BitTorrent Wars | 29/05/05

[Saracen 16]

The biggest Technology news recently is the strong case against BitTorrent and it's prominent sites. On Wednesday the FBI shut down the Elite Torrents site which leaked the copy of Star Wars Episode 3. But not before 10 properties were raided against the site's webmasters and downloaders.

 

This move coincides with an international law passed in Sweden banning ALL downloads of copyrighted material from the internet such as movies, music and pictures. Anyone caught breaking this law can be ordered to pay damages and receive a possible prison sentence.

 

If you've wondered why DVDs and CDs are expensive, then it's because of sites like BitTorrent and Peer to Peer file sharing Networks... Help bring down costs, and save yourself from a criminal record. DON'T DOWNLOAD ILLEGALLY!

[Luk3us 63]

Yep.. So when the guys in suits knock on your door grab your HDD and throw it out the window.

[Thierry 0]

lol, that wouldn't help much, just shift+delete the file in question

 

I dont download whole games or anything, to big for me, I download mods and MP3's from games

[Luk3us 63]

Deleting stuff doesn't work.. They use those foresnic specialists and they like un delete all ya stuff....

 

Unless of course you're hardcore paranoid and use those special deleting type programs....

 

 

I think its kidna strange that in the UK they can extradite you to the States with out even a trial first in the UK... Apparently the best place to be is Canada if you're a hardcore downloader..

[chickendippers 1]

I work for a hosting company, and this week we were contacted by id's legal peeps because someone on one of our customer's forums had posted some links to Doom3 torrents!

They threatened to go over our heads and have the datacentre take the entire server offline if we didn't remove the page! Which would obviously have been disasterous for business!

 

So if you torrent, think twice about linking to it, you may get someone into a lot of trouble

[Doctor Destiny 41]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with torrents or file sharing for that matter. It's merely another way to pass large files or groups of files without eating up a web site's bandwidth. The CONTENT passed along such networks is the problem, not the networks themselves.

 

CD and DVD prices are high because they're products and anyone involved needs to get their cut of the money generated by these media. Distributors, the stores, the company resposible for licensing, etc. All of those come into play when determining a cost. Illegal media sharing doesn't help but it's not the problem; greedy corporations are.

 

But not all DVD and CD prices are very high. I bought a DVD pack with 3 DVDs for $37. An average of $12.33 for 1 DVD, not a bad deal really. Most are $20 to $35. Pretty good deal... Hell, my BOC CD was only $10.

 

I download music but I've purchased more than I downloaded, even though that doesn't make it right. I never would have bought so much if I hadn't downloaded all those tracks to sample new bands.

 

@ Luk3us:

Sweden actually. They have the most liberal copyrighted media laws.

 

@ Thierry:

In Windows, even if you delete a file and remove it from the Bin, it's still on your drive in the cache. And if you have a big drive, it'll be there for quite some time if you have a lot of space on that drive. The only way to overwrite cached files is to delete more stuff or force the drive to write over that sector.

 

@ dippers:

I had that happen to me on account of a couple of ROM links. No warning, just a suspension. Boy was I pissed at that.

[Thierry 0]

I geuss its what in the Torrents really :wink:

[Luk3us 63]

@ Luk3us:

Sweden actually. They have the most liberal copyrighted media laws.

 

I don't think so any more. Recently a bunch of new anti privacy laws were passed..

[chickendippers 1]

@ dippers:

I had that happen to me on account of a couple of ROM links. No warning, just a suspension. Boy was I pissed at that.

Well really it depends which host you're with and what their policy is.

As I'm a nice bloke I always try and contact customers before having to take their website offline, although in our TOS it does state that we can suspend a website without warning for such offences.

[Doctor Destiny 41]

Well, it wasn't suspending me that pissed me off. It was the fact that NO ONE told me at all. First off, they lied about the reason, stating I had some illegal files on my account, which I know for a fact that I did not.

 

Then I had to go through a middleman to get my account re-activated. And then they lied again about why they suspended me saying that I had hacking tools or something similar on my account. Again, I did not.

 

No emails telling me what I could do to rectify the situation, no emails telling me why, nothing. As a PAYING customer, I deserve that courtesy. Thank god I'm not with them anymore.

[chickendippers 1]

God yea, I wouldn't accept that from a paying hosting company (although I'm sure someone at Valcato has done that in the past )