Some sad news for .torrent fans

[converge]

... sigh...

I don't see what the big deal is. Another publicly popular warez site went down.. oh no. There's a first.

[Voltage Spike]

I don't see what the big deal is. Another publicly popular warez site went down.. oh no. There's a first.

The reason I care is because suprnova.org[1] is not "another publicly popular warez site". Of note:

[1] I don't include other sites in this list because of rumors that some sites actively removed non-warez content.

• The site did not host any copyright-infringing content.
• The site did not host trackers for any of the questionable content.
• The site contained whatever the users submitted.
• The site did not, as far as I know, condone copyright infrigement. The users transformed the site into what it was.[2]

[2] On the other hand, the site operators obviously knew what was going on.

In a way, it was a non-crawling search engine. What would Google results return if they didn't actively index the web? Do you believe that the results would include mostly useful content with some questionable material, or lots of questionable material with some useful content?

Note: suprnova.org, according the FAQ, was not among the handful sites facing legal prosecution. The operator made a decision to avoid potential lawsuits.

[ch0l0man]

These will come and go but usenet lives on!

[converge]

... care is because suprnova.org[1] is not "another publicly popular warez site"

touche'

... It is true that the owners of the site did not participate in anything illegal or obscure. ..but look at the groans and context of the moaning. People aren't upset because they lost another http://www.homestarrunner.com.. they're busted because they lost their links to questionable trackers.

I think the site owner was quite smart in removing themself from the situation. Simply setting up a site and saying "we're legal, we trust everyone to use this site legally" doesn't remove yourself from responsibility for running something that does purvey illegal activity.

If people are seriously interested in freedom of information, they should focus their energies on creating a system within the legal specifications already defined; not systems that obscurely still break the law but give fuel and weight to the MPAA and RIAA. Bascule.. when is PDTP going to live? What needs to be done to make it so?

[Voltage Spike]

I agree with you on most of that.

Simply setting up a site and saying "we're legal, we trust everyone to use this site legally" doesn't remove yourself from responsibility for running something that does purvey illegal activity.

This is where I start having problems. What is the good/bad threshold at which something is considered "bad"?

Should the ISPs take action, and what would they do? After all, they had an even bigger role than suprnova.org in the infringing act.

If people are seriously interested in freedom of information, they should focus their energies on creating a system within the legal specifications already defined; not systems that obscurely still break the law but give fuel and weight to the MPAA and RIAA.

Everything is within the current legal specifications.

Bit Torrent is most definitely not trying to "obscurely" break anything. The protocol is very open, requires a central tracker to operate (i.e., not distributed), and provides the identity of all parties currently connected to the tracker. That does not sound like the ideal warez system, nor did Bram Cohen intend it to be. PDTP is not an answer; it is another tool that will also be abused.

suprnova.org was similar to a message board except you could only post trackers. The site made no attempt to hide the identities of those involved, nor did they make any attempt to moderate the actions of the users.


I would reword your statement as, "If people are seriously interested in freedom of information, they should focus their energies on creating a culture that inhibits illegal activites" (see these forums for an example). Likewise, one could focus their energy on changing the laws they do not agree with, but the task is so daunting that many have chosen to completely disregard the system.

[alklloyd]

These will come and go but usenet lives on!

Amen...they never even mention it in the mainstream press; RIAA and MPAA
also silent, heh.

Al

[Floydr47]

I think an interesting site is http://novamesi.com.ar/

[allentrace]

..but look at the groans and context of the moaning. People aren't upset because they lost another http://www.homestarrunner.com.. they're busted because they lost their links to questionable trackers.

I would liken this to taking your Hp/Dell/Gateway to a PC Tech shop like Best Buys service center to get the trojans and spyware removed only to have the tech delete your windows XP Shared folder with all of your questionalby obtained materials in it.

[prtsoft]

yep.... ive been using suprnova for a long time now, id like some kind of explanation.

I did find this suprnova mirror tho

http://www.bi-torrent.com/

if that helps anyone...

Yeah I use that, and m2.btefnet.com for my TV shows.

[MidnightViper]

I was pretty disappointed to hear about SuprNova.org and TorrentBits.org closing down. I was a huge fan of SuprNova.org... mainly because of the way they organized their torrents. I would get on, look up old Sega Saturn or Sega CD games, (not by searching for anything on my mind, but by going through their index of them and picking what I wanted), download, and burn them to a CD only to see that they played perfectly on my consoles. It was like shopping online. And I know that was not the best benefit of the site, as I could find tons of helpful documents about any programming language as well as torrents for popular LiveCD versions of Linux I never seem to could get from a mirror (because of bandwidth limitations). Even though I still download and use torrents, I've went back to my IRC downloading ways (for the most part). I use bi-torrent a pretty good bit though for torrents as well as www.torrentspy.com.

Hmm. I guess I'm still free to wear my SuprNova shirt though. Hah.

[octalpus]

Empornium is still up... what more can you possibly want?

[MidnightViper]

I know you were probably making fun of them, but I was like "Hey, I might try these guys out!" until I saw how small their torrent archive was and how the member database is invitation only. Hah.

[d3ad1ysp0rk]

I know you were probably making fun of them, but I was like "Hey, I might try these guys out!" until I saw how small their torrent archive was and how the member database is invitation only. Hah.

Did you actually see what KIND of torrents they were?

And who knows, octalpus could always be an avid member there.

[MidnightViper]

Haha. Eh, KaZaA is still around for downloading porn; I like to see other things being distributed via bittorrent.

[octalpus]

Actually, I *AM* an active member. The torrents are awesome... most of the stuff on there makes its way to other servers *eventually*, but almost all the good stuff hits there first. There's lots of insiders that upload some of the best pr0n around. It's not invite only right now... right now, it's closed to registrations, period, except when it drops below 150k. They just don't have the resources to support more. But consider they allow 150k members, whereas most of the ones who are coming back up only allow 15k-20k.

So no, I wasn't making fun of it... empornium 0wnz your porn.

SO NYAH!