The Pirate Bay shut down in coordinated multi-country raid. Intellectual property holders worldwide rejoice. But, this is so interesting to watch in real time. I've been trying to get The Pirate Bay while trading is slow. It didn't come up - and then it did 5 minutes ago - and then went blank again. You know the battle is hot, right now. If it does come back (and it usually does!), one of the funniest things you'll ever read is in The Pirate Bay's "Legal" section (below) http://thepiratebay.org/legal
A friend of mine went to the States recently where he was told illegal downloading is heavily frowned upon over there and you could even go to jail for it. Is this true or just a personal observation?
Maybe like 2 or 3 people have ever gone to jail for illegal downloading. What happens more often is that when you get caught, you will get sued for a huge amount of money. Here is a kid that downloaded 30 songs and was ordered to pay $675,000. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/31/joel-tenenbaum-jury-award_n_249155.html
Nope. Mind you most GOOD movies make money, no matter how heavily downloaded. Most musicians make their biggest profits from TOURING and not from CD sales. So we can look at illegal downloads as free advertisement. The big losers are authors/bookwriters, at least by my estimate...But there is a HUGE profit in e-publishing, (PDF books are way overpriced) and you can not legally sell your copy, unlike with a real book.
Police in File-Sharing Raids Across Europe, WikiLeaks Host Targeted by enigmax TorrentFreak.com September 7, 2010 Police in up to 14 countries around Europe have coordinated to carry out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning. Locations in The Netherlands, Czech Republic and Hungary were targeted but Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the action. Seven locations including PRQ, which hosts WikiLeaks, have been raided. This morning news is coming in which indicates that very significant raids against illicit file-sharing are taking place in locations across Europe. Police in up to 14 European countries are said to be involved in an operation, said to be in the planning for two years, targeting the Warez Scene, the network of individuals and servers at the top of the so-called 'Piracy Pyramid'. Details are scarce at the moment, but it is believed that at the behest of Belgian authorities, raids have gone ahead in The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden. Not unusually, Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the activity with a total of seven locations raided including Stockholm, Malmo, Umea, Eskilstuna and Solna. Armed with IP addresses, this morning police officers turned up at the Solna premises of PRQ, the company that in part hosts WikiLeaks. There is no suggestion that the controversial whistle-blowing site is connected to the operation. "At 9:00 this morning, five policemen were here," explained PRQ's Mikael Viberg. "They were interested in who were using two IP addresses from 2009 and onwards. We have no records of our clients but we're handing over the e-mail addresses for those behind the IPs. However, it's rare that our clients have mail addresses that are traceable." This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Update: Swedish Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad told Swedish news outlet Expressen.se, "I can confirm that [this operation] is not about Wikileaks." Update 2: Thus far, four people are said to be being questioned on suspicion of breaching copyright law. Servers and computers have been seized in Sweden. Update 3: Police raided the Umea University.
RIAA is a racket/gangster organization. they should not exist. music industry can go head and fuck themselves. those fuckers are so greedy..not the musicians..industry..it's just beyond me..look at film industry and compare to music industry. i would love to buy original cd 2-5 years after initial release date at 2-5$. just like the movies dvd(which is btw wayyyy more complex work). but no...how about $16 for cd with like 8-10 songs on it? does some shitty 20-30 years old stuff really worth it? FUCK THAT, FUCK RIAA TOO. here how it's works...fucking highway robbery- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammie_Thomas
I had a room renter that downloaded some porn illegally... so I got an email but all they knew was my internet provider or something like that... they said I "could settle for a small amount" if I contacted them. I found that if I ignored them they never could find out who I was and I did so...