Lokitorrent fighting back

[HangFire]

Saw this on /. earlier today. To summarize, as you may have heard, Bittorrent has come under attack recently by the MPAA/RIAA, and they successfully shut down a few sites such as Suprnova and Demonoid.


Now they're going to be suing Lokitorrent, but they're not just going to shut down, they're fighting back. Last I checked they've raised over $11,000 USD for their legal fund, which is amazing to say the least.


Whethor or not you support P2P networks, the bottom line here is that the MPAA/RIAA != the good guys. Every time that I read in the news of some supidity such as some poor college student being crushed for "copyright infringement" I remember why I'm so thankful that I don't live in the US.


In the US rapists and murderers get shorter sentences on average than what they give out to those the FBI arrests for copyright infringement. Its ridiculous.

Ah well. I guess this is what happens when a country is a plutocracy.

[sfx1999]

How does Loki stand a chance in hell of winning the case? I mean, come on, they'll probably just stash the money.

[HangFire]

No, they'll probably get crushed. They say that their minimal goal is $30,000, but realistically they'd need infinity dollars to match the power of the MPAA.

They are up to $18,000 right now. The guy should shut down the site and take the money.

[sfx1999]

I am saying for all we know he is scamming us and that he could possibly have never been taken down by the MPAA or RIAA. He probably will take the money and run.

Why are people paying for his legal fees anyway? What he is doing is illegal in almost any country. Copyright is international. Why do they think he has a chance of winning?

[HangFire]

They have a copy of the legal paper on the site, and recently many Torrent sites and trackers were attacked by the MPAA/RIAA, so it wouldn't surprise me if they were being threatened with legal action.

I'm really not sure why people are donating. The smart thing for the people who run site would be to give the donated money to a fund for something worthwhile (like disaster relief), then shut down the site, and host the thing outside of the US, where its very difficult for the US to enforce copyright laws.


Its a gray area with Torrent trackers. They do not actually host the files, they only facilitate the downloads by "hooking up" peers together to share the files. So.. technically the site operators are not actually distributing copyrighted material. Thats why they believe they have a hope of winning.

[Exilibur]

exactly... They're not breaking any copyright, since they are not sharing any files... Or at least thats the situation in sweden... But that probably doesn't matter much anywhere else (including Denmark).

It's a pretty stupid war... I wish somebody could just make some changes to the copyright stuff, which could solve the problem, but what changes that might be, I don't know.

[botmeister]

Gr$$d = Insane copyright laws.

Most of the problem could be solved in an instant by simply reducing prices to a more reasonable level, and providing a high quality download services for a reasonable fee.

I think a lot of people would rather pay a small fee to download hassle free, rather than mess around with unreliable p2p dl's.

As for bit torrent, the only argument the p2p download police have, is that the site operators are most likely knowingly assisting people to download copyrighted material without paying for it. The reason is that they moderate the torrent content that shows up on their websites.

[HangFire]

Well they've almost hit their minimal goal, and they probably will go over it at the rate its going. It'll be interesting to see how this all unfolds. Over $25,000 now donated.

[sfx1999]

Oh come on. There are things I think shouldn't be taken down (like Kazaa), but these sites are hosting torrents to copyrighted material. They don't stand a chance in hell of winning. Kazaa could search for copyrighted material, but so can Google. These guys are intentionally giving you the torrent, which will download the file.