6 ms·

> It was able to stop BitTorrent traffic if needed, which made the developers realize that they might have built the holy anti-piracy grail. That's flawed reas

> It was able to stop BitTorrent traffic if needed, which made the developers realize that they might have built the holy anti-piracy grail. That's flawed reasoning. Suppose their technology killed BitTorrent over night. Will it stop piracy? Of course not - we have a myriad of other technologies adept at transferring data from one host to another. Calling some protocol specific denial of service exploit the 'anti-piracy holy grail' seems out of touch to me.

batista 14y ago
>That's flawed reasoning. You don't say. >Suppose their technology killed BitTorrent over night. Will it stop piracy? Of course not - we have a myriad of other technologies adept at transferring data from one host to another. Yes, but it would be a very significant setback. Already the raids on DDL sites have had a large impact on the availability and easy access to pirated material. For example, they made 5 years worth of DDL links unreachable in one night. In the end, you don't have to kill piracy --you just have to make it inconvenient enough, and most of the people will give up.
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  Google learns, so the amount of links from Megaupload or pages with Megaupload links in the search results is almost zero by now. And this guys are probably going to become the center of DDOS attacks and legal conflicts, making their business model even less profitable.
- moe 14y ago
  you just have to make it inconvenient enough, and most of the people will give up. Let's verify that claim, shall we? 1. Fact: For the past 10 years the content industry has been doing everything in their power to make file-sharing as inconvenient as possible. 2. Result: http://disruptive-music.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/usmusicindustryevolution.jpg http://disruptive-music.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201... I'll tell you where your (and their) mistake is. Instead of trying to make "illegal" sharing inconvenient, the focus should be on making "legal" consumption convenient. When the content is available immediately, everywhere, at good quality, for a reasonable price, then most people have no reason to consider other channels. The content industry has only themselves to blame for not providing that. Case in point: I'd like to watch avengers, on my flatscreen at home, asap. Chances are PirateBay will make that happen before iTunes, even though I would happily pay $10 for it, if they'd let me.
  - huggyface 14y ago
    You seem to have a confused message. On the one hand you are arguing that it is futile trying to stop file sharing by linking to dropping music sales. But then you argue that they simply need to make legal consumption convenient: Music is superbly convenient to legally purchase online, with instant gratification. What you're really demonstrating is that a lot of people simply like things for free. Hopping on the soap box and pontificating how it is everyone else's fault is a ruse that we've seen since the early days of piracy. It is always someone else's fault, and it's always some natural right to have everything for nothing.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      "people simply like things for free" Maybe those things, objectively, no longer worth as much as they used to twenty years ago? You can make things free, too, with e.g. ad-supported streaming.
    - moe 14y ago
      Music is superbly convenient to legally purchase online, with instant gratification. That is a very recent invention with spotify and the ilk - and even they still have ways to go. iTunes may seem superficially convenient, but in reality it is only convenient when you already know what you want. Discovery is non-existent, and that's what many people want. And: It is way too expensive. (There, I said it!) You may be kicking and screaming after reading this paragraph, but: Reality is that people value movies higher than music. $10 for a film is reasonable to most people. $10 for (most) albums is not. $10/month flat for all music is then again in their comfort zone, as demonstrated by spotify et al. You can now either take the stance of the music industry; i.e. cry, complain and spend all your money on trying to turn back time to the golden 80s - where consumers had little choice other than pay whatever you asked. Or you can accept that the era of the middlemen (the "distributors") has ended because consumers don't want to pay for their Yacht's anymore. That the market has decided on two prices (for movies and music respectively), and that you either make do with that, or continue on your path to irrelevancy.
      - 14y ago
- muuh-gnu 14y ago
  > and most of the people will give up. And start doing what? Buying all the stuff they were just hoarding because it was "free" and they never were able to afford in the first place? I don't think so. If the effort to get stuff increases above the value of the stuff, they'll simply wait until somebody solves the problem and decreases the effort, so the stuff becomes "free" again.
- b0rsuk 14y ago
  Why make piracy inconvenient ? Why not make legal purchases more convenient instead ?
  - batista 14y ago
    I'm not against that, of course. But if both are equally convenient, then the zero cost (piracy) will probably win. So the big media also have to make piracy inconvenient. Changing their methods to be more convenient also take huge amounts of money and time. One example: worldwide, simultaneous distribution of a movie, probably needs tons of contracts with resellers, local networks, etc renegotiated. Plus changes in accounting, etc -- whereas fighting piracy just takes some lobbying money, a few crappy DRM add-ons, and lame FBI warning videos...
    - batista 14y ago
      Plus: piracy will always be more convenient, because even with everything else being exactly the same, you have the paying step at the end in commercial site, whereas you just download away on the piracy site.
      - guard-of-terra 14y ago
        It is not true, Apple proved otherwise.
        batista 14y ago
        Apple proved what exactly? That's far from equal. I din't dispute that music purchases can be made EASY. Or that current piracy methods are or can be hard. What I said is --and it's mere logic, it cannot be disproven--, that piracy will always have the option to be ONE STEP EASIER, i.e omit the paying step. People say that you don't have to fight piracy, just make buying easier. And I say that if you don't fight piracy and just let it be, then at best you get, say: a) a piracy service b) a commercial service Since we "don't fight piracy", nothing prevents the piracy service to offer whatever the commercial service does, from streaming to high quality lose-less files, to a great UI, to being totally free and even without ads. But the commercial service must always have the buying step (enter credit card details etc), plus all the legal and logistical necessities.
soup10 14y ago
There's no way to stop piracy, everyone knows this. The key is too slow it down and make it more troublesome. Just like there's no such thing as a safe that can't be broken into, that's not the point of anti-piracy measures. Piracy is a problem because it requires minimal effort and is far too easy these days, often easier than obtaining the content legitimately. If the copyright holders could just occasionally shutdown whatever the most popular site is at the time, and force people to smaller sites. Far less people would be pirating. The crux of the problem is that it is incredibly easy to pirate things, and even a token/whack-a-mole effort would dissuade most people. Look at web-advertising. If browsers came pre-installed with adblock google would have to find a new business model. But such a small thing like not making it the default, has huge effects. Similarly having to find a new public website every month to download things is going to dissuade a big percentage of people.
- slowpoke 14y ago
  I find it hugely amusing how people still make out piracy as the problem. It isn't. It never was. The problem is the insistence of an industry on their business model in face of a technology that made them obsolete. Their continued, stubborn refusal to accept reality. Their audaciousness to demand that this very technology be regulated to fit their business model again (which is both technically impossible as well as undesirable on a scale of "impediment to the entirety of mankind"). Piracy - or, how it actually should be called, Free (as in Speech) sharing of art, culture and technology - is probably mankind's biggest achievement. And here we are, arguing over an irrelevant industry that thinks it's entitled to a working business model for all eternity, and happens to excel at loudly crying at the shoulders of politicians and lie like a whole regiment of troopers. We should embrace free and unlimited sharing of what amounts to a non-scarce resource, instead of buckling down to the prolonged sissy fit of a child that doesn't get what it wants anymore. It makes no fucking sense, both economically as well as logically, to limit something that is infinitely available. I'm positive we'll be past this farce in about a decade, with the pirates ultimately emerging as the victors, because it's impossible to halt progress forever, even for the copyright industry. The more they entrench themselves in their vain fight, the more satisfying it will be to see them crash down.

batista 14y ago

>That's flawed reasoning. You don't say. >Suppose their technology killed BitTorrent over night. Will it stop piracy? Of course not - we have a myriad of other technologies adept at transferring data from one host to another. Yes, but it would be a very significant setback. Already the raids on DDL sites have had a large impact on the availability and easy access to pirated material. For example, they made 5 years worth of DDL links unreachable in one night. In the end, you don't have to kill piracy --you just have to make it inconvenient enough, and most of the people will give up.

jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
Google learns, so the amount of links from Megaupload or pages with Megaupload links in the search results is almost zero by now. And this guys are probably going to become the center of DDOS attacks and legal conflicts, making their business model even less profitable.
moe 14y ago
you just have to make it inconvenient enough, and most of the people will give up. Let's verify that claim, shall we? 1. Fact: For the past 10 years the content industry has been doing everything in their power to make file-sharing as inconvenient as possible. 2. Result: http://disruptive-music.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/usmusicindustryevolution.jpg http://disruptive-music.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201... I'll tell you where your (and their) mistake is. Instead of trying to make "illegal" sharing inconvenient, the focus should be on making "legal" consumption convenient. When the content is available immediately, everywhere, at good quality, for a reasonable price, then most people have no reason to consider other channels. The content industry has only themselves to blame for not providing that. Case in point: I'd like to watch avengers, on my flatscreen at home, asap. Chances are PirateBay will make that happen before iTunes, even though I would happily pay $10 for it, if they'd let me.
- huggyface 14y ago
  You seem to have a confused message. On the one hand you are arguing that it is futile trying to stop file sharing by linking to dropping music sales. But then you argue that they simply need to make legal consumption convenient: Music is superbly convenient to legally purchase online, with instant gratification. What you're really demonstrating is that a lot of people simply like things for free. Hopping on the soap box and pontificating how it is everyone else's fault is a ruse that we've seen since the early days of piracy. It is always someone else's fault, and it's always some natural right to have everything for nothing.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    "people simply like things for free" Maybe those things, objectively, no longer worth as much as they used to twenty years ago? You can make things free, too, with e.g. ad-supported streaming.
  - moe 14y ago
    Music is superbly convenient to legally purchase online, with instant gratification. That is a very recent invention with spotify and the ilk - and even they still have ways to go. iTunes may seem superficially convenient, but in reality it is only convenient when you already know what you want. Discovery is non-existent, and that's what many people want. And: It is way too expensive. (There, I said it!) You may be kicking and screaming after reading this paragraph, but: Reality is that people value movies higher than music. $10 for a film is reasonable to most people. $10 for (most) albums is not. $10/month flat for all music is then again in their comfort zone, as demonstrated by spotify et al. You can now either take the stance of the music industry; i.e. cry, complain and spend all your money on trying to turn back time to the golden 80s - where consumers had little choice other than pay whatever you asked. Or you can accept that the era of the middlemen (the "distributors") has ended because consumers don't want to pay for their Yacht's anymore. That the market has decided on two prices (for movies and music respectively), and that you either make do with that, or continue on your path to irrelevancy.
    - 14y ago
muuh-gnu 14y ago
> and most of the people will give up. And start doing what? Buying all the stuff they were just hoarding because it was "free" and they never were able to afford in the first place? I don't think so. If the effort to get stuff increases above the value of the stuff, they'll simply wait until somebody solves the problem and decreases the effort, so the stuff becomes "free" again.
b0rsuk 14y ago
Why make piracy inconvenient ? Why not make legal purchases more convenient instead ?
- batista 14y ago
  I'm not against that, of course. But if both are equally convenient, then the zero cost (piracy) will probably win. So the big media also have to make piracy inconvenient. Changing their methods to be more convenient also take huge amounts of money and time. One example: worldwide, simultaneous distribution of a movie, probably needs tons of contracts with resellers, local networks, etc renegotiated. Plus changes in accounting, etc -- whereas fighting piracy just takes some lobbying money, a few crappy DRM add-ons, and lame FBI warning videos...
  - batista 14y ago
    Plus: piracy will always be more convenient, because even with everything else being exactly the same, you have the paying step at the end in commercial site, whereas you just download away on the piracy site.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      It is not true, Apple proved otherwise.
      - batista 14y ago
        Apple proved what exactly? That's far from equal. I din't dispute that music purchases can be made EASY. Or that current piracy methods are or can be hard. What I said is --and it's mere logic, it cannot be disproven--, that piracy will always have the option to be ONE STEP EASIER, i.e omit the paying step. People say that you don't have to fight piracy, just make buying easier. And I say that if you don't fight piracy and just let it be, then at best you get, say: a) a piracy service b) a commercial service Since we "don't fight piracy", nothing prevents the piracy service to offer whatever the commercial service does, from streaming to high quality lose-less files, to a great UI, to being totally free and even without ads. But the commercial service must always have the buying step (enter credit card details etc), plus all the legal and logistical necessities.

soup10 14y ago

There's no way to stop piracy, everyone knows this. The key is too slow it down and make it more troublesome. Just like there's no such thing as a safe that can't be broken into, that's not the point of anti-piracy measures. Piracy is a problem because it requires minimal effort and is far too easy these days, often easier than obtaining the content legitimately. If the copyright holders could just occasionally shutdown whatever the most popular site is at the time, and force people to smaller sites. Far less people would be pirating. The crux of the problem is that it is incredibly easy to pirate things, and even a token/whack-a-mole effort would dissuade most people. Look at web-advertising. If browsers came pre-installed with adblock google would have to find a new business model. But such a small thing like not making it the default, has huge effects. Similarly having to find a new public website every month to download things is going to dissuade a big percentage of people.

slowpoke 14y ago
I find it hugely amusing how people still make out piracy as the problem. It isn't. It never was. The problem is the insistence of an industry on their business model in face of a technology that made them obsolete. Their continued, stubborn refusal to accept reality. Their audaciousness to demand that this very technology be regulated to fit their business model again (which is both technically impossible as well as undesirable on a scale of "impediment to the entirety of mankind"). Piracy - or, how it actually should be called, Free (as in Speech) sharing of art, culture and technology - is probably mankind's biggest achievement. And here we are, arguing over an irrelevant industry that thinks it's entitled to a working business model for all eternity, and happens to excel at loudly crying at the shoulders of politicians and lie like a whole regiment of troopers. We should embrace free and unlimited sharing of what amounts to a non-scarce resource, instead of buckling down to the prolonged sissy fit of a child that doesn't get what it wants anymore. It makes no fucking sense, both economically as well as logically, to limit something that is infinitely available. I'm positive we'll be past this farce in about a decade, with the pirates ultimately emerging as the victors, because it's impossible to halt progress forever, even for the copyright industry. The more they entrench themselves in their vain fight, the more satisfying it will be to see them crash down.