The p2p graveyard
p2pnet.net news:- “The Internet’s graveyard is deep with companies that have been sued out of business by the entertainment industry. I think the prevailing sense is that they are winning the battles but losing the war. Despite the lawsuits, there is more file sharing than ever.”
“We are rooting out those who enable copyright infringement on the Internet.”We will continue to take such actions against sites that are profiting from the theft of other people’s creative works…Our strategy is to go after people committing copyright theft on the Internet at all levels.”
“The lawsuits are little more than ’scare tactics’. The MPAA is using legal muscle to scare people but really they are the ones who are afraid. They fear technology but technology always prevails.”
The three statements above come in Greg Sandoval’s CNET News article which, after noting LokiTorrent, Scour, SuperNova.org, Aimster and the original Napster are just a few p2p entities “sued out of existence,” goes on:
Seven years after a judge ordered Napster to halt music swapping, online piracy continues to thrive. Some estimates hold that the large video and music files passing back and forth over the Internet chew up more than a third of the Web’s bandwidth. Meanwhile, the movie industry is following in the footsteps of the record companies by waging prolonged legal battles.
The first quote in the intro comes from well-known EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) advocate Fred von Lohmann: the second is from Hollywood MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) spokeswoman Kori Bernards; and, the third is from The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, TPB being one of the MPAA’s principal targets, and one it’s been completely unable to impress with actions up to, and including, police raids and the seizure of computer equipment.
TorrentSpy and isoHunt have also been attacked by the MPAA, although less violently, as have BTHub.com, TorrentBox.com, NiteShadow.com and Ed2k-It.com.
But unlike TPB, which has never watered down its views on Hollywood’s efforts to dominate the Net, TorrentSpy and isoHunt have decided discretion is the better part of valour.
Possible escape hatch
TorrentSpy once said it would never monitor users without their consent and in its position was underscored when the MPAA resorted to outright bribery to obtain information on TorrentSpy users.
MPAA director of legal affairs Dean Garfield was said to have promised to pay $15,000 for information stolen from Torrentspy.com, “after he [Garfield] and the MPAA reviewed it, if they found it useful,” says a court document, going on:
Dean Garfield expressly told the informant, on behalf of the MPAA, regarding the information that he requested, “We don’t care how you get it.” He assured the informant, when the informant expressed concerns about potential liability for obtaining or providing such information to the MPAA, that the MPAA would protect the informant from any liability for obtaining or providing such information.
Now, however, Hollywood has succeeded in getting a US Court to rule TorrentSpy must, as part of electronic discovery obligations, log users’ activities.
Gary Fung’s isoHunt, too, is is taking the path of least resistance, looking to a new filtering ’service’ called FileRights, started by TorrentSpy’s Justin Bunnell, as a possible escape hatch.
As step one, “enter your immediate items,” says FileRights. As step two, “enter the unique hash for your content” and finally, “relax, knowing your content is being removed from the Internet.”
One may not sympathise with TorrentSpy’s decision, and the launch of its new corporate industry friendly FileRights, but one can understand it. TorrentSpy falls, after all, beneath the shadow of the odious entertainment cartel inspired Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
‘Shooting themselves in the foot’
The same, though, can’t be said of isoHunt. It’s Canadian, based in Toronto, Ontario, and therefore the DMCA doesn’t apply, although the entertainment cartels are making headway with George W. Harper’s government which is making sounds suggesting Canadian DMCA-type legislation might well be in the offing.
Perhaps that’s what inspired isoHunt to become the first, and so far the only, p2p company to sign up with FileRights. However, p2pnet has been reliably informed most isoHunt staffers are unhappy with Fung’s decision, and there’s no doubt how TPB’s brokep feels about things.
The, “parts of the BT-community that I personally do not like (Isohunt for instance) are shooting themselves in the foot,” he says, “Trying to hide what they do, trying to be legit.”
Richard Charnley, an attorney who, says CNET News, has represented Fox and ABC in copyright cases, believes, “being able to access the identities of end users will certainly go a long way to shutting down potential infringement,” and, “TorrentSpy’s recent moves indicate that perhaps the scare tactics also work,” says the story.
(Cheers, Julie)
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Also See:
outright bribery – Overturn TorrentSpy ruling: EFF, CDT, June 25, 2005
path of least resistance – isoHunt DRM rumours, June 26, 2005
DMCA-type legislation – Canada’s very own DMCA, June 21, 2005
feels about things – TPB’s brokep bites into FileRights, June 28, 2005
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 30th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
@};-
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:26 pm
ANY p2p orginization, would be BETTER OFF to CLOSE… rather than stay open and submit themselves to the MPAA or RIAA! Period!
When a company goes “corporate” so to speak, it is absolutely WORTHLESS and will probably close anyway, because they want to start filtering and charging for everything and people simply give them the finger and go elsewhere!
So asI said, a company is better off to close it’s doors and be remembered for what it was, rather than the “corporate monster” it will become!
So yes, I CAN blame companies that just want to stay open…no matter what! They not only sacrifice their principles they had when they were an open p2p scource, but they allow themselves to become something they at one time fought against….corporate monoplies!
February 28th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
The movie and music industry isn’t a monopoly
They don’t have market power they have political/legal power.
Even so, fight the good fight and so on and so forth. The seas will run red with the blood of our enemies and yada yada yada.