10 ms·

Demonoid Busted As A Gift To The United States Government

141 points by rkudeshi 14y ago

stephengillie 14y ago
Torrentfreak is blocked where I work (again). Here's another comment thread on the Gizmodo article: http://gizmodo.com/5932143/ukraine-officials-shut-down-demonoid-to-impress-the-us-government http://gizmodo.com/5932143/ukraine-officials-shut-down-demon...
- cleverjake 14y ago
  Alternativly - https://173.193.242.225/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-united-states-government-120806/ https://173.193.242.225/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-uni...
ianstallings 14y ago
This is unfortunate. I see an end to sharing in general if the powers that be have their way.
- citricsquid 14y ago
  I assume you mean "their way" as in: an end to all illegal sharing. If so, why is it unfortunate, surely no illegal sharing is a good thing?
  - ianstallings 14y ago
    You're assuming that all sharing is illegal sharing. That's the same argument "they", the people working to shut down torrent sites, use.
    - citricsquid 14y ago
      So why would any company have any interest in shutting down legal sharing? Has there been any evidence that any media company has tried to shut down any legal sharing service that is only used for legal file sharing? It would seem you're implying that.
      - ktizo 14y ago
        Technology for sharing data does not care what data gets shared and has no way of doing so. Positing that nobody would shut down a service that is only used for legal sharing is therefore a fairly pointless exercise. Especially since definitions of legality vary so widely.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
  - GFischer 14y ago
    Illegal and immoral are not the same thing. It could be illegal but moral in some cases (ok, torrents are mostly used for copyright infringement, I admit, but they do have moral and legal uses). Furthermore, it's not even illegal in every country (but we'll get the US laws applied anyways).
    - pooriaazimi 14y ago
      > Illegal and immoral are not the same thing. Yes. Some of use have no choice but to pirate (why? Our credit cards are not good for international transactions.) I buy multiple apps every week from Mac/iOS App Store, and would like to do so for other apps/books/... that are not available at Apple's stores, but I can't. So, I used demonoid and am now very sad that it's closed. Now I have to resort to googling 'warez [some app]' and spend hours trying to find a working link... :(
- Dystopian 14y ago
  I don't. I see a beginning of decentralized sharing and an influx of more anonymous, secure, internet usage.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  That's highly unlikely. People said similar things when Oink was raided. And as Wikipedia notes, "Alan Ellis was tried for conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown court, the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing, and found not guilty on 15 January 2010." But now we have What.CD, which is infinitely better than Oink in terms of features and content. From What.CD, we also have Project Gazelle, which has made setting up new torrent sites much easier by providing up-to-date private torrent site software (what runs What.CD) under the GPL. And the What.CD admins have learned from Ellis's mistakes and set up the site in such a way that it can't be taken down so easily.
maratd 14y ago
It takes all of 10 minutes to setup a site/tracker like Demonoid. These sort of actions will continue to drive people toward private trackers. Want to combat piracy? Fix your damn business models. I don't want to pay per song, per album, per movie, per game, per book, per whatever! I am willing to pay a minor monthly subscription to get access to a library of content. There are companies out there that get that. Most, however, do not.
- rayiner 14y ago
  I agree the business models need work, but "let me get access to more product at lower prices or else I'll steal it" does't seem like a very defensible position.
  - kaonashi 14y ago
    Copyright infringement is not equatable to theft.
    - daenz 14y ago
      Exactly. That's the strawman that has been put in the public's mind: that piracy is theft. Theft is the removal of ownership.
      - elliottcarlson 14y ago
        Though - piracy accounts for (potential) loss of sales - so while not losing ownership, they are losing revenue.
        daenz 14y ago
        Except losing revenue, potential and real, is not a crime.
        rayiner 14y ago
        But copyright infringement, in certain contexts, is a crime. The "it's not theft" argument is pedantry. There are lots of ways to obtain things for free that aren't technically theft: extortion, blackmail, fraud, etc. Illegal copying is one of those ways.
forlorn 14y ago
Is it possible to dump magnet-links and launch on another tracker?
- StavrosK 14y ago
  Even if it is, it's not possible to dump the community.
- pudquick 14y ago
  Only if the torrent is marked public inside the torrent file itself. The magnet link is derived from a hash of a portion of the torrent file which includes the public flag/setting - which controls whether DHT/similar "trackerless" methods can be used for transmitting. Without the public flag set, a magnet link for that torret is pretty much useless to a torrent client since it won't be able to discover any other peers. Setting it will change the hash / magnet link.
ojbyrne 14y ago
"Tribute" seems like a better word choice than "gift". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute
alan_cx 14y ago
Remind me, how many media companies have gone bust due to so called "piracy"? Sony? Warners? Fox? Any? Any artists gone bust provably down to "piracy"? In fact many really awful "artists" make millions, seemingly supported by draconian acts of government. I mean, would some one like Rhianna be happy to see her fans potentially get fined or even jailed? Ironically if you fine people they have less cash to spend on these muppets. Any concrete proof that "piracy" is actually costing them actual real money? Is there any proof that the majority of down-loaders would have bought the "art" in the first place? Its mostly grazing. Or is it just that they want to make even more money? All those profits not quite enough? OK, fair enough, capitalism is capitalism, so then cant they invest rather than using government to beat on their customers? Why does government support failing business by using the law to do so? The law is government/public money, its just like pumping cash in to failing businesses. Its stealth socialism. I'm sorry, this whole thing is absurd. Worse still its based on a fundamental lie. The simple truth is that people will willingly pay good money for a product they value. Its that really not enough? It certainly was for Louis CK.
- citricsquid 14y ago
  > Remind me, how many media companies have gone bust due to so called "piracy"? Sony? Warners? Fox? Any? Why does that matter? > Any artists gone bust provably down to "piracy"? In fact many really awful "artists" make millions, seemingly supported by draconian acts of government. I mean, would some one like Rhianna be happy to see her fans potentially get fined or even jailed? Ironically if you fine people they have less cash to spend on these muppets. If Rihanna wanted people to have her music for free why doesn't she go down the pay what you want route? It's a business decision that she has made (or at least, sold the rights to make that decision to others through contracts and the like). If Rihanna didn't want her fans to be breaking the law by downloading her music illegally she would not make her music illegal to download. She would make it free. > Any concrete proof that "piracy" is actually costing them actual real money? Is there any proof that the majority of down-loaders would have bought the "art" in the first place? Its mostly grazing. Does there need to be? People are taking something for free, something someone is trying to sell and does not want to be taken for free. Surely that is enough for illegal sharing of music to be considered bad? If an artist wants their music to be free they would make it free. > OK, fair enough, capitalism is capitalism, so then cant they invest rather than using government to beat on their customers? huh? Please can you elaborate on what you mean by this. Are you suggesting that the media companies should either develop DRM that can't be broken, or that they should make their product attractive enough that it won't be stolen? If so, doesn't that argument extend to cars? BMW should make a BMW so attractive post purchase ("You can only start the car using finger prints!") that nobody would steal a BMW and if they don't make that the case then they deserve for the cars to be stolen? > Why does government support failing business by using the law to do so? The law is government/public money, its just like pumping cash in to failing businesses. Its stealth socialism. Huh, if a business has a product and people are taking that product without agreeing to the terms set out by the business that owns the rights to that product (eg: downloading a song for free when the business wants $0.99 to download a copy) shouldn't the government protect that? Just like if any business should expect to be able to control their product (within the confines of the law)? > The simple truth is that people will willingly pay good money for a product they value. Its that really not enough? It certainly was for Louis CK. I'm sorry but that's a laughably misguided statement. People pirate media because they don't want to pay for it. The evidence of this is EVERYWHERE, you included an example yourself: people pirated the Louis CK special[1][3]. People pirated "World Of Goo", a DRM free PC game that had ~90% piracy rates[2]. People pirate because they don't want to pay: the only way to prevent that is to include incredibly restrictive DRM (see: Steam) masked as some sort of "extra service"[3]. [1] https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/torrent/6878474/Louis_ck_-_Louis_C.K___Live_At_The_Beacon_Theater_(2011)_ https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/torrent/6878474/Louis_ck_-_Lo... [2] http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ [3] Even Steam games (eg: L4D) have huge piracy rates and Steam is considered a fantastic service with excellent sales (L4D has been as low as $2): http://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/torrent/7470070/Left_4_Dead_2-Black_Box_1.62GB http://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/torrent/7470070/Left_4_Dead_2-...
rmc 14y ago
We need more decentralised P2P systems. Decentralisation has lots of problems that make it crap for most people (e.g. verifying that you get what you think you're getting, and slow speeds). These problems are Hard Problems™. This is chance for a real hacker to solve them. We can beat them with technology.
- kenthorvath 14y ago
  Junk files can be catalogued by hashes and hashes can be indexed by wiki services with an API. So, downloaded junk? The app has a report button that flags the wiki. About to download something? The app can check the wiki for you. A wiki of file hashes would be great for cataloging things as malicious, describing the content, and cross referencing files with other versions (e.g. same content different format). Thus, we can make something really useful with a simple DB. I've been working on something like this, and registered hashpipe.net as a potential domain for this service. Anyone interesting in helping out is welcome to contact me.
  - rmc 14y ago
    But then the wiki is the central source that can be shut down? And how do you prevent people changing the wiki to say that their junk file is legit?
    - kenthorvath 14y ago
      I don't believe there would be a legal basis for taking down a site cataloging metadata about files. The information would be just as useful to copyright holders as it would be to copyright violators (e.g. tracking ownership, issuing takedowns on the basis of hash collisions, etc...). To be very careful, we might decide that no URLs to a hash be cataloged in the 'wiki'. As far as quality control - take a look at wikipedia - it's a beautiful mess. People make edits to entries all the time, some malicious, some not - there is a change tracker, and a community of editors. The consensus and the truth win out over individual acts of malice. If shut downs were truly a concern, the database entries could be stored locally by the user making the entry and retrieval of entries would be like doing a query on a decentralized p2p network (gnutella). But then, that's messier and less scalable. I think we should just make the wiki, and see how it goes as a first step. Establish its usefulness, build a community, and then support it.
kenthorvath 14y ago
Demonoid, while great, is last gen file sharing technology. The convenience and community is what made it great, but that same convenience of having a central server is what allowed it to be targetted in this way. There are other next generation file sharing and discovery tools available, and the only question is which ones will take hold and be embraced by the community? (Please reply with your favorite next-gen suggestion…) P2P will never go away, and there will always be a counterculture movement pushing it forward. You can't simultaneously have a free and open Internet and lock it down to file sharing. At this stage the only reason we are having this battle is because the copyright industry believes they can still quash these services at a sufficient rate compared to the rate at which new services are created and embraced. That may or may not be true today - but it certainly won't be true forever. Encryption and anonymization protocols are well established, and the end game is in sight for a file sharing service that is both anonymous, decentralized, fast, and resistant to junk-flood attacks. Five years from now, take downs like this won't even be newsworthy - and the industry will have adapted their business models accordingly. Five years from now, producers will be marketing their content direct-to-consumers over Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu, whatever.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  Name one next-gen p2p solution.
  - kenthorvath 14y ago
    https://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-decentralized-and-uncensored-file-sharing-is-booming-120302/ https://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-decentralized-and-uncenso...
    - rektide 14y ago
      Tribler is the only item mentioned that has P2P discovery, is the only one that is pushing decentralization to the last holdout preventing decentralized filesharing: trackers. The other options mentioned here, RetroShare and VPN's, are about saying, fuck it, we give up, doing public p2p filesharing is impossible, we'll do it oldschool warez IRC channel style and build darknets for those that care to and know how to chase this stuff down into the deeper webs we're tunneling. There's -absolutely nothing- little new or progressive or decentralized or P2P about these solutions: they were done adequately when in 2003 Justin Frankel/AOL release WASTE (which itself was not supremely novel, just well done & usable), and before that IRC and FTP. In other words, we still have no replacement for trackers (in the loose sense, given magnets), they make our p2p networks possible right now.
jmsduran 14y ago
One tracker down, dozens more will pop up overnight. No matter what side of this issue you are on, fact is, you cannot stop people from file sharing or pirating. Media companies need to realize this and fundamentally change their business models. That is the only viable solution to discourage pirating.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Monotoko 14y ago
You're all arguing over nothing, you can't reverse the trend the internet has set without severely restricting it. Data at the end of the day is 1s and 0s, nothing more. There will always be people who want things for free, just because they can then get something more tangible with the money.

141 points by rkudeshi 14y ago

Torrentfreak is blocked where I work (again). Here's another comment thread on the Gizmodo article: http://gizmodo.com/5932143/ukraine-officials-shut-down-demonoid-to-impress-the-us-government http://gizmodo.com/5932143/ukraine-officials-shut-down-demon...

cleverjake 14y ago
Alternativly - https://173.193.242.225/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-united-states-government-120806/ https://173.193.242.225/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-uni...

ianstallings 14y ago

This is unfortunate. I see an end to sharing in general if the powers that be have their way.

citricsquid 14y ago
I assume you mean "their way" as in: an end to all illegal sharing. If so, why is it unfortunate, surely no illegal sharing is a good thing?
- ianstallings 14y ago
  You're assuming that all sharing is illegal sharing. That's the same argument "they", the people working to shut down torrent sites, use.
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    So why would any company have any interest in shutting down legal sharing? Has there been any evidence that any media company has tried to shut down any legal sharing service that is only used for legal file sharing? It would seem you're implying that.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      Technology for sharing data does not care what data gets shared and has no way of doing so. Positing that nobody would shut down a service that is only used for legal sharing is therefore a fairly pointless exercise. Especially since definitions of legality vary so widely.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- GFischer 14y ago
  Illegal and immoral are not the same thing. It could be illegal but moral in some cases (ok, torrents are mostly used for copyright infringement, I admit, but they do have moral and legal uses). Furthermore, it's not even illegal in every country (but we'll get the US laws applied anyways).
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    > Illegal and immoral are not the same thing. Yes. Some of use have no choice but to pirate (why? Our credit cards are not good for international transactions.) I buy multiple apps every week from Mac/iOS App Store, and would like to do so for other apps/books/... that are not available at Apple's stores, but I can't. So, I used demonoid and am now very sad that it's closed. Now I have to resort to googling 'warez [some app]' and spend hours trying to find a working link... :(
Dystopian 14y ago
I don't. I see a beginning of decentralized sharing and an influx of more anonymous, secure, internet usage.
w1ntermute 14y ago
That's highly unlikely. People said similar things when Oink was raided. And as Wikipedia notes, "Alan Ellis was tried for conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown court, the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing, and found not guilty on 15 January 2010." But now we have What.CD, which is infinitely better than Oink in terms of features and content. From What.CD, we also have Project Gazelle, which has made setting up new torrent sites much easier by providing up-to-date private torrent site software (what runs What.CD) under the GPL. And the What.CD admins have learned from Ellis's mistakes and set up the site in such a way that it can't be taken down so easily.

maratd 14y ago

It takes all of 10 minutes to setup a site/tracker like Demonoid. These sort of actions will continue to drive people toward private trackers. Want to combat piracy? Fix your damn business models. I don't want to pay per song, per album, per movie, per game, per book, per whatever! I am willing to pay a minor monthly subscription to get access to a library of content. There are companies out there that get that. Most, however, do not.

rayiner 14y ago
I agree the business models need work, but "let me get access to more product at lower prices or else I'll steal it" does't seem like a very defensible position.
- kaonashi 14y ago
  Copyright infringement is not equatable to theft.
  - daenz 14y ago
    Exactly. That's the strawman that has been put in the public's mind: that piracy is theft. Theft is the removal of ownership.
    - elliottcarlson 14y ago
      Though - piracy accounts for (potential) loss of sales - so while not losing ownership, they are losing revenue.
      - daenz 14y ago
        Except losing revenue, potential and real, is not a crime.
        rayiner 14y ago
        But copyright infringement, in certain contexts, is a crime. The "it's not theft" argument is pedantry. There are lots of ways to obtain things for free that aren't technically theft: extortion, blackmail, fraud, etc. Illegal copying is one of those ways.

forlorn 14y ago

Is it possible to dump magnet-links and launch on another tracker?

StavrosK 14y ago
Even if it is, it's not possible to dump the community.
pudquick 14y ago
Only if the torrent is marked public inside the torrent file itself. The magnet link is derived from a hash of a portion of the torrent file which includes the public flag/setting - which controls whether DHT/similar "trackerless" methods can be used for transmitting. Without the public flag set, a magnet link for that torret is pretty much useless to a torrent client since it won't be able to discover any other peers. Setting it will change the hash / magnet link.

ojbyrne 14y ago

"Tribute" seems like a better word choice than "gift". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute

alan_cx 14y ago

Remind me, how many media companies have gone bust due to so called "piracy"? Sony? Warners? Fox? Any? Any artists gone bust provably down to "piracy"? In fact many really awful "artists" make millions, seemingly supported by draconian acts of government. I mean, would some one like Rhianna be happy to see her fans potentially get fined or even jailed? Ironically if you fine people they have less cash to spend on these muppets. Any concrete proof that "piracy" is actually costing them actual real money? Is there any proof that the majority of down-loaders would have bought the "art" in the first place? Its mostly grazing. Or is it just that they want to make even more money? All those profits not quite enough? OK, fair enough, capitalism is capitalism, so then cant they invest rather than using government to beat on their customers? Why does government support failing business by using the law to do so? The law is government/public money, its just like pumping cash in to failing businesses. Its stealth socialism. I'm sorry, this whole thing is absurd. Worse still its based on a fundamental lie. The simple truth is that people will willingly pay good money for a product they value. Its that really not enough? It certainly was for Louis CK.

citricsquid 14y ago
> Remind me, how many media companies have gone bust due to so called "piracy"? Sony? Warners? Fox? Any? Why does that matter? > Any artists gone bust provably down to "piracy"? In fact many really awful "artists" make millions, seemingly supported by draconian acts of government. I mean, would some one like Rhianna be happy to see her fans potentially get fined or even jailed? Ironically if you fine people they have less cash to spend on these muppets. If Rihanna wanted people to have her music for free why doesn't she go down the pay what you want route? It's a business decision that she has made (or at least, sold the rights to make that decision to others through contracts and the like). If Rihanna didn't want her fans to be breaking the law by downloading her music illegally she would not make her music illegal to download. She would make it free. > Any concrete proof that "piracy" is actually costing them actual real money? Is there any proof that the majority of down-loaders would have bought the "art" in the first place? Its mostly grazing. Does there need to be? People are taking something for free, something someone is trying to sell and does not want to be taken for free. Surely that is enough for illegal sharing of music to be considered bad? If an artist wants their music to be free they would make it free. > OK, fair enough, capitalism is capitalism, so then cant they invest rather than using government to beat on their customers? huh? Please can you elaborate on what you mean by this. Are you suggesting that the media companies should either develop DRM that can't be broken, or that they should make their product attractive enough that it won't be stolen? If so, doesn't that argument extend to cars? BMW should make a BMW so attractive post purchase ("You can only start the car using finger prints!") that nobody would steal a BMW and if they don't make that the case then they deserve for the cars to be stolen? > Why does government support failing business by using the law to do so? The law is government/public money, its just like pumping cash in to failing businesses. Its stealth socialism. Huh, if a business has a product and people are taking that product without agreeing to the terms set out by the business that owns the rights to that product (eg: downloading a song for free when the business wants $0.99 to download a copy) shouldn't the government protect that? Just like if any business should expect to be able to control their product (within the confines of the law)? > The simple truth is that people will willingly pay good money for a product they value. Its that really not enough? It certainly was for Louis CK. I'm sorry but that's a laughably misguided statement. People pirate media because they don't want to pay for it. The evidence of this is EVERYWHERE, you included an example yourself: people pirated the Louis CK special[1][3]. People pirated "World Of Goo", a DRM free PC game that had ~90% piracy rates[2]. People pirate because they don't want to pay: the only way to prevent that is to include incredibly restrictive DRM (see: Steam) masked as some sort of "extra service"[3]. [1] https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/torrent/6878474/Louis_ck_-_Louis_C.K___Live_At_The_Beacon_Theater_(2011)_ https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/torrent/6878474/Louis_ck_-_Lo... [2] http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ [3] Even Steam games (eg: L4D) have huge piracy rates and Steam is considered a fantastic service with excellent sales (L4D has been as low as $2): http://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/torrent/7470070/Left_4_Dead_2-Black_Box_1.62GB http://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/torrent/7470070/Left_4_Dead_2-...

rmc 14y ago

We need more decentralised P2P systems. Decentralisation has lots of problems that make it crap for most people (e.g. verifying that you get what you think you're getting, and slow speeds). These problems are Hard Problems™. This is chance for a real hacker to solve them. We can beat them with technology.

kenthorvath 14y ago
Junk files can be catalogued by hashes and hashes can be indexed by wiki services with an API. So, downloaded junk? The app has a report button that flags the wiki. About to download something? The app can check the wiki for you. A wiki of file hashes would be great for cataloging things as malicious, describing the content, and cross referencing files with other versions (e.g. same content different format). Thus, we can make something really useful with a simple DB. I've been working on something like this, and registered hashpipe.net as a potential domain for this service. Anyone interesting in helping out is welcome to contact me.
- rmc 14y ago
  But then the wiki is the central source that can be shut down? And how do you prevent people changing the wiki to say that their junk file is legit?
  - kenthorvath 14y ago
    I don't believe there would be a legal basis for taking down a site cataloging metadata about files. The information would be just as useful to copyright holders as it would be to copyright violators (e.g. tracking ownership, issuing takedowns on the basis of hash collisions, etc...). To be very careful, we might decide that no URLs to a hash be cataloged in the 'wiki'. As far as quality control - take a look at wikipedia - it's a beautiful mess. People make edits to entries all the time, some malicious, some not - there is a change tracker, and a community of editors. The consensus and the truth win out over individual acts of malice. If shut downs were truly a concern, the database entries could be stored locally by the user making the entry and retrieval of entries would be like doing a query on a decentralized p2p network (gnutella). But then, that's messier and less scalable. I think we should just make the wiki, and see how it goes as a first step. Establish its usefulness, build a community, and then support it.

kenthorvath 14y ago

Demonoid, while great, is last gen file sharing technology. The convenience and community is what made it great, but that same convenience of having a central server is what allowed it to be targetted in this way. There are other next generation file sharing and discovery tools available, and the only question is which ones will take hold and be embraced by the community? (Please reply with your favorite next-gen suggestion…) P2P will never go away, and there will always be a counterculture movement pushing it forward. You can't simultaneously have a free and open Internet and lock it down to file sharing. At this stage the only reason we are having this battle is because the copyright industry believes they can still quash these services at a sufficient rate compared to the rate at which new services are created and embraced. That may or may not be true today - but it certainly won't be true forever. Encryption and anonymization protocols are well established, and the end game is in sight for a file sharing service that is both anonymous, decentralized, fast, and resistant to junk-flood attacks. Five years from now, take downs like this won't even be newsworthy - and the industry will have adapted their business models accordingly. Five years from now, producers will be marketing their content direct-to-consumers over Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu, whatever.

aw3c2 14y ago
Name one next-gen p2p solution.
- kenthorvath 14y ago
  https://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-decentralized-and-uncensored-file-sharing-is-booming-120302/ https://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-decentralized-and-uncenso...
  - rektide 14y ago
    Tribler is the only item mentioned that has P2P discovery, is the only one that is pushing decentralization to the last holdout preventing decentralized filesharing: trackers. The other options mentioned here, RetroShare and VPN's, are about saying, fuck it, we give up, doing public p2p filesharing is impossible, we'll do it oldschool warez IRC channel style and build darknets for those that care to and know how to chase this stuff down into the deeper webs we're tunneling. There's -absolutely nothing- little new or progressive or decentralized or P2P about these solutions: they were done adequately when in 2003 Justin Frankel/AOL release WASTE (which itself was not supremely novel, just well done & usable), and before that IRC and FTP. In other words, we still have no replacement for trackers (in the loose sense, given magnets), they make our p2p networks possible right now.

jmsduran 14y ago

One tracker down, dozens more will pop up overnight. No matter what side of this issue you are on, fact is, you cannot stop people from file sharing or pirating. Media companies need to realize this and fundamentally change their business models. That is the only viable solution to discourage pirating.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Monotoko 14y ago

You're all arguing over nothing, you can't reverse the trend the internet has set without severely restricting it. Data at the end of the day is 1s and 0s, nothing more. There will always be people who want things for free, just because they can then get something more tangible with the money.