

Save, Create and Run Your Own Pirate Bay - jacquesm
http://openbay.isohunt.to

======
hendersoon
(Putting legality aside) this is fine, if you assume a site like The Pirate
Bay is nothing more than a collection of links. But it's not.

The metadata is important. When you download a file, you want to see how
popular it is. Popular files tend to be higher-quality, safer, and always
download faster.

The community is central to the experience. The comments matter. They talk
about a file being fake, or virus-infected, or poor quality. They give
instructions for using the download properly. This is valuable information.

Moderation is critical. Who removes links to broken, fake, infected, or poor-
quality files?

Download sites are more than collections of links. The Pirate Bay wasn't
successful due to its volume of .torrent files. Anyone can host a bunch of
little files up for download. Its infrastructure and community were key
components of its success. The links alone aren't interesting at all.

~~~
jordigh
We have federated comments: pump.io or its precursor GNU Social, née
status.net. Isn't it just a SMOP to tie together these piratebays together
with one of these?

Yeah, this is a WIP of how Mediagoblin is using pump.io to federate comments:

[http://mediagoblin.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html#part...](http://mediagoblin.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html#part-5-pump-
api)

~~~
hendersoon
Cool! Once you have federated comments why wouldn't you just distribute a
popularity index and torrent magnet links via the same mechanism?

Once you get all that stuff functional you end up with a truly decentralized
platform and there's no reason for anyone to "host" their own cordoned-off
copy in the first place. It actually /solves/ the problem.

~~~
Singletoned
This sounds almost exactly like eDonkey, which is what we used before
BitTorrent. eDonkey used to be much better for rare items, though BitTorrent
worked better for popular items. eDonkey used to let you start searches that
would run for days, asking neighbour nodes to ask other neighbour nodes, etc.

I miss it and I think there's a lot that can be learned from it.

------
neya
One of the frequent arguments here against torrent sites is that people think
it's a platform for ONLY copyright infringement and therefore conclude by
accusing their users of being mass copyright infringers and that these torrent
sites aren't some 'noble cause' and that its users are greedy parasites, etc.

1) I'd like to break your first world bubble and tell you about a little
secret - Not all content is available all over the world. There are really
some beautiful pieces of art (Movies, Music, etc) that are available (for
purchase/viewing) to certain parts of the worlds (Eg. US) and not available to
the rest (Eg. India). What makes you think that you deserve to have access to
these content and the rest of them don't?

You can observe this even on iTunes - "Sorry the content you requested is not
available in your country. Redirecting you to the <insert country here>
store."

Sometimes, there isn't an option to purchase these content and the only way is
to download them via torrents. You see information is like light - It's best
when it's shared. People are afraid that the more you share it, the less they
will be able to meter it. But they are so wrong[1].

2) I am a genuine customer of Adobe. I invested heavily into their software
suite. I paid several thousand dollars to upgrade their softwares so that I
can keep a copy of what I paid for. One fine day, infact, the very next day
after I paid for the CS6 suite, they introduced the Creative Suite cloud and
fucked up so many people dependent on their software - Basically, it's a model
where you keep paying them till you die and if you don't pay, you lose access
to the software. This is probably fine with me, since I'm a business guy and I
can probably afford the money. But the people who were affected the most were
students - Who paid for the student subscription, but were fucked to move to
the cloud and pay again:
[https://www.facebook.com/adobesteals](https://www.facebook.com/adobesteals)

Now, shortly after this happened, the piracy rates of their software suites
simply skyrocketed on several torrent sites. Most of the consumers of these
torrent sites are students who cannot simply afford to buy it. This in my
opinion is good. Why? Because this is the only way of not supporting such
companies - By using their products in a way that doesn't benefit them
(Remember, I am a legit customer who has paid for their software). At the same
time, the students who can't afford are also not at a disadvantage just
because they couldn't access a particular software suite during their course
of studies.

There are even more benefits of torrent sites, but one thing people must
understand is that torrent sites are more than just for "Greedy parasites".

[1][https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-boosts-music-
sale...](https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-boosts-music-sales-study-
finds-120517/)

~~~
jacquesm
This is one more way in which RMS piece on software-as-a-service ties in.
Software that has no reason to be sold as a service but has a subscription
model and an online component tacked on just because that makes more money.

------
archgrove
Use case 1: Running a torrent site for the distribution of free, out of
copyright, abandoned, or otherwise _entirely unavailable_ works.

Use case 2: Distributing ripped off copies of easily available, expensive to
produce, copyrighted works, largely made in the last 5 years, that the
purchase of would help feed the creators.

I really hope for the first, but I'm depressingly certain it'll be the second.
Mass copyright infringement is not some "noble cause". It's parasitic,
adolescent, greedy, "I want it, so I'm entitled to have it" behaviour that
makes me despair of large portions of humanity.

~~~
teddyh
Suppose you build a beautiful statue in a secluded forest, with the intent of
charging money for taking people through the trees to see it. Suppose further
that as you have completed the statue, all the surrounding trees are felled by
a freak storm, and anyone can now see _your_ statue without paying you, by
standing on public land. A large crowd now surround your statue day and night,
watching it.

If your response is to call the crowd “ _parasitic, adolescent,_ [and]
_greedy_ ”, then I suggest you are starting off your relationship with your
audience on the wrong foot. You _should_ be doing something like selling them
hot dogs. If that is not sufficient revenue, try something else, like taking
up a collection for your next project. But suppose that _none_ of the many
possible methods for raising capital work; then, maybe the time of large
statues is over, and you’ll have to do something else with your efforts;
something for which there is an audience willing to pay.

What you _cannot_ do is declare that anyone looking at your statue is a thief,
and lobby to abolish the public right to look at things, merely because it
upsets your old, now-obsolete, dependent-on-no-longer-existing-conditions,
business model.

The very idea of intellectual “property” is extremely suspect in these days of
zero-cost copying. “ _He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction
himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives
light without darkening me._ ”

~~~
iamdave
"Felled by a freak storm' is a pretty ignorant mischaracterization of people
deliberately hacking down trees to see the statue.

That said: I agree with the theme of consternation over outmoded content
distribution methods, not adapting with changing demand in the market place is
a good way to becoming outmoded yourself.

~~~
teddyh
What? The freak storm is supposed to represent the technological development
of digital copying itself – I should know, I came up with the analogy. _You_
stop mischaracterizing the analogy. It is an analogy, not a model.

Or are you implying that the developers of digital technology did so merely to
copy cheaply those things which were previously hard and lossy to copy? (I
doubt it.)

I.e. what is your actual criticism of my argument?

~~~
sbarre
Your analogy is still flawed, but I think you know that and you're just being
specious.

