Warez Moving From BitTorrent to Conventional Hosting Services 366
ericatcw writes "Driven by increased crackdowns on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, software pirates are fast moving their warez to file-hosting Web sites like RapidShare, reports Computerworld. According to anti-piracy vendor V.I. Labs, 100% of the warez in its survey were available on RapidShare, which, according to Alexa, is already one of the 20 largest sites in the world. V.I. Labs' CEO predicts file-hosting sites such as RapidShare will supplant BitTorrent, as the former appear better protected legally."
Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish that TV Shows were available on Rapidshare legit. The download speeds are great, and I would definitely pay $1 per episode.
Re:The future of piracy... (Score:2, Interesting)
Everything adapts. Software will be something you rent on the Internet and never resides on your computer.
Music? The situation in China has "evolved" to the point where there is no more recorded music sold (or produced). In the West check your local radio stations... what is selling there is oldies. What will continue to "sell" will be music from the previous century and the Internet will be dominated by garage bands offering stuff for free in hopes of landing a gig.
Movies? Eliminate digital distribution (DVDs) and you eliminate the problem. If it is going to be on DVD, lots of people will just download it for free. You want a theatrical release? It is going to have to be in theaters only, for years. Maybe sell DVDs years later, maybe never because once released on DVD the revenue stream ends.
User generated content? Check out YouTube for that, especially ShayTards and Magibon. This is the height of user-generated content and people are starting to discover (realize?) that it is crap. All crap, all the time. No, that isn't going to be the future of entertainment.
What most people don't understand is we've grown an entire generation that believes it all should be free and will never, ever pay. This is going to require a major adaptation that most "media" and "entertainment" isn't going to survive, but the adaptation will eventually succeed.
No, only in your fantasy will it really all be free. Someone has to pay, and patronage doesn't work. So we all have to pay for what we consume.
Re:captain obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:captain obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
BT (and any other pure P2P system) is safer simply because there are additional hoops for the MPAAs of the world to jump through (like ISPs and privacy laws) to get your identity and even so such identity is unreliable (unless your lawyer is a dolt or you have been completely unprepared and are keeping all your downloaded stuff in the open, have no WiFi routers etc).
This is of course not an impregnable defence but its orders of magnitude harder to crack then simply asking MegaUpload for all your downloads in your account, cross-correlated with your identity coming from your financial record (note that the prickly ISP problem has been circumnavigated neatly).
P2P can be made far more secure, and it has been, like for example the Japanese Winny system (which was a cross between something like FreeNet and a typical P2P system like Gnutella) and its more modern successor the Perfect Dark. If coupled with steganographic storage, good user practices and other tricks, such systems can be made near-impractical to crack, to the point that mere knowledge of the IP address is (practically) useless from the perspective of copyright witch-hunters.
Re:The future of piracy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Everything adapts. Software will be something you rent on the Internet and never resides on your computer.
In your dreams, and Microsoft's perhaps. On *my* computer? I think not.
Music? The situation in China has "evolved" to the point where there is no more recorded music sold (or produced).
Been to China lately? When I was there last April, I saw plenty of Chinese music [wikipedia.org] for sale.
(And my gf, who is from Canton, has boatloads of the stuff.)
In the West check your local radio stations... what is selling there is oldies. What will continue to "sell" will be music from the previous century and the Internet will be dominated by garage bands offering stuff for free in hopes of landing a gig.
I'm sure these guys [www.sr.se] (whom we listen to in the office nearly every day) will be interested in learning that Miss Li [missli.se] sounds like she recorded her stuff in the 1920s because she actually did...?
Movies? Eliminate digital distribution (DVDs) and you eliminate the problem.
Wrong [wikipedia.org]
and
Wrong [wikipedia.org].
User generated content? Check out YouTube for that, especially ShayTards and Magibon. This is the height of user-generated content and people are starting to discover (realize?) that it is crap. All crap, all the time. No, that isn't going to be the future of entertainment.
(I am going to burn in Hell for this, but...)
[citation needed]
What most people don't understand is we've grown an entire generation that believes it all should be free and will never, ever pay. This is going to require a major adaptation that most "media" and "entertainment" isn't going to survive, but the adaptation will eventually succeed.
No, only in your fantasy will it really all be free. Someone has to pay, and patronage doesn't work.
No, what we've got is a generation that views the 'Every conceivable juxtaposition of eyes/ears with content entails a licence fee' model with derision. And rightly so.
So we all have to pay for what we consume.
Please tell that to the rich folk who got that way by finding some way not to pay for something (a lot of something). Which would be most of them.
But wait -- that's what *they're* telling *you*, isn't it?
Re:The future of piracy... (Score:1, Interesting)
Your last part is probably not going to happen. A new decentralized network takes physical outlay to do. I'm sure Joe Sixpack won't be stringing a gigabit Ethernet cable from house to house. Wireless? The FCC will just methodically hunt down and squash rogue connections just like pirate radio.
The days of someone making a new app to win the cat and mouse game are slowly winding down. Virtually anything going from router to router gets logged, and any traffic that isn't obvious can just be dropped or throttled to nonexistance.
This reminds me about the early part of the century, unless you used USENET or IRC (and were able to get invites as opposed to mode +b *@*.yoursitename.com), the only way to find anything was "warez search engines". All they did was demand you vote for them, shunt you to another search and all the while try every browser hole known to get malware onto your system. Then we had file sharing networks with decent clients (which soon turned into malware infected clients). Then when those turned to crap, a standardized protocol. Now, with all the P2P throttling, we are back to download sites and lame "warez search engines" again to find not just where the program is stored, but what the RAR password for the archive is.
I hate to say it, but the big guys are winning this round, just like they took back satellite TV from the average joe with the universal card. Now HD programs from satellites and blu-ray players end up accessible to only a very few in a tight, closed circle. Similar with consoles, where PS2s still have yet to be cracked, after a number of years later.
Regular CD protection is not being cracked as easily. Splinter Cell, even years later still requires someone to physically unplug their IDE CD/DVD drives in order to get a "crack" to work. Newer StarForce games still have yet to be cracked in any meaningful fashion.
I'm sure in 3-5 years that piracy will get all but pushed to the fringes by a combination of techniques like RIAA style litigation, product activation, constant patching, CD/DVD ROM hardware with DRM hooks that work on concert with SecuROM's successor, and finally DLC, where the CD is just a stub, and the relevant content is downloaded. When technology fails, the laws will pick up. Right now, there is a lot of lobbying in US and other country governments for not just universalizing the DMCA, but the mysterious ACTA (where it will end up the law of the lands of many countries at once) which will not just require ISPs to act as policemen on their dime, but order peers to drop any packets that are not tracable to some group or person which can be held responsible for the contents.
Re:That's not new (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sucks to be American sometimes (Score:5, Interesting)
BEGINNING FILE TRANSFER OVER HTML (Score:3, Interesting)
(Please mod this post down so that the RIAA/MPAA/CoS doesn't see it and get it taken down)
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Re:Sucks to be American sometimes (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, you're screwed. Why do you think other nations are 'harmonizing' their copyright laws with the US?
Good luck with that. Every time our Canadian government tries that shit, we either kick their asses out or we storm their headquarters and threaten to kick their asses out.
They've tried the Canadian DMCA 3 times now only to be defeated every time. Canadians will not put up with that crap. Once you tell Grandma that she can't copy a song to her ipod, there's no hope for the gov't.
This faulty American DMCA legislation is probably the reason we now have minority governments. That's not a bad thing. They have to work together or get booted out.
America is on life support anyway. Not as important as she thinks, and soon to die from her own overindulgence and greed.
Bring on the trolls mutherfucker. Mod me into oblivion... I could care less.