I say let’s make the torrentspy.com domain a tribute to the old TorrentSpy. Maybe even an information page, with everything needed for anyone to enter and continue torrent downloads and uploads, such as downloads for BitTorrent clients (with detailed reviews), tutorials on using and creating torrents, an FAQ about torrents and P2P in general, plenty of information about self-defense in legal situations, more information on how to avoid those situations, and links to popular torrent sites and/or a torrent download section. This will help those P2P newbies when they’re starting out so they can escape the same legal issues that TorrentSpy faced before it’s too late.

RIP TorrentSpy

Justin i know the money is worth it and a man gets greedy but you could of faught for us little guys the guys who believe in P2P Shareing. People don’t understant once you let the government control one thing then it will control another and another and another until people go, WAIT A MIN. THE GOV IS TAKING OUR RIGHTS AWAY.

p2p is a right , if we abuse file sharing illegally such as people who sneak into movie theaters to film a movie that isn’t released.
HELLO UNETHICAL, Hire people within the company to monitor the site, if its illegal erase it. Ban the person from the site ( IP ADDRESS , MAC ADDRESS) all this law suit shit back and fourth stupid you can’t prove anything becuase the consitution and Internet law (government) are combined together people would just go back and fourth. If you Agree post

(P2P Forever) at the bottom!

“the end is near…for torrents that is” -Xander Dowler-

Who here has even heard of Torrents.se?

My sympathy for any legal action taken against you. Good luck with everything, fuck the MPAA.

> … That’s all I was saying, shutting down the torrent system doesn’t halt the original rippers of music, TV & movies who post to newsgroups,that’s the point!

True. But as you argue yourself later on, at least I read it that way, the main concern of the industry is the mass file sharing. A couple of rippers don’t eat into their revenue. They want the _masses_ to buy the stuff.

> … Thus if the masses can’t get their product via the torrent system, they’ll all mass migrate to the more efficient and ultra fast direct downloading of material via Usenet servers!

Hmm. I’m not so sure about that. Easy-to-use ways to download from industry servers, probably taken over from the torrent community, might be appealing for many torrent users. Even the visible individuals of the torrent community argue that the industry should embrace bittorrent.

> Also with public torrents the entertainment industry was forcing web-based companies such as TorrentSpy to supply a list of IP addresses of every user downloading & seeding of a particular torrent(s)! With Usenet servers, it’s direct download, no seeding back, thus there’s no mass file sharing!

I would argue as you do. But I draw a different conclusion. It makes sense for the industry to spread fear that file sharers can be catched and punished. Give them a little peace of mind by providing something else, that does not involve mass file sharing. I agree, that’s the main point. There is no money to be made from mass file sharing. Usenet servers might an alternative. Maybe for both sides. I believe however, that Usenet servers are more vulnerable to stupid legislation and easier to emulate than a peer to peer network. The industry would probably be happy to provide a legal way to download at a fast speed from their servers. They can of course name their servers whatever they like. Call them “Usenet servers”, “direct download”, “ultra fast”. We have seen this kind of strategy against torrent sites lately and going back all the way to Napster.

> What you say at the end of your comment makes no sense! P2P (peer to peer) is file sharing, it’s only a better way to distribute if you want to go to jail! P2P is: you have a list of songs, TV programs, movies, etc. on your hard drive which you make available to the P2P network. Every time you log on to a P2P network to download something, you’re getting that file from many users all at once while at the same time your own list of files on your hard drive is made available to be shared for uploading to all users!

Again, I agree. And I also see the danger that one could be thrown into jail. However, I like to emphasize the positive aspect of a P2P network. I can share something with others whether some authority (server) allows (provides) it or not. Okay, I have to ask a tracker who’s got the pieces that I want. And I have to ask an indexer what’s the hash for the file that I want. But everyone with a decent network card would be able run a tracker, when times are getting harder. And a torrent indexer doesn’t work totally different than any old search engine. What I like about P2P is that it is distributed, not centralized. Distributed systems are more robust against disturbances. At least, that’s what I like to believe. But you are right that the risk for the individual file sharer is higher than for the individual Usenet client.

> Thus a huge police net can grab all you guys at anytime,yah, real smart!

Maybe. However, zebras in large numbers are doing a lot better than rhinos with strong defenses.

> Finally P2P is incredible slow and inefficient in comparison to direct download via an ultra fast Usenet provider!

Okay, P2P exchange is slower than downloading from a Usenet server. The efficiency is probably higher, because the maximum bandwith in the net doesn’t need to be as large as the download bandwith from one fast server. I can provide my upload bandwith for someone else to use as download bandwith. With a lot of peers a downloader can get decent, still slower than direct download, speed. Well, “decent speed” is aguable, of course. If I wanted to watch _this_ movie after dinner I would probably have to go for a fast and direct download. But if I wanted to watch _a_ movie after dinner, I can watch the one I file shared yesterday.

RIP

http://www.fileprompt.com

You missed the point I was making, the entertainment industry is trying to crack down on people getting their hands on songs, TV programs & movies being shared among users on the Internet via public torrents. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter because everyone is getting these products from the same few rippers! If you could shutdown the entire torrent system (both public & private), all that would do would be to force users to a more direct, private and secure system by downloading via Usenet servers! That’s all I was saying, shutting down the torrent system doesn’t halt the original rippers of music, TV & movies who post to newsgroups–that’s the point! Thus if the masses can’t get their product via the torrent system, they’ll all mass migrate to the more efficient and ultra fast direct downloading of material via Usenet servers! Also with public torrents the entertainment industry was forcing web-based companies such as TorrentSpy to supply a list of IP addresses of every user downloading & seeding of a particular torrent(s)! With Usenet servers, it’s direct download, no seeding back, thus there’s no mass file sharing! What you say at the end of your comment makes no sense! P2P (peer to peer) is file sharing, it’s only a better way to distribute if you want to go to jail! P2P is: you have a list of songs, TV programs, movies, etc. on your hard drive which you make available to the P2P network. Every time you log on to a P2P network to download something, you’re getting that file from many users all at once while at the same time your own list of files on your hard drive is made available to be shared for uploading to all users! Thus a huge police net can grab all you guys at anytime–yah, real smart! Finally P2P is incredible slow and inefficient in comparison to direct download via an ultra fast Usenet provider!

It’s not a joke to go after public torrents. It makes a lot of sense for the industry to transform torrent users into direct download users. Downloaders are much easier to control because they are in a server-client relationship. First you give them a reasonably priced, super fast, direct download to ease them into using direct download. Then you open some servers yourself or buy those that are around already and fix the price to whatever amount you want. Third, there is no seeding of copyrighted material, which is a major headache for the industry. And last but not least, there is no need for a large policing force that goes after file sharers, probably asks a lot of money and produces untolerable amounts of bad PR for the industry. That’s what I would propose if I was an industry adviser.

P2P is a much better way to distribute data because the peers decide what’s going on, not the server.

VIVA LA GFY.COM

Think how differently things would have turned out if the music industry had said “Gee, this MP3 format seems to be getting popular. Maybe we should setup some kind of online store and sell music in MP3 format. It’ll cost us next to nothing to sell downloads and we can make a profit even at $.25 a song!”

Would Napster even have been invented? Why create a network to find and download music when you can go to one web site and legally download any song you want? Without Napster, would the other file sharing networks even exist? Maybe they would, but maybe their developement would have come much later.

Of course the music industry did what what every content industry does when a new form of technology appears; Try to have it declared illegal. The same thing happened with the VCR, DAT, CD Burners, etc.

When the music industry DID finally get around to noticing (a decade late) that people wanted to be able to obtain music in a digital format, they opened subscription services with limited selections, restrictive DRM, custom software required and prices that were completely out of touch with the actual costs of supplying digital downloads.

You want a real-world example?

I have a collection of about 50 games for Windows that I’ve bought either at a local closeout store (back when they used to get software that wasn’t crap) or on eBay. Now that I have a 3Mbs DSL connection, I could easily download any game I want. If given a choice between downloading a game for free, or paying $40+ for it at a retail store, I’ll probably download it. If the choice was between downloading it for free, or buying it for $10 at the closeout store, I’d happily buy it, just to have the manual and a factory copy of the disc.

By the same token, I’d also happily pay $5-10 to download a legal copy, IF it was supplied as a file that could easily be backed up to CD/DVD and didn’t require a net connection for online “activation”. (I still don’t own Half-Life 2 for this very reason)

People will pay if you give them a product that they want. The record companies want people to pay for the product that THEY want to supply.

I’m glad they shut down. They did the right thing. You know that 3 or more similar sites will just take its place anyhow.