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It seems as though the primary use case being discussed and implied is torrenting of media that is not legal (however ethical you feel it may be) to torrent in

It seems as though the primary use case being discussed and implied is torrenting of media that is not legal (however ethical you feel it may be) to torrent in many countries. Please remember that when you do so, you weaken the case the rest of us have against the same laws you're ignoring, against DRM, against intrusions into our privacy, and against unfair ISP practices.

mayneack 13y ago
I'm pretty sure the legality depends on WHAT you're torrenting. Is it illegal to torrent ubuntu anywhere?
- Nursie 13y ago
  I was going to say the same, but the page does talk about media and mp4s in particular. I'm not sure the set of legal mp4 torrents is very large.
- patio11 13y ago
  I'm sure their customers are enthusiastically paying $5 a month for fast downloads of their 3 TB of personally customized Ubuntu distributions, and that the numerous references to music and video on this page are all to Creative Commons licensed remixes of Jonathan Coulton songs.
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  Given that they show episodes and screenshots of TV show torrents on the home page, this throws all plausible deniability out the window.
  - supersystem 13y ago
    The episodes in the screenshots are creative commons licensed, distributed by donation based service http://vodo.net http://vodo.net
    - hayksaakian 13y ago
      good point, i simply assumed that since they were TV shows (I don't really watch TV shows) that they were licensed/distributed in a traditional way.
- lurkinggrue 13y ago
  I only torrent for medicinal purposes.
Nursie 13y ago
I understand the ethically shady bit but... how does it weaken the case against DRM? Surely it just continues to demonstrate how useless it is as a strategy?
- pikachu_is_cool 13y ago
  He never said it was unethical. He said that doing illegal things with these torrents will only give the corporations/ones in power more leeway into getting politicians to pass laws that require DRM, violate our privacy, etc.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    No he said it would weaken the case, I was wondering how. If piracy stops people will say DRM works and they need more powers to really cement it in place. If piracy continues then people will say they need more DRM to stop it. I cannot see how the existence of this site (or other torrent services) weakens the case against DRM.
    - aragot 13y ago
      If there is piracy, more laws will be passed, possibly ending up axing every category of Internet usage.
      - tomp 13y ago
        But that is making the case against such laws stronger!
      - Nursie 13y ago
        But that's nothing to do with making any case, simply practical consequences. Much like the drug war, DRM and its legal environment are basically self perpetuating now. I don't see.how continuing piracy has any impact at all.
        pikachu_is_cool 13y ago
pikachu_is_cool 13y ago
It honestly is not an issue, in my opinion. put.io just seems like a low-cost seedbox. https://whatbox.ca/ https://whatbox.ca/ has existed for eons and is primarily used to pirate music and it hasn't been shut down.
hhw 13y ago
Megaupload had more legal use cases than this. They will have to stay under the radar, or else be busted by the feds like so many other torrent related sites. Kind of hard to do, when you'll inevitably end up with people torrenting using public trackers. Most people on private trackers have already figured out seedboxes, so if they do restrict to private trackers, they won't have much of a market. And if and not when they get raided, there will be plenty of incriminating evidence against their client base.
fauigerzigerk 13y ago
So there are two groups of people on this planet: (a) Those who download stuff illegally instead of paying like 0.01% of their disposable income per year for it whilst making about as much money as those who have created the content. (b) Those who download stuff illegally instead of having no access at all or paying completely unaffordable fantasy prices for it whilst making only a fraction of those who have created the content. In which group you fall depends mostly on where you were born. And this is not primarily a debate about inequality as much as it is about infrastructure. There simply is no Netflix in most parts of the world that gives you reliable access to a huge movie library for peanuts. So when you say "you weaken the case the rest of us" you should be aware of how "you" and "us" can mean very different things depending on who says that to whom.
- ceol 13y ago
  Let's not delude ourselves into thinking the people who are in group (b) are the ones who have enough money to afford a high-bandwidth internet connection, a modern computer, and the knowledge to know what torrents and the accompanying technology are. The vast majority of people will be using this to watch movies they don't feel like paying for. There might be a handful who genuinely can't access it, who have no way to legally pay for it outside of handing over a substantial amount of their small wealth, and they paradoxically also have access to an internet connection strong enough and a computer powerful enough that can handle streaming these movies. However, they do not represent the vast, vast, vast majority of users.
  - fridek 13y ago
    In my part of the world (Eastern Europe) 25 mbps no-quota costs about $20/mo (~2% avg income) in the urban areas. Outside of cities the price stays the same but usually only (A)DSL is available, with bandwidth ranging from 512kbps to ~15mbps. Accidentally, an average price of a DVD movie is also around $20. So yes, there are places where fast internet is affordable, yet movies are not. Unless you want to watch only one per month and give up your internet instead. There is also a matter of TV series, which you have to wait 1-2 years for (poorly dubbed) in TV or on DVD. Of course we are probably in something like the top 10% of wealthy places to live in. I can only imagine that situation in poorer countries resembles the one we had when internet was just kicking off and hardly anyone had connection. There was (illegal) business model of downloading movies (from Kazaa or weird warez forums), burning them on CDs and selling for the locally acceptable price. Guess what - unless the price of virtual goods is adjusted to the local standards, and the availability increases, piracy will be there.
merry-year 13y ago
Just the opposite - every time you buy any content from the evil media mega corps you're funding their war against privacy, democracy and individual freedoms.
- goldfeld 13y ago
  Exactly. When SOPA came looming around, I realized my digital buying habits had in effect been indirectly funding lobby activities to make the internet and my life worse. That's when I decided to stop giving them money.
- brador 13y ago
  You're also funding them to make the content you enjoy.
  - merry-year 13y ago
    Enjoyment >> freedom /s Plus the artists who create the content get a miniscule part of your purchase money.
    - themoonbus 13y ago
      I have several friends and family who live off of that minuscule amount... You can rent basically any movie on Amazon, or buy DRM free music from a variety of sources. If you choose not to and torrent, you're not performing some sort of noble protest in the name of the artists. I can assure that they don't see it that way. Note: I'm not saying that people in creative capacities think that torrenting is evil, and yes, they know they are part of a broken system. I just think it's disingenuous when people justify torrenting using this argument. You're torrenting because you think the market price of whatever content you're downloading is too / you don't feel like paying. Simple as that.
    - jmagoon 13y ago
      So they should get none instead?
SimpleXYZ 13y ago
I think the real case should be against anti-piracy. The music and movie industries punish people because they don't like their business model or their product. Copyright laws were created when books were the medium. This is the fundamental key: I can not create 300,000 physical books with three mouse gestures. Think about how common piracy is. They demand what? 250k for each song downloaded. Multiplied by the number of songs downloaded illegally per day... they feel they are entitled to 600 trillion dollars per year. Does that sound right to you? Piracy is our new eighteenth amendment.
belorn 13y ago
Not respecting copyright in 2014 is a moral issue. It is good when authors can earn money on their work, and thus it used to be that authors had a deal with the government. Tax money is spent to enforce a limited monopoly for a few years, and afterward society could the work to the improvement of all. This deal has now been completely perverted, and all works stays perpetually under restrictions. Worse, In Sweden, we have a special deal on top of copyright. Every time someone purchase a harddrive, they are forced (through taxes) to pay for the privilege of "private copying". This deal is then again perverted through the use of DRM. Companies that do this are effectively stealing, and here the word is used correctly: They are stealing my money. I paid for something, and the other party is now refusing to give up their side of the bargain. When asked to respect copyright, I am asked to balance the moral issues at hand. Can I, morally, support the perversion in order to get authors some money, or should I ignore copyright in order to force a change.
- camus2 13y ago
  Same thing in France. Everything is taxed,cds,dvds,usb keys,hard drives because of the so called "private copying". I dont mind,the problem is "who's getting the money?why artist A and not artist B".And it's usually the artists that need it the less that get the most of these "revenues".
  - GFischer 13y ago
    Here in Uruguay it's a really opaque method that determines how artists get money. It's determined by an organization called AGADU based on things like plays on public stations, etc: http://www.agadu.com.uy/ http://www.agadu.com.uy/ Which collects money from plays and from public performances on behalf of artists. IMO Local artists probably get more money than they'd have gotten otherwise, while foreign artists are probably underpaid (though Uruguayan revenue is very likely a rounding error for them). I know of a person that works there, and I don't think they're scammers or mafia or anything, but the model is definitely outdated and I dislike a private organization having that kind of power (not to mention most artists never explicitly gave them representation power).

mayneack 13y ago

I'm pretty sure the legality depends on WHAT you're torrenting. Is it illegal to torrent ubuntu anywhere?

Nursie 13y ago
I was going to say the same, but the page does talk about media and mp4s in particular. I'm not sure the set of legal mp4 torrents is very large.
patio11 13y ago
I'm sure their customers are enthusiastically paying $5 a month for fast downloads of their 3 TB of personally customized Ubuntu distributions, and that the numerous references to music and video on this page are all to Creative Commons licensed remixes of Jonathan Coulton songs.
hayksaakian 13y ago
Given that they show episodes and screenshots of TV show torrents on the home page, this throws all plausible deniability out the window.
- supersystem 13y ago
  The episodes in the screenshots are creative commons licensed, distributed by donation based service http://vodo.net http://vodo.net
  - hayksaakian 13y ago
    good point, i simply assumed that since they were TV shows (I don't really watch TV shows) that they were licensed/distributed in a traditional way.
lurkinggrue 13y ago
I only torrent for medicinal purposes.

Nursie 13y ago

I understand the ethically shady bit but... how does it weaken the case against DRM? Surely it just continues to demonstrate how useless it is as a strategy?

pikachu_is_cool 13y ago
He never said it was unethical. He said that doing illegal things with these torrents will only give the corporations/ones in power more leeway into getting politicians to pass laws that require DRM, violate our privacy, etc.
- Nursie 13y ago
  No he said it would weaken the case, I was wondering how. If piracy stops people will say DRM works and they need more powers to really cement it in place. If piracy continues then people will say they need more DRM to stop it. I cannot see how the existence of this site (or other torrent services) weakens the case against DRM.
  - aragot 13y ago
    If there is piracy, more laws will be passed, possibly ending up axing every category of Internet usage.
    - tomp 13y ago
      But that is making the case against such laws stronger!
    - Nursie 13y ago
      But that's nothing to do with making any case, simply practical consequences. Much like the drug war, DRM and its legal environment are basically self perpetuating now. I don't see.how continuing piracy has any impact at all.
      - pikachu_is_cool 13y ago

pikachu_is_cool 13y ago

It honestly is not an issue, in my opinion. put.io just seems like a low-cost seedbox. https://whatbox.ca/ https://whatbox.ca/ has existed for eons and is primarily used to pirate music and it hasn't been shut down.

hhw 13y ago

Megaupload had more legal use cases than this. They will have to stay under the radar, or else be busted by the feds like so many other torrent related sites. Kind of hard to do, when you'll inevitably end up with people torrenting using public trackers. Most people on private trackers have already figured out seedboxes, so if they do restrict to private trackers, they won't have much of a market. And if and not when they get raided, there will be plenty of incriminating evidence against their client base.

fauigerzigerk 13y ago

So there are two groups of people on this planet: (a) Those who download stuff illegally instead of paying like 0.01% of their disposable income per year for it whilst making about as much money as those who have created the content. (b) Those who download stuff illegally instead of having no access at all or paying completely unaffordable fantasy prices for it whilst making only a fraction of those who have created the content. In which group you fall depends mostly on where you were born. And this is not primarily a debate about inequality as much as it is about infrastructure. There simply is no Netflix in most parts of the world that gives you reliable access to a huge movie library for peanuts. So when you say "you weaken the case the rest of us" you should be aware of how "you" and "us" can mean very different things depending on who says that to whom.

ceol 13y ago
Let's not delude ourselves into thinking the people who are in group (b) are the ones who have enough money to afford a high-bandwidth internet connection, a modern computer, and the knowledge to know what torrents and the accompanying technology are. The vast majority of people will be using this to watch movies they don't feel like paying for. There might be a handful who genuinely can't access it, who have no way to legally pay for it outside of handing over a substantial amount of their small wealth, and they paradoxically also have access to an internet connection strong enough and a computer powerful enough that can handle streaming these movies. However, they do not represent the vast, vast, vast majority of users.
- fridek 13y ago
  In my part of the world (Eastern Europe) 25 mbps no-quota costs about $20/mo (~2% avg income) in the urban areas. Outside of cities the price stays the same but usually only (A)DSL is available, with bandwidth ranging from 512kbps to ~15mbps. Accidentally, an average price of a DVD movie is also around $20. So yes, there are places where fast internet is affordable, yet movies are not. Unless you want to watch only one per month and give up your internet instead. There is also a matter of TV series, which you have to wait 1-2 years for (poorly dubbed) in TV or on DVD. Of course we are probably in something like the top 10% of wealthy places to live in. I can only imagine that situation in poorer countries resembles the one we had when internet was just kicking off and hardly anyone had connection. There was (illegal) business model of downloading movies (from Kazaa or weird warez forums), burning them on CDs and selling for the locally acceptable price. Guess what - unless the price of virtual goods is adjusted to the local standards, and the availability increases, piracy will be there.

merry-year 13y ago

Just the opposite - every time you buy any content from the evil media mega corps you're funding their war against privacy, democracy and individual freedoms.

goldfeld 13y ago
Exactly. When SOPA came looming around, I realized my digital buying habits had in effect been indirectly funding lobby activities to make the internet and my life worse. That's when I decided to stop giving them money.
brador 13y ago
You're also funding them to make the content you enjoy.
- merry-year 13y ago
  Enjoyment >> freedom /s Plus the artists who create the content get a miniscule part of your purchase money.
  - themoonbus 13y ago
    I have several friends and family who live off of that minuscule amount... You can rent basically any movie on Amazon, or buy DRM free music from a variety of sources. If you choose not to and torrent, you're not performing some sort of noble protest in the name of the artists. I can assure that they don't see it that way. Note: I'm not saying that people in creative capacities think that torrenting is evil, and yes, they know they are part of a broken system. I just think it's disingenuous when people justify torrenting using this argument. You're torrenting because you think the market price of whatever content you're downloading is too / you don't feel like paying. Simple as that.
  - jmagoon 13y ago
    So they should get none instead?

SimpleXYZ 13y ago

I think the real case should be against anti-piracy. The music and movie industries punish people because they don't like their business model or their product. Copyright laws were created when books were the medium. This is the fundamental key: I can not create 300,000 physical books with three mouse gestures. Think about how common piracy is. They demand what? 250k for each song downloaded. Multiplied by the number of songs downloaded illegally per day... they feel they are entitled to 600 trillion dollars per year. Does that sound right to you? Piracy is our new eighteenth amendment.

belorn 13y ago

Not respecting copyright in 2014 is a moral issue. It is good when authors can earn money on their work, and thus it used to be that authors had a deal with the government. Tax money is spent to enforce a limited monopoly for a few years, and afterward society could the work to the improvement of all. This deal has now been completely perverted, and all works stays perpetually under restrictions. Worse, In Sweden, we have a special deal on top of copyright. Every time someone purchase a harddrive, they are forced (through taxes) to pay for the privilege of "private copying". This deal is then again perverted through the use of DRM. Companies that do this are effectively stealing, and here the word is used correctly: They are stealing my money. I paid for something, and the other party is now refusing to give up their side of the bargain. When asked to respect copyright, I am asked to balance the moral issues at hand. Can I, morally, support the perversion in order to get authors some money, or should I ignore copyright in order to force a change.

camus2 13y ago
Same thing in France. Everything is taxed,cds,dvds,usb keys,hard drives because of the so called "private copying". I dont mind,the problem is "who's getting the money?why artist A and not artist B".And it's usually the artists that need it the less that get the most of these "revenues".
- GFischer 13y ago
  Here in Uruguay it's a really opaque method that determines how artists get money. It's determined by an organization called AGADU based on things like plays on public stations, etc: http://www.agadu.com.uy/ http://www.agadu.com.uy/ Which collects money from plays and from public performances on behalf of artists. IMO Local artists probably get more money than they'd have gotten otherwise, while foreign artists are probably underpaid (though Uruguayan revenue is very likely a rounding error for them). I know of a person that works there, and I don't think they're scammers or mafia or anything, but the model is definitely outdated and I dislike a private organization having that kind of power (not to mention most artists never explicitly gave them representation power).