First they came for the bitlockers...

[Garfield And Friends]

... and I didn't speak out because I had no Megaupload premium pass.

Then they came for the bittorrents...
... and I didn't speak out because Ubuntu Linux isos (ahem) can be downloaded from source, dontchano.

.
.
.

In other words, the latest tracker site to suicide in fear of the FBI is BTJUNKIE, one of the largest free-access
collators out there. See: http://submit.boingboing.net/2012/02/btjunkie-has-closed-down.html



So are we being slowly but surely painted into a NetFlix and iTunes corner? One future seems to hold 'smart tellys' with subscription streaming of films and albums. Or will there always be an 'underground' of material on the web?

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

I think downloaders fall into two categories, and some appear in both

There are those who do it because it's free, and those who do it because it's the most convenient way of accessing material

Services like Netflix and streaming TVs go some way to eliminating a lot of those who download for convenience, as Steam has done with games. I've bought more games since Steam and Origin appeared than at any time during my time on the web.

But technology will morph to accommodate those who still wish to get stuff for free, or who want stuff that isn't on services like Netflix

I assume something new will appear soon enough technology wise, but I see HTTP and bittorrent sites slowly disappearing now over the coming year

[small_world]

Ah this is absolute shit.

I suspected something was up the other week when browsing (I actually asked a related question in the techy thread) the site for some new xxx releases.
The site used to have a browse by category function which could then be sorted into date/peer/seed/size. But that had gone. So you then had to search by title. Making it all a bit suspect.
Luckily I've just downloaded a load of things to keep me occupied for a while, but this really is terrible.
Pirate Bay has been shit for ages now as well.

Undoubtedly the majority of ex-BtJ useres will migrate to a similar facility. But I don't know which one that will be. BtJ used to be so easy to use. So user friendly.

Goodnight sweet prince.

[Hank_Kingsley]

Right, well I'm grabbing as many hi-def new releases as possible.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Oh Hollywood, how forgetful you are.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

I'm probably one of the few people who's actually quite happy with this arrangement, but I still think the timing of it's been hilariously out of sync with the latest online developments: had the torrent and file-sharing sites been closed down prior to the emergence of services like netflix/lovefilm/spotify, the industry might have recouped some cash. At this point though, it's difficult to imagine that youre going to recoup half as many loses. I just dont see people going to the bother of downloading badly encoded movies like they used to. If you have anything approaching a social life, it's impossible to justify 2 hours sat a computer looking for the latest 'rip', or at least, it is now you can stream them off a variety of services for next to nothing. Will file-sharing die though? Will it? Of course it wont. As long as you have access to a letter box or someone's email, it will keep going and going ad infinitum. The only thing that would prevent people from file-sharing altogether would be to either ban entertainment outright, or ban human interaction outright, neither of which are likely to happen.[nb] The entire world suddenly turning into North Korea for no apparent reason non withstanding[/nb]

[small_world]

I just dont see people going to the bother of downloading badly encoded movies like they used to. If you have anything approaching a social life, it's impossible to justify 2 hours sat a computer looking for the latest 'rip',

With BtJunkie, I've never had that problem.
Maybe for the very latest things, things that had just been released in the cinema. But I was always happy downloading stuff that was being released on DVD.

Absolutely gutted about this.
And yes, I understand the moral/practical objections.

[Beagle 2]

Well I'm signed up to Netflix and Lovefilm streaming and last week wanted to watch three movies that had been out for more than a year or so. It took me ages to piss about on both the clunky xbox apps to determine they weren't there, nor was much else I wanted to watch. I found good quality versions in seconds for download. I tried...

[biggytitbo]

We still need a thriving piracy market to stop the big content companies providing us with utter shit at scandalously high prices as is their perennial habit. Once they actually provide a product people want, in the way they want it and at an acceptable price, a lot of the piracy will disappear of its own accord.

[phes]

D/L is still far quicker and easier than streaming, with far more choice. So, moral arguments aside...

edit: beaten to it.

[Blumf]

Well I'm signed up to Netflix and Lovefilm streaming and last week wanted to watch three movies that had been out for more than a year or so. It took me ages to piss about on both the clunky xbox apps to determine they weren't there, nor was much else I wanted to watch. I found good quality versions in seconds for download. I tried...

This, last night, after slowly digging through all Netflix's displayed content we eventually settled on Network but there just wasn't anything else that a) we wanted to see, and b) haven't got on disc already. Pretty sure we could have grabbed a torrent and have it showing on our TV[nb]Our Freeview DVR box just had an upgrade that added USB video file playback, and we already have a networked media streamer.[/nb] in the time it took to find one thing worth watching in the offered selection. The media companies are still shooting themselves in the foot!

Doesn't help that said XBox Metro UI is appalling to use, who the hell signed off on that? All in a damned shame because the service works very well otherwise, the movie streamed smoothly and looked like a good enough quality encode.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

We still need a thriving piracy market to stop the big content companies providing us with utter shit at scandalously high prices as is their perennial habit.

Maybe it's different in Leeds but I've never been threatened into buying a DVD or going to the cinema when I didn't want to. Well, not by a "big content company" anyway.
Why would I buy "utter shit at scandalously high prices"? Why would anyone?

[Famous Mortimer]

I think the members-only torrent sites will be next, although they'll try and stop themselves from getting fingered. The whole "if you sign up you state you're not a law enforcement official" thing that some of them have sounds nice but is, presumably, entirely useless when it comes to stopping getting them shut down. Is web hosting getting any cheaper? If it is, I can see people just hosting a film / TV show / whatever on their own web space for a day or two, and people grabbing stuff that way.

I think the whole trying to hide what the traffic is tactic is gone too, as John Q Law isn't worried about getting sued by the guys who run Megaupload, or btjunkie, or whoever. It's using a hammer to smash an egg, but it's working for them.

Copyright law is what will keep piracy going. If I want to watch some show that was cancelled after one season ten years ago, never got released and never got repeated, there's just no way of doing it without piracy (although saying that, that Crackle app for the Xbox has some awesomely obscure TV). If they'd just make international rights less of a minefield, we could have free, ad-supported streaming and everyone would be happy.

Time to invest in another hard drive and download the shit out of everything I can, make hay while the sun shines, I think.

[Blumf]

Is web hosting getting any cheaper? If it is, I can see people just hosting a film / TV show / whatever on their own web space for a day or two, and people grabbing stuff that way.

Magnet links; no tracker or on-line hosting needed just some text anybody can copy/paste.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Can someone link me to these sites where you get instant downloads? Im not being facetious; ive genuinely always found that even if you are lucky enough to stumble across a working/high-quality rip first time, youre either locked into a good 6 hours waiting for a torrent to download, or otherwise the narcoleptic tedium of wading through a whole slew of those count-down timers/capcha boxes if its off something like rapidshare. In fact with the later download method, I eventually got so fed up all of jumping through the all the various e-hurdles, that I relented and got myself a paid membership in the end. And for that particular service it's probably also worth mentioning that I was paying far more than what youd be paying for a monthly subscription to lovefilm now, so again, it's very difficult for me to find any justification in the whole thing. I know someone mentioned that a lot of steaming services dont have a lot of new stuff on them yet, but in time I find it very difficult to imagine that they wont do.

[Blumf]

Can someone link me to these sites where you get instant downloads?

According to Neil's, reasonable and pragmatic, wishes; no.

[katzenjammer]

I'm on my phone so not going to type much but sabnzbd, couchpotato and sickbeard may be of interest to some people

[Big Jack McBastard]

Well this is unfortunate but it's like taking a pond full of water out of an ocean, there's still many many BT sites out there and magnet links are the way to go on any site that's coughing up blood.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

You have a situation where an insane amount of data has already been duplicated and shared, and the ways in which to share and duplicate data are also expanding, while at the same time the speed by which they can be shared is increasing.

So no, I'm not pessimistic at all. They missed the boat, they can't hold back the tide now[nb]thank you for reading my moving and evocative metaphorical couplet[/nb] without fundamentally restricting access to the internet, which people won't stand for.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Can someone link me to these sites where you get instant downloads?

You need to get onto a private tracker, or perhaps one of the Blu-Ray specialist "open" sites (that require sign up)

I did used to have a load of them bookmarked, but not anymore sadly

My method of choice these days is Rapidshare and warez-bb, plus I have a membership at Torrentbytes for bittorrent stuff

The latest stuff appears on Torrentbytes almost instantly, Rapidshare costs about 8 quid a month I think

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Yeah, I went the private tracker route for a while, but I found alot of the (admittedly poncey and obscure stuff im into) wasnt particularly well-seeded. Oh well, maybe I just never found the site for all that, as of now though, I think im more or less ready to say goodbye to it all.

[small_world]

Time to invest in another hard drive and download the shit out of everything I can, make hay while the sun shines, I think.

Snap.
I'd been working my way slowly through Rolling Stone's [nb]shit[/nb] top 100 albums. Downloading one, listening to it. Repeat. And it was easy with the user friendly BtJ. But now it's going to be a bit of a headache learning a new site's layout.
But I'm on it, and I'm getting all the films and musics I'll need for a while.

[RickyGerbail]

don't worry sweden will always be a haven for criminals.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

At risk of sounding naive. When you're 'downloading Rolling Stone's top 100 albums' , and find something you like - I know there's a fair few of Zimmy's in there - and being as listening to music can be such a personal experience, do you ever think 'The artist laid his soul on the line to make this and I know (certainly in the case of Zimmy as he's always have stuff taken off YouTube) said artist isn't altogether happy with me acquiring his work for free, and I'm getting so much from it I'll just, y'know, pay the £3.99 which is less than the LP cost when it came out in 1975, and give the artist some reward for all that soul bearing'?

This isn't being bitchy, it's a genuine enquiry. It's also non-poster specific, I only mentioned Rolling Stone's top 100 as it was mentioned in the post above this one when I began writing.

[small_world]

Ah yeah totally.
Funnily enough it was me who suggested "Why don't you just by download it?" in the CaB record club thread.

Yeah, I've bought a good few things I never had, including a few Van Morrison albums and the Velvet Underground w' Nico. (I'm not that far in to the 100)
But it's a great way to hear something I wouldn't have had the chance to otherwise.

Similarly, I heard a song on a YouTube video ages ago, and found out the band's name. They were only a young band at the time and had only released stuff in Australia, but I was able to download it.
I bought their album when it was released (although I did D/L it too as I couldn't wait to hear it) and we're going to see them in a couple of weeks in London.
So for someone like this, I would never have heard their music if it hadn't of been for the DL'ing.

Oh, and I've DLoaded Prince's Symbol album as the three CD's I got through were more than enough money in his pocket.
Same goes for Richie Sambora's Stranger album. Some CD's seem to get damaged far easier than others and I don't worry about downloading something once the physical product has reached the end of it's life.

[Blumf]

Tend to find that I'll pick up on an artist who's releasing their early stuff free and then when they release a proper, pay-for, album I'll happily cough up the dough.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

At risk of sounding naive. When you're 'downloading Rolling Stone's top 100 albums' , and find something you like - I know there's a fair few of Zimmy's in there - and being as listening to music can be such a personal experience, do you ever think 'The artist laid his soul on the line to make this and I know (certainly in the case of Zimmy as he's always have stuff taken off YouTube) said artist isn't altogether happy with me acquiring his work for free, and I'm getting so much from it I'll just, y'know, pay the £3.99 which is less than the LP cost when it came out in 1975, and give the artist some reward for all that soul bearing'?

This isn't being bitchy, it's a genuine enquiry. It's also non-poster specific, I only mentioned Rolling Stone's top 100 as it was mentioned in the post above this one when I began writing.

Is it possible to just download an album yet, completely DRM free, without having to install fucking wanky itunes?

[Famous Mortimer]

At risk of sounding naive. When you're 'downloading Rolling Stone's top 100 albums' , and find something you like - I know there's a fair few of Zimmy's in there - and being as listening to music can be such a personal experience, do you ever think 'The artist laid his soul on the line to make this and I know (certainly in the case of Zimmy as he's always have stuff taken off YouTube) said artist isn't altogether happy with me acquiring his work for free, and I'm getting so much from it I'll just, y'know, pay the £3.99 which is less than the LP cost when it came out in 1975, and give the artist some reward for all that soul bearing'?

This isn't being bitchy, it's a genuine enquiry. It's also non-poster specific, I only mentioned Rolling Stone's top 100 as it was mentioned in the post above this one when I began writing.

I'll reply with a few questions: what about if the artist in question is dead? What about if they've said they're okay with people who can't afford it downloading their work? What if their contract with the record company which released said classic album was incredibly restrictive and paid the artist basically nothing per sale - http://www.negativland.com/albini.html? What if the record's been deleted for 20 years, but thanks to its label going out of business and the incredibly restrictive laws, will never be released again? What if it's something that was controversial on release that the releasing company is happy to sit on forever for fear of upsetting shareholders? Also, several of the states in the US had copyrights which lasted for eternity, so there's huge swathes of music which will never be seen again without the work of "pirates".

And so on, and so on. What if I pay for an album from iTunes and it's a huge bag of shit? Can't get a refund, can't sell it on. For a while there, the restrictive digital copyright meant I couldn't play the same music on more than one device (admittedly, this didn't last very long, but that's what the legal copyright holders were insisting on)? What if the artist is already a millionaire many times over and their record label has financial ties to arms companies? - one small example is listed here.

As a teenager, I would go to Rare & Racy record/bookshop in Sheffield and look at their rows and rows of awesome-looking experimental music. The cheapest thing they had was £15, and with no real idea (apart from the odd review in some newsletter) of what they sounded like, and being a poor ol' working class boy, I couldn't afford any of them. Now, 20 years later, similar teenagers can listen to all the weirdest and most wonderful records ever made, and have pretty much direct access to those artists, and can give them money, buy online from them at much-reduced rates, and so on. I'd rather this than the old system.

I have digital subscriptions to two labels, which means for a flat fee I get FLACs of everything they release when it comes out. Without piracy, I'd have never heard anything they released in the first place. Every music fan has a story like this, I'm sure.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

I don't see a need to justify it further than; it's what most people want. From there, companies have to adapt their business models to fit in with what people will just go ahead and do anyway. I think we'll look back and laugh at those who didn't see the way the world was changing, and instead focused on dragging people into court.

Maybe in the future, artists will release all their work for free, and make money from touring, the live experience of course being far superior to an MP3 at home.

Likewise the movie industry, make the cinema experience irresistable for film fans and give them copies of the film on Blu-ray for free at the screening. Work with Netflix and broadband providers to make home viewing cheap, reliable and of supremely high quality. Make it easier to turn on your telly and watch a Blu-ray streamed from the internet than it would be to download it, stick it on a USB stick, and shove it in the telly.

Games companies are almost there, digital distribution is now the norm, and a lot of games are enhanced enormously through online expansion and subscription services. EA has always referred to "pirates" as their customers, because they use and enjoy their work, this is the critical difference between technology companies and the other industries affected by copyright "theft"

EA now give away many games for free.

Adapt or die!

These austere times are here to stay, and while there may be less money to go around, there is still money to be made for those who geddit.

I'm surprised with the closure of Cheggit the porn site. Personally speaking, I joined many paysites after downloading "tasters" FNAAR FNAAR from there. It struck me at the time, maybe the owners of those sites are uploading the odd clip so that anyone interested in Russian students being talked into giving blowjobs in stairwells might give us some money!

_{It's czechstreets.org if you're interested, and it's almost as good as cashforsextape}

[madhair60]

I have stopped pirating games in the last year or so, and everything I have pirated I now own legitimately, 99% down to the cheap  prices that Steam throws out so routinely.

Steam is basically the Best Thing.