22 ms·

“The Pirate Bay can’t be stopped,” co-founder says

252 points by TangerineDream 5y ago

teddyh 5y ago
http://piratebayo3klnzokct3wt5yyxb2vpebbuyjl7m623iaxmqhsd52coid.onion/ http://piratebayo3klnzokct3wt5yyxb2vpebbuyjl7m623iaxmqhsd52c...
aborsy 5y ago
There is an interview with co-founders of Pirate Bay on darknet dairies. The founders come across as very arrogant, making childish arguments and apparently unaware of how modern society in which they live functions. Also lots of F words. I was put off.
- sweetbitter 5y ago
  They have always been like this, yeah. Here is a link to their legal section on their anonymous VPS / anonymous DNS registry service: http://njallalafimoej5i4eg7vlnqjvmb6zhdh27qxcatdn647jtwwwui3nad.onion/blog/t/legal/ http://njallalafimoej5i4eg7vlnqjvmb6zhdh27qxcatdn647jtwwwui3...
  - dS0rrow 5y ago
    clearnet link : https://njal.la/blog/t/legal/ https://njal.la/blog/t/legal/
- trevyn 5y ago
  Keep in mind that you also may have just come across as very arrogant and apparently unaware of how modern society functions.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  > Also lots of F words. They are not native English speakers. Learning english from American pop-culture makes you swear alot.
  - 3np 5y ago
    Also even native swear-words don't have the cultural taboo in Sweden that they do in anglo-cultures. The last time I remember someone frowning at curse words was when I was ~8 at the house of a classmate with very conservative Christian parents.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  > unaware of how modern society in which they live functions how so?
INTPenis 5y ago
The Foundation is out on Apple TV and I'm already paying for 4 streaming services. Avast matey! Piracy isn't dead, it's just underground.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
boomboomsubban 5y ago
>The piece doesn’t go deep into detail but it shows that the entertainment industry lawyer doesn’t regret going after the site and its founders, despite the mixed result. That lawyer is probably the person who has made the most money off of TPB. Of course they don't regret it.
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  this would be a funny youtube video, have all the RIAA lawyers, this lawyer, then all the haxxor TPB coders, passing around a blunt discussing the state of the industry
  - emj 5y ago
    You "don't do drugs" in Sweden so that won't happen, publicly almost everyone is against pot. This might be changing but not in the near future.
    - Maursault 5y ago
      FWIW, pot, or cannabis, is not a drug, no more than nutmeg. They're vegetables. Alcohol, on the other hand, is indeed a drug. So, no drinkers in Sweden? It always sounded like a pretty nice place to me, and now it sounds even more so.
      - 1_player 5y ago
        As someone that has smoked most of his 20s away, your comment is absolute misinformed bollocks.
        Maursault 5y ago
        Accurate, you mean, though one could say delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol is a drug. Also, wine and beer? Beverages, not alcohol, though they usually contain alcohol. It seems unimportant, but getting things right is critical. I mentioned nutmeg intentionally. 10g of nutmeg will cause quite like LSD states, and I'm not sure why, but no one anywhere considers nutmeg a drug. I'm also not sure how this was discovered as consuming even half a gram of nutmeg would be a pretty amazing feat.
jquery 5y ago
Won’t stop them from trying. The DRM folks have plenty of help from the evangelical “moral police” who want to wipe out obscenity online, even where there is no victim.
- vmception 5y ago
  They believe the content creators are the victims
- input_sh 5y ago
  DRM will never stop the pirates. As long as you can reproduce something, you can always record the output. For example, you can always record your audio output from Spotify or video output from Netflix. DRM is a minor annoyance and nothing more.
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    DRM has nothing to do with pirating. Piracy is just a nice excuse. DRM is about killing the second hand market. About keeping the market segmentation between countries. About killing fair use. It has been very succesful in all of this.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      But with streaming subscription services there is no second hand market. So there it must be just for piracy? I agree it's totally useless. Just takes one person to record the output and it's done.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    Just wait until Apple decides to "protect" its users from piracy by running a Content ID system client side. Then even if you can download a pirated file, your OS won't play it. If you're lucky, it will just delete the file, rather than informing the police.
    - l33tbro 5y ago
tdhz77 5y ago
I was in high school during the beginning of tpb. I leaned towards the Pirate Bay’s ideas and philosophy of what- digital good was and where ownership exists. I’m thankful that I followed the arguments and merits of both sides. If I was in high school now, I don’t think I would be as lucky as to get to be apart of good faith arguments. Instead, I might end up believing in Qnon. I’m so thankful that the original web was much more pure, good hearted than what it has become today.
- tjr225 5y ago
  Something awful, 4chan, and Ogrish were all started 2003 or earlier.
  - dannyw 5y ago
    don't let the n words fool you; 4ch is very actively moderated; both by janitors but also it's users. It's politically incorrect, but not as bad as Facebook in terms of damage to society.
    - anon9001 5y ago
      4chan is like a focus group for unacceptable ideas.
      - belorn 5y ago
        I have always seen 4chan to be more like a youth center than a focus group, with the associated criminal aspects. In both cases the suggested universal solution tend to be an increase in supervision.
    - sweetbitter 5y ago
      At least on anonymous imageboards or even pseudonymous forums you can learn your lesson of how foolish/incorrect you are about something with no future repercussions, no embarrassment, no one to use it against you in the future- you can just up and change your entire perception at the drop of a hat frictionlessly, without paying a personal cost to do it.
philliphaydon 5y ago
> When Wadsted was asked whether it was worth the time and money, she replied with “Absolutely!” > “Even though it was the American film companies that paid for my work, that work benefited all the authors and copyright holders. This is a very important but often forgotten aspect,” Wadsted told M3. It really didn't benefit film companies tho, it exposed TPB to probably 100's of millions of people who didn't know about it previously. I wouldn't be surprised if more people know how to pirate content as a result.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  She wasn't really answering whether it benefited film companies. Notice her answer immediately focuses on "paid for my work". The only way she can conceive of the question is "Did I personally profit from the campaign?", and that defines her moral horizons too.
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    Ah yeah I read the article at 2am. You’re right I misunderstood what was written!
ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
Wasn't the founder of Spotify the CEO of uTorrent?
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Kinda, Spotify bought uTorrent to get the head programmer then sold the company.
- sslalready 5y ago
  IIRC, the uTorrent guy (Ludde Strigeus) was employeed by Spotify and worked on, among other things, the P2P feature in Spotify.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Spotify pirated early content.
xbar 5y ago
"It is a cultivated myth that we would not have any streaming services for music, film and TV series if Pirate Bay did not exist. " This is false. Although, if someone wants to argue that other piracy services were more influential in breaking the old DRM systems, I will debate it with you.
smoovb 5y ago
As Chamath pointed out on the All In Podcast, Pirate Bay and torrenting serve as competition for rights holders, keeping Hollywood pricing and quality in check, and thus a net good for consumers. The 2013 TPB documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8
cheese_van 5y ago
Recently saw a movie, liked the soundtrack, and decided to buy the mp3 (On the Run - Naz Tokio). Found it, of course, on Amazon, good deal, and made the purchase. Tried to download it after the purchase, but the mp3 was ONLY available in the cloud for various devices, not for direct download. There was language that might have implied this was the case, but it was not clear or I was oblivious, probably the latter. I was refunded my $1.29 and went straight to a pirate site and got it for free. I would rather have paid. Occasionally, the availability of piracy is a check on bad ideas, in this case, cloud walled gardens.
- cute_boi 5y ago
  And the problem with downloading using cloud is you have to use their apps and requires them to supply your phone data forever which is no no in my book. Imagine the dystopia there would be if there were no piracy. You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back".
  - lovelyviking 5y ago
    >You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back". Do they specify what you actually purchase, I can't figure out what is it you purchase in such cases.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Don't they have your data as part of the Amazon account anyway? Why does that even matter?
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  >went straight to a pirate site Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to do with it? The whole 'buy mp3' idea always have been troubling for me because I can't figure out exactly what I actually buy there. What is it I purchase? The right to listen for some composition? The right to listen it in that specific mp3 format ? The right to listen it more then one time because I have access to the file? What do I actually possess after the purchase that I didn't possess before? If it's my property then what is it? Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited? For instance it belongs to me but somehow there are some limits to play it in my own restaurant, isn't it? It's all presented as you buy something and it's clear what you buy. But if you are trying to think about it's more and more unclear. It looks more like some bully simply blocks access to something he got using some leverage over the author then sells you 'unblock' feature while author is stripped away from any rights by the same bully and have no ability to sell it directly to you. Isn't it a case now days of redundant MIM? Another issue is with how long it is blocked by paywall. The initial idea was how much? 10 years ? 15 years? How come that let's say Beatles are still protected from public? How that even possible and why nobody rises the issue of abusing initial idea?
cute_boi 5y ago
Many people doesn't realize the value provided by pirate bay. Without sites like piratebay, scihub or libgen only rich privileged people would be able to enjoy the fruits. But thanks to sites like them poor people living in any places can enjoy the privilege. I understand there are some downsides like small creators getting destroyed. But as with any technology we know digital piracy has various advantage. Also music, movies etc offered by torrents can be far reliable because Netflix etc can remove content at any minute according to their wish. DRM is the main issue in piracy and I hope we can bypass this easily. And I also think many piracy doesn't have any dent on so called big producers. They are just mad that they can't suck few bucks from poor people.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > I understand there are some downsides like small creators getting destroyed Do they? I was vaguely under the impression that the overwhelming majority of people pirating stuff wouldn't have paid, and that whenever actual studies are run they show piracy benefiting the original creators.
  - realusername 5y ago
    Indeed, to my knowledge, nobody ever managed to prove in a proper study that the creators actually lose money with piracy.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      To provide a single data point, here[0] is an article about one such study. "EU study finds piracy doesn’t hurt game sales, may actually help. Results suggest a positive effect, but there's a huge margin of error." [0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...
- zionic 5y ago
  For me the breaking point was when Netflix removed the entire stargate series. That was a real wake up call for me personally and I canceled my subscription. 100+ TB later…
shmerl 5y ago
> It is a cultivated myth that we would not have any streaming services for music, film and TV series if Pirate Bay did not exist. Those who claim it do not understand how technology development works. Someone forgets how legacy copyright industry fights tooth and nail against any innovation, until they realize it's futile and then they try to start using technology instead of fighting it. This hasn't changed a bit. They literally do it every step of the way trying to slow progress down for the sake of their obsession with control.
- sjtindell 5y ago
  With an occasional detour to try to push some sort of technology that nobody actually wants.
mproud 5y ago
It’ll stop me if the certificate is invalid.
locallost 5y ago
In general these days I have mixed feelings about piracy, mostly because a lot of people don't want to pay because "everything is very commercial and they only want money", yet a lot of the pirated content are incredibly commercial mainstream things (e.g. blockbusters). This leads me to the positive aspect of it: I recently remembered an old Canadian movie from my childhood, and wanted to watch it with my son, but despite so many streaming services, tough luck finding it legally. I bet I could find it within minutes on torrent. So I would be happy if we were at least able to legally download things you can't really find "officially" because too few people care and nobody sells it.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Yes, this is a huge positive. It serves as a kind of archiving enabler too. I'm sure many years from now we'll be thankful that we can find 'obscure' movies and TV shows from the early 2000/10/20s etc
- amenod 5y ago
  This! I would say that if there is no simple way to find commercial content (for the location of the potential customer!), the law should treat the case as if the copyright owner waived their right to the copyrighted material.
  - therealcamino 5y ago
    So if you ever offer a work for sale, you're obligated to either sell it forever, or have it given away?
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
      Yes.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      I don't see how it's unreasonable these days. You can just simply leave it up on Bandcamp, GOG, and whatever may emerge in the future as a video ownership platform (as opposed to video rental).
booleandilemma 5y ago
Piracy was cool when I was a college student with barely enough money to buy McDonalds, nowadays however I believe in paying for people’s work. It just seems fair. I don’t work for free and I don’t expect others to either. And yes, this includes publishers and content providers, they’re providing something of value too.
- quadrangle 5y ago
  The Pirate Bay provides value also. So, how does that fit into your logic?
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Good news: there will likely remain a steady stream of college systems with barely enough money to buy McDonalds. New people are being born all of the time. Some of them in developing countries, where they literally couldn't afford to pay for your product no matter how much they wanted to. Piracy serves an important role for those people.
freewizard 5y ago
It's crazy DRM today has made screen capture almost impossible on consumer devices, and I see people use one device to photo the other just to share a screenshot to friends. If it turns out pirate can't be stopped by this, why bother anyway?
- AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
  I know that screen capture is impossible on mobile phones. I use Linux and screen capture is definitely possible on linux. Is screen capture possible on windows/mac?
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Linux is not relevant here. I don't think it has an equivalent of the protected path that is widely used by publishers.
  - freewizard 5y ago
    It differs by streaming platforms, take Netflix by example[1][2], up-to-720p are fine in most browsers and software DRM, 1080p may get "soft locked", 4K are well locked by a combination of software and hardware spec (HDCP 2.2, ECP). [1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23931 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23931 [2] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55764 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55764
no_time 5y ago
Stopping it may not be possible but the change of hands killed everything that was nice about tpb. Quality plummeted very fast and the last time I checked extremely obvious malicious torrents with faked seeder counts were at the top of the games section for days. The whole site looks like it lost its community and also it's heaps of obscure content. I'm still grateful for the sysops of tpb and more importantly, Mininova for providing me with endless hours of entertainment before I had the means to stay in a private tracker.
- myhn4444nick 5y ago
  Oh man, RIP to Mininova. First torrent site I ever used. I have many fond memories of that site. The biggest being the introduction to all the content that was so far out of reach for me, as a young kid. I could get vintage games that were long out of sale in retail stores (this was before mass GOG and Steam game availability), and conveniently sized movies by aXXO. Another memory was when they switched to legal-only content, creative commons stuff. Logging in one day and I had to double check why there was almost nothing "mainstream" present anymore. Introduced me to the concept of torrenting as a convenient, reliable method of file sharing, rather than just for getting stuff for free (illegally). And a final present memory is seeing fudged peer numbers, which I'm so glad I have a screenshot securing this memory, and securing this time in history of the web. https://i.ibb.co/tb2rV6h/mininova-2009.png https://i.ibb.co/tb2rV6h/mininova-2009.png https://i.postimg.cc/63h9m9VW/mininova-2009.png https://i.postimg.cc/63h9m9VW/mininova-2009.png
  - no_time 5y ago
    What a screenshot lol. Imagine trying to present that browser design as an MVP in 2021.
hypertele-Xii 5y ago
Since we are already paying for all the media we might pirate, in the form of a tax on empty media lobbyed by the media conglomerates - new hard drives included; And our attention and consciousness are constantly exploited by a barrage of malicious advertizements and spyware; And our tools and computers are gradually stripped of our freedoms and capabilities of expression in favor of inescapable consumerism and engagement; I feel absolutely justified employing whatever technological means available to bring equality and democratization to digital arts. I'm a political pirate.
lnxg33k1 5y ago
Well the lawsuits were worth it mainly as a way to create a income stream for the lawyers
AlwaysRock 5y ago
Hasnt the website been down for months?
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  Works fine on my end? The canonical domain is blocked by some ISPs around the world, but there’s always the .onion site. You can find the links on Wikipedia probably.
- makeworld 5y ago
  Nope. https://old.reddit.com/r/PirateBay_Proxy/comments/qkax5j/pirate_bay_proxy_list_updated_november_2021/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PirateBay_Proxy/comments/qkax5j/pir...
mymythisisthis 5y ago
I wonder if copyright will still be around in 50 years? It's easy to record music. It's easy to share music. It's hard to untangle what inspired a piece of music, and how much an artist reused previous work. I wonder when the whole scheme of copyright will collapse under its own weight.
- zaik 5y ago
  This has been the case for at least 20 years, so why hasn't it collapsed yet?
  - mymythisisthis 5y ago
    20 years ago it was still difficult to download music. In the 1990s and early 2000 there was much discussion around copyright. Specifically how much the fan base contributed to the success of a song. How much does each song borrow from others. In the teens, many streaming services came about, people could legally listen to almost anything they wanted on Youtube. The conversation died down. 'Algorithms' helped to police Youtube. What's going to be the next stage? I think just fatique with the whole industry. Maybe cancel copyright for authors that are found to be abusers?
posttool 5y ago
Torrents tied to a digital wallet is a clear next step. Creators could get paid and no need for a "distributor". Anyone could host pointers, we could download and pay when we watch.
swayvil 5y ago
Consider the good that a piece of copyable art does. The happiness, insight and highness that it creates. It's food for a person's soul. Multiplied a million times. The world is definitely made better. Compare that good with the good of "the owner gets paid". Pirating is clearly the much greater good. Pirating is a moral necessity.
sli 5y ago
Maybe not, but its quality can tank so low that nobody recommends it anymore, which has long since happened.
physicsguy 5y ago
Torrenting died because things like Netflix and Spotify came along, and they were “good enough” - they didn’t have everything but they had enough stuff that it would leave most people happy. Now though, things are becoming so fragmented again that I think it’ll pick up. Most people are already sharing accounts to get around it partly.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Exactly. Spotify killed music downloading for me. Providing convenience and quality for a good price. Netflix did too for a while but the current level of fragmentation is crazy. It's more convenient again to download.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Spotify is a shitty service though that might decide your content is too controversial. So in the same breath its existence make sense for piracy. You can just hope creators don't get contracted by them.
    - mclightning 5y ago
      Are we talking about Joe Rogan?
t0suj4 5y ago
This mess kinda reminded me why I've stopped watching movies altogether. It's simpler to do anything else than putting a lot of effort figuring out when and where to watch something.
Johnythree 5y ago
I've been reading a particular Science Fiction magazine for more than 50 years. When it first arrived on the Kindle I was delighted, no more lost subscriptions each time I moved, no more hunting newsagents to try and find a printed copy. Everything went well for ten years, when suddenly my magazines stopped magically appearing on the Kindle each month. It turned out that the WiFi in my Kindle was broken. Not to worry, I'll just download the mag and sideload via USB. But it is impossible to select recent editions on the Amazon website. It refuses to show any mags for this year. Even if I bought a new Kindle, I still couldn't schedule my unread magazines for download. So I tried to contact Amazon. It is now impossible to talk to Amazon by email. Only possibility is to talk via Chat. But after three very long sessions on Chat (last one being 8 hours long) I got absolutely nowhere. The people on Chat simply couldn't understand what I was trying to tell them. And it was impossible to send them a screen shot which showed the problem (they no longer have email). In the process they insisted on cancelling my account and starting a new one, which of course resulted in my losing ten years worth of magazines. However I persisted. After many times asking for the supervisor, they eventually agreed to send my report to "the technical people". And of course after a week or two I have I heard nothing back. It's pretty obvious that this blocking of downloads is because various sites have managed to crack the Kindle DRM. But the infuriating thing is that the Amazon Web page (and the Chat operators) are not aware that it's been blocked. Eventually I ran out of patience and cancelled all of my Amazon subscriptions. In the past I spent a LOT of money on Amazon, but no more. Goodbye Amazon forever.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Similar experience with the Kindle. Lost some books but I will never buy into this DRM hellhole again. I feel sorry for the people that do. The readers are awesome in so many ways, but I went back to papers.
- rg111 5y ago
  > And it was impossible to send them a screen shot which showed the problem (they no longer have email). I have used imgur many times for sharing screenshots.

http://piratebayo3klnzokct3wt5yyxb2vpebbuyjl7m623iaxmqhsd52coid.onion/ http://piratebayo3klnzokct3wt5yyxb2vpebbuyjl7m623iaxmqhsd52c...

aborsy 5y ago

There is an interview with co-founders of Pirate Bay on darknet dairies. The founders come across as very arrogant, making childish arguments and apparently unaware of how modern society in which they live functions. Also lots of F words. I was put off.

sweetbitter 5y ago
They have always been like this, yeah. Here is a link to their legal section on their anonymous VPS / anonymous DNS registry service: http://njallalafimoej5i4eg7vlnqjvmb6zhdh27qxcatdn647jtwwwui3nad.onion/blog/t/legal/ http://njallalafimoej5i4eg7vlnqjvmb6zhdh27qxcatdn647jtwwwui3...
- dS0rrow 5y ago
  clearnet link : https://njal.la/blog/t/legal/ https://njal.la/blog/t/legal/
trevyn 5y ago
Keep in mind that you also may have just come across as very arrogant and apparently unaware of how modern society functions.
rightbyte 5y ago
> Also lots of F words. They are not native English speakers. Learning english from American pop-culture makes you swear alot.
- 3np 5y ago
  Also even native swear-words don't have the cultural taboo in Sweden that they do in anglo-cultures. The last time I remember someone frowning at curse words was when I was ~8 at the house of a classmate with very conservative Christian parents.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
> unaware of how modern society in which they live functions how so?

INTPenis 5y ago

The Foundation is out on Apple TV and I'm already paying for 4 streaming services. Avast matey! Piracy isn't dead, it's just underground.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

boomboomsubban 5y ago

>The piece doesn’t go deep into detail but it shows that the entertainment industry lawyer doesn’t regret going after the site and its founders, despite the mixed result. That lawyer is probably the person who has made the most money off of TPB. Of course they don't regret it.

arthurcolle 5y ago
this would be a funny youtube video, have all the RIAA lawyers, this lawyer, then all the haxxor TPB coders, passing around a blunt discussing the state of the industry
- emj 5y ago
  You "don't do drugs" in Sweden so that won't happen, publicly almost everyone is against pot. This might be changing but not in the near future.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    FWIW, pot, or cannabis, is not a drug, no more than nutmeg. They're vegetables. Alcohol, on the other hand, is indeed a drug. So, no drinkers in Sweden? It always sounded like a pretty nice place to me, and now it sounds even more so.
    - 1_player 5y ago
      As someone that has smoked most of his 20s away, your comment is absolute misinformed bollocks.
      - Maursault 5y ago
        Accurate, you mean, though one could say delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol is a drug. Also, wine and beer? Beverages, not alcohol, though they usually contain alcohol. It seems unimportant, but getting things right is critical. I mentioned nutmeg intentionally. 10g of nutmeg will cause quite like LSD states, and I'm not sure why, but no one anywhere considers nutmeg a drug. I'm also not sure how this was discovered as consuming even half a gram of nutmeg would be a pretty amazing feat.

jquery 5y ago

Won’t stop them from trying. The DRM folks have plenty of help from the evangelical “moral police” who want to wipe out obscenity online, even where there is no victim.

vmception 5y ago
They believe the content creators are the victims
input_sh 5y ago
DRM will never stop the pirates. As long as you can reproduce something, you can always record the output. For example, you can always record your audio output from Spotify or video output from Netflix. DRM is a minor annoyance and nothing more.
- hyperman1 5y ago
  DRM has nothing to do with pirating. Piracy is just a nice excuse. DRM is about killing the second hand market. About keeping the market segmentation between countries. About killing fair use. It has been very succesful in all of this.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    But with streaming subscription services there is no second hand market. So there it must be just for piracy? I agree it's totally useless. Just takes one person to record the output and it's done.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Just wait until Apple decides to "protect" its users from piracy by running a Content ID system client side. Then even if you can download a pirated file, your OS won't play it. If you're lucky, it will just delete the file, rather than informing the police.
  - l33tbro 5y ago

tdhz77 5y ago

I was in high school during the beginning of tpb. I leaned towards the Pirate Bay’s ideas and philosophy of what- digital good was and where ownership exists. I’m thankful that I followed the arguments and merits of both sides. If I was in high school now, I don’t think I would be as lucky as to get to be apart of good faith arguments. Instead, I might end up believing in Qnon. I’m so thankful that the original web was much more pure, good hearted than what it has become today.

tjr225 5y ago
Something awful, 4chan, and Ogrish were all started 2003 or earlier.
- dannyw 5y ago
  don't let the n words fool you; 4ch is very actively moderated; both by janitors but also it's users. It's politically incorrect, but not as bad as Facebook in terms of damage to society.
  - anon9001 5y ago
    4chan is like a focus group for unacceptable ideas.
    - belorn 5y ago
      I have always seen 4chan to be more like a youth center than a focus group, with the associated criminal aspects. In both cases the suggested universal solution tend to be an increase in supervision.
  - sweetbitter 5y ago
    At least on anonymous imageboards or even pseudonymous forums you can learn your lesson of how foolish/incorrect you are about something with no future repercussions, no embarrassment, no one to use it against you in the future- you can just up and change your entire perception at the drop of a hat frictionlessly, without paying a personal cost to do it.

philliphaydon 5y ago

> When Wadsted was asked whether it was worth the time and money, she replied with “Absolutely!” > “Even though it was the American film companies that paid for my work, that work benefited all the authors and copyright holders. This is a very important but often forgotten aspect,” Wadsted told M3. It really didn't benefit film companies tho, it exposed TPB to probably 100's of millions of people who didn't know about it previously. I wouldn't be surprised if more people know how to pirate content as a result.

dane-pgp 5y ago
She wasn't really answering whether it benefited film companies. Notice her answer immediately focuses on "paid for my work". The only way she can conceive of the question is "Did I personally profit from the campaign?", and that defines her moral horizons too.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  Ah yeah I read the article at 2am. You’re right I misunderstood what was written!

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago

Wasn't the founder of Spotify the CEO of uTorrent?

boomboomsubban 5y ago
Kinda, Spotify bought uTorrent to get the head programmer then sold the company.
sslalready 5y ago
IIRC, the uTorrent guy (Ludde Strigeus) was employeed by Spotify and worked on, among other things, the P2P feature in Spotify.
rightbyte 5y ago
Spotify pirated early content.

xbar 5y ago

"It is a cultivated myth that we would not have any streaming services for music, film and TV series if Pirate Bay did not exist. " This is false. Although, if someone wants to argue that other piracy services were more influential in breaking the old DRM systems, I will debate it with you.

smoovb 5y ago

As Chamath pointed out on the All In Podcast, Pirate Bay and torrenting serve as competition for rights holders, keeping Hollywood pricing and quality in check, and thus a net good for consumers. The 2013 TPB documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8

cheese_van 5y ago

Recently saw a movie, liked the soundtrack, and decided to buy the mp3 (On the Run - Naz Tokio). Found it, of course, on Amazon, good deal, and made the purchase. Tried to download it after the purchase, but the mp3 was ONLY available in the cloud for various devices, not for direct download. There was language that might have implied this was the case, but it was not clear or I was oblivious, probably the latter. I was refunded my $1.29 and went straight to a pirate site and got it for free. I would rather have paid. Occasionally, the availability of piracy is a check on bad ideas, in this case, cloud walled gardens.

cute_boi 5y ago
And the problem with downloading using cloud is you have to use their apps and requires them to supply your phone data forever which is no no in my book. Imagine the dystopia there would be if there were no piracy. You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back".
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  >You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back". Do they specify what you actually purchase, I can't figure out what is it you purchase in such cases.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Don't they have your data as part of the Amazon account anyway? Why does that even matter?
lovelyviking 5y ago
>went straight to a pirate site Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to do with it? The whole 'buy mp3' idea always have been troubling for me because I can't figure out exactly what I actually buy there. What is it I purchase? The right to listen for some composition? The right to listen it in that specific mp3 format ? The right to listen it more then one time because I have access to the file? What do I actually possess after the purchase that I didn't possess before? If it's my property then what is it? Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited? For instance it belongs to me but somehow there are some limits to play it in my own restaurant, isn't it? It's all presented as you buy something and it's clear what you buy. But if you are trying to think about it's more and more unclear. It looks more like some bully simply blocks access to something he got using some leverage over the author then sells you 'unblock' feature while author is stripped away from any rights by the same bully and have no ability to sell it directly to you. Isn't it a case now days of redundant MIM? Another issue is with how long it is blocked by paywall. The initial idea was how much? 10 years ? 15 years? How come that let's say Beatles are still protected from public? How that even possible and why nobody rises the issue of abusing initial idea?

cute_boi 5y ago

Many people doesn't realize the value provided by pirate bay. Without sites like piratebay, scihub or libgen only rich privileged people would be able to enjoy the fruits. But thanks to sites like them poor people living in any places can enjoy the privilege. I understand there are some downsides like small creators getting destroyed. But as with any technology we know digital piracy has various advantage. Also music, movies etc offered by torrents can be far reliable because Netflix etc can remove content at any minute according to their wish. DRM is the main issue in piracy and I hope we can bypass this easily. And I also think many piracy doesn't have any dent on so called big producers. They are just mad that they can't suck few bucks from poor people.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> I understand there are some downsides like small creators getting destroyed Do they? I was vaguely under the impression that the overwhelming majority of people pirating stuff wouldn't have paid, and that whenever actual studies are run they show piracy benefiting the original creators.
- realusername 5y ago
  Indeed, to my knowledge, nobody ever managed to prove in a proper study that the creators actually lose money with piracy.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    To provide a single data point, here[0] is an article about one such study. "EU study finds piracy doesn’t hurt game sales, may actually help. Results suggest a positive effect, but there's a huge margin of error." [0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...
zionic 5y ago
For me the breaking point was when Netflix removed the entire stargate series. That was a real wake up call for me personally and I canceled my subscription. 100+ TB later…

shmerl 5y ago

> It is a cultivated myth that we would not have any streaming services for music, film and TV series if Pirate Bay did not exist. Those who claim it do not understand how technology development works. Someone forgets how legacy copyright industry fights tooth and nail against any innovation, until they realize it's futile and then they try to start using technology instead of fighting it. This hasn't changed a bit. They literally do it every step of the way trying to slow progress down for the sake of their obsession with control.

sjtindell 5y ago
With an occasional detour to try to push some sort of technology that nobody actually wants.

mproud 5y ago

It’ll stop me if the certificate is invalid.

locallost 5y ago

In general these days I have mixed feelings about piracy, mostly because a lot of people don't want to pay because "everything is very commercial and they only want money", yet a lot of the pirated content are incredibly commercial mainstream things (e.g. blockbusters). This leads me to the positive aspect of it: I recently remembered an old Canadian movie from my childhood, and wanted to watch it with my son, but despite so many streaming services, tough luck finding it legally. I bet I could find it within minutes on torrent. So I would be happy if we were at least able to legally download things you can't really find "officially" because too few people care and nobody sells it.

breakfastduck 5y ago
Yes, this is a huge positive. It serves as a kind of archiving enabler too. I'm sure many years from now we'll be thankful that we can find 'obscure' movies and TV shows from the early 2000/10/20s etc
amenod 5y ago
This! I would say that if there is no simple way to find commercial content (for the location of the potential customer!), the law should treat the case as if the copyright owner waived their right to the copyrighted material.
- therealcamino 5y ago
  So if you ever offer a work for sale, you're obligated to either sell it forever, or have it given away?
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    Yes.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    I don't see how it's unreasonable these days. You can just simply leave it up on Bandcamp, GOG, and whatever may emerge in the future as a video ownership platform (as opposed to video rental).

booleandilemma 5y ago

Piracy was cool when I was a college student with barely enough money to buy McDonalds, nowadays however I believe in paying for people’s work. It just seems fair. I don’t work for free and I don’t expect others to either. And yes, this includes publishers and content providers, they’re providing something of value too.

quadrangle 5y ago
The Pirate Bay provides value also. So, how does that fit into your logic?
selfhoster11 5y ago
Good news: there will likely remain a steady stream of college systems with barely enough money to buy McDonalds. New people are being born all of the time. Some of them in developing countries, where they literally couldn't afford to pay for your product no matter how much they wanted to. Piracy serves an important role for those people.

freewizard 5y ago

It's crazy DRM today has made screen capture almost impossible on consumer devices, and I see people use one device to photo the other just to share a screenshot to friends. If it turns out pirate can't be stopped by this, why bother anyway?

AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
I know that screen capture is impossible on mobile phones. I use Linux and screen capture is definitely possible on linux. Is screen capture possible on windows/mac?
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Linux is not relevant here. I don't think it has an equivalent of the protected path that is widely used by publishers.
- freewizard 5y ago
  It differs by streaming platforms, take Netflix by example[1][2], up-to-720p are fine in most browsers and software DRM, 1080p may get "soft locked", 4K are well locked by a combination of software and hardware spec (HDCP 2.2, ECP). [1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23931 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23931 [2] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55764 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55764

no_time 5y ago

Stopping it may not be possible but the change of hands killed everything that was nice about tpb. Quality plummeted very fast and the last time I checked extremely obvious malicious torrents with faked seeder counts were at the top of the games section for days. The whole site looks like it lost its community and also it's heaps of obscure content. I'm still grateful for the sysops of tpb and more importantly, Mininova for providing me with endless hours of entertainment before I had the means to stay in a private tracker.

myhn4444nick 5y ago
Oh man, RIP to Mininova. First torrent site I ever used. I have many fond memories of that site. The biggest being the introduction to all the content that was so far out of reach for me, as a young kid. I could get vintage games that were long out of sale in retail stores (this was before mass GOG and Steam game availability), and conveniently sized movies by aXXO. Another memory was when they switched to legal-only content, creative commons stuff. Logging in one day and I had to double check why there was almost nothing "mainstream" present anymore. Introduced me to the concept of torrenting as a convenient, reliable method of file sharing, rather than just for getting stuff for free (illegally). And a final present memory is seeing fudged peer numbers, which I'm so glad I have a screenshot securing this memory, and securing this time in history of the web. https://i.ibb.co/tb2rV6h/mininova-2009.png https://i.ibb.co/tb2rV6h/mininova-2009.png https://i.postimg.cc/63h9m9VW/mininova-2009.png https://i.postimg.cc/63h9m9VW/mininova-2009.png
- no_time 5y ago
  What a screenshot lol. Imagine trying to present that browser design as an MVP in 2021.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago

Since we are already paying for all the media we might pirate, in the form of a tax on empty media lobbyed by the media conglomerates - new hard drives included; And our attention and consciousness are constantly exploited by a barrage of malicious advertizements and spyware; And our tools and computers are gradually stripped of our freedoms and capabilities of expression in favor of inescapable consumerism and engagement; I feel absolutely justified employing whatever technological means available to bring equality and democratization to digital arts. I'm a political pirate.

lnxg33k1 5y ago

Well the lawsuits were worth it mainly as a way to create a income stream for the lawyers

AlwaysRock 5y ago

Hasnt the website been down for months?

aspenmayer 5y ago
Works fine on my end? The canonical domain is blocked by some ISPs around the world, but there’s always the .onion site. You can find the links on Wikipedia probably.
makeworld 5y ago
Nope. https://old.reddit.com/r/PirateBay_Proxy/comments/qkax5j/pirate_bay_proxy_list_updated_november_2021/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PirateBay_Proxy/comments/qkax5j/pir...

mymythisisthis 5y ago

I wonder if copyright will still be around in 50 years? It's easy to record music. It's easy to share music. It's hard to untangle what inspired a piece of music, and how much an artist reused previous work. I wonder when the whole scheme of copyright will collapse under its own weight.

zaik 5y ago
This has been the case for at least 20 years, so why hasn't it collapsed yet?
- mymythisisthis 5y ago
  20 years ago it was still difficult to download music. In the 1990s and early 2000 there was much discussion around copyright. Specifically how much the fan base contributed to the success of a song. How much does each song borrow from others. In the teens, many streaming services came about, people could legally listen to almost anything they wanted on Youtube. The conversation died down. 'Algorithms' helped to police Youtube. What's going to be the next stage? I think just fatique with the whole industry. Maybe cancel copyright for authors that are found to be abusers?

posttool 5y ago

Torrents tied to a digital wallet is a clear next step. Creators could get paid and no need for a "distributor". Anyone could host pointers, we could download and pay when we watch.

swayvil 5y ago

Consider the good that a piece of copyable art does. The happiness, insight and highness that it creates. It's food for a person's soul. Multiplied a million times. The world is definitely made better. Compare that good with the good of "the owner gets paid". Pirating is clearly the much greater good. Pirating is a moral necessity.

sli 5y ago

Maybe not, but its quality can tank so low that nobody recommends it anymore, which has long since happened.

physicsguy 5y ago

Torrenting died because things like Netflix and Spotify came along, and they were “good enough” - they didn’t have everything but they had enough stuff that it would leave most people happy. Now though, things are becoming so fragmented again that I think it’ll pick up. Most people are already sharing accounts to get around it partly.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Exactly. Spotify killed music downloading for me. Providing convenience and quality for a good price. Netflix did too for a while but the current level of fragmentation is crazy. It's more convenient again to download.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Spotify is a shitty service though that might decide your content is too controversial. So in the same breath its existence make sense for piracy. You can just hope creators don't get contracted by them.
  - mclightning 5y ago
    Are we talking about Joe Rogan?

t0suj4 5y ago

This mess kinda reminded me why I've stopped watching movies altogether. It's simpler to do anything else than putting a lot of effort figuring out when and where to watch something.

Johnythree 5y ago

I've been reading a particular Science Fiction magazine for more than 50 years. When it first arrived on the Kindle I was delighted, no more lost subscriptions each time I moved, no more hunting newsagents to try and find a printed copy. Everything went well for ten years, when suddenly my magazines stopped magically appearing on the Kindle each month. It turned out that the WiFi in my Kindle was broken. Not to worry, I'll just download the mag and sideload via USB. But it is impossible to select recent editions on the Amazon website. It refuses to show any mags for this year. Even if I bought a new Kindle, I still couldn't schedule my unread magazines for download. So I tried to contact Amazon. It is now impossible to talk to Amazon by email. Only possibility is to talk via Chat. But after three very long sessions on Chat (last one being 8 hours long) I got absolutely nowhere. The people on Chat simply couldn't understand what I was trying to tell them. And it was impossible to send them a screen shot which showed the problem (they no longer have email). In the process they insisted on cancelling my account and starting a new one, which of course resulted in my losing ten years worth of magazines. However I persisted. After many times asking for the supervisor, they eventually agreed to send my report to "the technical people". And of course after a week or two I have I heard nothing back. It's pretty obvious that this blocking of downloads is because various sites have managed to crack the Kindle DRM. But the infuriating thing is that the Amazon Web page (and the Chat operators) are not aware that it's been blocked. Eventually I ran out of patience and cancelled all of my Amazon subscriptions. In the past I spent a LOT of money on Amazon, but no more. Goodbye Amazon forever.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Similar experience with the Kindle. Lost some books but I will never buy into this DRM hellhole again. I feel sorry for the people that do. The readers are awesome in so many ways, but I went back to papers.
rg111 5y ago
> And it was impossible to send them a screen shot which showed the problem (they no longer have email). I have used imgur many times for sharing screenshots.