The slow death of the internet…

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?

You’re not anonymous on the internet either, its only the fact that noone bothers tracking you on the internet.

Chips: The government really doesn’t care if you’re going on with piracy or not, its only when the corporations offer them money, or goes to court towards someone they actually care.

what is piracy actually? if i hack my software so i can use it without the disc, is that piracy already? if i make use of my right given by the laws of the country i live in, and share my software with five of my friends calling it safety copy, is that piracy? is it piracy, when they share what i gave them, too and the recievers share it again and so on? honestly, the governments, the human mentality has not grown enough yet to declare clear and fair rules that would manage the possibilities mankind suddenly got with the appearance of the internet.

The laws were written with the concept of materiality in mind. The Internet, giving anyone the ability to become a producer and distributor at effectively no cost, is something that had not and probably could not have been planned.

@Bas: Effectively, used games are just as bad as piracy, even though one is legal and the other is not. There’s a reason more and more games use DLC (think Cerberus Network) that are specifically aimed, not at adding supplementary content, but at restricting the content you can get with a used copy. Day-one DLC that’s free for purchasers is essentially a deterrent for second-hand sales, because that DLC won’t be free for them since DLC is not transferable.

Game publishers would much rather kill the second-hand market and piracy at the same time, and are trying their best to manage both. Problem is, piracy is still as big as ever, and I think they’ll find themselves stuck with an antiquated business model with no way out.

@Wolfie: You’re effectively anonymous, if you want to be pedantic. If you give yourself the trouble, you can be so anonymous the time and effort required to track you down would not be worth the reward.

@Gisteron: I think you’d be allowed to share the backup copies with them, but those people would not be able to use them. Again, the current model was never built with the concept that you could easily make a perfect copy of whatever you owned. When photocopy machines first arrived, book publishers were decrying the end of the books industry. When magnetic tapes made their appearance, it was the music industry. VCR, movie industry.

None of them died from it, but they sure as hell freaked out. Many of the laws that control what you can and cannot do with what you own actually come from such freak-outs.

Well, I wasn’t argueing about the damage I “inflict”, but rather if it is ethically wrong for a single person to purchase used games. (I might have mistaken your answer)

@Gisteron: I think you’d be allowed to share the backup copies with them, but those people would not be able to use them. Again, the current model was never built with the concept that you could easily make a perfect copy of whatever you owned. When photocopy machines first arrived, book publishers were decrying the end of the books industry. When magnetic tapes made their appearance, it was the music industry. VCR, movie industry.

Well, I am not totally sure, but there might be a law/law passage in German law that allows the distribution of music/games/software/movies to near friends and family. But it isn’t clearly defined who belongs to your friend and family, but it is defintivly sure that you can’t call a guy in the internet your friend or maybe “a lot of friends in the internet”.

It has been some time I read about it, so please don’t take it as a total fact or think you can distribute it as you want (for my German pals) in your clique since I am not sure enough about it.

what is piracy actually? if i hack my software so i can use it without the disc, is that piracy already?

Actually, it is at least illegal to bypass copy protection. However, as far as I am aware there is one single exception; when you are not able to use the software except by bypassing the CP. This means, if you are able to buy the software, lengthen a license or whatever you are NOT allowed to workaround the CP, but there might be some cases where you are allowed to do. An example: You bought a game which connects to CP-server and checks if you own a legal copy. If this service gets shut down after two years and you can’t use the software anymore cuase of this, you might be allowed to work around the copy protection.

@Bas: I personally am undecided, but the answer is simple: if you think piracy is bad, then logically used games should also be bad. The original creator doesn’t benefit from it either, and quite a few people can play on a single copy. Obviously, piracy tends to have a much higher ratio of legit:copied, but the principle of the thing is fairly similar.

Since nobody’s really finding used sales to be bad, I think we might need to redefine how piracy is bad. The hardest part is finding a business model that will work without being stupidly ineffective, counter-intuitive and anachronistic like the current one.

As for copy protection, it is illegal to circumvent it unless the publisher/developer has released such a thing. I’m not even sure there are clauses everywhere about bypassing DRM being allowed if you cannot use the product without doing so. I’d hope there is, but…