Millions of File-Sharers Hide Their Identities Online
Written by Ernesto on November 03, 2009Millions of file-sharers have responded to the entertainment industry lobby by taking measures to hide their identities. A recent survey found that in Sweden alone, half a million Internet subscribers use anonymizing services. The findings further suggest that tougher anti-piracy legislation will boost these numbers significantly.
As pressure from anti-piracy outfits on governments to implement strict anti-piracy laws increases, millions of file-sharers have decided to protect their privacy by going anonymous. In Sweden alone an estimated 500,000 Internet subscribers are hiding their identities. Many more say they will follow suit if the Government continues to toughen copyright law.
These findings are the result of the Cyber Norms sociological research project carried out by a group of Swedish researchers. The researchers conducted a survey among Swedes aged between 15 and 25 and found that 10 percent of this group is currently taking measures against increasing online surveillance.
Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimates the percentage of all Swedes who are hidden on the Internet to be as high as 6 or 7 percent. If this figure is accurate, it means that there are more than half a million Swedes who already use a service to hide their identity.
The researchers note that file-sharing is not the only reason for people to anonymize their connection, but the results of the survey clearly show that avid file-sharers would rather hide their identities than stop downloading. And indeed, over the past months we’ve seen that more and more BitTorrent users are seeking ways to protect their privacy online, rendering all the newly proposed anti-piracy laws useless.
Contrary to what the anti-piracy lobby had hoped for, file-sharers are not an easy catch. Their calls for harsher copyright legislation are only driving ‘pirates’ underground. According to the Cyber Norms survey, more than half of all respondents said they would take measures to protect their identities if anti-piracy laws in Sweden are toughened, as is currently happening in the UK and France.
Currently, the most common and widely used privacy services are VPNs. These services allow a user to connect to the Internet while hiding their own IP-address. Millions of file-sharers around the world use services like this to prevent being tracked by anti-piracy companies, and this number is increasing rapidly.
The recently launched Itshidden service is one of the few that offer a free service in addition to premium subscriptions. Due to its increased popularity the owners recently had to disable new registrations in order to keep the service running smoothly. In just a few months Itshidden signed up over 100,000 members. Other VPN services report an increase in signups too.
The anti-piracy laws currently being mulled have created a flourishing multi-million dollar ‘online privacy’ industry. In recent months these services have seen a massive increase in customers, with most of them paying around $10 per month to prevent third parties from logging their download behavior.
Perhaps the entertainment industry should invest some time and money in creating legal and attractive alternatives to piracy. Apparently most file-sharers are willing to pay $120 a year for unlimited and unhindered access.
Previously: DRM Breaker Reports Himself To Anti-Piracy Group
Next: Secret Anti-Piracy Treaty Turns ISPs into Pirates
79 Responses
i would pay 240€/$ a year for the quality i get on bittorrent, but i gues this will never happen…
Apparently most file-sharers are willing to pay $120 a year for unlimited and unhindered access. says what source?
C’mon TF you usually cite your sources….
Or another FACT
http://www.fact-uk.org.uk/
Well, torrenters in Sweden only do this because of the fact that many people in Sweden have high-speed home connections.. It is definitely worth the money if you have it.
I currently pay between 110 to 160 a year for my VPN and occasional usenet/rapidshare/megaupload account etc
It may sound like a lot, but break it down per month and it really works out pretty cheap…. and to put thing REALLY into perspective, I would be paying around 600Euros just for cable television without the option of getting the latest shows, music, movies and software.
No regrets… at all.
@ anonymous
In the previous paragraph it says “In recent months these services have seen a massive increase in customers, with most of them paying around $10 per month…”
$10 a month, is $120 a year. There is your source.
having tried itshidden and ipredator, i’d say itshidden (free) works faster (or used to, haven’t tried since the limit) but ipredator connects to torrents better
but yeah….more and more people are realising its their right to not be spied on and persecuted for their downloading habits!
$10.00 a month X 12 months = $120.00
no source needed just basic math
“In recent months these services have seen a massive increase in customers, with most of them paying around $10 per month to prevent third parties from logging their download behavior.”
Of course I’ll hide my IP. I already do via http://www.swissvpn.net/
Obviously, Although I don’t agree it’s illegal, I don’t actually want to get caught, do I. Not that I’m doing anything wrong, no sireeeeee.
well Brian, swiss vpn ain’t that much, it’s only €3 so “apparently” that math dont stand up
the article said most of them are paying around $10 dollars a month. im sure if they shopped around they could get a cheaper price, like you said 3 dollars
I’v used many different free VPN’s and find that they are really slow, and sometimes adware ridden. I am about to try Itshidden, hope its better!
By going after file sharers, the one that will be really happy will be the one providing some VPN or other. And by annoying customers like that, they’ll soon see that their method of doing things is wrong. More and more people are turning their backs to them.
Don’t come crying when it’s too late to provide an alternative we’ve asked for a long time. You are starting to miss your opportunity to profit from “Piracy”.
You’ve been warned little cry babies.
swiss VPN is fast, avoids throttling no adds, gud price. anonyminity. wats not to like?
Yep anonyminity
Avoid Lawsuits
Buy DVDs
2nd Hand
whats the first rule of fight club?
i used to use a vpn but i usually dont as im lazy
Just wait a month or so for big name stuff, no need to hide, once the swarm size drops they stop shooting the fish in a barrel and move on to the next big thing.
if only they offered a service like rapidshare or megaupload, where you pay a monthly fee, and get unlimited access to a vast library of high quality media at line speeds with download accelerator support. I pay 30 euro a month for my internet, and a further 7 for a monthly rapidshare. And then, every one or two weeks, I go to an internet cafe, pay about 7 euro for six or seven hours, and come away with close to 20-30 Gigabytes of new media, through my rapidshare premium account.
All in all, thats around 50 euro a month, and none of it goes to the MAFIAA. If they developed a service exactly like that, I would eagerly sign up.
we’re goin underground if need be ;)
Can you use VPN’s with private trackers?
I use a SSH tunnel which I pay a small fee for, but I can only use it for public trackers
Thanks
i,ve using them for about 3yrs now much more peace of mind
VPNs? Paid subscription services?
They all lack “anonymity by design”, because they still store your info, in order to bill you. If they say that they don’t, you have to trust them not to have your info to hand over in case of a court order.
I am yet to see a service (free or paid) that offers “anonymity by design” and not “by policy”.
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/anonymity-design-versus-policy
@22
“They all lack “anonymity by design”, because they still store your info, in order to bill you. ”
Bullshit if they sell an unlimited bandwidth service why would they need to store your data?
I don’t get why you would need to pay to hide your identity online when you can use services that can’t or wont be tracked by anti piracy groups. You can also buy newsgroups for the same price you would be paying for a vpn at the same time you would save your upload bandwidth.
www graffitimaker com
@22
ToR is NOT for torrents. The ToR network is not designed for heavy data transfer, and trying to do so will ruin the network.
You can relay the tracker traffic through Tor and keep the rest outside of Tor.
If you want torrents in an anonymous network: use I2P.
@22 Hi, yes they have your payment information, but they don’t track what sites you visit.
This is what makes it anonymous.
The only thing a court can do with the bill of a VPN is say that you’ve used a VPN. They can’t say what you used it for, only assume.
Well with bias and glad handing so abundant in the Swedish legal system – what do they expect?
@28
”
The only thing a court can do with the bill of a VPN is say that you’ve used a VPN. They can’t say what you used it for, only assume.”
In fact, with harsher logging legislations like the IPRED in Sweden, they know exactly which packets are exchanged between a server (containing for example, illegal material) and your VPN IP (which often only you use, so it maps back to you perfectly)
That way, they know what you did, and with the connection logs (Which many VPN operators keep to track kiddy porn activity and stuff) you’re beef.
@30, @22
You are a couple of ill informed asshats. Haven’t you ever heard of prepaid mastercards? You can pick them up anywhere in most major cities, paying CASH.
Poof, bye bye papertrail. As long as my VPN provider gets their dough they don’t give a flying fart who I am.
Do you have to route all your web traffic through a VPN or can you just use it for it stuff you need secure?
The reason I ask is about gaming pings if its been routed through to different countries?
Oh just come 2 india the heaven 4 file sharing no 1 gonna ask and interfere in your work
Yet another example of the cowardly nature of P2P’ers. The natural thing to do when running away from a crime is to hide your identity – destroy the evidence.
Why not come out into the open and make your case? Or are you afraid that it will fall onto ears that were deafened by your own doing? Ears that were deafened by the repeated cries of “we’re not doing anything wrong”?
Sure, Reasoned Mind, you just reveal your identity first…
@Nothing To Hide,
Don’t be silly, the rules dont apply to people like her. How dare you ask such a question slave? Now work your ass off and give to those who need to buy their next packet of blow.
looks like we all will have to use this.
http://www.likemyscreenshot.com
@32 Normally all of your traffic will go through whatever VPN you’ve configured, partly in order to reduce your exposure – i.e. you don’t want to leave the front door open while you’re doing stuff via your private tunnel; better to make everyone who wants to talk to you do so via the tunnel. However you’re free to edit your OS’s routing table after connecting to the VPN. I used to do this when working from home so that I could still access my home LAN and do other things that I didn’t want being sent through my employer’s network. In Windows this amounted to just running a little script to do a couple of ‘route add’ and ‘route delete’ commands.
No doubt, that’s the REAL money the industry is actually losing!
Anonymous P2P ontop of VPN. The industry cartels can kiss my A$$.
problem is all the big four need to take you to court is you used 100gig this month you must be downloading illegal stuff havent you guys red all the blogs
One day the RIAA/MPAA will quietly and secretly meet with lawmakers, wine and dine them introducing them to celebrities, and brainwash the lawmakers into passing laws banning VPN services, and they will also make it illegal to use such services.
Of course this will be done to “protect children” and Reasoned Troll and .neo.troll will be rpraising the new laws.
Old news is old…
@23 Nov 04, 2009 at 02:28 by jemoer
The law says VPNs have to log what people do.
http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Transposition
And inside the E.U. is even codified already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_2006/24/EC
So no, no VPN is anonymous, is secure and offer some level of privacy but by no means it is anonymous.
No lets assume that the VPN service provider don’t hold data like IPs, time of login, pages requests and other things the law requires in some countries. How a VPN service will negate authorities to come in and install surveillance equipment?
All telcos in the U.S. did it for bush, someone really thinks that countries like the U.K. or France the governments will not do it?
Please don’t be naive. If you want to use VPNs that is fine just know that they do have limitations.
And for people who think they are anonymous by paying with a pre paid credit card(thats a oxymoron) you still connect with your real IP address and they log that. Unless you never use the account with your real IP, but in that case you would have to use another proxy so why would you pay for that.
Well, no shit.
If you’re going to outlaw sitting on chairs, I’m going to start calling my chair a stool.
It’s common sense to avoid getting punished.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/11/big-content-using-moral-panics-to-change-copyright-law.ars
Moral panics LoL
I love the alusions in the book.
- 3 Strikes is the guillotine.
- DRM is the chastise belt on another mans wife LoL
- Copyright is a cancer.
“The Copyright Wars and the recent grotesque expansion of rights and remedies should be regarded as a legal equivalent of the subprime mortgage crisis: cancers on our system that were foreseeable and preventable but for greed, a failed ideology that the unregulated private pursuit of profit is also in the best interest of the public, and worldwide lack of political courage to admit to and take responsibility for the damage caused by copyright laws that harm rather than serve the public.”
But the best quote is the last.
“in other areas where a government monopoly, created to serve the public interest, is blatantly abused over a long period of time, it is taken away.”
Those people keep abusing the law to gain something will soon find out what “the people” really means LoL
“Perhaps the entertainment industry should invest some time and money in creating legal and attractive alternatives to piracy. Apparently most file-sharers are willing to pay $120 a year for unlimited and unhindered access.”
Well said, Ernesto!
30 Nov 04, 2009 at 03:56 by Anonymouse
@28
”
The only thing a court can do with the bill of a VPN is say that you’ve used a VPN. They can’t say what you used it for, only assume.”
In fact, with harsher logging legislations like the IPRED in Sweden, they know exactly which packets are exchanged between a server (containing for example, illegal material) and your VPN IP (which often only you use, so it maps back to you perfectly)
That way, they know what you did, and with the connection logs (Which many VPN operators keep to track kiddy porn activity and stuff) you’re beef.
Not exactly. I couldn’t find the article addressing this but it was debunked. Basically what the log will say is that you connected to the vpn server @ time, then disconnected at another time. I seen this so basically it just says ip * connected then disconnected. Basically nothing.
41 Nov 04, 2009 at 06:47 by jon7272
problem is all the big four need to take you to court is you used 100gig this month you must be downloading illegal stuff havent you guys red all the blogs
Not true as for this will never hold true water in court. They just tried it in his case & it doesn’t look like he had too much of a defense given some information that was shown. I surely hope that it was all automatic as for almost any user can set up a chat room that people can connect to and send files one way or another. I have heard both sides such as they have nothing but some say they have something. I guess we will hear later. There is no law saying that if you use X gigs per month that you must be downloading illegal stuff as for there would be millions in that boat. It is not guilty but we didn’t find anything incriminating. Its if they find nothing, no case. Furk the parasites.
42 Nov 04, 2009 at 06:56 by diarRIAA
One day the RIAA/MPAA will quietly and secretly meet with lawmakers, wine and dine them introducing them to celebrities, and brainwash the lawmakers into passing laws banning VPN services, and they will also make it illegal to use such services.
Of course this will be done to “protect children” and Reasoned Troll and .neo.troll will be rpraising the new laws.
Hardly, you would have to ban ssl, and other similar services. Do you really think that people want all of their bank info transferred in plain view for anyone to swipe. This would go for everything. Lets not forget about those online orders. Well since you ordered whatever, your credit card data is logged & was distributed to X# of people because of packed inspection. So now you would & and many others would have to deal with fraud so bad that it would be epidemic/pandemic levels. Secure tunnels protect such data weather it be ssl, ssh, socks5 (if configured correctly) not tor as data passes through several places and can be logged, vpn, direct download link, etc.
44 Nov 04, 2009 at 08:18 by Anonymous
@23 Nov 04, 2009 at 02:28 by jemoer
The law says VPNs have to log what people do.
http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Transposition
And inside the E.U. is even codified already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_2006/24/EC
So no, no VPN is anonymous, is secure and offer some level of privacy but by no means it is anonymous.
No lets assume that the VPN service provider don’t hold data like IPs, time of login, pages requests and other things the law requires in some countries. How a VPN service will negate authorities to come in and install surveillance equipment?
All telcos in the U.S. did it for bush, someone really thinks that countries like the U.K. or France the governments will not do it?
Please don’t be naive. If you want to use VPNs that is fine just know that they do have limitations.
Not exactly. I couldn’t find the article addressing this but it was debunked. Basically what the log will say is that you connected to the vpn server @ time, then disconnected at another time. I seen this so basically it just says ip * connected then disconnected. Basically nothing. Also who says that you have to use whatver vpn that logs. If you you come across one and it and it logs, switch providers if you don’t like whatever it logs if anything. Vpn’s are so redundant nowdays that there are so many to choose from that limits are virtually none. Not all vpn’s are widely known about. I ever so often will stumble over a new one I find on the net that I have never heard of. Many months later, many others may not still have heard about it but that doesn’t make it not good or less quality because it is not a big brand name such as http://www.itshidden.com which is a great service but most have heard about it because it told the world that it was giving away free access & that pretty much everyone should have it & why they should have a vpn. As many other providers do not advertise so broadly it is quite possible to have a service that is advertised friend to friend or pirate to pirate or whatever to whatever. I have several vpn’s which I have only heard about from others saying what kind of service they provide (good, reliable, etc). Had others not spoken about the very nice services & I had not seen articles or whatever about the product, I would not know about them.
If it is said that whatever user was busted for using whatever vpn & it is found that the company gave away info, you can probably consider them toast as for many will stitch providers & tell others about the situation & it will probably be in the news so vpn logging is not something that is to be done. Also, the internet is worldwide so if they ever take one vpn down, another one will replace it. Same as file sharing sites.
I would not use a vpn if it logs users as for what would the point be? I might as well just connect regularly although sometimes I can get a better connection connecting through a vpn rather than just regular accessing the internet.
Basically for whatever reason, being anonymous is popular. It may be used to protect whistleblowers, to write your senator, to email grandma, to connect your skype phone call or whatever voip service you use, download your files, send a picture to your friend in Fiji, or just browse your myspace or facebook. Heck why not even watch youtube with it? Most work like your regular connection so not really many drawbacks if any. You will want to make sure to set up your vpn though to auto-reconnect and redial on 1sec though prob for 9999999999999999 seconds so if your connection goes down though, your regular ip will not take over and resume. The redial feature is so that it will redial so often it will not allow any traffic to pass through until the connection is re-established with the vpn or the operation is canceled on the user side.
@Reasoned Mind: Not everyone wants the world to know they look at goat porn and some people would prefer their governments to not know they are doing something, be it legal, illegal, or simply treason.
maybe TF could do an article on exactly what info places like ipredator keep.
So you used a pre-paid credit card to sign up, no paper trail.
If you didn’t then the courts can tell you have paid to use a VPN, thats all?
Do these places keep logs of what IP was assigned to who at what time? Do you always get a new IP when you log in? are several people sharing an IP?
The really paranoid should have a look at try http://www.perfect-privacy.com/
I, e.g., paid using codes of anonymous prepaid cards which I bought at a gas station using cash.
This is how it should be done. No connection to your Name through your Credit Card or Paypal Account.
This is honestly starting to amuse me
“Apparently most file-sharers are willing to pay $120 a year for unlimited and unhindered access.”
Classic quote, great insight TF!
@Anonymouse
“That way, they know what you did, and with the connection logs (Which many VPN operators keep to track kiddy porn activity and stuff) you’re beef.”
Then shouldn’t those logs be used to track kiddy porn instead of breaching people’s privacy?
@44
well, in case of using vpn, one needs to check on regular bases, if local laws change. in the EU, it becomes difficult indeed, but f.e. switzerland is not member of the EU… ;)
I pay more in VPN subscriptions to get around the communist internet blockade here in China, than I pay for broadband itself.
Now it seems Sweden is going the same way as China, this is not good.
@47
Goat porn? Is that why p2p’ers are so mad about regulation, they’re obsessed with bestiality?
Also, the fact that people are trying to hide their identities and run away just re-inforces the fact that this is illegal, and that you hold it this way. If torrenting and other means of p2p data transfer were morally correct, as you claim, why not do it in open, as a protest against government?
Meh. Carry on, I always figured that you lot were spineless anyway.
The right to hide identities online must be granted by the constitution.
@ Reasoned Mind:
your an idoit!
All these people could be paying for digital consumer flatrates instead of these services, but the industry seems to prefer to bitch, whine and prosecute(read: make enemies rather than / ) instead of make money.
Stupid, stupid industry.
@55
Let’s be honest here. If the industry happened to offer an ‘unlimited, online database’, then a few people would be able to easily and quickly, and cheaply download and then upload the content onto p2p sites (and so, the others wouldn’t have to).
When that happened, your next step would be to say that the industry should roll out a free service.
tl;dr: No matter what ‘the industry’ does, you’ll whine.
I’m paying nothing with Itshidden :)
@31
Even if you pay using a pre-paid MasterCard, the VPN company has your home IP and the VPN’s IP.
Of course you can try to hide your IP by using open wifi’s or a prepaid mobile connection.
Open wifi’s are great. Not only can you leech free internet, you can even store your loot in shared folders.
Why stop at open wifi’s? It doesn’t take much brains or time to hack a secured wifi connection, leech free internet and store loot in shares folders.
It’s so easy to implicate innocent parties of all kinds of illegal activities. For example: piracy, t*rrorist activities/threats, kiddy p*rn, fraud, etc. This is the same reason why botnets are so attractive – no one gets caught and the finger is pointed at an innocent party that takes the fall. It’s the exact same thing with wireless.
Oh gee. I hope someone isn’t stupid enough to hack a politician or RIAA/MPAA corporation executive/lawyers wifi, plant highly illegal files in their or their familie shared folders and reports them to the police/FBI. ;)
IMO, Furk.net is simply the best way to do this. It’s free and all. Only problem, of course, is that you can’t seed and actually fileshare.
@56 Nov 04, 2009 at 15:52 by SomeGuy:
So what?
Google competes with free and is doing fine.
Red Hat compete with free and even with itself and is doing fine.
Broadcast TV compete with free and it is doing fine.
Madonna is competing with free and is doing fine.
Where are the numbers showing that artists are making less money?
Can you produce those figures from sources that people can verify?
I know you can’t so I will just go ahead and call you a liar.
By the way if you had any spine in you and was convinced that you were morally correct you would post your name and address for all to see who you are, why don’t you?
You won’t of course do that but some reason you have to hide and by your own definition everybody who hides is a criminal right? So what moral grounds do you have to speak to others about morals?
@56 Perhaps so, but how is that any different from what’s happening now on a longer timeline? The numerous free & anonymous alternatives to licensed vendors continue to expand and are on their way to comprising a massive online, distributed database of content. The tools to help organize and access it conveniently are primitive for now, but continue to evolve. Yet despite the proliferation of a significant portion of the industry’s content (and then some) to these unauthorized venues, there seems to be no shortage of people willing to fork over their money and personal information to the iTunes Store, Amazon, Rhapsody, and so on. So even with the increasing convenience offered by the black market sources of content, it seems there will continue to be a substantial commercial market for content distributed via authorized services. The industry would be wise to continue to improve these services to compete with the free networks. They might also consider just investing in the competition. When you can’t beat ‘em…
58 Nov 04, 2009 at 14:35 by SomeGuy
@47
Goat porn? Is that why p2p’ers are so mad about regulation, they’re obsessed with bestiality?
Also, the fact that people are trying to hide their identities and run away just re-inforces the fact that this is illegal, and that you hold it this way. If torrenting and other means of p2p data transfer were morally correct, as you claim, why not do it in open, as a protest against government?
Meh. Carry on, I always figured that you lot were spineless anyway.
See here:
Post # 67 By the way if you had any spine in you and was convinced that you were morally correct you would post your name and address for all to see who you are, why don’t you?
You won’t of course do that but some reason you have to hide and by your own definition everybody who hides is a criminal right? So what moral grounds do you have to speak to others about morals?
@66 Nov 04, 2009 at 19:20 by JTK
IMO, Furk.net is simply the best way to do this. It’s free and all. Only problem, of course, is that you can’t seed and actually fileshare.
If you want to seed, you have to purchase a subscription & the service works great bwt. You can seed to a 1-1 ratio if you set it. If not, it looks like the service only seeds when the file is available. After you download it, it doesn’t seed using the auto feature. You have to set it to do so. It does preserve the file though if you use the paid service so others can get it forever. Hope this helps & support the service. Thx.
So thieving children try to hide from the law?
Big deal. all criminals try and hide from the law. Most criminals are clever enough to understand that using a so called free proxy wont protect you from the FBI or the RIAA.
You kdis using peerguadian think you are safe?
hahahahahahahahahahaha
The problem with VPN providers is… that they are corporations, and therefore subject to stringent data retention laws (if they are EU-based).
The only solution would be a distributed (p2p) VPN network, e.g. a la I2P, tor or Freenet. In this network, everyone is a mini-VPN provider.
Big centralized VPN providers have their uses though, but anonymity is not one of them. An analogy would be centralized Bittorrent trackers (that are subpoenable) vs. a DHT swarm.
I lol’d @ goat p0rn. A few years ago I’d say such a person is sick, however I have learned to respect different…. Opinions…. lmao.
“Apparently most file-sharers are willing to pay $120 a year for unlimited and unhindered access.”
YES, I AM. On an article from TF some time ago it was said that 40 billion tracks were downloaded illegally. Then (I believe on the same article) they said if the price was down to .40 USD per song the piracy would go down by 50%.
Now, assuming iTunes sell tracks for $1 (average) and they sold like 2 billion songs in 3 years (so 2 billion dollars revenues) and that 50% is too much so only 20% of the piracy would be turned into revenues, that would be 8 billion songs in an year or 3.2 billion dollars in revenues in a single year.
Ok, if they don’t like this number they can always use the $120 from VPNs which would probably give some juicy revenues IF they added other nice services capable of retaining the users.
Wow. Tell me about money wasting…
@ Shelly Corrigan
Please, arrest over 100 million people (wait, that number is probably for the big countries in europe.. Add other 100 million for asia and other 100 million for the americas and other 100 for…. – AND I’M BEING CONSERVATIVE). Please, I’d love to see what jails would handle all those people. Pretty please.
@60 (zeebart):
Weird, I was always under the impression that people who responded with ad-hominem attacks without actually doing anything about the argument were the ones who were idiots.
@35 (Nothing to Hide):
And I didn’t mean to simply give up your identity to the (RIAA, MAFIAA, whatever you want to call it) who ask for it. God knows you’re doing the right thing for yourself by hiding your real identity on those risky online sites, no matter what it is that you do online.
What I meant was to open up your political position on this issue to the world. You don’t need to disclose what you pirate, just that you support the anti-copyright (or pro-sharing, whatever it’s called) movement with more than just your flimsy Internet identity.
@36 (http://www.eZee.se):
I’m not a “her”… and BTW, your “blow” supplier called. They want the payment for their next shipment of packets.
@83 Such a big subject, cleverly talked about by all here in one way or another and that’s the best you can do Dummy go look that up clever boy
@74 Reasoned Mind, thanks for the clarification. Putting one’s real identity behind one’s support of agendas in this realm (on either side) would still invite fishing expeditions and would just make one a target, naturally. Certain people associated with Creative Commons have been branded by industry attorneys & so forth as being “anti-copyright”, the very broad and inaccurate brush you paint us TF readers with. There’s a broad range of views here & elsewhere; I’d venture that many of us are very much pro-copyright, but, like the Creative Commons advocates, are against unnecessarily restrictive, increasingly impractical, culture-undermining, profit-maximizing licensing and ever-extended terms which prevent copyright’s intended limitations from working. You/the industry continues to reveal itself to be comfortable issuing blatant distortions of truth and ad hominem attacks in order to persuade the ignorant that people are “anti-copyright” if they’re in any way critical of your self-serving commoditization of art and abuse of copyright, the courts, and legislatures. And then there’s the issue of fabricated evidence, improper identification of alleged infringers, and other shenanigans that have come up in the music industry’s civil proceedings. One need only read Ray Beckerman’s blog for a few minutes to see how desperate the industry is to nail someone, anyone, for anything at all. Why expose ourselves to that kind of risk? Better to post anonymously.
A few do publish under their own names and engage in critical, rational discourse in copyright: William Patry, the Copycense bloggers, a few others… but the rest of us (yourself included) have chosen to inject our tiny, anonymous voices into the meme pool, reasoning that over time, we’ll exert some influence while we reiterate our positions and refine the points we choose to draw attention to. Even if it has no effect, it at least helps to make it clear that there’s a wide range of points of view, not just the two extremes that each side (industry & consumer) likes to brand just “right” and “wrong”.
@34: In the United States prior to 1865, one could be criminally prosecuted for housing or transporting runaway slaves. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 furthermore empowered slave catchers to freely cross state boundaries in pursuit of their quarry and enjoined local authorities to assist in the recovery of suspected runaways — even in free states. The law was contentious and drew considerable public criticism from abolitionists, who rightly declared it immoral, but so long as it was in effect, free citizens continued to be arrested for assisting escaped slaves. Some Americans therefore chose to clandestinely support runaway slaves by participating in the Underground Railroad, a network of safehouses and secret routes leading through the free states to Canada. They took measures to keep their activities secret because discovery would be ruinous for themselves, their families, and their accomplices. Were these people cowards for taking a stand while also acting to shield themselves from unjust laws? You may not agree that IP piracy is comparable to assisting runaway slaves, but yours is not ultimately the opinion that matters. The pirates clearly do believe in what they are doing (and I’m inclined to agree with them, since I understand that intellectual property, when taken to its logical extreme, necessarily requires mind control*) and are willing to continue sharing files regardless of the dictates of the law. That does not mean they must gleefully sacrifice themselves in order to make a point. That’s stupid. It is far more sensible to simply circumvent unjust laws until such time as they are no longer enforceable.
* No, this is not hyperbole. People are now being charged with copyright infringement for singing songs in public. What will happen if/when it becomes possible to digitally record and transmit human sensory information? Suddenly, your experience of a live concert would be considered “protected material”, the act of sharing your memories an infringement of some IP owners copyright. In a media-saturated environment full of proprietary imagery, you wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without owing royalties to scores of coporations. Under current and/or pending draconian IP laws, you would literally lose control of the contents of your own brain. That is mind control, and it is only a matter of time before a combination of advancing technology and retrograde legislation makes such absurd-seeming scenarios a reality. If the laws do not change by then, the consequences will be explosive.
@77 I don’t say this often but, coming from a clinical psychology professor from an Ivy League institution, I am pleasantly surprised. Your claim of piracy being analogous to underground slave activity is the most thought provoking idea I have read on this topic.
@73 That’s what the FEMA coffins are for silly.
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