EU =/= global; China + Japan + US + Russia + EU is global. EU is just a bunch of rogue states without an effective central government.

Boo!! Boo!!
Nowadays you just click something and unintentionally breach the copyright of something/someone! (or at least that's what I'm gonna say, that link was sent me by e-mail. I did think it was a spam, but was curious, and it installed itself)..

How are they going to be able to tell copyrighted traffic from non-copywrighted traffic? I get lots of windows disks off torrent sites so I can reinstall it for people. I don't have access to all the OEM discs, and the users already have keys. There's nothing illegal there - but I'll bet they'll mark it that way. Also, if I've already bought an album or movie and I lost it, shouldn't I be allowed to get it back?

The obvious thing about this is...you can't tell.

Fuc* the EU.

A paper tiger says miauw.....
Will never see the light of day.
ISP's are just (inter)network providers.... can't be held responsible for traffic.
Just like you can't hold the State responsible for criminals using highways.
It is just infrastructure.
I guess this spanish bloke is on the MPAA's payroll.

Gotta say that I think this is a stupid move. 1. There is not way to determine illegal vs legal downloads without some serious intrusion into peoples personal lives. 2. If you shut down 1 site, 2 more will replace it. Are they that naive that pirate bay is the ONLY torrent site with illegal torrent trackers.

Is it me or is Pirate's Bay lately a shadow of its former self? I did a search yesterday and it showed up about 10% of the results that it would typically return.

Based on the precedent the Pirate Bay has set, I'll give them 72 hours before they circumvent the ban some way or another.

Ah I wouldn't worry guys, they might ban pirate bay but another torrent site will pop up and theres already many more anyway. As for disconnecting pirates that will never be enforced or if it is it will only be enforced in extreme circumstances. Everybody under the age of 30 with an internet connection downloads stuff illegally nowadays and as time goes on so will more and more internet users so there is no way the Internet Providers will disconnect them all as they would lose too much money. I also doubt that many goverments will be in favor of bringing in legislation to that effect as it would lose them votes. Its about time that the music industry got used to the fact that cd's are going to die in the next 10 years and that the new money in the music buisness is going to be live gigs, band endorsements etc. I hope that pirating won't kill any good bands but instead bring back the focus onto live music and so only eliminate those without talent(and yes I realise it may hurt some fringe alternative stuff which can't be played live but small loss tbh). If it cuts out some of the commercialism that can't be a bad thing. What I see happening in the future is bands using downloads to advertise for their tours rather than tours advertising for albums. I don't know theres probably a flaw in my logic here somewhere and please tell me if there is

I am pretty much going to go with the idea that information should flow freely. I buy alot of games. I put all my boxes and CDs in a storage room after I install them. I download NoCD cracks for the games that require a CD present. I also download complete CD's and DVD's of games I own that are burned in such a way as to not allow me to simply make an ISO of them without buying software with the hacks in them. I download copies of Windows XP CD's that have all the patches already installed on them and I also make my own Windows CD's or DVD's that have been trimmed down in some ways and bulked up in others so I can reinstall Windows onto all of my computers as needed. I own all the software, I paid for it, so is it really proper for someone else to arbitrarily decide that it is pirating without all of the facts?

My wife buys alot of music. CD's, iTunes and such. I cannot for the life of me see where any lawfully minded judge could possibly come up with the idea that because she paid for an iTunes track that she should also pay for the exact same music on a CD if she wants to play it in the car CD player instead of simply downloading it off a P2P site and buring it to a CD. Once again, paid for in full.

When I get around to making my HTPC internet storage box later this year. I am not going to pay money to some person in order to take my video collection from VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray and turn it into computer files. These items have been paid for. I have the hardcopy version and if I want it on my HTPC so I can play it on my HDTV, I should be allowed to do so. If someone else has already done the hard part of getting the movie off the hard media for me, I cannot see any reason for me to pay for software to allow me to do so and spend the countless hours to accomplish the task, not when I can simply go to a P2P download site and start downloading dozens of these movies and go to sleep and in a few days watch the movies.

P2P is not criminal. Simply having copyrighted material available for download should not be illegal. Downloading copyrighted material you have not paid for is and should be illegal. It is paramount to the government going to the car companies and fining them for people breaking traffic laws. The car companies supplied a device capable of allowing people to break laws, and there are too many people using cars and breaking the law for it to be economical for the the government to stop and fine each person, so they just go to the supplier of the vehicles. It is not the way things should work.

So far the game industry still has me, where I can live without buying music by simply listening to radio, playing my old tunes, or doing something else altogether. It is hard to replace gaming, as there is no free media out there being streamed through the air waves that is similar. I have been able to cut certain specific companies from my game buy list such as Sony. Companies who take the DRM entirely too seriously and cross the lines all too often and by large margins. While I personally think that the criminals are criminals, that much of the pirating and file sharing is instigated by DRM. If I own a game, can make copies of the game so I do not risk losing the game due to a scratch or broken CD/DVD, why would I put it out on the internet knowing that others who paid for the game can do what I have done? On the other hand, if I had to spend many hours cracking the code on how to extract that CD and know that many of my friends and peers do not have this skill, then I might put the CD out there for them to get. I may even do it just because I am angry at the software company for taking my Digital Rights and trying to micro manage them to my loss. Making the DRM in and of it self helps to cause much of the software available on the internet. If people who pay for games/music/movies know that they and others can freely make copies of their game CD's, Music CD's, Video DVD's without spending hours and maybe money on special software to accomplish it, why would they put that out on the internet when they know it takes 5 minutes to extract 700MB from a CD, about 18 minutes from a DVD and 45 minutes for a Blu-Ray disc and it takes hours, days and weeks to download it from the internet?

The final problem with all this is that it takes months to years for the companies to react to DRM being defeated, the government takes years to implement laws to fight new types of copyright infringment, and it takes a couple hackers between 5 minutes and 2 weeks to defeat each and every single move that the companies make and the government makes. The comapnies will never win the battle. They should concede defeat and learn how to make money with-out disenfranchising its customer base with new and more daunting DRM schemes.

I concur completely with Stoner. If media companies would make it easy to create legitimate back-up copies of their media, there would be less incentive for many instances of so-called "piracy". That is not to say, however, that making cracked media available to others who already own it does not itself invite pirates to help themselves to it. But then again, if there were no need to crack it open for convenience of use, there'd be no need to offer a cracked version in the first place.
And while it likely isn't a perfect solution, I like Steam's distribution model, which allows users to run software without CD verification or intrusive DRM. iTunes also works more or less by this model now as well. I think it is entirely possible that such digital distribution is the way of the future, as it accounts for user ownership by tying it to a flexible account instead of tying it to physical media or hardware.

Besides, you paid good money to buy the rights to personal use of the media. What incentive do you have to distribute it for free to others who don't feel like paying an equal price? (I can, however, sympathize with people who download torrents of media that is no longer commercially available or will never be commercially available in their market short of jumping through hoops to pay $40 for a $15 CD imported from Japan to the U.S. If there is no reasonable means to acquire it commercially, and there is no real reason for it to not be available other than a lack of commercial viability, then there are few other routes to take.)

Bittorrent was born out of necessity like any other technologies around the world. To keep such technology alive, you need fuel, in this case Pirate Bay or other torrent sites. Banning them is basically saying banning the use and development of new innovative technologies. We need a free environment to access and use torrents without these media monopolists tighten the noose on us, milking our hard earned and constantly devaluaed money. People, we need to sue their money grabbing behinds, fight back and win our internet freedom back!

"advice" or not, due process is important, with clear and transparent policies underneath. Many ISPs are already more than just service providers by the way they operate, taking this step is no small matter. Hope this stays within their backyard and not spill over to other parts of the globe. I'd like to see how much things gets scr3w3d

So Australia si like what?... an alien territory?

And on topic... as long as there is no legal service that can even marginally provide the convenience of having almost any movie ever made in a couple of minutes (assuming the movie is popular and so it has many seeders), I'm gonna stick with the good old galleon.

By the way, why aren't they making a legal tracker... you know with a paid subscription?... I mean there are already this sort of trackers (paid for) out there, just not any legal ones.

If it is on the net and I can get it without hacking then it is free. End of story!

Lol, love to see the ridiculous excuses pirates make. Come on folks, don't pretend to have a conscience, why not just come out and say you steal because it benefits you and costs nothing? Pirates aren't moral characters, they take what they want, why continue with the lame justifications, no one is fooled.

The truth is that pirating off of large sites and networks like Piratebay and P2P networks will disappear in the future. Why? Because we're moving to a new type of production. We're all becoming rich enough to own the material things we want, like clothes, couches, Tv's, and electronics. The cost of producing these items continue to drop and how many TVs does a person need? So the future economies will be based on creating non-tangible goods like concepts and content like movies, music, and games. We'll always need entertainment even if we have the technology to "replicate" any material item like that of Star Trek.

Content is valuable, that's why you spend so much time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV, which depends on writers and actors to produce. It's also why you'll spend so much effort to find and steal that content and why you can't live without broadband. After all, how else can you steal all those movies, music and games without DSL or cable modem? But how are people going to make a living if all their work is stolen? Something has to give, and it will be pirating. Don't be surprised when it happens, people have to live and if it means shutting down pirates, then society will agree to do so and do whatever it takes to stop massive stealing. That means making ISPs liable, that means tracing streams to the real world addresses and busting thieves and putting them in jail, that will become necessary someday, and it will happen within our lifetimes.

Already the industry is moving towards making legally purchased content available to be used on other formats. Apple now sells non-DRM music, but that's not the issue because it's not the main reason you folks steal. You pirate because you get something that is very valuable to you for nothing. Even if there wasn't any DRM and you could transfer stuff to any device or format, you'd still steal, although you'd come up with another excuse. In the end, it's all about greed and taking what you can. No, of course the people who create the music don't deserve the money, but you deserve the music right? You who did nothing, yet somehow you're entitled to the music and the creators are entitled to nothing. Give me a break.

You do realize we are in a recession right? Not everyone in this world is becoming rich enough to buy own the material things we want.

Exactly! I've earned $20 bucks, I lost it, shouldn't I be allowd to just photocopy a new one?

Ok, guys, Piracy online/offline is always there, back then when internet was very slow, piracy was already there and in future it still will. I support warez sites(but with no attach virus)lol... specially when they post a lot of tutorials and ebooks on how to's coz those ones are very helpful.

about this comment

"No, of course the people who create the music don't deserve the money, but you deserve the music right? You who did nothing, yet somehow you're entitled to the music and the creators are entitled to nothing. Give me a break."

U are wrong, the creators deserved enough money "if" they do live gigs and more passionate to fans and thr music so fans might be able to donate money to thm thr fave artist but when u're talking about CD/DVDs to sell, well thAT depends~ if the artist is d one struggling to sell and u can see the hardwork they done then ppl might buy it otherwise it's the opposite unless ur a freakin' fan and like really wanting it.

but if they were brought online like iTunes or any music stores then the "artists isn't really doing anything thus spoiling himself waiting for money to come in to his paypal account and spend it(Im not saying that its a bad thing) but then again when the consumers or buyers download this music they'll also be spoiled on sharing it to thr friends since it can just be copied and pasted w/c brings us "buyers" to think, I bought and download his music and "share" it with my friends.

Innovative isn't it~!
\\\\\\\\\

azxcvbnm321 > To think that everyone is becoming rich enough to buy all material things they desire is being out of reality. To think suddently everyone will unite to ban "mass stealing" is also illogical, in fact I would think the contrary, downloading has become so popular and nearly everyone does it that the contrary is happening, downloading is becoming accepted and legal in many countries.

I think that in the future the ISP should charge more for the connection and simply give that extra money to a global artist fund. Every artist would then get a percentage of that fund depending on the number of songs/movies they got downloaded.

Me for sure I would not mind paying 20$ or 25$ more each month and get freedom on my downloads. They could even go for 30$ or 35$ if they add me a download and install support line.

Astoner taps onto something that I have been thinking of for sometime. Pirates will always appear no matter how hard you try to stop it. So instead of trying to stop it, embrace it. Use the pirates to distribute perfect digital copies of said library. Then when you sell the service of VoD to someone you can actually tie back into these torrents and not have to waste their own bandwidth. They can use the pirates bandwidth. A little give and take, they give away their material to the people that would take it anyways, but in return they suck off their bandwidth for distribution to the honest people that would rather pay. Then they can finally stop carrying about it as they will be the only place that any pirate would go to get their goods as it would be the best possibly copy.

Remember, companies like to use the torrent distribution system to cut down on bandwidth needs. There are plenty of legal uses for file sharing. I wouldn't worry about this round, what they are going to do is inevitable, but at this point they are going to need much better technology to do it.

Rapperyz, do you know how long it takes to make an album and come up with 12 songs? What gives you the right to determine what the artist makes, how did you get the wisdom to judge that he is spoiled just because he wants to sell his work and make a living? The music is not yours, you have no right to "share" or "give" what doesn't belong to you. If you want to share, then write a good song and you can share all you want. But I'm betting that no one will want your song, you couldn't even give it away because writing a good song is hard and the chances are that you don't have the talent or the work ethic to make one.

Drake, the Labels and Studios are moving down the path where you can subscribe to their music. But if I don't listen to music, then why should I be charged just because some damned pirates destroyed the industry? How about tracing that ISP number back to his home and charging him 3x the cost of every song he's downloaded as a punitive fine. If that means he has to sell his house, then too bad, he will have to declare bankruptcy to save his house or else have his wages automatically deducted every month until he pays off what he owes. That seems like a much better method.

As for Blessedman, murders and thieves have existed since the dawn of humanity. Does that mean we should accept murder and stealing? Just because there always will be criminals, should we just embrace them? Tell that to the wacko guy who wants to rape your family members, yeah, just embrace it.

Recession or not, we're very rich compared to the rest of the world and compared to humans who lived in the past. We never worry about having enough food to eat, we worry about eating too much food, we have clothes to keep us warm, now we buy clothes for a fashion statement, and we have free time to watch TV or listen to music. In America, the majority of the "official" poor own a car and have cable TV, they would be considered upper middle class if compared against the average human living today.

Our economy is becoming more and more focused on content and ideas. If I make a shirt, who'd want to buy it since we all have enough shirts to clothe us? I need to make a cool design or I need to provide entertainment by way of music or movie. If you take away the ability to make money with content, then you're destroying the ability of that person to live.

azxcvbnm321 your comments are dumb and I can only imagine the sort of loser you are in real life. You think someone losing their house is punishment equal to the crime of downloading mp3s. get a life, freak. There are those who commit manslaughter and worse who get less time in jail than copyright infringers, and who also pay far less when faced with civil judgments. You are the type of fool who probably thinks it's a great idea to classify copyright infringement right up there with terrorism. In other words, you are a stupid a-s-s-h-o-l-e crying for the poor unfortunate multimillionaire recording artists and software devs driving a different color benz every day of the week or deciding which private jet to hop on next. Maybe we don't want our money going to support their heroin and cocaine habits, or don't want to be paying for their hookers so we dl their shit for free and say f-u-c-k y-a-l-l. How about that ya lil b-i-t-c-h?

lol dumb-a-s-s

"That means making ISPs liable, that means tracing streams to the real world addresses and busting thieves and putting them in jail, that will become necessary someday, and it will happen within our lifetimes."

What you talk about is a police state where the government is not of the people, by the people and for the people. It would fit in well with Communist China, Communist Russia, dictatorships around the world and is likely going on in places like Venezuale right now.

This is where the problem with your argument begins. You force the ISPs into being government employees by making them spy on their customers. The ISPs become police. That makes them government agents and as government agents they do not have the right to spy on their citizens. We have a bill of rights in the USA, and it certainly protects me and everyone else in this country from this sort of thing. Here is where the problem comes in. In order to decide to peek into someones stream, they would have to go to a judge and convince him that it is very likely that you are breaking the law. What grounds would they use to decide this? As government agents they cannot use inhouse tracking, as that is unreasonable search and seisure, or just simply information that a free society could not allow the government to have carte blanche access to. The only thing they would have available to them in order to determine if you are likely breaking copyright laws is the amount of bandwidth that you are using, and even that is a bit of a stretch as to whether they could use that information to get a warrant to dig deeper.

Basically the way the RIAA does things is about as close as you can get to legal, but I think that they bend alot of laws further than the laws were intended to be used. They hire investigators that track a specific download to an IP address, then using that information get the physical address of the person from the ISP, typically through a court order, which to me is a bit of the bending of the law, but the judge allows it, and then they have the police invade the persons private home and take their computer for investigation. If the results of the investigation show the person was "sharing" copyright material then RIAA takes that person to civil court. While it seems to have worked as far as they got some people to pay fines, I think many laws and rules have been twisted out of recognition in order for them to do so. This is not a criminal trial by the way. This is why I think alot of laws get twisted here, if it resulted in a criminal trial I would agree that many of these things were within the law. The judge forcing an ISP to reveal personal information on its users seems out of bounds. The police taking personal property to be used in a non criminal trial is another instance where the law is distorted beyond any real understanding of the law. Now it does not matter if the person they took to trial actually paid for the music, what they determine for liability is that it was avilable for download, once again, they do not check to see if the people who downloaded the music have rights to that media. At no point in time in these trials is the rights of the owner of the media, the end user purchaser being protected. My right to have a copy, my right to modify the end product for use on a different device. It is always about some theoretical lost revenue. I cannot think that someone who is willing to steal the music or game or movie is going to simply decide to pay for it just because they were not able to steal it.