Today is a sad day for progress in the case against recent SOPA/PIPA/anti-censorship campaigns. Btjunkie was essentially a directory of torrents (files which contain information about where to find other files) which was majorly used to download movies/software/music etc. – most of which was illegal. The point that we should be concerned about here, is that btjunkie felt threatened after recent action taken against megaupload, to close voluntarily. Btjunkie did not host the copyright materials, but rather pointed the user to where it was stored; essentially it was a directory of links. Essentially btjunkie was one of the most powerful search engines – like Google – but specifically for these torrent files. The fact that they have retreated, instead of fighting the cause, does not bode well for the future. This may even be detrimental to future cases when quoted.
My view is that people should have a choice…. If you choose to download things illegally then that is your call – you are liable, NOT the website that hosted a link to the content. What ever happened to freewill?
To be continued…
Well there’s still ISOhunt. They actually have a legal team and have managed to stay in operation through all this MPAA/RIAA turmoil. I think part of the reason is because they do comply with all requests to remove specific torrents from their system on receiving ‘cease and desists’ from content owners. Of course there’s also pirate bay who goes the guerilla approach and is constantly relocating servers to different countries as they get shut down. Currently I think they are in sweden, after being booted from the US and then the Cayman islands. Tough business to be in, eh?
Chris recently posted..Thoughts on Mint.com
You make a good point. I think the whole ‘removing links to content upon request’ thing only really buys them time in the long run. That said there will always be a country somewhere in the world which welcomes the publicity/income/development of hosting such servers. P2P sharing is not new and in my eyes will always exist! The penalties may just get more severe for those who share the most content! Do you download from these sites?
savvyscot recently posted..I’ve Got my Baby Back 🙂