6 ms·

Pirate Bay Founder Devises DDo$ Attack

89 points by mcantelon 18y ago

dfranke 18y ago
This is infantile. I hope it gets him new charges if he goes through with it.
- nixy 18y ago
  No, it's brilliant! I gladly payed $0.057.
  - tvon 18y ago
    Eh, it's easily the oldest trick in the book when comes to giving someone money you don't want to give them. I might call it trite, juvenile or predictable, but 'brilliant' is not a word that enters into it.
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
    - dkokelley 18y ago
      Getting other people to pay is the brilliant part.
- evilneanderthal 18y ago
  I agree with dfranke here. This whole issue with the RIAA is about powerful entities abusing their resources toward unethical ends. If the letter of the law is on the side of the Pirate Bay (which it is, by all accounts), then they have no reason to do something like this; and if it isn't, then they have no right.
- jrockway 18y ago
  Why should you be nice to a corporation that wants to take away everything you own, and prevent you from ever owning anything again in the future? (As an aside, I wonder why more terminally-ill people don't go on last-minute killing sprees.)
  - visitor4rmindia 18y ago
    Evolution.
  - mcantelon 18y ago
    I've often wondered the same, about suicide perpetrators. Opportunity squandered!
  - lucumo 18y ago
    > Why should you be nice to a corporation that wants to take away everything you own, and prevent you from ever owning anything again in the future? Yeah, I wonder that too. Why exactly are we nice to The Pirate Bay?
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  Agreed. Sometimes in life, things don't go the way we want them to. The responsible way of addressing this issue would be to dedicate more time to convincing the public that your views are in fact the legitimate ones, that copyright has some serious flaws that need to be addressed, and that the law was bent out of intention to aide a corporation's interests. Instead, the Pirate Bay pretty much proves the opposite point: They're a bunch of petty crooks that are only interested in stealing and harming others. A shame, because they do have valid points and we do need to reform our copyright laws globally.
  - helium 18y ago
    Yup. These underhanded tactics makes them seem less like the 'victims' of the music companies. This can diminish their cause quite a bit in the eyes of the public, not just for themselves but for anyone else that might face a similar lawsuit in future.
- dfranke 18y ago
  My karma appears to be undergoing a vigorous random walk.
  - pj 18y ago
    It's interesting to watch it go up and down when you say something controversial. I agree with you. It's childish and reflects poorly on the BitTorrent community which is already treading water. Anyone who has produced anything of value wants to protect that thing of value. If the value of products can't be protected, then people will stop taking the big risks they need to take to produce the products. People who steal movies and music and other digital content need to give up the delusion. BitTorrent is a great system, unfortunately, leeches on society have destroyed its reputation and value to the world by using it to steal people's hard work. Just stop doing it. Do you really need 1,000 movies? Do you really need 10,000 songs? Just stop stealing stuff. There's plenty of great free content on the web.
    - noonespecial 18y ago
      Just stop doing it. Do you really need 1,000 movies? Do you really need 10,000 songs? Just stop stealing stuff. There's plenty of great free content on the web. I hear this all the time. I couldn't agree more. But if I don't need 1000 movies and 10,000 songs, and I do enjoy the great free stuff on the web, isn't the result exactly the same for the producers of said "things of value"? Would it not be better for them if I did believe that I needed their movies, "stole" 990 of them and bought 10, than if I decided (as I do more each year) that I just don't need that stuff in my life?
      - lucumo 18y ago
        It is. But if they're competing with the free stuff, the solution is to make stuff that's worth more than the free stuff. So much more that people are willing to pay the price. They may go out of business if they fail, but if they succeeed, we're all better of because of it. If, on the other hand, they're competing with their own pirated stuff, making it better will only make the problem worse. The way to solve that is to make piracy harder, more dangerous, or useless. If they succeed we may be better off (if they change their business model and the new model gives us better quality), but it seems unlikely. It's more likely that everybody will be worse off whether or not they fail or succeed.
nop 18y ago
Some say this is infantile like the previous poster said, some think it's awesome. I'm not sure it's either, I can't decide if this is civil disobedience or a weird form of vandalism. I'm by no means on the fence on the issue of piracy and I think the ruling in the case was absurd but I can't bring myself to take part in this action. Maybe if this action was targeted at the plaintiffs rather than the law firm I'd think differently but it's destructive to punish those who choose to represent those we don't agree with. I just can't shake the feeling it's wrong, I don't like it.
- TallGuyShort 18y ago
  I think what makes it wrong is that most of us think that they didn't do anything against the law, and even though the law had to be bent for that conviction to go through, what they're advocating now is basically lawlessness. As funny and clever as I think it is, I think it's crossing the line.
- mseebach 18y ago
  The lawfirm is hardly at fault. What exactly will be achieved by harassing them?
  - ciupicri 18y ago
    The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Before thinking that I'm exaggerating or infantile or whatever, I would ask you to think about Richard Stallman and his "obsession" for free software and freedom in general.
    - eli 18y ago
      The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Everyone deserves good lawyers. Even people you disagree with. What if it was the other way around and the MPAA was hassling law firms who defend file sharers?
    - paulgb 18y ago
      What's "stupid" about the case? I've been following the case when topics came up on HN, but I still can't understand why everyone is siding with TPB, an organization that advocates piracy. Yeah, they weren't hosting the material themselves, but they encouraged their services to be used to illegally distribute content that did not belong to them, did they not?
jrockway 18y ago
How long until Peter Sunde returns T when invoked on this law firm? (</lisp joke>)
- mahmud 18y ago
  for those who didn't get it, Sunde's handle is "brokep". http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_5.html#SEC8 http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_5.html#SEC8 [edit: ignore the examples of possible uses]
amalcon 18y ago
That's... clever... but I can't see it working very well. They'll probably just lock out payments at values smaller than the transaction fee.
cedsav 18y ago
I don't see how that can even work. The site is in Swedish and they only provide a 'Plusgiro' number, which I think is insufficient for international money transfer. Plus the bank can close or suspend the account whenever they want. oh, and did anyone actually check that it's not a scam?
- nop 18y ago
  When we register a plusgiro-account to make a payment to it you see the name of the account holder. Since this has been making the rounds around the Swedish blogosphere for one or two days now I'm sure someone would have noticed especially considering how paranoid my fellow pirates are. Even if it was a scam the scammer would essentially make himself loose money by the nature of the action.
  - Retric 18y ago
    The core banking system is fairly fragel, under some system a transfer of money to an account let's the other party keep transfering money to that same account.
    - nop 18y ago
      There's a fee attached to receiving money over a postgiro-account as the article explained, the hack is that the fee is larger than the money they receive and not that they could keep it. Your ability to (maybe) get the money back is just an extra step you could take if you wanted to cause more harm. In Sweden there are laws that if you transfer money to someone by accident they are required to return it and this is a Swedish bank account and a Swedish law firm. I have no idea if those laws would actually apply in this case though, seeing how I'm not a lawyer or anything. On a related note it's nice to know those laws exist when you accidently pay the rent to your webbhost.
      - fatdog789 18y ago
        Except that the bank can also refuse to consider these transfers to be made "in error", given the vast publicity this has been given on the web. Indeed, given the fraudulent intent behind these transactions, the bank can simply keep the money (without forcing the intended recipient to swallow the costs of the transfer) to pay for its own costs in handling the transfer. On top of that, above a certain dollar limit (don't know what it is in this case), this gives the Swedish court jurisdiction for criminal charges for the mastermind, for bank fraud.
mojonixon 18y ago
Some naive comments. Might makes right, especially when it comes to the law. If PB has found a way to kick the motherfrackers in the shins, more power to them.

89 points by mcantelon 18y ago

dfranke 18y ago

This is infantile. I hope it gets him new charges if he goes through with it.

nixy 18y ago
No, it's brilliant! I gladly payed $0.057.
- tvon 18y ago
  Eh, it's easily the oldest trick in the book when comes to giving someone money you don't want to give them. I might call it trite, juvenile or predictable, but 'brilliant' is not a word that enters into it.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - dkokelley 18y ago
    Getting other people to pay is the brilliant part.
evilneanderthal 18y ago
I agree with dfranke here. This whole issue with the RIAA is about powerful entities abusing their resources toward unethical ends. If the letter of the law is on the side of the Pirate Bay (which it is, by all accounts), then they have no reason to do something like this; and if it isn't, then they have no right.
jrockway 18y ago
Why should you be nice to a corporation that wants to take away everything you own, and prevent you from ever owning anything again in the future? (As an aside, I wonder why more terminally-ill people don't go on last-minute killing sprees.)
- visitor4rmindia 18y ago
  Evolution.
- mcantelon 18y ago
  I've often wondered the same, about suicide perpetrators. Opportunity squandered!
- lucumo 18y ago
  > Why should you be nice to a corporation that wants to take away everything you own, and prevent you from ever owning anything again in the future? Yeah, I wonder that too. Why exactly are we nice to The Pirate Bay?
run4yourlives 18y ago
Agreed. Sometimes in life, things don't go the way we want them to. The responsible way of addressing this issue would be to dedicate more time to convincing the public that your views are in fact the legitimate ones, that copyright has some serious flaws that need to be addressed, and that the law was bent out of intention to aide a corporation's interests. Instead, the Pirate Bay pretty much proves the opposite point: They're a bunch of petty crooks that are only interested in stealing and harming others. A shame, because they do have valid points and we do need to reform our copyright laws globally.
- helium 18y ago
  Yup. These underhanded tactics makes them seem less like the 'victims' of the music companies. This can diminish their cause quite a bit in the eyes of the public, not just for themselves but for anyone else that might face a similar lawsuit in future.
dfranke 18y ago
My karma appears to be undergoing a vigorous random walk.
- pj 18y ago
  It's interesting to watch it go up and down when you say something controversial. I agree with you. It's childish and reflects poorly on the BitTorrent community which is already treading water. Anyone who has produced anything of value wants to protect that thing of value. If the value of products can't be protected, then people will stop taking the big risks they need to take to produce the products. People who steal movies and music and other digital content need to give up the delusion. BitTorrent is a great system, unfortunately, leeches on society have destroyed its reputation and value to the world by using it to steal people's hard work. Just stop doing it. Do you really need 1,000 movies? Do you really need 10,000 songs? Just stop stealing stuff. There's plenty of great free content on the web.
  - noonespecial 18y ago
    Just stop doing it. Do you really need 1,000 movies? Do you really need 10,000 songs? Just stop stealing stuff. There's plenty of great free content on the web. I hear this all the time. I couldn't agree more. But if I don't need 1000 movies and 10,000 songs, and I do enjoy the great free stuff on the web, isn't the result exactly the same for the producers of said "things of value"? Would it not be better for them if I did believe that I needed their movies, "stole" 990 of them and bought 10, than if I decided (as I do more each year) that I just don't need that stuff in my life?
    - lucumo 18y ago
      It is. But if they're competing with the free stuff, the solution is to make stuff that's worth more than the free stuff. So much more that people are willing to pay the price. They may go out of business if they fail, but if they succeeed, we're all better of because of it. If, on the other hand, they're competing with their own pirated stuff, making it better will only make the problem worse. The way to solve that is to make piracy harder, more dangerous, or useless. If they succeed we may be better off (if they change their business model and the new model gives us better quality), but it seems unlikely. It's more likely that everybody will be worse off whether or not they fail or succeed.

nop 18y ago

Some say this is infantile like the previous poster said, some think it's awesome. I'm not sure it's either, I can't decide if this is civil disobedience or a weird form of vandalism. I'm by no means on the fence on the issue of piracy and I think the ruling in the case was absurd but I can't bring myself to take part in this action. Maybe if this action was targeted at the plaintiffs rather than the law firm I'd think differently but it's destructive to punish those who choose to represent those we don't agree with. I just can't shake the feeling it's wrong, I don't like it.

TallGuyShort 18y ago
I think what makes it wrong is that most of us think that they didn't do anything against the law, and even though the law had to be bent for that conviction to go through, what they're advocating now is basically lawlessness. As funny and clever as I think it is, I think it's crossing the line.
mseebach 18y ago
The lawfirm is hardly at fault. What exactly will be achieved by harassing them?
- ciupicri 18y ago
  The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Before thinking that I'm exaggerating or infantile or whatever, I would ask you to think about Richard Stallman and his "obsession" for free software and freedom in general.
  - eli 18y ago
    The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Everyone deserves good lawyers. Even people you disagree with. What if it was the other way around and the MPAA was hassling law firms who defend file sharers?
  - paulgb 18y ago
    What's "stupid" about the case? I've been following the case when topics came up on HN, but I still can't understand why everyone is siding with TPB, an organization that advocates piracy. Yeah, they weren't hosting the material themselves, but they encouraged their services to be used to illegally distribute content that did not belong to them, did they not?

jrockway 18y ago

How long until Peter Sunde returns T when invoked on this law firm? (</lisp joke>)

mahmud 18y ago
for those who didn't get it, Sunde's handle is "brokep". http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_5.html#SEC8 http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_5.html#SEC8 [edit: ignore the examples of possible uses]

amalcon 18y ago

That's... clever... but I can't see it working very well. They'll probably just lock out payments at values smaller than the transaction fee.

cedsav 18y ago

I don't see how that can even work. The site is in Swedish and they only provide a 'Plusgiro' number, which I think is insufficient for international money transfer. Plus the bank can close or suspend the account whenever they want. oh, and did anyone actually check that it's not a scam?

nop 18y ago
When we register a plusgiro-account to make a payment to it you see the name of the account holder. Since this has been making the rounds around the Swedish blogosphere for one or two days now I'm sure someone would have noticed especially considering how paranoid my fellow pirates are. Even if it was a scam the scammer would essentially make himself loose money by the nature of the action.
- Retric 18y ago
  The core banking system is fairly fragel, under some system a transfer of money to an account let's the other party keep transfering money to that same account.
  - nop 18y ago
    There's a fee attached to receiving money over a postgiro-account as the article explained, the hack is that the fee is larger than the money they receive and not that they could keep it. Your ability to (maybe) get the money back is just an extra step you could take if you wanted to cause more harm. In Sweden there are laws that if you transfer money to someone by accident they are required to return it and this is a Swedish bank account and a Swedish law firm. I have no idea if those laws would actually apply in this case though, seeing how I'm not a lawyer or anything. On a related note it's nice to know those laws exist when you accidently pay the rent to your webbhost.
    - fatdog789 18y ago
      Except that the bank can also refuse to consider these transfers to be made "in error", given the vast publicity this has been given on the web. Indeed, given the fraudulent intent behind these transactions, the bank can simply keep the money (without forcing the intended recipient to swallow the costs of the transfer) to pay for its own costs in handling the transfer. On top of that, above a certain dollar limit (don't know what it is in this case), this gives the Swedish court jurisdiction for criminal charges for the mastermind, for bank fraud.

mojonixon 18y ago

Some naive comments. Might makes right, especially when it comes to the law. If PB has found a way to kick the motherfrackers in the shins, more power to them.