the bottom of the page, but opinions may vary.) There's also legaltorrents.com [legaltorrents.com] which specializes in creative-commons media. Neither one is going to have as much mainstream material as the illegal sites (that should go without saying), but etree, at least, has some fairly big names, e.g. Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Buckethead, JJ Cale, Los Lobos, Primus.