Wow I didn't know the price of having bad taste was so steep.

I think for the fine she has to pay and the artists downloaded, she could have rented Electrial for a month and paid to have the artists themselves come and record the songs for her and still would have plenty of money left over.

Pure L wrote:Just out of curiosity, why doesn't the record industry go after sites like bittorrent or soulseek? Seems like they've gone after the people on Kazaa before.

Or maybe I should ask, how long will it be until they go after these sites?

Or is the technology different in these instances?

This is why I prefer soulseek. That network server is so poorly designed, it barely works as it is - good luck to the RIAA getting any useful data from it. Add to that the fact that it absolutely sucks for getting mainstream music (which seems to be 100% of these lawsuits). Plus the more experienced users only share with downloaders who have a good selection of music in their shares (RIAA spies would stick out like a sore thumb, like a narc at a frat party).

I think the most dangerous - after Kazaa and its clones - are the torrent sites. The whole concept is based on having trackers that keep detailed records on everything you upload. All it would take is one well-written subpoena and you're toast.

More information on this: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/riaa_trial/index.html

Sid Hartha wrote:(RIAA spies would stick out like a sore thumb, like a narc at a frat party)

I think they'd blend in there. Maybe a "narc at [something more countercultural]" would be better.

A narc on these very forums.

Sid Hartha wrote:This is why I prefer soulseek. That network server is so poorly designed, it barely works as it is - good luck to the RIAA getting any useful data from it. Add to that the fact that it absolutely sucks for getting mainstream music (which seems to be 100% of these lawsuits). Plus the more experienced users only share with downloaders who have a good selection of music in their shares (RIAA spies would stick out like a sore thumb, like a narc at a frat party).

I think the most dangerous - after Kazaa and its clones - are the torrent sites. The whole concept is based on having trackers that keep detailed records on everything you upload. All it would take is one well-written subpoena and you're toast.

Um... Soulseek being poorly designed actually presents much more of a security risk than if it worked well. Soulseek is just crap.

& as far as BT goes, as long as you're careful about which trackers you use, subpoenas won't be a problem.

Colonel Panic wrote:& as far as BT goes, as long as you're careful about which trackers you use, subpoenas won't be a problem.

Have any idea of the relative safety of Pirate Bay and Demonoid?

slincire wrote:

Sid Hartha wrote:(RIAA spies would stick out like a sore thumb, like a narc at a frat party)

I think they'd blend in there. Maybe a "narc at [something more countercultural]" would be better.

I don't care who y'are, the two 35-year-old dudes with the Rayon shirts tucked into their jeans and the multi-pack of Keystone usually stick out at the frat party.

I mean, so I've heard.

slincire wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:& as far as BT goes, as long as you're careful about which trackers you use, subpoenas won't be a problem.

Have any idea of the relative safety of Pirate Bay and Demonoid?

Pirate Bay is located in Sweden, which has fairly strict laws prohibiting copyright infringement. However, Sweden does not consider Bittorrent to be illegal because it does not actually host any copyrighted files, but only "torrent" files and other metadata .

Demonoid is based in the Netherlands, a similar legal environment to Sweden with regard to the Bittorrent network and the operation of trackers. I think the situation in NL is kind of tumultuous, however. An online "friend" of mine from Holland, who is loosely associated with a BT tracker there, told me about 2 years ago that there's a very large and vocal anti-piracy lobby there and he's expecting the laws to change "any day now". Again, that was 2 years ago and nothing seems to have changed so far.

So both trackers may be safe from prosecution in their home countries for the time being, but does this mean their users are safe as well? Not necessarily. When you download, upload or seed a torrent, your IP information has to be stored and sent out to other peers so that a connection can be made for the torrent pieces to be transferred. If your BT client has a decent user interface, you can probably look at the IP addresses of all the peers you're connected to and the speed at which they're downloading or uploading. If you can see this information, then you don't have to be a genius to surmise that it's possible for some agent of the MPAA or RIAA to see them also, as long as he can connect to the same tracker.

From the standpoint of avoiding prosecution, you want to avoid trackers that are open to any and all connections (like Pirate Pay, for instance). Instead, you should do most of your business through closed trackers (like Demonoid) which require invitations from within the community before joining, and which authenticate users before initiating Bittorrent connections. Probably the safest trackers are the smaller ones who closely monitor all activity on their network and actively firewall any IPs known to be associated with specific businesses or government agencies. If you use Bittorrent and are a regular on any particular trackers, get to know the community. Frequent their discussion forums. PM the admins, get to know them and talk shop with them.

Even so, you can still never be 100% sure that no RIAA/MPAA agents are using fraudulent accounts to monitor the network for traffic data, user IP addys, etc.

So I;d say Demonoid is much safer tham Pirate Bay, but even safer yet would be your smaller, more specialized closed-admission trackers with a limited number of users and a tight community.

Of course if you want to be really safe about it, you could go through a proxy server or a proxy network (like Tor), but this will prolly drastically reduce your transfer speeds.