Secret Copyright Law Reported

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Reality check --- Many laws are being ignored by some. I still believe that you are doing the same as the US "moral majority". You are part of a small minority and claim to represent nearly everyone.

And I still believe that you are deeply out of touch with the real world. It isn't easy to find statistics of numbers of downloaders from all available sources (which even a listing of the big ones would probably result in an editing of my post by cautious moderators) but I did find this link. In late 2008, the number of monthly users for a single bittorrent client was 28 million. And that 28,000,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to every source put together.

http://forums.techarena.in/web-news-trends/1093373.htm

The number of downloaders in the world is many, many millions.

Reality check -- apparently it will be getting easier to get caught in the future as this article seems to suggest?

And this will go one of two ways-- either the big growth industry of the 21st century will be building new prisons to house millions of new white collar prisioners-- or the laws will fail. Government over the majority fails when the majority do not wish to be governed over.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

And I still believe that you are deeply out of touch with the real world. It isn't easy to find statistics of numbers of downloaders from all available sources (which even a listing of the big ones would probably result in an editing of my post by cautious moderators) but I did find this link. In late 2008, the number of monthly users for a single bittorrent client was 28 million. And that 28,000,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to every source put together..

So are you suggesting that every single download represents a different individual? And how do Torrents count, per file or per part-of-file since a file is being downloaded in parts from many different sources. So even if the number is correct (which isn't verified -- we don't even know if they counted successful downloads only, a great number of failed attempts usually precede a successful download) you can easily divide it by a factor of a few 100 or even a few 1000 given vast numbers of multiple downloads by the same individual. And the same users will download 100s of files each months from different sources, I know several. So my guess of a few hundred thousand file sharers worldwide will probably not be far off.

Good joke at the end about building new prisons, etc..

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

So are you suggesting that every single download represents a different individual?

Read what I said, and what the article said. 28 million USERS, not 28 million downloads. USERS. Going by IP address. Your guess of "a few hundred thousand" is so utterly naive as to strain belief. I have seen individual torrents with multiple thousands of downloaders at once. And that isn't a rarity, that is an every day occurrence for fresh episodes of US TV shows and fresh fansubs of Japanese anime shows. Looking at the top recent torrent at (take the words anime and suki, squish them together, put a www at the front and a com at the end) has 2,000 people downloading it just at this moment. Do you really think that several percent of all downloaders in the world will be downloading a single file at the same time?

[osnova]

HansTWN,

Well, if it's just a small minority, then what is the fuss about? What's gotten into MPAA, IRAA? Why so much lobbying? Why create these secret international agreements? I think they want to put the genie back in the bottle.

[ardeegee]

Okay, found a tracker tracker. At this moment, there are 18.27 million "peers" currently active on the networks tracked by this site:

http://isohunt.com/stats.php?mode=btSites

Some of those will be the same person downloading more than one torrent at once-- but even if each person, on average, was downloading 10 torrents, that is still almost two million people downloading at this very moment.

[HansTWN]

assuming your figures are all accurate, aren't you forgetting that you should only count illegal downloads of copy righted materials?? How do you distinguish between them? There are plenty of regular uses for torrent downloads, I have used them many times for items such as very old movies, cell phone ROMs, and other items.

Not every torrent user is breaking the law.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

assuming your figures are all accurate, aren't you forgetting that you should only count illegal downloads of copy righted materials?? How do you distinguish between them? There are plenty of regular uses for torrent downloads, I have used them many times for items such as very old movies, cell phone ROMs, and other items.

Okay, you got me. 99.9 percent of all downloaders are getting public domain movies and cell phone ROMs, allowing you to deflate the tens of millions of users to the few hundred thousand in your fantasy world. (Is the grass blue there? Do cows hop and frogs give milk?)

[osnova]

What public domain movies are there? Any worth watching?

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

(Is the grass blue there? Do cows hop and frogs give milk?)

How did you know?

Well, you have demonstrated some creativity -- want to join the line of unpaid artists?

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by osnova

What public domain movies are there? Any worth watching?

Stuff too old to still be in copyright. Black and white, often silent. (You know, exactly the sort of stuff that almost nobody is downloading.) Some of it is on archive.org:

http://www.archive.org/details/movies

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Okay, you got me. 99.9 percent of all downloaders are getting public domain movies and cell phone ROMs, a

Jesus, I was just giving you a few examples of the multitude of legal uses. How about software? Public domain ebooks? File exchanges? You have a few hours while I count everything down?

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Okay, you got me. 99.9 percent of all downloaders are getting public domain movies and cell phone ROMs, allowing you to deflate the tens of millions of users to the few hundred thousand in your fantasy world. (Is the grass blue there? Do cows hop and frogs give milk?)

Bittorrent is also used to distribute Linux ISOs and many game updates.

From my perspective there are two issues here:

1) The government should not be big content's lapdog - abrogating rights and freedoms and ignoring due process to protect the RIAA and MPAA members' bottom lines.

2) The idea that people don't deserve to know about a trade pact that could potentially put them at risk of being jailed without due process.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Jesus, I was just giving you a few examples of the multitude of legal uses. How about software? Public domain ebooks? File exchanges? You have a few hours while I count everything down?

And as much as 20% might be legitimate, sure. But let's pull figures off TPB's front site, where we can be virtually sure that they're not legal torrents:

3.938.634 peers (13.347.505 seeders + 10.591.129 leechers) in 2.305.243 torrents

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

An article on Teleread reports that the US Government is negotiating a new international copyright law. The text of what they are discussing has been hidden as a State Secret.

The text of the article is here:

http://www.teleread.org/2009/11/25/t...-be-published/

This is not really news. The existence of ACTA has been known for a long time now. What is actually in it is the real story.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

And as much as 20% might be legitimate, sure. But let's pull figures off TPB's front site, where we can be virtually sure that they're not legal torrents:

3.938.634 peers (13.347.505 seeders + 10.591.129 leechers) in 2.305.243 torrents

Hm. I looked for user stats there-- didn't think about looking at the bottom of the page.

3,987,607 registered users. And you can download without being registered. Registration just allows you to make your own torrents, and comment on others. Gotta be at least 10 "silent" users for everyone who is registered.