If The MPAA Takes Down A Dozen Torrent Sites, And No One Notices, Did They Really Exist?
from the if-a-tree-falls... dept
The Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has a history both of assuming it has much more authority than it really does and in announcing how it has shut down all sorts of "piracy" sites that no one seems to know exist. Lately, it's been teaming up with the MPAA on such things. The latest is the claim that BREIN and the MPAA have been able to shut down a dozen more "torrent sites." Except that no one seems to know what sites these were, and there's no indication that anyone actually used them. As TorrentFreak points out, when sites people actually use get taken down, people start emailing to tell them about it -- but no such emails came in with these shutdowns. Kind of makes you wonder just what BREIN and the MPAA are actually doing.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: netherlands, takedowns, torrents
Companies: brein, mpaa
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Where do I sign up for this?
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MPAA is smart - take down tons of little fish, and use that as proof that larger ones should be shut down too.
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Re:
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Me too
/sarc
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Similar to FBI
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Setting up Precident
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If only.
"take down tons of little fish, and use that as proof that larger ones should be shut down too"
OK, explain this to me, please. If they take down the small sites - i.e. those with little to no traffic - then the rate of "piracy" doesn't go down as a result. If shutting down numerous torrent sites has no effect, how does that prove that bigger sites should get the same treatment?
I'm quite concerned about this kind of binary thinking, actually. I mentioned this in a post a little while ago about CD sales actually rising in the UK during 2009. The rises "just happened" to coincide with the 1 year anniversary of the UK launches of Spotify and Amazon's MP3 store, as well as 7digital's finalisation of right to all 4 major labels. Consumers got more choice and an excellent and innovative service in Spotify, was it really a surprise that sales went up? However, a lot of critics just seemed to assume it was something directly related to overbearing attempts to crack down on "piracy".
It's extremely concerning to me that such consumer-friendly actions are ignored in favour of more draconian legal controls and invasions of civil rights and privacies.
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And this is proof that the larger ones should be shut down why? I'm a relatively intelligent person and I can't see the logic in that statement.
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Legal Basis?
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I cant resist
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You get enough of them, the takedowns become almost automatic.
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AAAAUUGHHHH
Two legal precedents.
The principle of legal precedence.
Now stop writing "a legal precedence"!
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Not that I fully disagree but...
aXXo is big on torrenting a lot of movies for years. Having his site taken down is kinda big...
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Re: I cant resist
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Its a perception thing. They can say this has been going on for a long time in other nations, we just need these rules in the nation of www.thisCountry.com to stop piracy. Its like the 301 report. Its a lead up to a strategic thrust.
The things it promotes are COICA and ACTA. Pure and simple its advertising aimed at the politicians and justification for what they are doing. It allows them to throw out statistics to say they are right, and ignore the fact that they are suffering from competition and poor business apptitude.
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Agreed. Read up threaded, or down flat.
Personally I think the move is brilliant. If you are trying to cause a backlash.
We have a society that is getting more and more connected. 2 billion of us. All talking, all finding what interests us, all finding what we want to rebell against. The governments of the world are going the other way. As much as they pay "open government" lip service, they are going down the route of less talking, less openness, more control from above led by the all mighty dollar.
I see this as a step towards copyright reform. People will get hurt along the way. But change is coming.
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I can see this backfiring on them though. If they have been so successful in shutting down hundreds of (albeit insignificant) sites without these laws, why are they necessary? They're already successfully shutting them down.
Of course their rebuttal is that the process takes too long, but hey, so does carrying out a death penalty...
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You would have a point if people stopped watching Hollywood movies, stopped buying (completely) label music, and stopped watching network TV. But deep down, that is exactly the content everyone wants. When there is no longer a way to pay for it, it will no longer be there.
RIP golden geese.
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Re: Not that I fully disagree but...
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Re: Not that I fully disagree but...
Note that the site was just asked to move to a different server, and is doing that. Not really a takedown...
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Just watch. The second global entertainment income drops a *TICK*, you'll see an upsurge in investment from consumers. People will only care as much as they have to. Trying to force it is both pointless and unnecessary. The system rights itself.
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Re: Re: Not that I fully disagree but...
I was going to point out DRG's predicament, but I suppose you do have a point. That said, you do have to give kudos to their web host for treating them like the paying customers the are/were by discussing the issue with their admins.
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Re: Re: Not that I fully disagree but...
More than anything, this shows that there are fewer and fewer hosts that are willing to take the risk. Leaseweb knows that hosts have gotten into trouble for this sort of thing before, and are declining to put themselves in that position. If enough hosts take the same stand, the pirate bay bunker may be the only place left for these guys. Easier to play whack a mole when the moles only have one hole to come out of.
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The industry is preparing the terrain for the grand assault latter.
It doesn't matter if those sites have traffic or not, what does matter is the case law that they are building in stealth mode to go after the big names, laws abused today didn't start big they morphed into what they are today, copyright didn't last half a century it became that after a while.
Those little takedowns enforce the notion that it is legitimate to do so. Case in point look at the seizure of the domain names, it was not done to big names that could fight back it was done to the little guys who had no way of defending themselves and stabilished a disputed for now legitimacy to the whole process.
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You start doing things little by little to understand what can be done and when you are prepared you go after the big prize.
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Re: Re: Re: Not that I fully disagree but...
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Indeed. But the Golden geese in this case is not culture. It's manufactured crap.
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Re: Re: Re: Not that I fully disagree but...
Sounds like this.
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