btjunkie says goodbye

[chimeracoder]

This is the scary part about bills like SOPA. Who cares if they're constitutional, who care if they could stand up in court, who cares if the public supports them? They do their job anyway, even if they don't pass.

Glenn Greenwald was right about this - we didn't win the SOPA battle; we lost it. The very next day after all the hullabaloo and protests, the government went ahead and showed that the powers that SOPA would have been redundant - it already has those powers anyway.

[pyre]

  >  it already has those powers anyway.

It didn't take Megaupload down without a trial, without due process. They took them down as part of a 2 year long investigation. While it's possible that they timed the takedown with SOPA, I would err on the side of coincidence. This wasn't an operation entirely within the US. They had the coordination of law enforcement in other counties. This isn't something where they just had a late-night idea that they decided to act on.

[furyofantares]

Wasn't btjunkie used primarily to violate copyright?

If so, it seems you are mistaken about the outrage regarding SOPA. The outrage was not defending our right to free movies. When Megaupload got taken down I started seeing all these posts that seem to be under the impression that the Internet had rallied around the right to get everything digital for free/cheap against the creators' wishes, which is not the case.

[nextparadigms]

Well yes, they kind of did have those powers, thanks to the passing of the Pro IP act in 2008, which allows them to take town .com, .org and .net websites. SOPA would've just allowed them to take down foreign sites. They already have the power because the Internet wasn't awake enough at the time.

But that's alright. What's important is that first we stop this trend - not a single law like this passes anymore. And then we try to reverse the trend - repeal Pro IP, overhaul copyright laws, etc.

[dwyer]

Hacker News double standard:

* A company like Zynga who runs a completely legal business and employ thousands of people with good wages and benefits by copying game concepts is generally considered evil.

* A torrent tracker or file locker that makes a handful of employees rich by ripping off thousands of artists, musicians and filmmakers and serving spammy aggressive popup ads shut down and are considered martyrs.

Somebody care to explain?

[cageface]

A lot of hackers view "content" as raw grist for their business mills, measured in gigabytes and intrinsically "free". Not surprisingly, many of us that have worked in industries that produce this "content" and know how much work it takes to produce are less glibly generous about piracy.

I'd vote for both as evil because I also don't see much social benefit in hooking people into clickfarming their way through mindless reward loops. But pirate sites are the lowest because by abusing internet freedoms they give censors the ammunition they need to lobby for tools that will inevitably be abused to restrict more important freedoms.

[patio11]

Hacker News of late has a much higher consumer Internet to producer Internet ratio than it used to.

[crystalis]

A hypothetical situation where this works out:

Torrent site serves up 1000 pirated DVDs, making $20 in the process. Only 1 out of those 1000 pirates would pay the $10 required to buy a DVD [1]. Assuming as little as 2 cents of consumer value per pirated DVD, this scenario has generated $10 more income for 'businesses' and $10 more consumer surplus.

Zynga copies a game that would have had 1000 customers otherwise. They're Zynga, so they get 1500 customers and the original creators get 100. Unfortunately, this makes the game unprofitable for the original creators and the development dollars Zynga had to spend copying the game are not offset by the 600 extra players they generated. Furthermore, this game is seen as a substitutable good- no real consumer value is generated when Coke is drunk instead of Pepsi.

(Honestly, I think consumer surplus is the intuitive reason people support file lockers and not Zynga. They're probably right.)

[1] This is the only conversion rate I've seen people give actual numbers for. Citation available if requested.

[noonespecial]

"makes a handful of employees rich by ripping off thousands of artists, musicians and filmmakers" also applies to the companies that the file-lockers were threatening.

Legal isn't always right, and its dual.

[pyre]

The flaw in your logic is that you're treating a group of people as if they are a single person with a singular set of ideas, views and motivations.

[libcee]

it's not a double standard, it's two very arguably different issues that people frequently confuse as the same. the zynga issue is closer to plagiarism, and copying is not the same thing.

people get really upset about plagiarism and see it as dishonesty or fraud, as well as theft. history is rife with good (or at least gray) works of plagiarism that people would miss, such as "make em' laugh" in "singin' in the rain," which is a complete ripoff of "be a clown" by cole porter. not a parody, a ripoff with no attribution. (porter never complained.)

still, you find a larger portion of humanity is pissed off by plagiarism, where more people think copies are copies are copies, at least they help make the author famous or rich as a kind of advertising if attribution stays intact.

plagiarism is less likely to help the author of the original, but it can sometimes. for example, i hadn't heard anything about joe satriani for about a decade until coldplay allegedly plagiarized some guitar riffs from him. i've listened to both and apparently you need to be a musician to tell. at least i couldn't tell.

i like that riffs get reused sometimes, and so i don't think it's always easy to have a black and white view about plagiarism. i've neither defended zynga nor joined in condemnation.

[scotty79]

Because making people into addicts for profit by using inoriginal ideas is bad and enabling people to share for free is good?

[philwelch]

It's not a matter of good and evil, it's a matter of due process.

[quaunaut]

Torrent trackers or file lockers that make a handful of employees rich? Haha. Good one! Oh you're funny oh wait no you don't actually understand the economics of this at all do you

[someone13]

Wow. Btjunkie was in the Alexa top 500 too (#390) - it wasn't exactly a small site.

Here's a screenshot of the Alexa ranking, for posterity:

http://imgur.com/U7dex

[m_eiman]

You probably shouldn't rely on imgur for posterity… Put it on a server that you control.

[ericflo]

Anyone remember Suprnova.org?

[joenathan]

There has never been as site as good as Suprnova, it made thepiratebay look like junk, Mininova was my next favorite...

[yxhuvud]

Yes. Trackers come, trackers go.

[8ig8]

Some background: BT = Bit Torrent (search engine)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTJunkie

[matmann2001]

Does anyone else suspect that this shut down was not as "voluntary" as stated? Now is the moment in history where people need to speak up for the protection of their rights on the internet, and before the culmination of these struggles has even begun, btjunkie is throwing in the towel? Do they know something we don't?

[jonhendry]

"Now is the moment in history where people need to speak up for the protection of their rights on the internet"

People are. They're just not speaking up for the "rights" you are thinking of.

[pyre]

I'm thinking that the idea of jail time instead of just an un-payable debt (after a long civil suit) could be a deciding factor.

[alan_cx]

Ah, I just made the same point, ish. Should have read further before posting.

I think this is a reaction to megaupload and perhaps an unofficial nudge. This might be the first of a few, or many. The "authorities" are simply scaring people off the web.

[vy8vWJlco]

I feel like I have been working to train and support people, and giving people legs in the form of networks and software just so they can turn around and kick me with them. Did we do this to ourselves?

[rangibaby]

Another one bites the dust... and TPB sails on!

[alan_cx]

Do people think that shutting down the site prevents prosecution? I don't.

My assumption here is that they, and possibly others, have been told to shut down or face Megaupload treatment.

I wonder if we will see few others make the same "decision".

[furyofantares]

There are only finite resources available to pursue prosecution. If the choice is between prosecuting the owners of a site that continues to operate versus one that has ceased operation, I expect the choice would be to go after the one that continues to operate.

[bitsoda]

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay is still up despite it being shut down numerous times. It truly is the boy who cried wolf of torrent indexes.

[dagw]

It's worth noting that people involved in TPB have been fined millions of dollars, sentenced to jail and fled their country to avoid justice. Not everybody is willing to go those sorts of extremes to run a website.

[dasil003]

I don't like that analogy. TPB has faced serious legal troubles but has stood up for their principles. I don't necessarily agree with their principles, but I don't think this is fun and games for them.

[citricsquid]

Wikipedia states that the site was commercial, considering the amount of traffic it had does this mean they were making money from it or was it a volunteer organisation using adverts to cover costs? I've never used the site and Wikipedia doesn't explain any of that.

[WalterSear]

commercial venture.

[zokiboy]

Isn't there a way to create a database of torrents without using http protocol, by relying only on peer2peer network? It would be much harder to shutdown each peer individually.

[icebraining]

That's what Tribler[1] claims it does. I've never used it.

And while it doesn't use bittorrent, eMule has had completely decentralized file searches using the Kad[2] network for years now.

[1]: http://www.tribler.org/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kad_network

[spoiledtechie]

So incredibly sad.... Anyone know who started the site or how to get in touch with them? I would love a crack at their code base....

[known]

What next http://www.usniff.com/ ?

[oliveoil]

Wouldn't it be enough to just move sites like this to for instance Russia?

[Elhana]

Your assumption there is no law against piracy in Russia is false. Russia is not a great idea, our gov took torrents.ru domain away without any trial as well. They are not so active as in USA, but since Russia is on the way to WTO, btjunkie wouldve been closed rather fast if it would be demanded.

[LefterisJP]

Another one going down makes you think how exactly did we win with SOPA and what we are going to do with ACTA

[xpose2000]

Sad news. :(

[krambs]

End of an era.

[pyre]

As was the shutdown of Napster, and the shutdown of other trackers like SuprNova (as someone else mentioned). I'm actually surprised that some sites have made it this long. It's not like the MAFIAA hasn't taken down sites in the past. But the last few years seem to have been somewhat quiet on that front. Seems like they were spending their time getting the FBI and Congress to fight their battles for them; the government just moves at a slower pace.

[szcukg]

btjunkie will be missed

[zobzu]

its been a long ride, bye!