Brokep over at the Pirate Bay responds to word that TorrentSpy and ISOHunt have caved in to the demands of the MPAA and he's none too happy.Just a little while ago Brokep over the Pirate Bay Skyped me about a post he made in his blog about recent reports that Justin Bunnel over at TorrentSpy has created a new system called FileRights to automatically remove copyrighted content from the site. He doesn't pull any punches, in fact starting with the title "PrivacySpy," and closing with "So f---k you filerights.com. Thank god that technology is smarter than some of it’s users." It's understandable why he's so mad, after all, if any of the existing BitTorrent tracker sites have been on the forefront of defending against censorship it's the Pirate Bay hands down. I mean let's not kid ourselves here, it's a site dedicated to the facilitation of piracy and to ignore that fact does its users a huge disservice as well. It either stands for the free flow of content and ideas or it is little more than a huge ad machine that just "happens" to have copies of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. He poses an important question about who it will be that polices the content censors and to what length this censorship will be allowed to flourish and he's right.
Who checks that a copyright claim is correct? Who downloads all those files and checks them out to see if they are what they seem to be? What happens when the right holders start censoring other peoples content as well, maybe out of moral or maybe for a competing company?He also points out how it's a slippery slope in that if TorrentSpy and others, perhaps ISOHunt as mentioned by their attorney, begin to automatically filter out content with copyright holders doing all the inputting of identifiable data, it will set a precedent that others may follow in order to get sites to comply with their wishes yet, all the while the case has not been allowed to properly wind its way through the court system and the defendant has not exhausted all his appeals. He furthers: FileRights.com states “Relax, Knowing your content is being removed from the internet”. Ok? So that means what? Come on. There no such thing that will work. Or will you also in the next step of the system demand logs of the users that downloaded the content, so when a right holder puts up a torrent or hash he automatically gets the IPs that downloaded the same file? Maybe a good next step Justin. I know you’re scared and I can understand that. But if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen - don’t blow it up so nobody else can cook.Again, he's right. The MPAA's lawyers can be an understandably scary lot I'm sure but, to cave in to their unprecedented demands that it create data from where there was none, that it create server logs in fact, without the first exhausting its appeals going down without a fight will have an effect that could ripple throughout the BitTorrent community. Like Brokep says, "...don't blow it up so nobody else can cook." Either way, I think he's write to say "F---k filerights," and I too "Thank god that technology is smarter than some of it’s users." Guess we'll have to wait until the dust settles to see what kind of mess must be dealt with. Until then, I hope TorrentSpy and the EFF try to give the MPAA a run for their money in the courtroom. READ THE REST OF BROKEP'S BLOG POSTINGLooking for more stuff to watch or download? |
 
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Brokep 
