The inner chaos of a web guy's mind.
Posts tagged piracy
Torrent Spy Eulogy
Mar 27th
Torrentspy.com R.I.P March 24th 2006
As my fears suggested in my previous post torrentspy.com is now permanently shutdown. I guess the US government and MPAA scare tactics and demands to invade the personal privacy of its citizens came to a screeching halt when torrenspy.com owners refused to relinquish information protected by their privacy act. The owners of torrentspy.com made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the rights of everyone that has ever used the site and for that sacrifice on behalf on site owners across the globe I thank you and bow to your values. The injustice you have suffered will not be forgotten, the battles you fought and the rights that you stood up for will forever be remembered.
The following is posted in the torrentspy.com site:
Friends of TorrentSpy,
We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.
The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.
Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users – permanent shutdown.
It was a wild ride,
The TorrentSpy Team
“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.” – Justice William O. Douglas
I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors, keep up the good fight!
Torrentspy Gone!
Mar 25th
Well I just checked torrent spy to look something up and its GONE! Looks like the MPAA has taken another blow against distribution of music, software and movies over the internet.
The site just displays “Service Unavailable”. I am no condoning the distribution of pirated content but really folks the guys at torrentspy just provided a portal with links to files that where hosted at other servers managed by other people. The problem does not start and end with TorrentSpy it starts with the fact that people have realized that using the internet they can freely share information and materials.
Piracy has always been around, remember recording VHS movies for your friends on your second VCR. What about making mixed tapes for your love interest. That also could be considered “PIRACY” could it not? This is a war that is never going to end. A truce is best and some compromise on both sides and the world will be a better place.
Common does the MPAA feel good about themselves now that they people of torrent spy no longer have an income. The ads they displayed paid them for the service they provided to MILLIONS OF PEOPLE that wanted the service. So really is torrentspy the problem or the demands of the general population that want this distribution.
Thats all I have to say on that!
Piracy? My 2 Cents…
Mar 20th
Ok well this topic has been flogged to death over the years but man it bugs me how bureaucracy gets in the way of common sense all the time.
For years now I have been saying why doesn’t the Music and Film industry say to hell with it we can’t fight piracy and just offer the ISP’s a deal $5/Month charged to each client and it all goes to the industry and then make downloading music and video legal. Instead of spending countless millions of trying to pass laws and shut down torrent, ftp, and other files sharing sites why not just cut a deal with the ISP’s. Well now such a deal is in the works and I for one am all for it. $5/Mon to have access to all the music I want DONE DEAL! and you never have to worry about getting busted for downloading music. Now if the movie and television industry would just get on the bandwagon we would have some great internet freedoms and everyone is compensated.
To the people that say well I don’t download music, why should I have to pay $5 per month extra for my internet. Well let me ask you this: Have you ever downloaded a picture you found on the internet and used it in a picture frame, for a wallpaper, distributed it to a friend? Well thats EXACTLY the same thing and downloading music. The unfortunate thing in this scenario is that the artist that created that image will never be compensated for his/her work. It has happened to me and I know how the artist feels. I caught a company using my images from my website to sell their DVD of tutorials no doubt stolen from the internet also. I could not even get the company to respond to me and E-Bay did nothing about the copyright infringement. Taking it legal was not worth it so I chalked it up to the risks involved in displaying my work on the web.
The problem with the music and film industry is they refuse to embrace the future and be creative in dealing with the availability of distribution on the net they choose to fight it because they have the money to do so. To these industries I say EMBRACE the future save your money and put it into making a better product so that people will be more likely to go and see it in the theater and then buy the DVD.
I own a rather large STORE BOUGHT DVD collection because I like to contribute to the industry in the hope that they will start making higher quality products. I am not advocating piracy, but I can totally understand where the advocates of free distribution are coming from. But seriously folks waging wars no matter how small they are is futile and no body wins in the end. Sit down! Drop the EGO’s! and work it out for crying out loud.
Well that is my 2 cents on this topic don’t even get me started on the software racket my bang account is still reeling from the 3K i just spend on new software for the company. Maybe a later post 
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