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BitTorrent Tracker Shoots Back at IFPI Volleys

Swedish BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay is demanding compensation from the IFPI for a court decision that found the site blocked from customers of the Denmark’s Tele2 ISP.

The block, initiated last February by the IFPI, ordered Tele2 to shut off access to The Pirate Bay after a Danish court found the ISP to be unlawfully assisting in the distribution of copyrighted works, by allowing customers to access The Pirate Bay’s BitTorrent tracker and search engine. Critics feared the ruling would soon spread to a number of other countries, and IFPI executives in nearby Norway and Finland announced they were looking into similar court action.

Writing in his blog, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter “Brokep” Sunde said the site will file a legal complaint, asking to be compensated for the time the site spent blocked in Denmark, with proceeds to be spent funding Danish artists interested in sharing their music online, for free. Sunde said the money would be handled by the Danish Piratgruppen, and that unlike the IFPI, The Pirate Bay will only ask for “a reasonable amount of money.”

“The grant will give out money to Danish aspiring artists for making music and releasing it for free,” said Sunde, “And all will be sponsored by IFPI since they tried to fuck those people over. Poetic justice.”

The Pirate Bay’s demand for compensation represents its second maneuver in the case of IFPI v. Tele2: shortly after the block was implemented administrators opened The Jesper Bay, a site for Danish users that provided instructions for circumventing Tele2’s restrictions.

Sunde notes that while the site has risen from 29th to 24th in Alexa rankings, “we’ve had to do a lot to defend ourselves and that we need compensation for the users that lost access to the site and for the people who are spreading their works using The Pirate Bay.”

Earlier this month the IFPI demanded $2.5m from The Pirate Bay, for its role in illegally facilitating the distribution of a handful of music CDs, movies, and video games.

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Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By SandmanWN on 4/16/2008 8:55:53 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
“And all will be sponsored by IFPI since they tried to fuck those people over. Poetic justice.”

I would like to nominate this for the comment section at the bottom of the page.




RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By Adonlude on 4/16/08, Rating: -1
RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By SandmanWN on 4/16/2008 9:11:43 PM , Rating: 2
yes I understand that. I meant the quote about the IFPI.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By ImSpartacus on 4/16/2008 9:10:49 PM , Rating: 2
Its a TPB quote, but its still funny. The current pool is getting a tad stale. Even though the seagate-porn one is golden. Other than that, you should shake it up a bit.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By walk2k on 4/16/08, Rating: -1
RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By See Spot Run on 4/16/2008 11:15:15 PM , Rating: 5
It's not always stealing.

A lot of independent artists put their music on sites like this voluntarily. And even some big name artists like that Trent fellow (not a big music listener myself)

And what about "free" stuff like Linux distro's or game patches?


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By xsilver on 4/16/08, Rating: -1
RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By ImSpartacus on 4/17/2008 6:20:58 AM , Rating: 2
That's all? I figured there would be more. Even then, all of it still isn't illegal. I recently downloaded a large source mod for the Orange Box on TPB. It worked fine.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By walk2k on 4/17/08, Rating: -1
RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By kelmon on 4/17/2008 12:36:15 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
It's not always stealing.


And therein lies the rub. Sure, there's certainly legitimate uses for BitTorrent and it's a great way to distribute data. The sad fact is that not only is The Pirate Bay probably "the" source for pirated material but they're damned proud of the fact. So while I'm happy for people to champion BitTorrent I will never hear anything good said about this site until they stop providing Torrents for pirated material. When that stops then I'll happily concede that it can be a great source for free material.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By Bigjee on 4/17/2008 1:27:32 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The Pirate Bay probably "the" source for pirated material but they're damned proud of the fact.


IMO I didn't know they actually hosted the material on there servers? I'm sure TPB is a basically a site that host torrents that link to the real 'source'.

Yes, TPB does enable piracy (anyone copying music from their PC's to mp3 player does too) so I can see how Sunde can actually
say "hey I don't have any of the copyrighted stuff on me and I'm not distributing it. If you have a beef with someone it should be with the people who have the contents on their hard drives. "
I could be mistaken but my logic seems fair(it could have its mistakes and would be grateful if someone pointed them out.)
Analogy : The cops (IFPI and other copyright protection agenicies) try to find a snitch(TPB), who knows where the biggest drug deals are going down or but doesn't have any drugs on himself. And the cops keep threatening the snitch to speak up or go to jail for obstruction of justice or w/e. Only in this case TPB tells the cops to f**k off since they got nothing on him.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By dragonbif on 4/17/2008 2:28:48 PM , Rating: 2
Sort of but not really true. The “snitch” would be more like a sales rep handing out pamphlets on how and where to get the drugs and what the prices are. He may not have the drugs on him but he does have the materials and is actively keeping tack how to get you the drugs (working for drug dealers must be fun) and that is breaking the law. If you take him out then no one would know where to get the drugs.
Before you can start downloading the BT file you need something, a file that allows the connection to the tracker which on a Host Server and would be run on the server itself. In this case the host server would be the one handing out the P2P protocol and keeping tabs on the tracker so if the server is shut down no one else could get the tracker files and there by prevent getting the videos or music. However if the tracker is not hosted on the server but just the links to the tracker that would be different, that would be someone saying I don’t know how to get the drugs but I can tell you who knows so you can go get the pamphlets.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that just because the files are not on your server itself does not mean you are not sharing it. If someone is downloading the tracker from you they are getting the files from you because that is how the protocol works without you there would be no download. Also if you allow your users to make trackers on your server you are still guilty just like a corporation is guilty for what its employee’s are allowed to do. If you look at some BT sites and look at the links provided you find that the tracker is not on their server but other severs and that’s why they don’t seem to get into trouble. Someday this may change but as it stands now if the tracker is not provided by you the law does not care. If you get shut down the tracker is still running and did not change anything. They would find out from you who are providing the tracker so now you have become the “snitch” that gets away.
If you do host a tracker server and don’t want the law to come after you all you have to do is actively take out any trackers that are made to provide content that is copyrighted. Also you should think about providing an E-mail address for people to ask that a torrent be removed if they own the content meaning they have to provide proof of ownership.

All in all the law looks at a host tracker server as a spider making a web (hehe web) and if the spider that makes and maintains the web is killed, the web will fall.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By Bigjee on 4/17/2008 2:40:47 PM , Rating: 2
So basically TPB if doesn't host the trackers themselves but links to the trackers or torrent files (kinda like google) then TPB is as good/bad as Google really? Did I get that right?

Lol web. But also if the spider jumps webs then well its gonna be hard for the agencies to track him right?


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By dragonbif on 4/17/2008 2:54:46 PM , Rating: 2
You got it right, if they killed your site that only hosts the links then they really did not change anything but if they take out the tracker they made progress. Hehe if they take out the tracker then you end up with a lot of dead links on your site.

Not really if the spider jumps the web the agencies can still find him because he still has to attach his web to branches and if he still wants to be known to someone then he can be found. To not be found would mean not being known by anyone including the users so he would have to be in a vary dark hole.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By PWNettle on 4/17/2008 2:33:33 PM , Rating: 2
NIN should give their music away since it's garbage that's not worth paying for (or listening to in any way).

It doesn't really matter if PB deals in legal traffic too. If they support any illegal traffic they should be stopped.

Pirates, those that condone piracy in any way, and those that indulge in piracy are all a bunch of losers. Go to your favorite retailer, like Best Buy, and try to walk out with a few DVDs, CDs, and games without paying and see how that works out for ya. Grab that NIN record off the shelves and carry it out too - tell Trent said it's ok.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By barjebus on 4/17/2008 4:45:46 PM , Rating: 3
I completely agree. Any website that infringes on copyrighted material should be brought down immediately. Google is especially evil in this regard. That damn search engine is always finding so many illegal things that I'm just about ready to pull my hair out.

These days I can't even go on YouTube without accidentally catching a glimpse of some copyright material. The itchy crawly feeling of being a dirty pirate from having taken a glimpse into the unholy abyss of someone elses copyrighted work has me visiting the bathroom every 10 minutes to obsessively scrub myself clean of my sins.

Oh wait...you're dumbass , I forgot. So sorry for forgetting.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By kelmon on 4/18/2008 3:11:13 AM , Rating: 1
Unfortunately, you're the dumbass who has resorted to the playground mentality that if someone does something bad and gets away with it then it's OK for everyone else. I'm sorry but you might as well throw ethics (as they exist in the online world) out the window. The major difference, as far as I can tell, is that Google ends up displaying pirated material as a side-product of their business. Sure, they probably could do more (or even something) to not show illegal content and that would be a good thing, as long as it could be done without creating false-positive results, which I doubt. The Pirate Bay, and I draw your attention to the 2nd word in their name, actively solicits and champions pirated materials. To suggest that they're just doing the same thing as Google is just an attempt to justify something that benefits yourself but is very definitely ethically wrong, if not illegal.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By barjebus on 4/18/2008 11:17:16 AM , Rating: 2
You really don't get it do you? Ever heard of Torrentspy? Ever heard of Demonoid? Where are they today? Oh right, shut down, because the IFPI doesn't give a damn as to whether or not the piracy is a "side-product" or not.

Tell me, do you know of any torrent sites that don't have a ton of pirated material? Should they all be shut down? How would we find the legitimate torrents? How would I be able to share files or my own music produced by me with my fans?

Piracy comes part and parcel with p2p. It's a sad reality, but it's true of every aspect of the internet. There's always bad along with the good, and p2p seems to have a larger share of the bad, which is why it's being targeted.

The reason why I don't support the Pirate Bay being shut down is because it sets a precedence. Those kinds of rulings open the door for ever p2p tracker search engine to be shut because they all have "pirated" material. In my view, it's an all or nothing scenario, either p2p exists and thrives, or it gets shut down completely. Politicians aren't intelligent enough to differentiate enough to take half measures.


RE: Posterize the IFPI quote!!!
By kelmon on 4/18/2008 5:37:44 PM , Rating: 1
Unfortunately, I do "get it". Let's look further at the thrust of your reply...

quote:
Tell me, do you know of any torrent sites that don't have a ton of pirated material?


Honestly, no.

quote:
Should they all be shut down?


Yes

quote:
How would we find the legitimate torrents?


You make a web site that only accepts torrents that are validated as being non-copyrighted material, or at least remove Torrents if they are notified as being for pirated materials. Failing that, use freakin' Google to find the source for the Torrent and download it from there.

quote:
How would I be able to share files or my own music produced by me with my fans?


Post the Torrent to your own website - your fans will find it and then BitTorrent takes care of the rest once it has been seeded.

As I have said already, I like the idea of BitTorrent and the purpose that it serves. However, I take objection to the likes of The Pirate Bay who act like children, sticking their tongue out at "the man", and getting away with clearly unethical actions. It's not helped by the likes of you who act like it's OK and that there's nothing that can be done about it, which is nonsense. If you don't want to see legitimate uses of BitTorrent being hijacked by the illegitimate then grow a spine.