Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
TBP offline!
JayBirdz
Member Posts: 1,017
So much for invincible. Just noticed there site was offline and started looking around to see what was up. Besides the fact it seems pretty clear the owners wallets aren't nearly as deep as they once were. They are in the process of selling ThePirateBay (or has it been sold already?). They have now been forced to go offline. LoL. I laugh because of those who say it won't ever go under when I have seen site after site say the same thing over the years. Sure it might be back tomorrow with a new ISP (supposedly). I doubt that new ISP is going to stand tough when they face legal action though. I would of cut my losses and run had I been them and kept my millions as soon as BREIN served me papers. Anyway's here some spin I ran across when I was looking to see what was going on.
August 24, 2009
The Pirate Bay: Broken but Not Dead
After being taken offline, the site promises and early resurrection in the morning
For some years now, the industry has been throwing everything they could at The Pirate Bay trying to shut it down and using their best lawyers to do it. However, instead of the hoped for ressult, it seemed that the more efforts they put into it, the more popular, and apparently invincible, the Swedish Bittorrent tracker became. Let’s see if that ended today.
After sentencing its founders to jail and ordering them to pay a large sum of money, the Swedish authorities have decided it was time to go radical and put some heavy pressure on the Pirate Bay’s bandwidth suppliers in order to force them to disconnect the site from the Internet.
As TorrentFreak reported earlier today, the ISP Black Internet gave in to threats and cut off the site. “The censorship of The Pirate Bay will continue pending the outcome of a civil action taken by several entertainment companies including Disney, Universal, Warner, Columbia, Sony, NBC and Paramount,” says the site.
As quoted by the aforementioned source, Rick Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party was prompt to come forward with a statement saying: “This is absolutely ridiculous. The Court seems to consider themselves above the Constitution,” referring to how negatively these civil actions willl affect the freedom of speech. “This clarifies how copyright law has become untenable, and how information is lacking political skills in the judiciary,” he continued.
Fortunately, the aura of invincibility we were talking about in the beginning of this post doesn’t seem to have left The Pirate Bay which has managed to get a new Internet connection and is expected to be back on tracks tomorrow morning (we’ll definitely check it out).
To wrap up, we post below the comment from the Pirate Bay crew related to this latest attempt to bring them down: “The MAFIAA has spent millions of dollars and endless amounts of time to get this ban in order. Our guess is that they also bribed a bit to get it since it violates so many laws not only in Sweden but also in the EU, not to mention violations against human rights. And what do they have to show for it? 3 hours of partial downtime.”
To end this in a dramatic note, the site has proved once more it’s really a devil to kill.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A devil to kill lmfao! I admit it's taken a tad longer than most. However they are pretty much sucking their last breath. If it's lucky the new owners will be able to turn it into a scam site like so many others before it.
Edit: Guess I am a tad late. I could of sworn it was up a few days ago. But I see articles dated on the 11th saying it's been shutdown. Oh well. Wonder how quickly others will fall once BREIN and gang are done with these guys..
Comments
This is why we use private torrent sites like ScT, SCC, and FTN which are invite only, limit the amount of users and have strict seeding/ratio rules, and the content is straight from "The Scene" and virus free, and often times have fake front sites and therefore draw much less attention. I'm not surprised TPB got killed finally but like always two new sites will come in and take it's place.
On Time? On Target? Never Quit?
It's not dead yet. It came back up under the new ISP. I jumped the gun a little.
Supposedly it's being sold this week if everything pans out for them.
Private groups defeat the whole purpose of P2P. Just my take on them. No one could freakin pay me to register and use a private tracker, if I were to torrent at all. Why swim in a barrel of fish when I could use the ocean? Better odds for me. The only thing keeping current private trackers alive is the fact TPB is still fighting and has the resources to still fight. It's funny that they are taunting these guys like they are. I mean if the "Big Names" were going to cut their losses for a draw, I would be willing to bet they sure as hell aren't now. Anyway's. I'm not really against filesharing either. I'm nuetral. I just find the whole sticking the middle finger up to "The Man" kind of silly when one has egg shell think defenses.
Better odds of what? Why wouldn't you use a private tracker? The speeds are extremely fast, they get TV shows minutes after they air along with DVD screeners. If somebody were to pay me to join I would do it in a jiffy.
The outcome of the TPB has nothing to do with the welfare of your top private trackers. The only thing private trackers rely on is donations and "The Scene" and as long as they are still willing to cap television shows and upload them 10 seconds after they air, steal DVD screeners, rip DVD's, crack games and applications your top tier of private trackers will still exist. Most of the content released by The Scene never ever makes it to the large bottom feeder sites like TPB or Mininova or Demonoid simply because it has to go through a hierarchy of sites and private FTP's.
On Time? On Target? Never Quit?
I think something got lost in the way I wrote that. or you misunderstood? I shortened it up alot. I guess maybe to much... Or my wording/ phrasing is piss poor. We'll heres a little bit better of a break down on what I was trying to say.
1st. "Better Odds" at not getting caught. When I said the line about choosing to swim in a barrel or an ocean. It was a reference to "Shooting fish in a barrel". I was referring to BREIN and gang as being the shooters and people (us) being the fish in a barrel verses an ocean. If I swim in the ocean, I have better odds at not being shot. Shot = being serve cease all activity nasty-o-grams (letters).
So anyways all I was saying is that when groups like BREIN start logging IP's as members "spying" on who is sharing what on these private trackers, which they tend to do if they decide to go after people. When it's time to seize those servers, it will make it kind of hard in a court for "me" /"you" or "anyone else" to use the first defense which is denial that you didn't upload anything or that they are mistaken. When they then can produce a registered name and IP (same IP as before) from said site that has logs. In other words. When they log your IP for uploading say "Nemo", It will be kind of hard to say I didn't upload anything (deny) your illegal activity. That tactic is now null and void because they pull up those logs which say you uploaded.
2nd part. The large wall of text way of saying what I said previously.
I wasn't implying "The Scene" would be hurt. The popular private trackers will fall if their communities are sizeable enough. If BREIN and gang are focusing fire on TBP currently, they aren't focusing their efforts on private trackers / smaller communities. They are frying the biggest fish in the whole pond atm. I don't know but I bet very few have millions to help them hide behind bullshit defenses to stay online, pay legal fees, pay off ISP after ISP to keep running during a legal battle, which btw has fines that add up in the millions. What number (ISP) is TBP on atm? It's all costing them millions. Donations. lol... So again I was never really implying that I thought torrenting would be over or that "The Scene" / "Releasers" would fall. I do bet there will be a major change in landscape when BREIN gets done with the beast that is TPB. I expect the foundations shaken and maybe a new evolution in the peer to peer world. I watched, like so many others first hand happen to the ED2k network and how quick it freaken happened. One day a major site was there and the next, "Awe man. Fuck! They are gone. ".
It was trashed pretty bad and a shadow of what it was. Every popular site (large) community at the time got cleaned up. They were private to.... go figure. They were just as large as any any of the current ones for torrents except for TPB. Hell I bet Simon Moon is still doing court battles and his site was one of the first to go in the sweep. I bet he is wishing he had made a deal when he had a chance. And that was ages ago. People were donating to help him to.... LoL oooppps guess it wasn't millions! Surviving off of donations in these multi million dollar battles just won't happen. I maybe gullable, not the brightest bulb around, and not the most articulate (far from it), But I ain't flat out stupid. I got good common sense and decent street smarts.
Here's an example as to how BREIN tore the shit out of the ED2K network.Slyck.com (a list that was formed and last updated in 05 . A lot of the bigger names that were able to fight it out for a few months aren't even on that list Majority of those sites are either scam sites now or dead because of BREIN and gang. For anyone that might be hesitant to click this link: The site is Slyck.com and is only a information / news site on things that happening in the world of peer to peer. It's pretty slow traffic wise. They are generally spot on with their articles though. I just didn't see the article from them at the time I posted the OP or I would have used them instead. Expected it would of been front page but wasn't.
So once more I agree releasers will exist, torrent sites will exist. However, I would put money on the issue that after TPB falls, those top tiers you are referring to won't last but a few months. If they have large enough communities, they'll be targeted. They don't = do not have the money = for legal fee's and fines, I imagine. If they do I seriously doubt that they are going to waste MILLIONS to fight. Considering what is happening to TPB. Why would they want too? So that billybob leecher can continue his illegal activity. I was never implying or mean to imply "The Scene" or releasers or the network would die. Just the sites that have large enough communities that BREIN deems worthy of assault. If they survive it won't be because they are invincible.
In the end all this thread was, was me being a stupid "drama whore". That jumped the gun (was surprised). I do find the whole thing interesting at times. We all know what will happen in the very end though. The activity is illegal until / unless copyright laws change. 99% of these sites enable that activity, they just hide behind techno babble the courts and lawyers aren't use to. The surprises along the way make it entertaining though. I am also curious to see what the next evolution in peer to peer will be (non centralized) and if it can maintain the positives that make torrents so attractive to users. Mostly speed.
Edited: I forgot to put the link back after the umpteenth re-write..
2nd Edit. I wanted to post it as well but I forgot. This kind of behavior doesn't help "The Cause" out.
This simply is not true. You have a much, much greater chance of getting caught using a large public tracker then using a private one. You are much safer on a site with a fake front page that is invitation only and has a population limit of 15,000 computer savvy people who only invite people they know. Or sites like F** which has a user cap of like 6,000 and only administration can invite people. Not to mention numerous other security measures that are impossible to implement on larger sites. It would be very hard for authorities to become members and start spying in the first place.
As for the rest of your post I agree with for the most part.
On Time? On Target? Never Quit?
Its kinda funny since The Pirate Bay started going through these legalities, other torrent sites have been getting too much traffic. MiniNova is frequently on the fritz due to the traffic, and the new host for the new Pirate Bay is having a huge amount of traffic and publicity.
Slyck.com
Mininova Must Remove all Friggin Torrents
August 26, 2009
Thomas Mennecke While few are crying over The Pirate Bay, Mininova is a different case. Mininova has been fighting BREIN, the Dutch copyright authority, but unlike The Pirate Bay, this isn't a fight to the death. Instead, BREIN doesn't want to see the more moderate Mininova eliminated - rather only torrent files it feels link to copyrighted works.
Mininova fought the good fight in court, and tried to argue that it's impossible to keep track of every potentially copyrighted work. But that wasn't good enough for the courts, who felt if the moderators can keep pornography and other undesirable content off Mininova, torrents pointing to copyrighted content shouldn't be a stretch either. Apparently, Mininova's take down procedure for removing potentially infringing torrents wasn't good enough for the courts either. But compared to other BitTorrent sites, Mininova's position isn't dire.
The court ruled Mininova has 3 months to remove infringing torrents and to prevent such torrent from appearing on the site. If they don't, Mininova will be fined 1,000 Euro per infringing link, and up to 5 million Euro total (or $7 million dollars).
But what will Mininova be with many of its most popular torrent removed
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another neat link with graphs http://freakbits.com/pirate-bay-downtime-boosts-publicbt-tracker-0824 One heck of an increase!