A huge torrent site closes down. If you are a pirater, I suggest you grab whilst you can, because they will not be the last.

http://www.btjunkie.com/goodbye.html

Through their own doing, too. There's a rumor floating around the web that medafire has been called for a hearing as well.

Wow, that was the last big torrent site I used. I got mainly movies and games from there, but ever since I left my router open someone downloaded that movie Rango and I got a slap on the wrist from my internet provider. Not good.

Mediafire being ringed is even worse.

Source?

That seems to be strictly a rumor. A Google search didn't turn anything up. Regardless, it wouldn't surprise me if these other companies are sweating just a wee bit.

I tried to download some files from mediafire the other day, and it seems that a lot of files have been pulled.

This makes me nervous. TBP will probably be safe though, right?

Sad, yeah. I was in class this morning doing my usual business (not listening and downloading stuff on the univ's wifi) and I click the btjunkie link, I was pissed. Too bad that's its David versus Goliath.

I'm pretty sure they'll be alright. They've been through so much legal bullshit and they're still going strong.

I wouldn't say they're as strong as they used to be. The site can be rather slow at times and the advertising has gotten way more intense. If mediafire goes down though, I am near positive something similar will go up in a matter of days.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. It seems that the US government is going to be cracking down on piracy sites, SOPA or no SOPA...

I've noticed a lot of stuff being pulled as well, off mediafire. But I think that the crackdowns just cannot last. They'll go strong now while it is a debate, but when the dust settles new sites will appear.

Someone will replace them, its a never ending war...

First cheggit now this, no!

Well, I hope this is all just a temp shuttering after the whole SOPA drama and all. As it's been in the past, big trackers will fade but new ones emerge so hopefully that's the same case here eventually. All the DDL alternatives I'm seeing so far are pretty crappy. Fileserve seems to be back to normal though.

It's really not.

It may look that way, but I assume everyone on this board is what I would call 'an early adopter'. We all having been riding the piracy bandwagon from diapers, I would guess. I was raised on Limewire, Megaupload, bittorrent trackers, and slsk. I have been downloading since I could rock out to Smash Mouth. I don't think I would have discovered Ulcerate last week if it wasn't for downloading. But Ulcerate isn't going to be paid for my download. When it really comes down to it, we are stealing, and the laws have not caught up to the technology.... Yet. The days of the wild wild WWW are numbered, and the rest of us information highwayman (fuck i love that pun) are going to have to come to terms with the fact that 'free downloading' will probably come to an end, thats the just the straight truth of it.

I have read a few interviews with musicians since this internet censorship issue has bubbled to the surface, and most of them end up in some form or another saying that "yeah I'm a downloader, but I lose money when people download my album". The upside to downloading is that niche artists are getting more attention online then they ever would with a conventional record store, or CD swaps. This freedom is good, and the next business model will probably need to capture that free spirit to be the next 'legal torrenting' platform.

So how are artists going to get paid, but still maintain information liberty?I think that the industry will move to take cues from TV. I would wager that we are going to start to see businesses that force us to watch a 30 second ad before downloading an album, or something like that. The other possibility again is pulled from the TV industry, and your music service will regularly be interrupted with ad's in between albums, and is streamed to your machine.



TL:DR War is ending, Artists need to get paid, new technology has to emerge to maintain ease of access, but enforce compensation.

Strictly speaking, no we're not. Even if it's illegal (and that depends on the applicable laws, not all things are illegal everywhere), not giving is not the same as taking.



Citation needed. You speak the truth when you say the business model must change, though. But claiming that "free downloading" will end is quite a stretch. If anything, any future business model will have to approach "free downloading" (via advertisements, for example, as per your suggestion) if it's to have any worldwide success. What most people demand is cheap, easy and convenient access to content, that's why downloading is so widespread and things such as Netflix are a viable business model where they exist. Make it difficult or too expensive, and customers will go elsewhere, some even at the cost of breaking the law.

Ok, so... why not go back to P2P?!?
NOBODY is talking about P2P while they're starting to close all the websites.




That's true.

The laws are catching up, and when I say that the days of piracy are numbered, it's mainly just the speculation of a guy who has been downloading for a long time, and has a solid grasp of how the web works. I think it is fair to say that laws or regulations, be they international or national, will eventually stop piracy as we know it. IP theft laws in the US are extreme, while anyone uses The Pirate Bay knows that Sweden has more lax ones. This imbalance allows the last few trackers/download sites around the world to operate outside the reach of modern IP law. I don't think this line of logic needs to be 'cited'.

Also, Netflix is hemorrhaging subscribers. I think part of it has to do with the fact that torrent sites are simply a better system for watching shit at home. Higher quality, faster speeds, and more selection are all benefits of the tracker system. Personally, i tried Netflix out for a week, and was unimpressed.




Torrents are p2p? BTHunkie was a torrent tracker (the best damned one out there), and would allow users to download torrent files or magnet links, so they could connect to the other guys in the p2p network sharing the file you want.

Yes, Torrents are used for BitTorrent (wich is P2P) but people should just use P2P programs without need of web indexes.
The problem is that, lately, shit has been available for direct download but NOT for P2P.
My question is, they have started to close websites but could they do something against P2P?

Limewire was probably the most popular and widespread P2P software, and we all know where it ended up: http://www.limewire.com/

Plus a few casual law suits for single moms charged ~$200k for downloading 24 songs.

I don't know, I've been following the downloading phase since Limeware/Kazaa myself, and I kind of think the opposite. People will just continue to find more loopholes and new services or software may continue to still pop up regardless of what happens.

As for stealing (downloading), as some people put it, it's not a loss when the sale was never going to happen anyways. That's one way to look at it.

Yeah, but that's only one of the programs (the others continue working).
Some years ago I was trying to decide what to use and found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_P2P
http://anonymous-p2p.org/
I had to give up cause the use of those apps was marginal.
Maybe now...

Roll as much as you like, it's still not the same thing. And this is not merely an issue of semantics. Or would you argue that manslaughter and murder are equal merely because both result in a dead person?



Those lax laws that you mention must be the reason why the TPB guys are going to prison in Sweden. You also seem to think only a few trackers/sites resist, and that they're globally illegal. Needless to say, neither is true.

On a related note, I noticed that in a mere two posts, you've gone from "free downloading will cease to exist" to "it will cease to exist as we know it". I'll just assume you had meant to use the later from the start, since it's a more sensible statement.



It may be losing subscribers, and certainly if that continues it will stop being a viable business model. However, it still is now, as evidenced by their earnings reports. Besides, a major reason fo that loss of subscribers was related to changes in pricing and how customers perceived them. And price is as important as easy and convenient access to content. It's kind of obvious that blunders in pricing are likely to lead to a loss of customers.

Nah...its like the war on drugs, you can't stop the demand or the means, only make people do it farther underground.

That said, I both buy and download, no guilt about not paying artists though.

Probably, but it always seemed the better option to me anyway. Why go to the Web at all? You can have private P2P networks dependent on the use of client programmes with high security measures. Of course then you are operating in a much more niche-oriented system, and there are still drawbacks....but that's inevitable.

Once a system gets too popular it's open to a huge amount of scrutiny, obviously. Keep it underground, as someone already said.

Make it legal, line your pockets!



Yeah, thats what i am saying. It's not globally illegal, yet. The ones that are still kicking around don't need to resist.

Do p2p clients such as limewire, DMC++ (whatever it was called, never used it), bearshare, and others have an advantage in terms of confidentiality for the downloader? Most programs have a feature that limits uploads only to users you approve of. Generally speaking, if someone has a huge library, they are legit. Are we going to start getting piracy narcs, lurking in p2p client chatrooms, luring naive, broke unfortunate little shits to the abhorrent center of a legal maelstrom?

I actually prefer P2P. I've used Soulseek for the last ten years, it's changed my life.

I'm reading about I2P and IMule.
Let's see.

And I don't think it will ever be. Actually, it would be pretty sad if that's the one thing on which all laws agree.

Agreed. Torrents are ace for movies and bulky software (e.g.: huge VST sound libraries), but P2P has always been my first choice when it comes to music. I only download OOP materiali since I always buy physical releases when they're available, and most of the stuff I got (including some very obscure items) I found via DC++.

I was saddened by the BTJunkie's "death." They were my main source and I've been a little hesitant to use The Pirate Bay for some time.

If any buds want a demonoid invite...

I wouldn't mind

My friend hyped up demonoid as the best torrent site ever but when I got into demonoid it didn't have alot of what I was looking for and there was just as many leechers as The Pirate Bay.

Sad to hear about btjunkie. I got quite a bit of stuff from them.

Hit me. Haha. Seriously, want.

Yeah, I use demonoid. It is about as secure as torrent sharing can get if you ask me.

So according to PeachPit, listening to music at your friend's house on his stereo is GRAND THEFT AUDIO.

Because that's really the same exact thing, in regards to the industry. You're still not paying a dime to hear it.

But what sucks, is that rare stuff disappear in the process. It's not rare that I'm trying to find a rare album/demo/ep only to end up on a dead link, or now links towards Megaupload. And stuff that is either rare/expensive on eBay, or can't anyway be obtained as a firsthand copy.