The slow death of the internet…

Read it on a computer news site 2 days ago. Although I don’t use limewire or frostwire as I really don’t like any of them.

On the other side, I think these steps is basically ripping freedom away, especially with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement making its way in the USA. It basically allows the government to shut down sites they find inappropriate, arrest people only on suspicion of piracy or legal activity, and even impact the medicine exportation to third-world countries (read the document).

RIAA and other such organizations are liars. I think the corporate digital market model has to change, as that is whats causing damage, not the fact that there are pirate sites out there.

Well, from what I hear, they’re going to give Oblamma an Internet Switch so he can control the internet. Only allow what he thinks is necessary.

However, I do agree that Pirating is illegal but, with technology the way it is, there’s not going to be any way to stop it. It’s just like selling drugs, if there’s a way and people want them, people are going to do it, no matter what steps are taken to prevent it.

Criminal minds are always at work and the more technology advances, the faster they’ll be working.

As for me, I don’t know enough about it all to want to deal with it. I had a bad experience with LimeWire and don’t use it anymore.

Pretty soon, you won’t be able to listen to the radio without someone crying about it. Watching TV has become so limited as to it’s programming that, in my opinion, it’s not even worth owning one other than to watch DvD’s. I’m one to program what I want to watch and not what others want me to watch.

to say something on this you have to watch what you are downloading these days. alot of these hacked software programs are laced with trojans and other harmful script that could really throw a wrench in your systems . also alot of isps mine in particular are monitoring your bandwidth usage. also monitor what you download. i had to stop running my freelancer server because of that. another point you open yourself up to attacks with downloading this pirated crap and also what ever is on the hosts computer.

In general, one shouldn’t use Peer-To-Peer software for illegal contents. It is just too controlled by police & government, the corperations co-op with them pretty much. HTTP/Browser downloads are much safer IMHO, especially stuff that lies at rapidshare.com

Bas: Thats far from the truth, LimeWire and P2P used for illegal purposes are always encrypted. HTTP and FTP doesn’t encrypt data heavily, if at all.

Well, I don’t know about those two applications, but actually most of the F2P software isn’t safe. Not only the app itself, but also their….cooperation will. They regulary give information out to police, corporations, which ask about particular files, etc.
This is IMHO the most dangerous part. I think it is rather unlikely that the police will scan networks directly to see which sites you visited. Plus, it would be only worth to do it if they suspect someone to download illegal content.

Plus I have rarely to never heard about a one click hoster, especially rapidshare, which users got sued because they did download illegal content. Quite the opposite of the F2P-networks.

Umm, since in a P2P download you always also upload the file that you want to download to other users, the copyright holders can identify you and your illegal download very easily - and this is by design and has nothing to do with co-operation.

w0dk4 wrote:
Umm, since in a P2P download you always also upload the file that you want to download to other users, the copyright holders can identify you and your illegal download very easily - and this is by design and has nothing to do with co-operation.

Might be correct. Moreover, since you are always uploading when you are downloading some thing it makes you a DISTRIBUTOR of illegal content. And police is FAR more interested in those plus one can expect a far harder result when sued.

@Wodka: Nonetheless, I very often read about that most P2P services do also support police & co, this is another aspect to consider.

You guys are doing as if innovation stopped here. Like it or not, believe it or not, for every single thing that gets taken down, a dozen pop up.

Limewire might officially be killed, but the code is open source and will obviously be picked up by others and kept running. That’s how eMule managed to stick around. On the other hand, how many times was The Pirate Bay supposed to go down, but didn’t?

Further, BitTorrent is still very much alive, both legal and illegal. That companies are starting to monitor it just means things like encryption will become even more popular. I’ve heard of a new sharing client that’s basically like BT and TOR rolled into one.

P2P is here to stay and tbh, if 80%of the population is a “criminal”, maybe the laws are wrong…?

As for the kill switch, they say it’s only in the case of a cyber attack (say, by China). Of course, you do what you will there, and it’s a huge risk. Although, Americans actually agree with this, so I think it goes to show how we should never put so many eggs in a single basket. I wish for a technocracy right now.

And ACTA is getting shot down from all sides. I’m really hopeful it just ends up getting killed.

Do note that 90% of illegal P2P traffic goes over .torrent clients, and at that they are usually encrypted. The only thing a tracker does in this case is containing the .torrent file itself, not the files. That is also why TPB didn’t go down, as they really have no argument to take it down. Torrents are equally as useful for illegal and legal content.

That is what I was talking about earlier

Well, skyplayer and iplayer are both p2p and I use them quite a lot, so those two apps alone must generate an absolute shed load of internet traffic. But, all content is legal and drm is in place.

I figure the impact that illegal file sharing might have on internet traffic is now more important than ever, if people are paying for premium services such as skyplayer and struggling for bandwidth when streaming media, then big corps like sky are going to be sticking their noses into this.

In short, illegal p2p file sharing has always been a pain in the ass as far as strangling bandwidth for gamers etc goes, I personally detest it for that reason alone, but the music corps and gamers didn’t have enough concerned parties backing them up to make the lawmen listen. With the likes of Sky, BBC and all the other TV corps now offering streaming services, some paid for and premium, it’s hard for the lawmen not to take a stance.

Also, from what I understand of it, you can download free mp3’s from certain sites now that make revenue from advertising, so is it really necessary to risk using file sharing software?

Personally, I think anybody that does it is mad, I’ve always had creative soundcards in my systems which allows me to record anything that passes through it, if I can hear it, I can record it, so if you can afford it buy a good soundcard, go to myspace music, last fm etc and just record what you listen to.

Xarian_Prime wrote:
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE.
DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL.

I turned on my limewire today… and found this… another one bites the dust due to corporate greed…

Discuss…

I always find these subjects amusing. Limewire is down due to Corporate greed? Surely Limewire is down due to piracy?

Is it so wrong that anyone should be paid for a service they provide?

So, honestly, what legitimate and legal files do you share - and don’t start making things up, please state exactly what you are sharing with the world that is legal.

I don’t know anyone who has used file sharing software for legal purposes only. Every single one of them has used it exclusively to download movies, music, television, games, books and illegal software…

I used to download TV shows - in particular Ed, NCIS, Bones, Numb3rs, Band of Brothers. I never downloaded movies or games, and only ever downloaded about 10 songs (I’m just not into music that heavily, I own it all on cd instead).

For the past 3-4 years I haven’t downloaded anything as my morals finally exceeded my greed.

I never used filesharing for any legal or legit reason…

I tend to favor BT for things like Linux ISOs and, recently, Company of Heroes update files

However, I agree, there’s a lot more illegal P2P than legal one. Again, though, I have to wonder whether making 80% of the population “criminals” is a good thing. Surely other business models can eventually appear that won’t require this?

Same thing for software/business patents. The stuff I read about is really incredible sometimes.

ooo I should have also therefore stated what has been downloaded illegally as well - otherwise it presents a view that since I only ask for legal, everyone only uses it for legal :lol

A short sightedness.

I must admit, I tend to DL iso’s for Linux via the more traditional http method. At home it takes perhaps an hour, at university it takes just a few minutes.

Uni connections. Installed Steam on my PC in uni, and downloaded a 2Gb game in about 20 minutes… whoooosh!

This year all PC’s at uni have a warning about the legality of file sharing…

Ironically, a university network is best suited for file sharing.

My home connection is 30 mbit down, 1 up. My uni connection (wireless N on whole campus) is 30 mbit down, 35 up

Isn’t it wild though, how a huge percentage of people that would never have the balls to steal from a shop, have absolutely no problem with stealing on the internet. Perhaps that’s the real discussion to be had.

The internet turns total pussies that would otherwise cower in a corner and pee themselves when confronted with real fear, into fearless warriors, thieves, bullys, political masterminds etc. Half the world is living two different lives, online badass and real world pussy. You should of course know that I’m 8ft tall and 6ft wide weighing in at 20 stone and I literally caved mike tysons head in last night for a laugh, so don’t mess with me! Punk!

Anonymity and the fact you’re not really stealing. Making a copy of something does not deprive the owner of what you’ve copied. A more apt comparison is photocopying a book you rented from the library.

FriendlyFire wrote:
Anonymity and the fact you’re not really stealing. Making a copy of something does not deprive the owner of what you’ve copied. A more apt comparison is photocopying a book you rented from the library.

Though it must be admited that the copyrighters aren’t damaged in the same way as if their stuff would be physically stolen, there is no ressource/variable cost damage, plus not everything which got pirated would have been bought.

I am not saying that piracy doesn’t harm the copyrighters, but you can’t expect, for iantance, super pirate with 300 games and movies per year downloaded to purcahse each of them. He wouldn’t be even financially able to do that.

Also, which might be also interesting, I read that “pirates” are just playing a game for a few days before they switch to the next, while buyers are just buying about three games per year (averagely! we are hardly average people, arent we?).

Also, an ethic question comes up to my mind, I am buying old games used for very low prices (about 3-5 € per game) at a local store here. Is this ethical as worse as pirating or stealing?
On the one hand, many goods are sold used and I think it should be the right of a human being to sell own property.
On the other hand I am “damaging” the developers and publishers.

What do you think about this one?