drDugan writes "Many legitimate media providers are using Bittorrent to distribute content, but the recent Pirate Bay legal verdict and closures left many content downloads unavailable. Along with the ongoing legal issues at Mininovaand other sites, options have been scarce for legitimate Bittorrent tracking service. Once a torrent is created with a tracker URL, that tracker has to stay running for normal distribution to continue. LegalTorrents.com has quietly launched a solution with three open Bittorent trackers for its members, including a fully automated, community-based flagging system to blacklist and immediately remove copyright-infringing content. Users submit SHA1 hash values for content with infringing materials. Site members can include and track their own published materials regardless of flagging."
This slashvertisement conveniently left out the fact that 1) You need to add the hash via their website, which for you need a member account and 2) Member accounts start at $20 an year up to $399 an year
While the trackers itself are "open", as in everyone can get the peers via them, you need to add the hash first for it to function. So no, this isn't open tracker.
I don't know the figures, but I would venture to guess that AT&T and Comcast are the two largest ISP's providing DSL and Cable (at least in California). Neither of them block bittorrent, maybe its time to get a new ISP. You know, one that doesn't block legitimate file transfer protocols.
I fail to see that this will do much good when the bittorrent protocol is blcked on many ISPs (including mine).
I was under the impression it uses the TCP protocol (maybe UDP under some of the new versions IIRC). They wouldn't be blocking TCP on you. Just encrypt your traffic and lower the number of connections you allow, and you'll be back in business. They cannot "block" bittorrent, not possible, but they can make it slow, that is for sure.
Actually, this is not accurate, the trackers are open, and can be used without adding the hash to the website. Unfortunately, a completely open system is open to abuse, copyright infringement, and other issues.
To publish your own content, or content you have a license to distribute, membership is required to "whitelist" content, and prevent automatic removal by blacklisting. This is the solution we have come up with to minimize and prevent abuse.
Any logged in user can flag content as copyright infringing, here http://www.legaltorrents.com/flag_content [legaltorrents.com] and unless that hash value is in the whitelist (added by a member), the tracker will remove it in about 15 minutes.
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday November 11, @04:53PM (#30066222)
This is the solution we have come up with to minimize and prevent abuse.
Is that to imply you are involved with this service (beyond member that is)? I had a question that doesn't appear in the FAQ
Plenty of places state how the site will respond to a member that uploads someone elses content, and a very partial description of how DMCA requests are handled - but only from the assuming I am a criminal view.
If I was to become a member, and publish my own works where I have the copyright on that work, how do you defend MY rights against DMCA notices?
To actually qualify for safe harbor provisions, the site is required by law to notify me of a take down notice, and upon my reply that I do in fact own the copyright, are required by law to put that content back up (and provide the entity sending the takedown with my contact info)
Does the site do this? Am I as a rights holder going to still be treated like a criminal when some fool sends an illegal takedown notice to you? Will the site follow the law and inform me? Will I be compensated if this does not happen, out side of me having to press charges for damages in civil court? (If you do not notify me, you do not qualify for safe harbor, and my own lawsuit will almost certainly win, and odds are the fool sending the takedown can sue you successfully too)
The FAQ states so many places how the rights of IP-thieves (IE RIAA and co) are protected, and not a single mention of how real IP holders rights are protected if at all.
There are several steps to qualify for safe harbors, and we will follow each of them to the letter. We have not yet had to reply to any DMCA takedowns yet - all the content on the website must have a share-friendly license before content can be uploaded.
In such a situation, we will both defend the rights of our customers and provide them all the information possible to resolve the issue. I disagree the FAQ is slanted toward "IP-thieves". This does not represent the ethos of LegalTorrents.
We have not yet had to reply to any DMCA takedowns yet - all the content on the website must have a share-friendly license before content can be uploaded.
Say someone develops a video game in the vein of Quadra [google.com], Quadrapassel [gnome.org], or KBlocks [flickr.com]. These games are free software, and they implement substantially the same rules as Tetris. The Tetris Company claims that other computer programs that implement the rules of Tetris infringe the copyright in Tetris, despite a U.S. Copyright Office publication to the contrary [copyright.gov]. If someone develops a Free video game with the same rules as Tetris and hosts a mirror of the game on LegalTorrents, how do you plan to handle a DMCA requ
In other words, until you're big enough to have one asshat flag you and "tough luck, you'll need a membership to stop it being deleted". I guess you're technically correct but given the number of asshats on the Internet I'd say it works out the same. Unless there's some ToS problem, I'd just add all the open trackers like OpenBitTorrent, The HiddenTracker, OpenBitTorrent.kg, PublicBitTorrent and BitTrk [wikipedia.org]. Host the torrent yourself, everybody loks at that but honestly nobody looks at what tracker(s) you're usi
This is the solution we have come up with to minimize and prevent abuse.
This is good work, drDugan. I'm glad you identified yourself as part of the project.
I currently distribute my own original, Creative Commons-licensed content via bittorrent (under my professional name, not "PopeRatzo"), and I plan to sign up for an account right away. Thanks to you and the others involved in legaltorrents.com.
Which is a shame, somewhere with unabiguously legal content available freely and freely would be great. I have plenty of content [lifeinmegapixels.com] that i would happily share freely, but im not going to pay to share it. Id bet there's a few others in a similar situation aswell.
On the other hand, even if such a place did exist, having only 512kbit upload would make sharing multi-gigabyte, multi-gigapixel images tedious anyway.
Which is a shame, somewhere with unabiguously legal content available freely and freely would be great. I have plenty of content [lifeinmegapixels.com] that i would happily share freely, but im not going to pay to share it. Id bet there's a few others in a similar situation aswell.
If you're serious, consider The Internet Archive [archive.org]. Servers around the world, zero cost, unlimited uploading and downloading for all, and no size limits (as far as I know). IA hosts a lot of large files (full-length movies, DVDs, some periodic TV shows
There's no benefit as whatever may be available on "their" side isn't as appealing anyhow. Wake up, give people what they want and you'll make money. Keep trying to force your business model on people, you'll go under.
Wake up, give people what they want and you'll make money.
My understanding is that what pirates want, is the same thing but without having to hand over money.
Or is this about to be another person arguing that the customer should be able to force the seller to hand over the goods at whatever price the customer fancies (including nothing) - or else they'll just take it for free anyway. Or perhaps the other argument that if you give your most valuable asset away for free, you'll magically make more money f
What people want is reasonable prices. When companies make insane profits (not saying that they don't have a right to, cuz they do), they're obviously charging way more than is necessary - pirating is people's way of saying "I like what you're producing, but you're charging too much - cut the cost and I'll buy it". I guarantee that if the average new movie price was $10 instead of $25, they'd sell a LOT more dvd's and there'd be a lot less pirating going on. Same with seasons of tv shows - since the cost
No, I buy them on sale, but I'm a collector. Don't assume.
Just because I know many people who do pirate for that very reason (that they're too expensive) doesn't mean I do. But hey, you can just go ahead and look like a jackass without having a clue about my spending habits!
Keep trying to force your business model on people, you'll go under.
Yeah, just like the cable companies, Microsoft, Apple with it's iPhone, etc...
You use the term "people" like they're some single object that all wants the same thing. As long as *some* people want the product, and revenue exceeds costs, then *any* company can remain solvent, regardless of how you personally feel about it.
Giving stuff away can certainly turn a profit if it's used as advertising for other services/products.
But advertising eventually has to point to a product for sale. Say I develop a video game for PCs or Android phones that isn't massively multiplayer. What should go into the "demo" that I distribute freely, and what should I restrict to draw revenue?
It's a bit like the invention of fire. You can't suppress it, despite its danger - sure, people are burned with it every day (and there are people out there who use it to burn people!) but if you want to cook food or refine metal, you can't throw it out.
There are legitimate users of BitTorrent technologies, and there will continue to be legitimate uses of it. This site/service, whether it's directly useful to you or not, serves as documentation of that fact.
Exactly, a site and set of trackers dedicated to legal material will facilitate the argument that there are, in fact, legal uses for torrents. This fact is utterly lost on many legislators thanks to the lobbying of Big Content. They need all the help they can get to see beyond the lobbyists and this is a step in the right direction. If the LegalTorrents community can demonstrate that a community can self-regulate to avoid infringement it will make the arguments of the RIAA more transparently false.
Big Content will eventually die off simply because they aren't needed anymore. Artists no longer need big labels to publish their content and the more tools that artists have to avoid Big Content the better.
Exactly, a site and set of trackers dedicated to legal material will facilitate the argument that there are, in fact, legal uses for torrents.
The name of this particular service - LegalTorrents.com - serves to focus undue attention on the ubiquity of torrents providing access to infringing content.
Moreover, it comes down squarely on the wrong side of an important issue: torrents themselves are arguably never illegal, in that they only provide a means of finding content, and leave the actual distribution up to participating clients. Google indexes plenty of content that is either illegal or infringing, and though they deal with plenty of copyright-related complaints, they have not seen the need to establish an explicitly "legal" search service.
The company would also do a tremendous disservice to those advocating legitimate uses of torrents, if the number of torrents it tracks becomes a convenient shorthand for the number of legal torrents available. It might be good for business to publicize those numbers, to the extent they aren't readily visible, even if it is very bad for other legitimate users of the protocol. For instance, it would be trivial to assert that only 5% of torrents are available through LegalTorrents.com, and to imply that the other 95% are somehow illegal or questionable.
Frankly, it would be better for everyone if they had simply picked a name they could brand and advertise effectively. I can't see "LegalTorrents.com" getting the same sort of traction with Fortune 100 businesses as Akamai has, and it draws an inordinate amount of attention to the fact that the legality of the underlying protocol is controversial.
They might however be unauthorized derived works of the material whose hashes they contain.
For sure though once a tracker has knowledge that one of their torrents is being used to facilitate copyright infringement they become an accessory if they fail to remove it.
Copyright infringment is BS. Aiding and abetting, however, I'd be more apt to buy.
If torrent files are derivative works because they contain hashes of other works, then any work with a bibliography is a derivative of the works it references. Hashes merely identify the a work; they aren't a copy of it.
Moreover, to the best of my knowledge as a non-lawyer, if something wouldn't qualify for copyright on its own (and thus isn't a work at all) then it can't be a derivative work. Hashes certainly wouldn't qualify by themselves, and it's rather unlikely that any torrent file containing them would either.
The "aiding and abetting" argument would indeed be the most sound approach. To that end—if you wish to support copyright—then once the copyright holder has established in court that a given swarm (identified by hash) is infringing on their copyrights, or the court has granted them an injunction pending a final decision, then you should blacklist that particular hash. However, allowing the swarm to continue when its illegality has not been established in a court of law should never be considered "aiding and abetting", since the tracker doesn't have "knowledge that one of their torrents is being used to facilitate copyright infringement"; they only have the copyright holder's allegations to that effect.
and yet you're the only one who is making such an absurd and asinine claim.
Really?
In a lawsuit filed in August 2009, BREIN [wikipedia.org] claimed that "80 to 90 percent of all torrents... [link] to copyrighted material." (citation [pcmag.com])
All that remains is to take the number of torrents on LegalTorrents.com, estimate the number of torrents available through other sites, compare the two numbers, then revise upward the estimate of illegal torrents.
Absurd and asinine it may be, but such claims are already being made.
Admittedly, it's overstating the importance of LegalTorrents.com by quite a lot. This is
But in response to the claim that it will someday support the argument that torrents have substantially non-infringing uses, it's fair to point out that it is far more likely to damage such arguments.
Sayeth the SCOTUS:
[...]The staple article of commerce doctrine must strike a balance between a copyright holder‘s legitimate demand for effective -- not merely symbolic -- protection of the statutory monopoly, and the rights of others freely to engage in substantially unrelated areas of commerce. Accordin
Uhhh...dude? Big content has one BIG fricking advantage you seem to be missing. You see, you are under the naive impression that by proving your argument with common sense, you, the little guy, might actually win. Wrong son, so wrong it ain't even funny.
The reason it is so wrong is big content has these thing called "lobbyists" that carry a magic wand called a "big fat check". Now you see with enough of these "big fat checks" you can get a congress critter to say blue skies are green, the moon is made out o
Artists no longer need big labels to publish their content
Over the past decade, this has become true of books, music, and short film. But in interactive entertainment, three companies (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) act as gatekeepers to the market, and they prefer to deal with big labels over individual developers. Individuals can self-publish games on PCs, but PC gaming has serious drawbacks that I've discussed numerous times in the past.
I'd think the use of BitTorrent for things like World of Warcraft updates [arstechnica.com], for about 5 years, is more validation than someone hosting a pay-to-join tracker for legal content.
Aren't there already totally free trackers for legal content (like Linux ISOs, etc)?
If you have a very popular website that hosts torrents, and its name is "The Pirate Bay", it has certain connotations, and an undesirable association is formed. Well, then, if so much is in the name, then another website hosting torrents named "Legal Torrents" might go a long way towards reversing that association!
It's a bit like the invention of fire. You can't suppress it, despite its danger - sure, people are burned with it every day (...) but if you want to cook food (...) you can't throw it out.
Between my kitchen cooktop, oven and microwave - all of which run on electricity - I'd say that was a very poor example. The last time I cooked something with fire, like an actual burning flame was when I went camping. Or in a cabin on a stove using either gas or wood. The only time you'd find a flame in my kitchen is if I'm trying to flambé something or I've set the kitchen on fire, where the latter is far more likely. Particularly since the former would probably lead to the latter.
It depends on where you live, but out here on the West (U.S.) Coast, the prevalent heating fuel is natural gas, which is used in the vast majority of forced air furnace and hot water heaters. They work with open flame. Unless you have an electric hot water heater (they do exist, but are phenomenally expensive to run, by comparison, according to my brother-in-law in Florida who has one), it's very likely that your hot water needs are met by fire.
If that's not enough, there's more: Your house likely has coppe
Somehow I don't relate how they welded my water pipes to cooking, the charcoal grill is a decent point though. I think here in Norway anyone using gas would be the outlier, it's almost all electric here. Yes, we use oil and and gas and wood for space heating and water heaters but almost noone for cooking - normally people boil initially cold water so the water heater isn't involved either. Besides, you can quite easily burn yourself without a flame, so wasn't like that it's safer. Just that most here cook w
It depends on where you live, but out here on the West (U.S.) Coast, the prevalent heating fuel is natural gas...
The ironic part of that is that electricity is probably cheaper at this point, given how much natural gas prices have increased.
I've always thought someone should design a clothes dryer based on tying into your home's heat pump system. Have a three-way switching valve on the freon lines. When you're heating clothes, you're either cooling your house (if it needs to be cooled further) or cooling
Heat pump systems do not work that way, unfortunately. They are typically just a reversible air conditioner hooked up to forced air ducts.
I would love to see a heat pump system that had high and low pressure refrigerant lines, individual throttles in each room, and tie-in ports for things like refrigerators. It always strikes me as inefficient that we stick a refrigerator up against a wall in an insulated room and then chill the room itself.
On the other hand, such a system would also suffer from some scal
There are legitimate users of BitTorrent technologies, and there will continue to be legitimate uses of it
And even if there weren't legitimate users, there should be, if only the legislation weren't so absurd. The fact is that current "intellectual property" regulation is completely arbitrary, imposed by the corrupt organizations that have taken over our culture.
They want to use analogies as long as it benefits them, they call it "piracy" and "just like stealing" when someone copies something, yet they forg
Which version of copyrights? The MPAA and the RIAA where fair use doesn't exist? The US one where anti-circumvention tools are legal? The German version where hacking tools are illegal? Or the Canadian version where fair use and privacy actually matter ('till ACTA is signed and forces us to change our laws, at least)? Something might be legal in one situation and not in another. In the end, only the proper authorities and legal system (aka the courts and judges in most countries) of the users can fairly decide what is legal and what isn't.
And this "community-driven" system for black-flagging "illegal" content looks rife for exploitation.
Their SHA1 hashing method will not be sufficient to detect most copyright infringements. Even one bit change in a file will result in a completely different SHA1 hash.
I am the creator of pHash [phash.org], which is well suited for this type of similarity search. The hashes do not need to be identical in order to detect duplicate or similar files, and similar files will have hashes that are "close" to one another.
This is really what they should be using.
The eMule Content Database [emule-project.net] has been doing that, very successfully and for many years. Legit content, that is.
And you need no tracker in eMule. As long as the file/collection is moderately popular, once a few people download it from you it will exist in the network for ever. I know as I have published service manuals there and I can still find them after 4 years...
Why does slashdot keep quoting media sources written by people who are obviously either too old or too ignorant to type in a URL and watch a page load?!
Anecdotally, it seems to be blocked for some people and not for others, and the blocking itself seems to be in flux. The last time I saw a post on Slashdot saying it had been closed, I tried accessing it then and could not. This time around, I can access the website. Don't know about the torrent though, haven't tried.
Anecdotally, it seems to be blocked for some people and not for others, and the blocking itself seems to be in flux. The last time I saw a post on Slashdot saying it had been closed, I tried accessing it then and could not. This time around, I can access the website. Don't know about the torrent though, haven't tried.
Meant to say *tracker* - heh. Maybe I shouldn't slashdot without my green tea:)
This seems to be varying. During the last weeks, there were two days during which the main site would simply not load at all. Keep in mind that some European countries have already blocked it, and then also there are some ISPs that are doing that preventively.
Well, people actually do, but only if it's worth it:
Indepedent movie Nasty Old People:
-> Financed by a bank loan
-> Freely distributed via bittorrent at TPB
-> Released October 10
-> 16 day later (October 26), they had paid 25% of the loan, all with donations
I'm not criticizing these film-makers, but it's disingenuous for you to say that this validates some kind of sustainable financial business model. According to the second sentence, "nobody got paid". This sounds like an expensive hobby.
"We have also have received MORE than 20 000 SEK, (2000 EUR!) by now. This means we have covered more than 20 percent of the bank loan!! Thank you so much to all of you!"
So worst case scenario, they took out a EUR20,000 loan, or roughly $30,000.. which puts it in the realm of the Blair Witch Project (at least for principal shooting - google about for the nasty details of the numbers by the time they got that thing in a traditional release with any hope for the suc
slashvertisement (Score:5, Informative)
This slashvertisement conveniently left out the fact that
1) You need to add the hash via their website, which for you need a member account and
2) Member accounts start at $20 an year up to $399 an year
While the trackers itself are "open", as in everyone can get the peers via them, you need to add the hash first for it to function. So no, this isn't open tracker.
Reply to This
Re:Legal torrents (Score:3, Interesting)
I fail to see that this will do much good when the bittorrent protocol is blcked on many ISPs (including mine).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I fail to see that this will do much good when the bittorrent protocol is blcked on many ISPs (including mine).
I was under the impression it uses the TCP protocol (maybe UDP under some of the new versions IIRC). They wouldn't be blocking TCP on you. Just encrypt your traffic and lower the number of connections you allow, and you'll be back in business. They cannot "block" bittorrent, not possible, but they can make it slow, that is for sure.
Re:slashvertisement (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, this is not accurate, the trackers are open, and can be used without adding the hash to the website. Unfortunately, a completely open system is open to abuse, copyright infringement, and other issues.
To publish your own content, or content you have a license to distribute, membership is required to "whitelist" content, and prevent automatic removal by blacklisting. This is the solution we have come up with to minimize and prevent abuse.
Any logged in user can flag content as copyright infringing, here
http://www.legaltorrents.com/flag_content [legaltorrents.com]
and unless that hash value is in the whitelist (added by a member), the tracker will remove it in about 15 minutes.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:slashvertisement (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the solution we have come up with to minimize and prevent abuse.
Is that to imply you are involved with this service (beyond member that is)?
I had a question that doesn't appear in the FAQ
Plenty of places state how the site will respond to a member that uploads someone elses content, and a very partial description of how DMCA requests are handled - but only from the assuming I am a criminal view.
If I was to become a member, and publish my own works where I have the copyright on that work, how do you defend MY rights against DMCA notices?
To actually qualify for safe harbor provisions, the site is required by law to notify me of a take down notice, and upon my reply that I do in fact own the copyright, are required by law to put that content back up (and provide the entity sending the takedown with my contact info)
Does the site do this? Am I as a rights holder going to still be treated like a criminal when some fool sends an illegal takedown notice to you? Will the site follow the law and inform me?
Will I be compensated if this does not happen, out side of me having to press charges for damages in civil court? (If you do not notify me, you do not qualify for safe harbor, and my own lawsuit will almost certainly win, and odds are the fool sending the takedown can sue you successfully too)
The FAQ states so many places how the rights of IP-thieves (IE RIAA and co) are protected, and not a single mention of how real IP holders rights are protected if at all.
Just curious...
Reply to This
Parent
Re:slashvertisement (Score:4, Informative)
There are several steps to qualify for safe harbors, and we will follow each of them to the letter. We have not yet had to reply to any DMCA takedowns yet - all the content on the website must have a share-friendly license before content can be uploaded.
In such a situation, we will both defend the rights of our customers and provide them all the information possible to resolve the issue. I disagree the FAQ is slanted toward "IP-thieves". This does not represent the ethos of LegalTorrents.
Fred von Lohmann from the EFF provides an excellent .pdf review for service providers; there is a recently updated version here:
http://www.law.depaul.edu/centers_institutes/ciplit/niro_symposium_09/pdf/paper_cohn1.pdf [depaul.edu]
plus EFF has a wiki page with additional details: http://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Copyright:_Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act [eff.org]
Reply to This
Parent
A DMCA request from The Tetris Company? (Score:2)
We have not yet had to reply to any DMCA takedowns yet - all the content on the website must have a share-friendly license before content can be uploaded.
Say someone develops a video game in the vein of Quadra [google.com], Quadrapassel [gnome.org], or KBlocks [flickr.com]. These games are free software, and they implement substantially the same rules as Tetris. The Tetris Company claims that other computer programs that implement the rules of Tetris infringe the copyright in Tetris, despite a U.S. Copyright Office publication to the contrary [copyright.gov]. If someone develops a Free video game with the same rules as Tetris and hosts a mirror of the game on LegalTorrents, how do you plan to handle a DMCA requ
Re: (Score:2)
In other words, until you're big enough to have one asshat flag you and "tough luck, you'll need a membership to stop it being deleted". I guess you're technically correct but given the number of asshats on the Internet I'd say it works out the same. Unless there's some ToS problem, I'd just add all the open trackers like OpenBitTorrent, The HiddenTracker, OpenBitTorrent.kg, PublicBitTorrent and BitTrk [wikipedia.org]. Host the torrent yourself, everybody loks at that but honestly nobody looks at what tracker(s) you're usi
Re: (Score:2)
This is good work, drDugan. I'm glad you identified yourself as part of the project.
I currently distribute my own original, Creative Commons-licensed content via bittorrent (under my professional name, not "PopeRatzo"), and I plan to sign up for an account right away. Thanks to you and the others involved in legaltorrents.com.
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On the other hand, even if such a place did exist, having only 512kbit upload would make sharing multi-gigabyte, multi-gigapixel images tedious anyway.
Consider The Internet Archive (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're serious, consider The Internet Archive [archive.org]. Servers around the world, zero cost, unlimited uploading and downloading for all, and no size limits (as far as I know). IA hosts a lot of large files (full-length movies, DVDs, some periodic TV shows
Legal Torrents (Score:3, Insightful)
Torrents that have been approved by your masters, is more like it.
Reply to This
... why bother? (Score:3, Informative)
There's no benefit as whatever may be available on "their" side isn't as appealing anyhow. Wake up, give people what they want and you'll make money. Keep trying to force your business model on people, you'll go under.
Reply to This
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My understanding is that what pirates want, is the same thing but without having to hand over money.
Or is this about to be another person arguing that the customer should be able to force the seller to hand over the goods at whatever price the customer fancies (including nothing) - or else they'll just take it for free anyway. Or perhaps the other argument that if you give your most valuable asset away for free, you'll magically make more money f
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No, I buy them on sale, but I'm a collector. Don't assume.
Just because I know many people who do pirate for that very reason (that they're too expensive) doesn't mean I do. But hey, you can just go ahead and look like a jackass without having a clue about my spending habits!
Re: (Score:2)
Keep trying to force your business model on people, you'll go under.
Yeah, just like the cable companies, Microsoft, Apple with it's iPhone, etc...
You use the term "people" like they're some single object that all wants the same thing. As long as *some* people want the product, and revenue exceeds costs, then *any* company can remain solvent, regardless of how you personally feel about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Giving stuff away can certainly turn a profit if it's used as advertising for other services/products.
But advertising eventually has to point to a product for sale. Say I develop a video game for PCs or Android phones that isn't massively multiplayer. What should go into the "demo" that I distribute freely, and what should I restrict to draw revenue?
Still, it validates the technology (Score:2, Redundant)
It's a bit like the invention of fire. You can't suppress it, despite its danger - sure, people are burned with it every day (and there are people out there who use it to burn people!) but if you want to cook food or refine metal, you can't throw it out.
There are legitimate users of BitTorrent technologies, and there will continue to be legitimate uses of it. This site/service, whether it's directly useful to you or not, serves as documentation of that fact.
Re:Still, it validates the technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, a site and set of trackers dedicated to legal material will facilitate the argument that there are, in fact, legal uses for torrents. This fact is utterly lost on many legislators thanks to the lobbying of Big Content. They need all the help they can get to see beyond the lobbyists and this is a step in the right direction. If the LegalTorrents community can demonstrate that a community can self-regulate to avoid infringement it will make the arguments of the RIAA more transparently false.
Big Content will eventually die off simply because they aren't needed anymore. Artists no longer need big labels to publish their content and the more tools that artists have to avoid Big Content the better.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Still, it validates the technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, a site and set of trackers dedicated to legal material will facilitate the argument that there are, in fact, legal uses for torrents.
The name of this particular service - LegalTorrents.com - serves to focus undue attention on the ubiquity of torrents providing access to infringing content.
Moreover, it comes down squarely on the wrong side of an important issue: torrents themselves are arguably never illegal, in that they only provide a means of finding content, and leave the actual distribution up to participating clients. Google indexes plenty of content that is either illegal or infringing, and though they deal with plenty of copyright-related complaints, they have not seen the need to establish an explicitly "legal" search service.
The company would also do a tremendous disservice to those advocating legitimate uses of torrents, if the number of torrents it tracks becomes a convenient shorthand for the number of legal torrents available. It might be good for business to publicize those numbers, to the extent they aren't readily visible, even if it is very bad for other legitimate users of the protocol. For instance, it would be trivial to assert that only 5% of torrents are available through LegalTorrents.com, and to imply that the other 95% are somehow illegal or questionable.
Frankly, it would be better for everyone if they had simply picked a name they could brand and advertise effectively. I can't see "LegalTorrents.com" getting the same sort of traction with Fortune 100 businesses as Akamai has, and it draws an inordinate amount of attention to the fact that the legality of the underlying protocol is controversial.
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Torrents themselves do not infringe copyrights.
They might however be unauthorized derived works of the material whose hashes they contain.
For sure though once a tracker has knowledge that one of their torrents is being used to facilitate copyright infringement they become an accessory if they fail to remove it.
Copyright infringment is BS. Aiding and abetting, however, I'd be more apt to buy.
Re:Still, it validates the technology (Score:4, Interesting)
If torrent files are derivative works because they contain hashes of other works, then any work with a bibliography is a derivative of the works it references. Hashes merely identify the a work; they aren't a copy of it.
Moreover, to the best of my knowledge as a non-lawyer, if something wouldn't qualify for copyright on its own (and thus isn't a work at all) then it can't be a derivative work. Hashes certainly wouldn't qualify by themselves, and it's rather unlikely that any torrent file containing them would either.
The "aiding and abetting" argument would indeed be the most sound approach. To that end—if you wish to support copyright—then once the copyright holder has established in court that a given swarm (identified by hash) is infringing on their copyrights, or the court has granted them an injunction pending a final decision, then you should blacklist that particular hash. However, allowing the swarm to continue when its illegality has not been established in a court of law should never be considered "aiding and abetting", since the tracker doesn't have "knowledge that one of their torrents is being used to facilitate copyright infringement"; they only have the copyright holder's allegations to that effect.
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and yet you're the only one who is making such an absurd and asinine claim.
Really?
In a lawsuit filed in August 2009, BREIN [wikipedia.org] claimed that "80 to 90 percent of all torrents... [link] to copyrighted material." (citation [pcmag.com])
All that remains is to take the number of torrents on LegalTorrents.com, estimate the number of torrents available through other sites, compare the two numbers, then revise upward the estimate of illegal torrents.
Absurd and asinine it may be, but such claims are already being made.
Admittedly, it's overstating the importance of LegalTorrents.com by quite a lot. This is
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Sayeth the SCOTUS:
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Exactly, a site and set of trackers dedicated to legal material will facilitate the argument that there are, in fact, legal uses for torrents.
This isn't the only one either. bt.etree.org has been around for quite some time.
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Uhhh...dude? Big content has one BIG fricking advantage you seem to be missing. You see, you are under the naive impression that by proving your argument with common sense, you, the little guy, might actually win. Wrong son, so wrong it ain't even funny.
The reason it is so wrong is big content has these thing called "lobbyists" that carry a magic wand called a "big fat check". Now you see with enough of these "big fat checks" you can get a congress critter to say blue skies are green, the moon is made out o
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Artists no longer need big labels to publish their content
Over the past decade, this has become true of books, music, and short film. But in interactive entertainment, three companies (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) act as gatekeepers to the market, and they prefer to deal with big labels over individual developers. Individuals can self-publish games on PCs, but PC gaming has serious drawbacks that I've discussed numerous times in the past.
Re:Still, it validates the technology (Score:4, Informative)
I'd think the use of BitTorrent for things like World of Warcraft updates [arstechnica.com], for about 5 years, is more validation than someone hosting a pay-to-join tracker for legal content.
Aren't there already totally free trackers for legal content (like Linux ISOs, etc)?
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Parent
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Aren't there already totally free trackers for legal content (like Linux ISOs, etc)?
Yes there are, but as the summary states, the biggest ones of those are the trackers being shut down by lawsuits.
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Hey that's right!
Blizzard might actually be a big bad corporation on OUR side here.
If ISPs start interfering with WoW's ability to update itself...
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I think it's a cunning scheme.
If you have a very popular website that hosts torrents, and its name is "The Pirate Bay", it has certain connotations, and an undesirable association is formed. Well, then, if so much is in the name, then another website hosting torrents named "Legal Torrents" might go a long way towards reversing that association!
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It's a bit like the invention of fire. You can't suppress it, despite its danger - sure, people are burned with it every day (...) but if you want to cook food (...) you can't throw it out.
Between my kitchen cooktop, oven and microwave - all of which run on electricity - I'd say that was a very poor example. The last time I cooked something with fire, like an actual burning flame was when I went camping. Or in a cabin on a stove using either gas or wood. The only time you'd find a flame in my kitchen is if I'm trying to flambé something or I've set the kitchen on fire, where the latter is far more likely. Particularly since the former would probably lead to the latter.
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It depends on where you live, but out here on the West (U.S.) Coast, the prevalent heating fuel is natural gas, which is used in the vast majority of forced air furnace and hot water heaters. They work with open flame. Unless you have an electric hot water heater (they do exist, but are phenomenally expensive to run, by comparison, according to my brother-in-law in Florida who has one), it's very likely that your hot water needs are met by fire.
If that's not enough, there's more: Your house likely has coppe
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Somehow I don't relate how they welded my water pipes to cooking, the charcoal grill is a decent point though. I think here in Norway anyone using gas would be the outlier, it's almost all electric here. Yes, we use oil and and gas and wood for space heating and water heaters but almost noone for cooking - normally people boil initially cold water so the water heater isn't involved either. Besides, you can quite easily burn yourself without a flame, so wasn't like that it's safer. Just that most here cook w
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The ironic part of that is that electricity is probably cheaper at this point, given how much natural gas prices have increased.
I've always thought someone should design a clothes dryer based on tying into your home's heat pump system. Have a three-way switching valve on the freon lines. When you're heating clothes, you're either cooling your house (if it needs to be cooled further) or cooling
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Heat pump systems do not work that way, unfortunately. They are typically just a reversible air conditioner hooked up to forced air ducts.
I would love to see a heat pump system that had high and low pressure refrigerant lines, individual throttles in each room, and tie-in ports for things like refrigerators. It always strikes me as inefficient that we stick a refrigerator up against a wall in an insulated room and then chill the room itself.
On the other hand, such a system would also suffer from some scal
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And even if there weren't legitimate users, there should be, if only the legislation weren't so absurd. The fact is that current "intellectual property" regulation is completely arbitrary, imposed by the corrupt organizations that have taken over our culture.
They want to use analogies as long as it benefits them, they call it "piracy" and "just like stealing" when someone copies something, yet they forg
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which version of copyrights? The MPAA and the RIAA where fair use doesn't exist? The US one where anti-circumvention tools are legal? The German version where hacking tools are illegal? Or the Canadian version where fair use and privacy actually matter ('till ACTA is signed and forces us to change our laws, at least)? Something might be legal in one situation and not in another. In the end, only the proper authorities and legal system (aka the courts and judges in most countries) of the users can fairly decide what is legal and what isn't.
And this "community-driven" system for black-flagging "illegal" content looks rife for exploitation.
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Hashing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Already done by the eMule project! (Score:3, Informative)
The eMule Content Database [emule-project.net] has been doing that, very successfully and for many years. Legit content, that is.
And you need no tracker in eMule. As long as the file/collection is moderately popular, once a few people download it from you it will exist in the network for ever. I know as I have published service manuals there and I can still find them after 4 years...
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"closure?" (Score:2)
What is with this fud about TPB being closed?
it's still there! It hasn't gone anywhere!
Why does slashdot keep quoting media sources written by people who are obviously either too old or too ignorant to type in a URL and watch a page load?!
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I haven't been able to connect to tracker.prq.to for weeks.
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Anecdotally, it seems to be blocked for some people and not for others, and the blocking itself seems to be in flux. The last time I saw a post on Slashdot saying it had been closed, I tried accessing it then and could not. This time around, I can access the website. Don't know about the torrent though, haven't tried.
Meant to say *tracker* - heh. Maybe I shouldn't slashdot without my green tea :)
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it's still there! It hasn't gone anywhere!
This seems to be varying. During the last weeks, there were two days during which the main site would simply not load at all. Keep in mind that some European countries have already blocked it, and then also there are some ISPs that are doing that preventively.
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Well, people actually do, but only if it's worth it:
Indepedent movie Nasty Old People:
-> Financed by a bank loan
-> Freely distributed via bittorrent at TPB
-> Released October 10
-> 16 day later (October 26), they had paid 25% of the loan, all with donations
http://nastyoldpeople.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
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Perhaps more tellingly, is this statement...
"We have also have received MORE than 20 000 SEK, (2000 EUR!) by now. This means we have covered more than 20 percent of the bank loan!! Thank you so much to all of you!"
So worst case scenario, they took out a EUR20,000 loan, or roughly $30,000.. which puts it in the realm of the Blair Witch Project (at least for principal shooting - google about for the nasty details of the numbers by the time they got that thing in a traditional release with any hope for the suc