7 ms·

That makes me happy that people are still fighting authoritarian governments with their time instead of watching football. Panem et Circenses!

geekam 12y ago
I have become so cynical and scared that I usually do not even click on such websites and links. Can the US police arrest you to visit just the web page and search on it? I wonder how it is back? Aren't Sunde et. al. in jail for this?
- maxerickson 12y ago
  It's about as likely as police arresting you because they feel like it. Which I guess happens, but there is little that can be done personally to guard against it. (I'm trying to draw a distinction between actions that protect an individual and actions that encourage a fair society there, it's the protecting just yourself against corrupt police that isn't particularly possible)
  - jeffreyrogers 12y ago
    Yeah, there is a strange misconception on HN that the US legal system is totally broken and that everyone is out to get you. I don't think the data support this. Actually, I believe there is legal precedent that you can't be prosecuted for downloading something from a site like TPB, only from uploading to others (the reasoning is that when you upload you're a distributor).
    - geekam 12y ago
      > I believe there is legal precedent that you can't be prosecuted for downloading something from a site like TPB, only from uploading to others I did not know that's the case. Do you have a source to confirm this?
      - gpvos 12y ago
        This used to be the case in the Netherlands, until an EU directive overrode it. No idea about the US, sorry.
    - gizmo686 12y ago
      This is mostly true; it is perfectly legal to download copyrighted material. The crime is in distributing copyrighted material that you do not have any rights to. This means that I do not need to worry about if Hulu, Funimation, or whatever streaming service I am using is complying with the law and obtained the rights to stream their content. However, in the case of torrents you are also uploading the content, which is illegal; and I believe there is precedent that you can be charged (although I do not have a case handy).
      - zanny 12y ago
        So just go set upload speed to 0 and enjoy the 4k game of thrones?
        cdh 12y ago
        I'm not familiar with the specifics of the protocol, but your download speeds would be much slower without uploading. I believe that with BitTorrent, you are penalized/rewarded somehow for not uploading vs. uploading.
        zanny 12y ago
        Not really, trackers will impose restrictions on users based on seeding ratios, but if you just DHT a random torrent whoever gets bandwidth is more down to random luck than priority towards other seeders. There is just no protocol level mechanism that prioritizes seeding to someone with a higher upload - the choice of who to seed to is up mostly to the implementation.
        pdkl95 12y ago
        This strategy is mentioned in many bittorrent discussion. What I have yet to see is any sort of justification for why it is ok to push personal risk onto other people, many of which have no idea how bittorrent works. If you're going to use bittorrent for works that are protected by copyright, sharing in a small amount of risk is how the protocol works. Technical changes that actually reduce risks are fine; moving risk around is merely hoping someone who is ignorant of the technical details can be the patsy.
- teamhappy 12y ago
  I don't think you need to worry about that. We live in a world where web browsers implement prefetching to improve overall performance, which means your browser "clicks" links for you in the background all the time. This may or may not end up looking like you visited the website yourself. I'm not sure if they're distinguishable, but you get the point. Aside from that, I don't think visiting The Pirate Bay is illegal in the first place, the same way that talking to a drug dealer isn't necessarily illegal either. Anyway, if you're still worried, I suggest you use the Tor Browser and stop worrying about these things all together. https://www.torproject.org/ https://www.torproject.org/ (no affiliation)
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    >I don't think visiting The Pirate Bay is illegal in the first place, the same way that talking to a drug dealer isn't necessarily illegal either. You'd think that, but stop and remember what the pirate bay actually does, again. They don't have copyrighted files. They used to but no longer keep track of the people that do have copyrighted files. All they have is descriptions of files and ID numbers. Plus comments and a search engine. So while I'm pretty sure you won't get arrested for visiting today, I'm less confident the current law won't become stretched enough to cover it.
    - teamhappy 12y ago
      > They don't have copyrighted files. True. > They used to [...] keep track of the people that do have copyrighted files Did they get rid of their tracker? I don't know actually, but that's not important. Running a torrent tracker is considered very legal in most places (similar to running a Tor exit node or something like that). > Plus comments and a search engine. That's the tricky bit. > So while I'm pretty sure you won't get arrested for visiting today, I'm less confident the current law won't become stretched enough to cover it. I'd rather you wouldn't just say stuff like that. You're basically spreading FUD. There is no sane reason to believe anybody will ever be arrested (in western countries, that is) for visiting a site like TPB. Which law would you like to stretch in order to make that happen? Using their indexer is similar to getting a menu from your drug dealer. You haven't even attempted to do anything illegal yet. What you'd need is a law that allows you to arrest people for something they haven't even attempted to do (some people call that pre-crime). What happens in reality instead is governments blocking sites like TPB and that's the end of that.
- unicornporn 12y ago
  Sunde and the guys haven't been affiliated with the site for years and they just want to see it dead.
  - r3bl 12y ago
    I think that it is important to emphasize is that the reason why they want to see it dead is because they want the community to build something new and better instead of relying on an over 10 year old service. They want to see some innovation. Further reading (by Peter Sunde himself): [1] http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-forever/ http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-foreve... [2] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/11/peter-sunde http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/11/peter-sunde
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  >Can the US police arrest you to visit just the web page and search on it? I'm going to sound like a paranoid nut (and I can assure you I'm not), but the reality is, if you get a target on your back the "US police" will find a way to arrest you[1]. This is the scary thing about mass data collection; they can concoct any story they want from the breadcrumbs of personal data. [1] a fun documentary about someone getting railroaded when the police needed a suspect: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/anthrax-files/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/anthrax-files/
StevePerkins 12y ago
I mostly just lurk on HN... but occasionally I wish I had the time to post more regularly. Just so I could build up enough karma points to have downvote privileges for stuff like this.
- henpa 12y ago
  Ditto, but on your post.
- skrebbel 12y ago
  Consider saying why you'd downvote this instead of bitching and maybe you'd actually get those karma points.
  - StevePerkins 12y ago
    There was a very active thread yesterday (400+ comments), titled "Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8972179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8972179). TL;DR: The article was basically a critique of people like the parent commenter. In the thread that followed, I came down on the side of those who agreed with the article. So I would downvote parent for two reasons: (1) Attempting to twist a thread about the Pirate Bay into a thread about the Super Bowl and "'Murica" is pretentious in the extreme even without Latin, and (2) I disagree with the popular premise that downloading Game of Thrones and porn == "fighting authoritarian governments". I realize that this makes me a minority here, to the point of possibly being considered a troll for admitting it. Which is one reason why I don't bother posting more, which in turn is one reason why HN is so "hivemind-ish" on many subjects.
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      I realize that this makes me a minority here, to the point of possibly being considered a troll for admitting it. You do come off as a troll, not so much because you oppose TPB, but because of the blatant straw man you use to characterize it. The main advantage that permissive torrent trackers carry is that they serve as vast cultural archives. No, consuming media is not necessary for survival, but should poverty condemn you to cultural illiteracy?
enqk 12y ago
Isn't more "Panem et Circenses" the practical result of something like the pirate bay? The large majority of the content there is entertainment of all forms produced by the high-class members of the powerful states.
- tomp 12y ago
  I understand "Panem et Circenses" as "let the authoritarians and libertarians fight each other, while I watch and enjoy the benefits of their fight".
geographomics 12y ago
Pirating movies, music, software and so on strikes me as a mostly selfish act, and only loosely related to being anti-government due to there being laws against stealing (in the copyright infringement sense). Also I don't really see the distinction between watching football, and watching whatever movie one has pirated via sites such as TPB.
- jMyles 12y ago
  The health of high-bandwidth, distributed systems of content delivery is a vital part of resisting censorship.
- genofon 12y ago
  and what about the injustice of governments (at least in Europe, don't know elsewhere) that make you pay extra-taxes on any digital support with the excuse that people use them to store pirated material. I'm pretty pissed off that I have to pay this tax despite storing only legitimate material, but not enough to do something directly. I cheer if someone else is fighting against the way the copyright industry works right now.
  - geographomics 12y ago
    The blank media levy may well be unfair, but I don't see how enabling or engaging in widespread piracy helps fight against that. It probably does the opposite, given the rationale behind such taxes.
  - tokenizerrr 12y ago
    Living in the Netherlands, I used to be fine with this. It used to be that you'd pay a bit extra for storage media, but that piracy was tolerated. Downloading, that is. But recently the government caved to EU influences and now downloading content is also enforced to be illegal, yet the storage media taxes remain.
  - sergiosgc 12y ago
    >... pay extra-taxes on any digital support with the excuse that people use them to store pirated material. That's not what the blank media levy is for. It is a compensation for the right copyright law gives you to copy works you bought in one format to a different format. Think buying conversion of an audio CD into mp3 for listening in your car. Not that the real justification makes sense, but please stop associating it with piracy: it is wrong and serves to perpetuate this levy.
aaronbrethorst 12y ago
It's funny you'd say that, seeing how NFL players, just last month, were protesting racial disparities in our policing system: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/07/nfl-i-cant-breathe_n_6285526.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/07/nfl-i-cant-breathe_...
Dan_Nguyen 12y ago
I never understood comments like this. Whoever said it's either/or? Watching a football game is about three hours out of your week, and that's only for 1/3 of the year when it actually is football season. Less than that if your team doesn't make it to the playoffs. I've spent a considerable amount of time volunteering in my past while being able to enjoy football all the same. The same can be said about any number of hobbies. Comments like this do nothing but create a false dichotomy.
anonbanker 12y ago
But now, you can fight your government WITH entertainment. Rome would've found this brilliant. But try telling the plebs that the revolution won't be a twitter hashtag. They won't listen.

geekam 12y ago

I have become so cynical and scared that I usually do not even click on such websites and links. Can the US police arrest you to visit just the web page and search on it? I wonder how it is back? Aren't Sunde et. al. in jail for this?

maxerickson 12y ago
It's about as likely as police arresting you because they feel like it. Which I guess happens, but there is little that can be done personally to guard against it. (I'm trying to draw a distinction between actions that protect an individual and actions that encourage a fair society there, it's the protecting just yourself against corrupt police that isn't particularly possible)
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  Yeah, there is a strange misconception on HN that the US legal system is totally broken and that everyone is out to get you. I don't think the data support this. Actually, I believe there is legal precedent that you can't be prosecuted for downloading something from a site like TPB, only from uploading to others (the reasoning is that when you upload you're a distributor).
  - geekam 12y ago
    > I believe there is legal precedent that you can't be prosecuted for downloading something from a site like TPB, only from uploading to others I did not know that's the case. Do you have a source to confirm this?
    - gpvos 12y ago
      This used to be the case in the Netherlands, until an EU directive overrode it. No idea about the US, sorry.
  - gizmo686 12y ago
    This is mostly true; it is perfectly legal to download copyrighted material. The crime is in distributing copyrighted material that you do not have any rights to. This means that I do not need to worry about if Hulu, Funimation, or whatever streaming service I am using is complying with the law and obtained the rights to stream their content. However, in the case of torrents you are also uploading the content, which is illegal; and I believe there is precedent that you can be charged (although I do not have a case handy).
    - zanny 12y ago
      So just go set upload speed to 0 and enjoy the 4k game of thrones?
      - cdh 12y ago
        I'm not familiar with the specifics of the protocol, but your download speeds would be much slower without uploading. I believe that with BitTorrent, you are penalized/rewarded somehow for not uploading vs. uploading.
        zanny 12y ago
        Not really, trackers will impose restrictions on users based on seeding ratios, but if you just DHT a random torrent whoever gets bandwidth is more down to random luck than priority towards other seeders. There is just no protocol level mechanism that prioritizes seeding to someone with a higher upload - the choice of who to seed to is up mostly to the implementation.
      - pdkl95 12y ago
        This strategy is mentioned in many bittorrent discussion. What I have yet to see is any sort of justification for why it is ok to push personal risk onto other people, many of which have no idea how bittorrent works. If you're going to use bittorrent for works that are protected by copyright, sharing in a small amount of risk is how the protocol works. Technical changes that actually reduce risks are fine; moving risk around is merely hoping someone who is ignorant of the technical details can be the patsy.
teamhappy 12y ago
I don't think you need to worry about that. We live in a world where web browsers implement prefetching to improve overall performance, which means your browser "clicks" links for you in the background all the time. This may or may not end up looking like you visited the website yourself. I'm not sure if they're distinguishable, but you get the point. Aside from that, I don't think visiting The Pirate Bay is illegal in the first place, the same way that talking to a drug dealer isn't necessarily illegal either. Anyway, if you're still worried, I suggest you use the Tor Browser and stop worrying about these things all together. https://www.torproject.org/ https://www.torproject.org/ (no affiliation)
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  >I don't think visiting The Pirate Bay is illegal in the first place, the same way that talking to a drug dealer isn't necessarily illegal either. You'd think that, but stop and remember what the pirate bay actually does, again. They don't have copyrighted files. They used to but no longer keep track of the people that do have copyrighted files. All they have is descriptions of files and ID numbers. Plus comments and a search engine. So while I'm pretty sure you won't get arrested for visiting today, I'm less confident the current law won't become stretched enough to cover it.
  - teamhappy 12y ago
    > They don't have copyrighted files. True. > They used to [...] keep track of the people that do have copyrighted files Did they get rid of their tracker? I don't know actually, but that's not important. Running a torrent tracker is considered very legal in most places (similar to running a Tor exit node or something like that). > Plus comments and a search engine. That's the tricky bit. > So while I'm pretty sure you won't get arrested for visiting today, I'm less confident the current law won't become stretched enough to cover it. I'd rather you wouldn't just say stuff like that. You're basically spreading FUD. There is no sane reason to believe anybody will ever be arrested (in western countries, that is) for visiting a site like TPB. Which law would you like to stretch in order to make that happen? Using their indexer is similar to getting a menu from your drug dealer. You haven't even attempted to do anything illegal yet. What you'd need is a law that allows you to arrest people for something they haven't even attempted to do (some people call that pre-crime). What happens in reality instead is governments blocking sites like TPB and that's the end of that.
unicornporn 12y ago
Sunde and the guys haven't been affiliated with the site for years and they just want to see it dead.
- r3bl 12y ago
  I think that it is important to emphasize is that the reason why they want to see it dead is because they want the community to build something new and better instead of relying on an over 10 year old service. They want to see some innovation. Further reading (by Peter Sunde himself): [1] http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-forever/ http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-foreve... [2] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/11/peter-sunde http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/11/peter-sunde
hnnewguy 12y ago
>Can the US police arrest you to visit just the web page and search on it? I'm going to sound like a paranoid nut (and I can assure you I'm not), but the reality is, if you get a target on your back the "US police" will find a way to arrest you[1]. This is the scary thing about mass data collection; they can concoct any story they want from the breadcrumbs of personal data. [1] a fun documentary about someone getting railroaded when the police needed a suspect: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/anthrax-files/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/anthrax-files/

StevePerkins 12y ago

I mostly just lurk on HN... but occasionally I wish I had the time to post more regularly. Just so I could build up enough karma points to have downvote privileges for stuff like this.

henpa 12y ago
Ditto, but on your post.
skrebbel 12y ago
Consider saying why you'd downvote this instead of bitching and maybe you'd actually get those karma points.
- StevePerkins 12y ago
  There was a very active thread yesterday (400+ comments), titled "Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8972179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8972179). TL;DR: The article was basically a critique of people like the parent commenter. In the thread that followed, I came down on the side of those who agreed with the article. So I would downvote parent for two reasons: (1) Attempting to twist a thread about the Pirate Bay into a thread about the Super Bowl and "'Murica" is pretentious in the extreme even without Latin, and (2) I disagree with the popular premise that downloading Game of Thrones and porn == "fighting authoritarian governments". I realize that this makes me a minority here, to the point of possibly being considered a troll for admitting it. Which is one reason why I don't bother posting more, which in turn is one reason why HN is so "hivemind-ish" on many subjects.
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    I realize that this makes me a minority here, to the point of possibly being considered a troll for admitting it. You do come off as a troll, not so much because you oppose TPB, but because of the blatant straw man you use to characterize it. The main advantage that permissive torrent trackers carry is that they serve as vast cultural archives. No, consuming media is not necessary for survival, but should poverty condemn you to cultural illiteracy?

enqk 12y ago

Isn't more "Panem et Circenses" the practical result of something like the pirate bay? The large majority of the content there is entertainment of all forms produced by the high-class members of the powerful states.

tomp 12y ago
I understand "Panem et Circenses" as "let the authoritarians and libertarians fight each other, while I watch and enjoy the benefits of their fight".

geographomics 12y ago

Pirating movies, music, software and so on strikes me as a mostly selfish act, and only loosely related to being anti-government due to there being laws against stealing (in the copyright infringement sense). Also I don't really see the distinction between watching football, and watching whatever movie one has pirated via sites such as TPB.

jMyles 12y ago
The health of high-bandwidth, distributed systems of content delivery is a vital part of resisting censorship.
genofon 12y ago
and what about the injustice of governments (at least in Europe, don't know elsewhere) that make you pay extra-taxes on any digital support with the excuse that people use them to store pirated material. I'm pretty pissed off that I have to pay this tax despite storing only legitimate material, but not enough to do something directly. I cheer if someone else is fighting against the way the copyright industry works right now.
- geographomics 12y ago
  The blank media levy may well be unfair, but I don't see how enabling or engaging in widespread piracy helps fight against that. It probably does the opposite, given the rationale behind such taxes.
- tokenizerrr 12y ago
  Living in the Netherlands, I used to be fine with this. It used to be that you'd pay a bit extra for storage media, but that piracy was tolerated. Downloading, that is. But recently the government caved to EU influences and now downloading content is also enforced to be illegal, yet the storage media taxes remain.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  >... pay extra-taxes on any digital support with the excuse that people use them to store pirated material. That's not what the blank media levy is for. It is a compensation for the right copyright law gives you to copy works you bought in one format to a different format. Think buying conversion of an audio CD into mp3 for listening in your car. Not that the real justification makes sense, but please stop associating it with piracy: it is wrong and serves to perpetuate this levy.

aaronbrethorst 12y ago

It's funny you'd say that, seeing how NFL players, just last month, were protesting racial disparities in our policing system: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/07/nfl-i-cant-breathe_n_6285526.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/07/nfl-i-cant-breathe_...

Dan_Nguyen 12y ago

I never understood comments like this. Whoever said it's either/or? Watching a football game is about three hours out of your week, and that's only for 1/3 of the year when it actually is football season. Less than that if your team doesn't make it to the playoffs. I've spent a considerable amount of time volunteering in my past while being able to enjoy football all the same. The same can be said about any number of hobbies. Comments like this do nothing but create a false dichotomy.

anonbanker 12y ago

But now, you can fight your government WITH entertainment. Rome would've found this brilliant. But try telling the plebs that the revolution won't be a twitter hashtag. They won't listen.