US federal authorities shut down 9 pirate sites

Quasar said:

How many serial killings, bank heists, and maybe even terrorist plots probably went unchecked while all this federal agent manpower was misdirected to serving as the Cartel's personal police force?

While I agree it's a waste of money, I think that statement is a bit of a stretch.

You're right about the Cartel's personal police force though. As I said in the other piracy thread these sorts of this should be handled by tort law. If a major company broke copyright would the police arrive? I don't think so. It would be handled in a lawsuit. So why is it different for these websites or individuals?

The answer being because it's not financially viable, but now you're spending tax payer money and using criminal law instead. Something hardcore_gamer couldn't seem to grasp in the other thread.

I'd like to know what the charges are. AFAIK TVShack.net was a user run site with links to YouTube or other video sites, and Filespump.com was just a search engine for sites like Rapidshare. I can see why TVShack since it's purpose was to assist copyright infringement. However if sites like Filespump are illegal, why isn't Google and other search engines? Not everything on there was illegal, most of it was probably just junk.

The Ultimate DooMer said:

Says the Doomer who's played countless wads which were all made for free :P

For a game that wouldn't have existed or gained a fanbase if it hadn't been a commercial project.

Scet said:

why isn't Google and other search engines illegal?

Because you need them to use the internet?!

Anyways: I found out that the US federal authorities also searched for neo-nazi music that some of the websites provided.
Here is what you see now when clicking on the wrong website:

Grazza said:

For a game that wouldn't have existed or gained a fanbase if it hadn't been a commercial project.

That's right in so many ways. I wished there would be more attention for the freeware game Liero. Bloodiest 2D game ever!

deeforce joins hardcore_gamer's campaign. piracy worldwide is doomed. support us troops and overpriced music albums!

Deeforce said:

Because you need them to use the internet?!

So the biggest search engines aren't illegal just because they're big?

Deeforce said:

neo-nazi music

I wasn't aware that this type of music was illegal, what about free speech?

Just when are the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement doing copyright infringement pursuing now?

Heh. All you guys carrying on like people and personal businesses actually have rights or liberties. Amusing.

I may pirate (dl only) but I don't use torrents..surely most folks who posted in this thread have done this or download/upload.

Quasar said:

Heh. All you guys carrying on like people and personal businesses actually have rights or liberties. Amusing.

SORRY for infringing upon your right to download anything you like for free, sniff sniff

If you can't pay for something, don't buy it, it's not like you NEED a movie to survive. Also, some people were saying that you need a large budget to write a movie, look at El Mariachi, a guy who had barely any money to make a movie made a popular movie that a big company bought and created sequels for.

In other countries, if you stole something you could be tortured and killed in a prison cell, you don't even have a chance.

Mr. T said:

SORRY for infringing upon your right to download anything you like for free, sniff sniff

That isn't what's at issue here at all. What is at issue is, for example, the ability to provide a service that allows people to upload files and have the 3rd party provider immunity that was supposedly promised under the DMCA.

ACTA will do away with this and instead increase 3rd party service providers' potential liabilities to the point where it cannot be economically possible to provide any service on the internet that allows end users to provide or create content.

And that is exactly what the media companies want.

The federal government has proven time and time again that it will change the rules whenever and wherever it wants. You can now be labeled a criminal by accidentally clicking on the wrong links.

One of the first critical steps toward any totalitarian regime is installation of the ability to easily criminalize any member of the population. Look at any of them through history and you will see they have all done it. Now we have done it. The difference here is that it's not to serve the interests of some particular mad despot or the power ambitions of a senseless junta, but to put more money into the hands of a corrupt, wealthy industry that has taken control of our culture.

Yes I agree that both ACTA and DMCA are horrible laws, but I think trying to defend sites that obviously make a vast percentage of their revenue from linking to movies and warez is a waste of breath and makes you look stupid.

If Hardcore_Gamer hates pirates so much, why doesn't he upload some 'legal material' that doesn't have a place to be hosted? Torrents aren't associated with illegal activity by default. It's like blaming guns, instead of abusive gun users...

That or you could upload fakes, filled with malware, like myself... I always like sticking it to some newb.

JK, that would be a waste of time.

Mr. T said:

SORRY for infringing upon your right to download anything you like for free, sniff sniff

sorry for not being yesmen of authoritative governments and their campaign to gain control over people's privacy and free thinking. some of us probably need some tasing and waterboarding before we subscribe to the war on internet insurgents.

Meanwhile, an oil-sharing site in the Gulf of Mexico continues to gush forth its unauthorized content, an activity known as "valdezing". What are the RIAA and MPAA doing?

GhostlyDeath said:

In other countries, if you stole something you could be tortured and killed in a prison cell, you don't even have a chance.

Yes, but that "stealing" would regard something material, for which "theft" (aka physically trespassing and removing it) is indisputably defined in even the most primitive jurisdictions. Copying is a phenomenon of the last 50 years, and in the age of analog formats it was either tacitly tolerated (in the case of home dubbing/cassettes), or passively enforced (macrovision/limited sales of pro-grade VCRs/DSCM protection on CD players and DATs).

While with the possibility of unlimited digital copies we have this situation:



It's not so clear-cut as to equate it with traditional theft in most jurisdictions, and if you throw enough legal paper at it, you can win/settle most "piracy" cases .

Quasar said:

That isn't what's at issue here at all. What is at issue is, for example, the ability to provide a service that allows people to upload files and have the 3rd party provider immunity that was supposedly promised under the DMCA.

ACTA will do away with this and instead increase 3rd party service providers' potential liabilities to the point where it cannot be economically possible to provide any service on the internet that allows end users to provide or create content.

And that is exactly what the media companies want.

The federal government has proven time and time again that it will change the rules whenever and wherever it wants. You can now be labeled a criminal by accidentally clicking on the wrong links.

One of the first critical steps toward any totalitarian regime is installation of the ability to easily criminalize any member of the population. Look at any of them through history and you will see they have all done it. Now we have done it. The difference here is that it's not to serve the interests of some particular mad despot or the power ambitions of a senseless junta, but to put more money into the hands of a corrupt, wealthy industry that has taken control of our culture.

If you think about it, it goes beyond just the criminalization of society. At this point, the government is getting so in-bed with corporations that the businesses practically are the government. By removing sites such as these under the pressure of corporations - and yes may, sites like these can and will of course be used for simple entertainment means or the like - they also stifle ways of free and open communication. And it's not just through this channel. Ever hear of DRM?

Indeed, I have heard of and have actively campaigned against DRM.

(I posted this above but the thread had already moved on by the time I finished it, so I'm moving it down here)

Here are my firm predictions for the next couple of years. Let us see how many of them come to pass:

• At least one (probably many more) major websites will be forced to close because of copyright violation liability risks (not because of any actual violations).
  
• A federal enforcement terror campaign will be waged against individual persons *suspected* of copyright violation. At least one of the people (probably more) arrested will have been spied on via electronic surveillance obtained by abuse of the PATRIOT Act's mass wiretap provisions. At least one (or more) will be arrested for having accessed so-called honeypot servers, possibly by mistake via being redirected by deceptive emails or internet websites set up by the federal government and/or industry IP enforcement companies.
  
• At least one (probably more) people will be arrested and charged for the mere insinuation or "incitement" to commit copyright violation. Some of these people (possibly all) will be innocent of any actual crime and will be having their constitutional rights blatantly violated.
  
• Formation of a new federal agency, or permanent re-deputization of an existing one, solely for the purpose of overseeing the "War on Piracy"
  
• All of this will culminate in industry-backed proposals in congress for mandatory monitoring software to be installed on all machines as a condition of receiving internet service. The software will use DRM and malware-like tactics to take hypervisor-like control of the computer from the user. Major software companies, including Microsoft, will be openly complicit in supporting the installation and enforcement of this regime.
  
• Special detention facilities will then be subsequently set up for the purpose of housing and re-educating intellectual property "criminals," due to the massive number of arrests taking place under these new catch-all laws that stress the normal prison system to its limit.
  

Partition36 said:

If you think about it, it goes beyond just the criminalization of society. At this point, the government is getting so in-bed with corporations that the businesses practically are the government.

It's a well-known fact that many administrative councils of large multinationals hold more actual power than democratically elected governments, and that no sane politician that wishes to keep his country within "the Western world" would dare challenge their bids.

They can lobby, close down plants, ruin your exports/competitivity/employment rates/investments and even raise their own private armies, in shitty enough countries (well...not sure how record labels could affect the way a country is run though. They are selling little more than smoke and mirrors, after all, they're not like diamond or oil industries).

The only modern political force that ever dared say a big "fuck you" to companies were the Bolsheviks, when they repudiated the debts of the Tzar towards the west, and kicked all foreign investors not giving a fuck about how much money they could give to this or that local shitty politician or baron...because they kicked those out as well.

Maes said:

While with the possibility of unlimited digital copies we have this situation:

Meh, it's not even piracy.

Piracy is a war-like act committed by private parties (not affiliated with any government) that engage in acts of robbery and/or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons travelling on the same vessel as the perpetrator (e.g. one passenger stealing from others on the same vessel). The term has been used to refer to raids across land borders by non-state agents. Piracy should be distinguished from privateering, which was a legitimate form of war-like activity by non-state actors, authorized by their national authorities, until this form of commerce raiding was outlawed in the 19th century. (Wikipedia)

People who sell bootleg or warez copies are counterfeiters, not pirates. Calling these things piracy or theft is just a cheap rhetorical trick to make the crime seem graver than it really is by loading it with the emotional baggage attached to something else. Could as well call it "software terrorism" or "software jihad" or "software genocide". I'm surprised they haven't used these terms yet, in fact.

Unfortunately for them, pirates are glamorous rockstars now. Who wouldn't want to be as awesome as Captain Jack Sparrow?

Now that Maes has clarified that piracy is not stealing, I will go and stick it to zenimax and by extension The Man by googling iwads and downloading them.

Mr. T said:

Now that Maes has clarified that piracy is not stealing, I will go and stick it to zenimax and by extension The Man by googling iwads and downloading them.

Oh no no no no no, you can do much better than that.

You can add an ideological "exploited poor average Joe" overtone by calling warezing "proletarian expropriation" and contending how most IPR was generated by Enemy of the People that oppress the poor proletarian masses, and you're merely getting back what was the People's to begin with *insert Internationale here*.

Heh...I wonder what would happen if the Iron Curtain was still standing today, what stance would it keep towards "piracy". I bet it would tolerate and even encourage piracy that harms the dirty Capitalists, and would even tolerate warez of their own stuff -preferably stuff loaded with propaganda messages.

Or more realistically, if a country decided to modify its laws to turn itself into a "piracy heaven" granting total freedom and even legal protection to warez hosters. Probably the RIAA would cause a military invasion/precision bombardment of server farms :-p

Maes said:

Oh no no no no no, you can do much better than that.

You can add an ideological "exploited poor average Joe" overtone by calling warezing "proletarian expropriation" and contending how most IPR was generated by Enemy of the People that oppress the poor proletarian masses, and you're merely getting back what was the People's to begin with *insert Internationale here*.

Heh...I wonder what would happen if the Iron Curtain was still standing today, what stance would it keep towards "piracy". I bet it would tolerate and even encourage piracy that harms the dirty Capitalists, and would even tolerate warez of their own stuff -preferably stuff loaded with propaganda messages.

Or more realistically, if a country decided to modify its laws to turn itself into a "piracy heaven" granting total freedom and even legal protection to warez hosters. Probably the RIAA would cause a military invasion/precision bombardment of server farms :-p

Post of the thread!

Mr. T said:

Now that Maes has clarified that piracy is not stealing, I will go and stick it to zenimax and by extension The Man by googling iwads and downloading them.

You know what else isn't stealing? Murder! Murder isn't stealing! Rape isn't either! Nor is arson! So now that you have somehow reached the conclusion that anything that is not stealing is legal, embrace your newfound career as a psychopath!

Gez said:

You know what else isn't stealing? Murder! Murder isn't stealing! Rape isn't either! Nor is arson! So now that you have somehow reached the conclusion that anything that is not stealing is legal, embrace your newfound career as a psychopath!

Um... OK?

Gez said:

Could as well call it "software terrorism" or "software jihad" or "software genocide". I'm surprised they haven't used these terms yet, in fact.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/hollywood-funde/

Quasar said:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/hollywood-funde/

I'm surprised that wasn't on Fox News's website.

Gez said:

People who sell bootleg or warez copies are counterfeiters, not pirates. Calling these things piracy or theft is just a cheap rhetorical trick to make the crime seem graver than it really is by loading it with the emotional baggage attached to something else. Could as well call it "software terrorism" or "software jihad" or "software genocide". I'm surprised they haven't used these terms yet, in fact.

If you're going to get technical about it, counterfeiters is the wrong word as well. Counterfeiting is an act of claiming that a product (which is usually inferior) is made by a well known brand (when it isn't) in order to get people to buy it. Even if the people selling bootleg/warez copies of stuff claim that those copies are legitimate, the actual content of what is being sold was actually made by the company in question. It's just that they're copies.

In short, I think those who are defending piracy are selfish and spoiled. Piracy doesn't necessarily directly negatively affect the provider of these pirated items but you don't really need to do anything in return to get it unlike those who don't pirate things, who have worked hard or sold valued belongings in order to receive it; those who benefit the well-being of the people around them by working and providing services and building and manufacturing and ultimately making the world a better place to live in.

It would be different if the item were presented to you in the form of the gift, but the provider of the item had not given you any consent to have it and yet you go out of your way to take it anyway. What have you done to demonstrate that you deserve to own these things?

No one is arguing that piracy is a 100% alright, rather that the punishment for users violating copyright is getting ridiculous. It shouldn't be possible for police to arrest someone for posting copyrighted images on a forum or sharing an MP3 with a friend. Sure those cases are rather extreme, but something like that should never become a possibility.