The Constable on October 10th, 2008
Even though it’s still over two weeks away from an actual retail release, Bethesda’s much-anticipated new entry in the Fallout series has already made its way onto several torrents and into the hands of happy pirates everywhere.
Although it just hit the torrents, the pirated version of the game has reportedly been downloaded over 2,000 times already. Of course this is expected to increase substantially (especially now that news about its availability on the torrents has been hitting), although it is unlikely to see anything like the levels of piracy Spore saw (even in spite of its much-maligned DRM), since a(n illegally) modified Xbox360 is required to play it.
Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for the heads-up.
The Constable on October 9th, 2008
Just a year after one of Romania’s most popular BitTorrent sites was raided by the police (and its admins arrested, then released), Torrentbits.ro is now being blocked by one of Romania’s largest ISPs, UPC.
The move mirrors other recent blocks by ISPs, including the now-famous block of The Pirate Bay by Italian ISPs - a block which was later forced to be removed at the behest of the Italian courts.
Kind of makes you rethink Net Neutrality, doesn’t it? While freedom on the net may sound like a great idea at first, perhaps a middle ground can be found where ISPs are at least allowed to block access to sites it deems to be potentially illegal.
Just a thought.
(Thanks to TorrentFreak for the heads-up)
The Constable on September 17th, 2008
TV shows are by far the most wanted files via BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s fast becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
read more | digg story
The Constable on August 22nd, 2008
This is probably a bit old, since The Chronicle of Higher Education already reported on this way back in the beginning of July, but it seems like it would be a disservice not to mention it here as well.
As is to be expected with any kind of product that is easily digitized and pricier than most people would like, one of the biggest new things being traded online is textbooks. As such, sites like Textbook Torrents are starting to pop up focused on the area, hoping this focus will help spur more availability of the books (they claim to currently have over 5,000 fully scanned textbooks).
Of course, the copyright holders and publishers of these products are less than happy with this and have begun a concerted legal effort to thwart the sharing of such files. Their response: the Association of American Publishers has hired an outside legal firm to send takedown notices to sites hosting the illegal content (although I’m not quite sure how this is going to do them any good in the p2p realm).
One thing to note, however, is that unlike the RIAA’s approach, the publishers have yet to focus on the actual individuals downloading the books. Rather, they appear to be placing their focus (for now at least) entirely on the ones actively hosting the files.
As for Textbook Torrents, it appears they have already been forced to move servers once - and they seem to be prepared to do it again. This is the one real problem with take-down notices: all it will do is keep moving the sites from server to server until they decide to move their hosting to somewhere outside the United States or any other territory that will actually take them down.
The Constable on August 21st, 2008
An article at torrentfreak today indicates that popular “search system,” The Pirate Bay, is appealing the recent ISP block imposed by the Italian government who has accused them of copyright violation.
Since The Pirate Bay itself does not host any copyright-protected content, they perhaps have an argument. Then again, the argument is the same as that used by Kazaa, Morpheus, etc. - and what it comes down to is the sole purpose of The Pirate Bay is to enable people to download copyrighted material illegally.
So our question is this: can their intent be proven? If so, is it illegal to intend to do something? In the U.S. I would think it could be, since you can be charged with things such as “intentional homicide.” But then again, the Pirate Bay doesn’t intend to download anything, the intend to give you direction as to how to do it. To use the homicide analogy, this intent isn’t even the same as being part of a conspiracy to kill someone. It’s more akin to showing someone how to shoot or gun, or where they can get one.
