Torrent Talk Wrap Up: 05-23-08

You know, we have entered a brave new world. Chilling Effect doesn’t even begin to describe it. We are in a virtual Ice Age. Trackers, search engines (well, not the big ones) are being sued, not for any money they may have (they don’t) but rather to set precedents and make examples.

I would normally write several paragraphs of flippant commentary peppered with links that punctuate my points through association. Not today. Today I have decided to utilize a method known as The Wall of Shame. Shame to the entertainment industry for being (once again) so myopic, reactionary and greedy in the short term at the expense of the long run. But also, shame upon us for laying back and letting it happen. It’s like the artificial shortages and inflation of costs for energy, food, water, et. al. We just keep paying. That’s a form of support you know. No protest equals permission.

I see the same things happening with the torrent/intellectual property communities at large. Sure, there’s the odd rebellious organization or person to stand up (and to sometimes take one for the “team”) but by and large, what I see and experience first hand is a lot passive leecher behavior but not a lot of active participant (seeder) behavior. Shouldn’t we be lined up in front of Shell Oil and Warner Brothers, throwing rotten tomatoes and declaring, “I’m not buying your shit anymore until you wise up!” Shouldn’t we support our right to information? Shouldn’t we do everything we can to set up guerrilla operations, that move swiftly and silently in the night, swapping IPs, locating to new countries at a whim, and multiplying in numbers so large that the idiots finally give up through the sheer force of attrition?

Yeah, right.

Without further adieu, this week’s wall of shame.

• The Pirate Bay File Police Bribery Complaints (Book’em Dano)
• Michael Jackson to Take on The Pirate Bay (From the Neverwasland files…)
• Is Watching An Infringing YouTube Video Copyright Infringement? (Can you spell Thought Crime? I knew you could…)
• University Makes Students Take Copyright Quiz To Get Timed Access To P2P (So if Lars is traveling on a train to Amsterdam and he has two songs that no one knows about and 10,000 people discover his music who didn’t know about it before, how many pennies in royalties does he lose?)
• Warner Brothers Shuts Down Auction For Children’s Cancer Charity (Filthy cancer pirates! They’re like…uh, well…cancer.)
• NSA site goes down in blaze of badly-engineered DNS glory (Thank gopod the smart guys are here to save us all from the terrorizers)
• Your national paranoia state at work (d00d, I got the fear…)
• File Sharing Comes to the iPhone (Uh, how handy?)
• WOW! Privacy talk free for all on Gilmore Gang (When they come to take us away, we’ll still be sittting around talking smack like this…)
• Don’t tell Hollywood: The Pirate Bay now 97th most visited site (File under, “Hollywood passes on another ticket to the Cluetrain”)
• Mininova Faces Legal Action: Filter or Else (This is the kind of chickenshit, second hand CENSORSHIP tactics that really give me goosebumps. I hear goosesteps?)
• BREIN wants to shutdown Mininova (Ugh. Ditto)
• $4M MPAA ShowStash, Cinematube, judgments (See?)
• SceneAccess and NFOrce Under Pressure from BREIN (and another one’s down, and another one’s gone…)
• If you can’t beat ‘em: Comcast invests in P2P firm (This just in: Britney goes punk!)
• Pioneering Music Piracy Group Suffers Another Conviction (Warez is not a city in Mexico…)
• Proposed US ACTA multi-lateral intellectual property trade agreement (Everybody sing! We are the world…)
• Steal the footage from Steal this Film (I needed to end on a up tempo beat)

Until next week: Run cloaked, share at least as much as you download and support your community. (Oh yeah, and if some freaking movie studio and oil company offices (unoccupied) were to mysteriously incinerate in the middle of the night, it might make old Uncle Torrenttalk very happy.)