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."
It makes them useless (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why Bother (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes they are - but now they can more-or-less show 'good faith' to the judge.
Currently mininova - knowing full well the reason why people use their site - simply go by the strict laws.. if a copyright holder / representative tells them they're hosting particular copyrighted content, they'll take it down.
Of course it will be back up there 5 minutes later. This is pissing the Dutch interest groups off who are trying to slap the mininova people around a bit with other laws / more loose interpretations.
But now they can say "ahh, but look.. we installed a filter.. it's not our fault that them sneaky pirates find ways around those filters.. it would be *impossible* for us to manually go over each and every upload!".. then hope to exit the court grinning while their main page continues to display top 10 lists of every popular category with scarce 'legal' torrents (I think the Windows 7 Release Candidate was the only one when I checked yesterday and yes, I know there's nothing illegal about a torrent file itself.. splitting hairs over technical details is what they'll be doing in court).
Re:Why Bother (Score:2, Interesting)
Currently mininova - knowing full well the reason why people use their site - simply go by the strict laws.. if a copyright holder / representative tells them they're hosting particular copyrighted content, they'll take it down.
Well I'm curious what the law is in wherever-it-is-that-Mininova is filtered?
In the US, responding to takedown notices is all that's required, and there is no obligation ("good faith" or otherwise) to do more. My understanding is that the problem with TPB was that they didn't respond to takedown notices (can anyone confirm?)
Furthermore, installing filtering software may run the risk of them being more liable, as they surely give up any claim of being a "common carrier".
I would be extremely worried if Mininova were found guilty for not actively filtering, even when they responded to takedown notices. Consider, how would one hypothetically run a legal bittorrent search engine (because there are at least a few legal bittorrents out there)? Would a bittorrent search engine be illegal simply because they fail to remove the link to copyrighted information even without a takedown notice? How does that make them any different to Google (not to mention ISPs and other hosts that make host actual copyrighted material, and not merely links to them)?
Featured torrents: (Score:5, Interesting)
Featured torrents:
"How to bypass mininovas copyright filter"
Sony v. Universal & Selection Bias (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently BitTorrent is predominantly used for copyright infringement. Well done for proving the RIAA / MPAA right, boys. You're a true help to the cause.
According to the logic of Sony v. Universal, as long as the technology has substantial non-infringing uses, the creators won't be held liable for contributory infringement. That's under US law, of course.
Also, there's this thing called selection bias. [wikipedia.org] Or don't you think people who primarily use Mininova to download infringing material would be more likely to comment on an article that says Mininova is filtering infringing material?
Sheesh.
Re:Alternative? (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I use NNTP.
The first rule of USENET is ... oh, nevermind.
I use www.bitnabber.com
For yucks, I visited the site. Cute and friendly so I guess it would appeal to novice users. That said, the following caught my eye:
Reading the above I'm reminded of the way in which Napster (?) advertised themselves before being sued for contributory copyright infringement and went out business.
Then, there's the new and disturbing trend by state attorneys general to get together and browbeat content providers. Craig's List is the latest to draw their attention (turns out their Erotic Services section is too popular), but usenet providers have already been hit. A large number of groups that were alleged to contain child pornography are no longer accessible. Extending the successes of their Do It Or We'll Take You To Court approach to the alt.binaries.mp3 groups, for example, would seem a no brainer.
Glad you like bitnabber. Enjoy it while it lasts.
HOW do they do it? (Score:1, Interesting)
It seems if they filter by text (like the title contains "batman" or whatever) then this would be extremely effective.
I'm trying to figure out how it would -not- be effective. I'm a moron... please explain. Seems torrent clients would need to be redesigned to use like some kind of encryption for the actual filename or ... ?
I'm not concerned with Mini, but the potential for all the other torrent sites to follow suit. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
HOW? (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems to me... (Score:4, Interesting)
...that this is yet another opportunity to come up with a way of making a distributed lookup system part of the bit torrent spec. Sure, it wouldn't be as quick, but if your client can listen for other nearby clients and query them for a list of files that they've accessed (not just ones being seeded by them, but ones they've connected to recently or are currently connected to). I'm sure this would greatly limit the number of seeds you find, but with a proper system of distributed "well, I've heard this guy has this" and "I'm seeding this right now and I've transfered it to this guy who might also be seeding" and such would give you a fairly decent list of seeds that you can probably get a good speed to (since they're somewhat 'local'). This would have the benefit of not needing a search site, nor needing any centralized repository.
On the other hand if this worked and was really successful, the RIAA would just try to ban the protocol from ISP's.
Indexted DHT URI's only legit? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've often wondered if a list of indexed DHT URI hashes would be any stronger in court.
I figure at some point we will have sites that don't link to or have torrents but just indexed and categorized DHT URI links.
Encrypting solution for torrent sites... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think all torrent sites should 2-way encrypt all their search results (meaning the titles, descriptions, etc..) and put a statement up that says decrypting is not allowed. Then have "hackers" make a firefox addon that automatically decrypts the text on torrent sites. Everybody (except MIAA/RIAA) starts using the addon. The MIAA/RIAA can't use the addon because that would violate their own laws can be sued for breaking encryption.