Torrents Going Down? No way!

Screw the rich industry people. If I wanted a perfect copy, I would blow my money on Blu-ray disks. (and many people do) As it is, I punch a clock, and I want some of my entertainment to be free, and I do pay a price, slow dload speeds, compromised processor speed, and of course the ever present risk of viruses and worms and adware and spyware. If you ask me, the industry is doing just fine with the torrents functioning. Remember, you need a PC and broadband to torrent, so the poor throngs of sad destitute consumers will still fill the mall and pay theatre prices.

in a way torrents should not be illegal because all you do when you download them is what happens is electrical signals get sent from your PC/Laptop to the severs and from their servers to you, which means its not free as youre paying for the electrical signals your sending to get the download and the people that are sending you the signals are paying for electric too, basically your not getting torrents for free so there is no infrigement to copyright, the person(s) who own the servers are paying for the electric used, so their paying for the software indirectly its not our fault the companies complaining arent taking money from electrical distributors as they should if they dont want their software being distributed for free

hipe,

Following your logic, everything should be free, i.e. computers should cost 0 because the raw materials (iron, silicon etc.) are free to be found in nature.
Paying your electrical bill to send signals to the wire doesn't mean that what you download should be free. You could steal also the electricity as you steal copyrighted material and get everything for free. Paying bill means that you pay for a service. Stealing electricity for example is only a little bit more complicated than just clicking few buttons on a screen.

On the other hand, artists live from whatever they do. They work to create movies, creating a movie involves thousands of people, from the script writer until the ticket seller from the cinema booth (actors, director, decors, distributors, equipment etc.). So artists are only a small wheel in this system.

Now, well they live or not, that's another matter.

Everytime a piracy medium is taken down a more powerful one replaces it. This is how torrents got started. I use netflix because it's more convenient, but the authorities have got to understand that their efforts are feeble compared to the masses of people that will deffend file sharing with their lives. The way I see it, the only way to inhibit piracy is to keep the data density as high as possible so that pirated content looks bad compared to the real thing. Blu-ray is a good example but the players and media are still cost prohibitive. It needs to be cheap enough so that making copies usn't worth it. By the way, physical media is going to die out when tv's have built in conputers and can stream hd from internet based companies that compete internationally. It will also be the end of cable providers as people will just have an internet connection.

Yes, it's illegal. Fine. But it's silly to assume, as an example, that I should NOT have access to a movie simply because I am a citizen of another state. As an example of this, examine Boondock Saints II:All Saints Day. Sure, it released in theaters... all 67 of em. The nearest of which is over 1,000 miles away from me.

Now, I am not against the companies being paid for their work. I think that they should. But I'm not driving or flying 1,000 miles to see a new movie. So, where do I look? It's not streaming on Netflix (which I pay for), nor is it available anywhere else that I have found. So I can't pay for it legally. But I really want to see it.

So the next thing I do? Well... I look for torrents. They are low quality theater thefts, someone snuck a camera in and filmed it. Sucks, but I REALLY REALLY want to see this movie.

Too bad the movie company didn't release this in my area. My entire History class wanted to go see it for our outing day. All 30 of us. And our families. We all would have paid for it, too.

So perhaps it's not just people wanting a free movie, game, etc, that are pirating video.

And yes, that is just one example. But some software not produced anymore, un-buyable anywhere that I can find, (enter Star Wars Rebellion), and some music, though not much, could fall into the same category.

Just a thought that MAYBE not every person who torrents is a thief at heart.

I would like to say, first of all that as an editor, your English is abhorrent! I'm no English Professor but WOW I could put together a better piece of tripe than you have. I would love to write for a tech blog and simply cannot believe that someone can get a gig and not know how to string a sentence together.

Enough of the ad hominem attacks.

I agree and disagree with your article. Firstly, I think you're correct in saying no-one to nearly no-one uses Bit Torrents for free products. I do though, I guess this puts me in a minority. I download videos from people who produce documentaries for free, only wanting their available to as many people as possible. They have found that their material gets out to the community a whole lot faster and easier using Bit Torrent technology. I do understand that this use of Bit Torrent is in a minority as mentioned above.

I disagree that we should eliminate the use of Bit Torrent and other P2P methods of distributing non-free material. What should be happening is the creation of a better distribution model such as netflix. I no longer use a credit card which makes this difficult to use these types of services.

I remember someone mentioning that by paying their ISP to access the net is like paying the "Internet tax" allowing them to download what they want. While this is a tongue-in-cheek comment, it might actually hold some value. Maybe there would be a solution whereby end users pay an additional subscription fee to their ISP which is put towards (based on logs of downloads) different media companies as compensation for these said downloads. This is like a shopping centre paying a subscription to play licensed music over their PA system.

Users could nominate how much of their bandwidth would be used for downloading copyright material and then a certain percentage of your monthly quota towards that. In fact there could be a secure site based with your ISP or your ISP could partner with sites like netflix and then downloaded material will be done so legally.

FGC : STFU okay this is isnt a school test if you want a school test then go back to school.

Makes me sick everytime someone comes on a proclaims their english is better than most of the world, when they themselves can even screw in a lightbulb, let alone download a program from a torrent, so please STFU.

So called stealing programs is a myth, what happens if you buy a program and the program doesnt work, on your computer. what do you do then? youve spent 50 to 60 dollars on a program or applications sometime thousand of dollars are spent.

The pirate scene has always proclaim if you like it then buy it, which is true. most time ill would buy a game, or an app in order to get updates and such, but when a company that made the program start charging for every update, then to hell with them.

some people here think they know everything about the pirate scene, ive been around for years since 1983 and today is 2010. from the looks of it, its doesnt seem to stop or slow down, its awesome, with all the encryption going on, the people they hire are pirates themselves, which other pirates tries to beat. it a neverending battle.

so give it up world, just give it up!!

dude , torrent sites will NEVER go down ... altough ... now i buy my games ... no more piracy for me ... i guess

I dare you to regulate torrents or the internet in general. The day they do is the day I throw my cpu out the window and never look back. Free me from my escapism prison, I DARE YOU

All right all you who think that it's ok for torrents to be operating without parameters out there. I'm a songwriter/musician living in Nashville. Here's a scenario for you. You make something with your own bare hands out of nothing...where there was once nothing now there is a product that you spent possibly years creating. Now you say to yourself...man this is cool...i bet alot of people might like to buy this after all my hard work. After all this is still currently a nation where capitalism and the american dream still lives (or gasps rather). So you take the time to package it, put it together and you walk down to the curb to sell it to whomever passes that takes an interest. But someone comes by, makes a xerox copy of what you worked years to perfect and decides to give it to everyone for free...without your permission of course. That's called stealing. I currently am a struggling, unknown musician in Nashville, TN. I work hard for every penny I make. Recently finished an instrumental cd that has been received nicely on CD Baby, I tunes etc. Only to find out that it immediately got stuck on a torrent and has been downloaded over 3200 times. That's over $30,000 that someone just reached into my pocket and took. How would you feel if it were you? And yes with a group of other musicians here who have suffered similar slaps in the face we ARE going to do something about it.

maybe they wanted to hear ur crap before they bought it? and it sucked? how could u even think that ur CRAP was worth $100 per download?!?! Really! u r unknown because u and ur friends are losers with loser crap and even if it was worth buying u want way too much! i will personally copy ur crap and distribute it to as many people who are willing to listen to it. if it brings attention to ur legitimate song then u might make money, their is always idiots who like any crap. OR, u can whine about ur loser music, charge $100 per song and NEVER go anywhere! LOL! I am doing u a favor! But ur stuff sucks and, even GIVING it away, u and ur friends will never make a dollar, but make sure that u blame us for u sucking!

I'm guessing most people have no idea how torrents work, so I'll explain it to you (I'm no expert but I have a rudimentary understanding of it, so I'll do my best).

The .torrent file itself is just hash marks, and it points your connection (well, it points something) to where the files are. Why is this necessary? The files are not stored online, they are on personal computers or servers. It's more like a file transfer than a download, really. If files were all on the web then there would be no need for torrents.

To get the files though, you need the help of some peers. These peers are known as seeders and leechers. Seeders are people who have downloaded all of the files the torrent points to (or at least some of them, I'll explain), and leechers are the ones who are still receiving some of the files. Seeders are the ones people depend on to help the downloading process go faster. The more seeders, the faster it goes. In the case of someone downloading only some of the files, the seeder will only be able to help out on those particular files. This is why leechers run into slowed speeds and also why downloading sometimes stops at less than 100%. It's not like a file-sharing site where the file is available to everyone at all times regardless. If there are no seeders, the files cannot be transferred.

I can equate torrents to a possible scenario. Let's say I buy a CD and put it on my computer. However, after a while I get decide to get rid of my CD. I choose to give it to a friend because he likes the artist(s) as well. Whether I sell it to him or give it away for free does not matter, as it's my personal property and can do with it what I please. Now let's say my friend does the same thing I did, and the cycle keeps continuing for whatever amount of time. Whether it is sold to the next person or given away for free, the only money going to the record companies or artists is from the original purchase. Also, since the disc is now property of a new owner, they can do whatever they want with it. Then the cycle repeats on and on... That scenario basically describes how torrents work. It's absolutely ludicrous to go after torrent sites and try to make them illegal when the exact same result can be achieved using the method I just described above.

One minor counterpoint to your argument...in the process of re-selling and giving away of a CD you do not retain a copy yourself to be redistributed indeffinatly, nore do the people who recieve your copy(least not through any legal means). There is just the single bought product. In the case of torrents a copy is made, the orignal is kept and so two are produced, one paid for, the other not...this then occurs exponentially creating many many copies not covered by the orignal paid price. each detracting from profit.

guy sounds like a bellend

Alexandru

Torrents are an innovative technology to transfer large files around the Internet and to ban that would be as retarded as the catholics banning ideas like evolution.

But now people have been given a cookie. A way to get high quality content before it hits the retail shelves quickly and free. You can't go back from that now. Why should people accept with less?

If the movie and music industries are stupid enough not to go with the evolution of technology to find innovative ways to get revenue for their content then this is the result - they get nothing!

Same thing happened with the Internet providers in the US. Scraping up big fees for crappy Internet got to a culmination point when Google took matters into their own hand and started laying down optical cables and saying: "Guys! Stop fu*king around. Every goddamn hillbilly town can have 100mb connection with half the price".

The message to the music and movie industry is the same. Get your thumbs out of your asses and go to work. Old business models don't work anymore.

So right now torrent sites are one by one burned like a witch at the stake and all that does is slow down the inevitable.

I don't want the industries to sink and true artists to starve and I don't know the perfect solution how both consumers and artists could be happy. But then again, I'm not the one paid heaps of money to figure it out...

Did you ever use a VCR? You Broke all the Same laws -Worldwide...but because Sony etal Sold us the equipment and the Tapes, we thought it was OK and New and Too Big for anyone to bother with.

This is more of the same - just tech now screws the Owner quicker than before.Back in the 80's everyone and his family would Tape music too.Same Rules as now.

The More things change ...

You are retarded! Try and stop billions of people from upcharging, OVERcharging or actors, NBA players, MLB players demanding they be paid more than any person working a REAL job for playing a GAME! ROTFLMAO! Ditch diggers, plumbers, and real people can't make money by playing games, why should they FIGHT for MORE money and get mad when they ONLY make millions?!?!

you know what! big money can eat it and you say i steal or pirate. but the truth of the matter is that im a modern day robin hood and i take this data and share it to as many people as i can. my band sends our music out for free. all aspects of my life i try to find alternate ways to get people what they want and im not consenting to crime but there should be a giant line between murder and torrent. i mean a 6.7billion dollar fine that is bs and everone knows it but noone will fight it. all the people who dont like torrent have lots of money made from there movies or music or have never torrented before. some are just ignorant people who want to fight everything or anything that they will be known for bad or good some dont care. and thats as much bs as a bill against free info. i know not all info is made to be free but why why make money off something that was invented a long time ago (computers) all data is is 1s and 0s. that means on or off. every peice of electronic tech works in this way. sure there is an illigality behind torrents. however you dont see the underlying promblems with our society if there are aliens out there you think they charge themselves with purchasing 1s and 0s. i dont think so. we have to see a change in the way people think and i dont mean just the torrent thing but all aspects of life. the idea of free thought is an idea of free info no matter what the info is. if i didnt have free info i would not be disputing these things because i would be like all other * americans and yes america is * i live here and i know for sure that the US has gone to * and its not the goverment its not the schools its everone refusing to work together. everone just wants to be fat and happy and it doesnt work people that are fat and happy die from all sorts of * . im not a humanitarian i cant be when i beleive that world population should stay under 500 million. yes that means WE have been abusing our lives. you should not have a child because you friend has one its not a play thing. life is not a game the material world will falter and all the people who survive will (not can) but WILL HAVE to work together as a whole. now back to free info. if you were living in a cave and your neighbor had an invention that would make his life and your life and everones life better do you think he would charge you for the info on how it worked or would he charge you for the invention itself. im saying if you want a dvd buy the dvd if you want a movie then someone should allow you to see the movie free of charge. now im not saying go and steal electricity im saying there are alternate ways there is always alternates always dont say there isnt. electricity is not made its energy changing into what you see as electricity via a magnet and a coil. so dont steal dont cheat dont kill and dont mess with people and there freedoms like thought. be good to all and have a good day!