I mean, you validate our points as you go.




This line of reasoning totally exonerates sites like Pirate Bay Joel, and they have done massive damages, far more than sites like Megaupload, where "clicking on the link" is in itself illegal (so to speak)

Those .torrent files Pirate Bat distribute are not "links to illegal content". You don't click on them and start downloading a file from somewhere else. The files you get on Pirate Bay aren't illegal. You can have as many on your computer as you wish (and open them as often as you wish) without committing anything illegal if you don't do more, no different than owning a book telling you how to make a bomb.

I'm not a user, so don't expect a full technical explanation, but essentially it's text information you get out of Pirate Bay (or put there, if you offer something) that you copy and paste at the right place in your peer-to-peer client software (which aren't illegal to use as such, to distribute, to create.. it depends what files you're exchanging with others using those softwares). This kind of "flags" the file you'd wish to get, and then connects your computer to the personal computers of all the other users who also have this .torrent files flagged/enabled, either because they have this content file you seek to obtain or part of it, or because they too wish to download it from another user. The software then download bits of the file from tons of different personal computers, and as soon as you have some data on yours, other users will download those bits of the file you already have from your computer as well. There's no money exchanged, no communication between users, and the file is not hosted anywhere but on personal computers. And the very same problem of "us.


That's one way peer-to-peer works. Other systems work differently and don't even require a site like Pirate Bay. Rather then getting the information of the files as a .torrent, softwares like e-mule have a search engine - the directory (no the files) of files available on users' computers are hosted on servers (that belong to God knows who), many of which are in countries where US justice can't do anything (eg: Russia) and they already work using IP only, not DNS, so SOPA/PIPA wouldn't be able to do anything to stop them. When the search engine finds the file you wish, you flag it (or enable it or something, I've seen it used just a few times), and then it connects you with all the users currently online who have that files or are in the process of downloading it.

Shutting down Pirate Bay and all the sites like this just would mean people will exchange .torrents elsewhere, or turn to the other, far more elusive form of peer-to-peer if it becomes too difficult to find .torrents.

The piracy situation is just far, far worse already than you think Joel. You were saying that the laws must go after the sources, not the users. For the most part that's already obsolete thinking, alas. That let authorities go after sites like MU, sites that stream illegal content with or without making the users pay. Basically, it could remove, or more specifically as these are mostly in countries that don't recognize copyrights, it could make slightly more difficult to reach the more visible aspect of piracy, but that's no longer the bigger source, not by a long shot.


The real "sources" of most piracy are now the users themselves. People digitize their CDs, rip their DVD, digitize HD TV content, their e-books and so on. All of this is exchanged peer-to-peer. By far, that's the biggest source of piracy nowadays, and nearly impossible to stop, as this form of piracy is already ahead of laws like SOPA/PIPA. As most people who've followed the development of piracy would tell you, peer-to-peer was a new concept that came as the direct consequence of shutting down sites like Napster. The "anarchist" developpers, those little geniuses (who I would guess don't indulge in criminal activity, stay anonymous and quite out of reach to the authorities - and even if caught, have committed no crime) who constantly create new means by which the internet can escape control, out of ideology, rather than seeking any financial gain for themselves, saw that the days where sites could hosts tons of files like this were over. They came up with this new concept, where people wouldn't upload files to a site (because those sites would all enjoy Napster's fate), they would simply have them on their own personal computers and connect anonymously using a client software with people who want to download that/those files. You may have five album and two movies, your neighbour has ten more... Put that on the scale of millions and millions of peer-to-peer users, and you get something all too close to the full catalogue or every albums and movies available, tons of books, photos and so on, way, way more music than you could find in the Napster days, apparently. Basically, we could say that shutting down Napster and co. created this new, far worse monster (which was the goal of creating monster... to seriously reduce piracy, the copyright owners can't just go after the more visible "pirate sites", the new technology forces them to go after the millions of users, or enough of them to make a difference, which basically is impossible). Web experts are already foreseeing what the "next gen" might look like, and it's quite ugly (notably, "rogue" alternatives to the DNS), and laws like SOPA/PIPA might very result in their arrival sooner than expected, and really, it's quite a bit frigthening - when you hear that these alternatives to the DNS system are quite uncharted territory, but in theory would be aimed at reducing a great deal the little control authorities now have over the internet, and jeopardize their ability to deal with cyber criminality, as this may be introduced by developpers wishing "freedom for all", but that won't stop criminals other and far more dangerous than content pirates to seek these "havens" too.

Pirate Bay isn't a pirate site, if by pirate site you mean a site with either files hosted, or links to files hosted elsewhere. It's neithr.

It's not a source of pirated content at all. It's like a directory, if you wish, no more. In the early days of peer-to-peer, the guy who create it was just clever enough to create that site where .torrent files could be exchanged. For all sort of reasons it became the most popular of such sites. It's strictly because millions of people visit the site for .torrent files that he could make such profits from selling ads. It could be quite likely in fact he introduced ads there to pay for server maintenance after being "victim" of his site's popularity, and eventually the popularity of the site turned that into profit.

Megaupload and its clones (similar companies I mean, they abound) are something else. They emerged around the same time as several other services providing servers with fast connections where people could upload their files for others to download. Quite a few of these companies are totally legitimate businesses (a lot of people, especially pros who don't have access to a ftp server of their own, need to exchange big files all the time), not linked to pirating activities. The devil is in the details, as those services are in the end very similar (and officially, providing the same services) as Megaupload and co. Those "good guys" services truly meant for people to exchange their files too big for email with other people have secured connections, and the files you upload are meant for specific people, who receive a securized link to your files via email from the service provider. When downloaded by those people, an email warns you they did, and the file gets automatically deleted. Megaupload and its myriad of clones did things differently.

When you upload, they provide an unsecured link to the file you upload, a link you can go post anywhere you like, for anyone to come downloading. They leave to their users the care of encrypting or password protecting their files (which pirates don't do, of course. Other criminals do, however. A terrorist, or a pedophile, could perfectly upload encrypted files there and give the link only to the people he wishes to access the file). Nobody is quite sure even today if Megaupload had any notion of being a legitimate service or not early on. Because there was no limit, no conditions to downloading and because they let people download up to a certain limit for free each day, they rapidly attracted people wanting to make illegal content available to others, and people who wanted to download the illegal content at high speed. It could be that Megaupload just did nothing to stop that once it put them way ahead of their competition in revenues (that they got greedy, basically), until they had not much customers left but people involved in piracy. They sure didn't make many efforts over the years (unlike the "good companies" offering similar services like Webcargo, that constantly bettered their security and such) to hinder pirating in any way, but they did pull down files when copyright owners complained (only of course for pirates among their users to re upload them soon after). The tricky part about Megaupload and such sites is that they don't provide any directory of the files on their servers to anyone. It's up to uploaders to go find sites where to post the links to their files, so basically they were like this storage facility where people commit crimes but where they, the landlords, are not directly involved in any way except their building is mostly rented by criminals. This among other things is what makes some legal experts/commentators say when the owners were arrested that they're quite eager to see under what charges and with what evidence exactly the MU owners we'll be tried in the US, and that it's likely to be a very technical and long trial. But though still massively popular with many (it's faster than peer-to-peer I understand), Megaupload is quite an old-fashioned concept compared to the more popular peer-to-peer way. As for streaming/downloading sites, they abound, but they're a bit like dinosaurs, outdated technologically, and very visible targets. Sooner or later, the content providers will eliminate those sites anyway.

One problem with SOPA/PIPA blocking sites like Pirate Bay is that in the short term, it would lead people to turn to other means to post links and torrents and such. Of course the plethora of little geniuses will come up with something sooner than later (and remember, SOPA/PIPA merely blocked DNS, this won't hinder pirating much as it becomes a matter of posting somewhere the IP address of those sites, and they can then be reached again), but in the meantime this is very likely to also cause an invasion of legitimate services by people wishing to post links and such. The phenomenon already exists on services such as Google's blogs. It's free, you just need a gmail address to start one, and people who start a blog to post links and other illegal stuff don't do this from their own computer/IP, so even if Google pulls down the blog and deny service, they register another address and start again. If you protect Google and co. from the reach of SOPA/PIPA, it would only encourage pirates to find new ways to use their services. If you don't, you put innovative, extremely law abiding and economically important companies like Google at risk, or force them to end some valuable and extremely lucrative services, just because the content providers think there's too much illegal content exchanged through them, and though Google pulls down those blogs eventually, it's impossible for them to catch them all, and to catch them fast enough, and as long as one user who does peer-to-peer get any file, the ball rolls and eventually tons and tons of people also get the file.

No one (experts, I mean) has yet suggested any credible, viable way to put an end to "peer-to-peer" piracy. The articles discussing the issue always end up falling back on education, on offering new services that might like i-tune has done attract back would-be pirates to the legitimate market, or the industry facing the truth of the devaluation of its products and so on.

It's only the more visible, the more outdated face of piracy (and that which also happens to make money out of it) that the current and the recently proposed law targeted, not the far more damaging peer-to-peer phenomenon.