Nowhere to hide for Illegal BitTorrent Downloads?

[Phantasm66]

Use of the popular BitTorrent technology for downloads, especially illegal ones of copyrighted media, has really been on the rise recently. This is mainly due to the stability of the downloads, which is far superior IMHO to Kazaa, and of course its got certain parties quite worried.

And people should be worried. In this reporter’s opinion, the healthy flow of DVD rips, music, games and all sorts of other goodies has never been so good as since the lovely BitTorrent came on to the scene. But of course, that’s illegal. Never forget that. But the difference these days is that one thinks that the retaliation is just as illegal in nature. Denial of service attacks? ISPs bullied into shutting accounts down? Black hat hacking? The dark cavalcade of revenge goes on and on and on….

Its almost like a campaign of retribution. Attack. Attack. Attack. Download Paradise, and some others just gone.

"Sorry to everyone for this, but I have no other choice," said a message on a public BitTorrent-themed discussion board attributed to the site's owner. "I wish I could keep it up, it's been really great, even though it's been a constant struggle."

Learn about BitTorrents here.

Good coverage of the full story here.

 

[Phantasm66]

This sort of thing reminds me of how, centuries ago, when machines were going to take people's jobs away, disgruntled workers sabotaged them in a vein attempt stop the flow of progress. They somehow thought that if they “put a spanner in the works” – literally – that they would somehow prevent the inevitable: that machines are changing society, economics, psychology and all sort of other areas of human existence.

It’s a kind of prevalent event in modern life today, as regards technology. The old tries to stand in the way of the new, because the old has everything to loose. This kind of thing seems to happen in the IT workplace just as much as it does in the IT and media industries as a whole. Technology is leading us one way, but certain parties more interested in money than in progress try to take it over and stop it. Who knows… perhaps it happens everywhere in modern life….??

 

[JSR]

thank god

nothing got in the way of your developement, phant............just think what it would be like around here if you had been sabotaged in your creation as a bio-mechanical menace

 

[Phantasm66]

Oh man, you just can't wait for Half Life 2, can you??

 

[Abraxas]

Yes, practically every big torrent site is gone over night, they pretty much died at the same time. Currently there's only one big site that still works...

 

[vassil3427]

I think this is great...shut em' down..stupid thieves......

 

[Phantasm66]

Originally posted by vassil3427
I think this is great...shut em' down..stupid thieves......

That is every bit as valid a viewpoint as some of the viewpoints I have put forward.

Regardless of what we can say about changing media communication technologies in the 21st Century, piracy is still piracy.

However, I would suggest that there are right and wrong ways to deal with these problems. Hacking into people's computers, using various underhanded tactics and so forth makes whoever is doing this just as bad. Its the cyber equivalent of "have-a-go" vigilantes, and just because its happening in cyberspace, and not the real work, does not legitimise or condone it.

Whatever else happens, like it or lump it, P2P of some sort is here to stay. P2P swapping of copyrighted media is here to stay. To try to deny that is to be simply ridiculous.

 

[Phantasm66]

I've just checked, and there are even more sites down today...

 

[Phantasm66]

A message from ShareLive

One of our servers was suspended, which happened to be the one with all our data on it.

I'll be moving from our current host ServerBeach (which has caused nothing but trouble for us) back to RackShack soon...

Right now i'm trying to convince this serverbeach employee to let me get my data off the server.

Hello,

The server was suspended for Promoteing piracy. Allowing users to use
p2p through your www site. We can not unsuspend the server.

Thanks,
Brandon

Of course, I replied explaining why this is rubbish. Ah well. We'll have to see what happens.

To all DownloadParadise users, please accept my apologies, you are in the same boat.

- Intimidated

Download Paradise has been down now for many days.