LegalTorrents Launches Copyright-Compliant Tracker 113
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 Mininova and 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."
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).
Who cares? (Score:1, Interesting)
Ah, right, the media industry cares. Maybe they will use it. I hear they have atrocious up/down ratios though. When will they get through their thick heads that the cat is out of the bag? There will never be a time again when people have no way of communicating with one another across huge distances without needing someone else to approve the message. Digital information can be copied at next to no cost. If you believe that you can make people attribute value to something which can be copied and transported at negligible cost, then you're delusional.
Re:slashvertisement (Score:1, Interesting)
"Adding hash value is not required for the tracking to start. You can try the service without a membership. However, taking this step prevents other users from flagging the content as copyright infringing, and removing it from the tracker automatically."
from http://www.legaltorrents.com/about/member_self_publishing [legaltorrents.com]
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.
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...
Re:... why bother? (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 from nebulous side benefits?
"Give people what they want and you'll make money?" Uh, no. Sell people what they want and you'll make money.
Transparency (Score:1, Interesting)
DRM (Score:1, Interesting)
It depends on the pirate. For music, I think you're almost always right.
For TV and movies, what some pirates want is unDRMed files. They're willing to pay for it, but it's not for sale at any price. Try playing a BluRay with mplayer sometime, or get a cablecard driver for Linux, and you quickly run into trouble. Pirates offer files without DRM.
Same goes for most offline Windows games too. If the non-pirate version requires a weirdo CDROM driver that does fuck-knows-what to your system, then they could offer the game for free but it still wouldn't be nearly as good as the pirated version.
Shit for money can't compete against good stuff for free, but good stuff for money might be able to compete with good stuff for free. Or maybe not, but if publishers don't even try, then I'm not going to cry for them.
Re:... why bother? (Score:1, Interesting)
So how do you define 'insane profits'? Exactly whose profits are you objecting to? Is it the content provider, the retailer, the trucking company, the energy company heating the producers building? Do you really expect anyone to believe that you check the balance sheet of whatever provider you are pirating from to make sure that the profit is 'too high' first (and what exactly are you looking at to make your insanity determination)? Please give us some examples of the 'insane profits' that you see, because I am sure a lot of people would like to invest in these companies.
Since you mentioned television, we can take a quick look at that. CBS (the number one network in the US) had a profit of $440M on revenues of $2269M in their third quarter. Of that $2269M in revenue, a whopping $47M came from 'home entertainment' (which includes your DVD sales). Clearly they are not cleaning up on those sales quite like you think they are. By the way, last year in the third quarter they had a LOSS of $7580M dollars. I am sure during that time you did not pirate anything from them, right?
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.
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 upload broadcast-quality episodes). I'm sure they'll host your images too.
So are you looking for gratis hosting or aren't you?