Scratch one Web site off that “alternatives to The Pirate Bay” list. Mininova has been ordered by a Dutch court to remove all links to copyrighted items from its servers, or face fines to the tune of €5 million. You get the feeling that the era of BitTorrent as we know it is about to end, don’t you?
Mininova, which is based in the Netherlands, has been charged with “contributory copyright infringement,” which means only that it contributed to copyright infringement, and not actually infringed on anything itself. I hope that makes sense out there.
Then there’s something about profiting from the whole venture, making some €1 million in ad sales in 2007 alone. That doesn’t look good in court, no sir.
The court said that up to 90 percent of the content on Mininova infringed copyright in some form or another.
I’m right now imagining a world where BitTorrent trackers like Mininova don’t exist, and I have to say: I’m not too concerned. Will I miss being able to get things really quickly? Yeah, for like a day, but then I’ll find a new hobby, like gardening or stamp collecting.
You are such a drama queen Deleon.
Pirate Bay… Mininova.. Ok, a couple hundred more torrent sites to go after those.
What you’ll see is torrent sites popping up based in countries that do not have/do not care about copyright laws. Good luck shutting down all of the asian torrent sites.
Even if all of the torrent sites were wiped out, people will simply transition to another system. People will go back to using IRC or more usenet or whatever else. Its like whack-a-mole.
kudos Jordan…your defiantly not my biggest fan Nicholas Deleon
..and in that world Columbia House/Blockbuster/Netflix/iTunes and bootleggers around the world will rejoice and reap the lost profits from an era of thievery. Sad times indeed. Oh and if you are any indication then Ace Hardware and the USPS may yet see the light of day.
Mininova has never been a tracker, could you, maybe, check your facts and update your post…
thanks
How about any one breaking up copy rights for images. Suppose if you publish maxim issues coverpage photos on your site and if Maxim sends you a mail saying copyrights infringement asking you to pay $3000, would they be so serious about the issue or else removing the images from site would be doing the job ??
You really think shutting down any of these sites is going to make any difference? They will simply pop back up in another location or a new one will crop up. Eventually someone will create one that comes with VPN access and requires it for the trackers and there won’t be any proof of anything for any given IP.
All this will do is cause the technology to morph and make it harder to play the whack-a-mole game the *IAAs are already playing.
Why would you “miss being able to get things really quickly” ?
1. You can still get whatever you want if bt disappears.
2. Torrents are (relatively) slow for the most part, so retaining that speed shouldn’t be difficult.
I feel slightly sad for you if bt is the sum of your p2p capabilities. Granted it’s probably the best for big new files (ie films), but other than that it’s really not so great. Music can be found and obtained much quicker via other means, and all the bt trackers put together have a fairly small catalogue due to the way the protocol works. Software is waaaay easier to get by other means. So bt is not that important really, it’s just convenient for new films, and I’m sure something else will pop-up the moment it dies, or one of the other existing technologies will take it’s place. There’s already an anon emule, and various other anon systems.