back to article Pirate Bay becomes 'Research Bay' for three days

Notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has found a way to clothe itself in a little respectability for a couple of days by teaming with Sweden's Lund University Internet Institute to research file sharing. The Institute operates a ”Cybernormer” effort that says “Understanding online norms and values is essential to …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No IP addresses

    Just your personalised, secret, NSA backdoor key...

    Paranoid?

    Us?

  2. Ketlan
    Pirate

    Mostly male

    Interesting that the responses to previous surveys show a user gender split with males on 93.4% and females on only 6.1%. All the women I know are okay with the odd bit of piracy and one male friend disapproves (but does it anyway). I'd have expected females to have been better represented - but I probably know all the dodgy ones.

    1. Moosh

      Re: Mostly male

      I don't want to start anything here - but might this not be explained by the already-present gender bias present when it comes to anythnig relatively technical?

      Most women I know are fine with piracy but just don't torrent. Most of them go on those really dodgy sites where YOU CAN WATCH MOVIES AND TV SHOWS FOR FREE!!! or get the files off of friends using USB sticks.

      My 3rd year femal housemate at university and my ex girlfriend both used to torrent occasionally, but they didn't go to a specific site (and had no idea what TOR was or realized that the pirate bay had a large number of proxy sites), instead just typing in "<name of film> torrent" on google.

      Surely this makes it close to impossible to accurately track this sort of thing?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Eh

    I don't really pirate anymore. Thanks to Steam being cheap, Netflix having a decent library of stuff to watch, and crunchyroll I don't really have anything I need to pirate anymore because I actually get access which is value for money. At least it is in my opinion.

    The only things I still occasionally download are gams not released in the EU for whatever reason .

    It used to be I'd be downloading TV series, games, films, music. Purely because I didn't have access to them otherwise. Music was not worth nearly what they were charging. (Buy this album for the 2 songs you want, only £17) same with movies ( Watch this movie in the cinema for £7, or buy the DVD for £20 where you'll only watch it once) videogames were a laugh, (Awesome game released in USA, doesn't arrive in UK for 6 months by which point you might as well not bother thanks to the spoilers.) The same went for TV shows. And of course the classic games. Want to play sonic 2? Fat chance.

    I think the industry has come a long way so far as games and TV shows are concerned with things like Netflix, Lovefilm and Crunchyroll. The only thing I think still needs to catch up somewhat is the music and movie side of the industry. Music has gotten better with digital downloads (Album for £5 rather than £15) but movies are still out of what I'm willing to pay. £8 to watch a movie at the cinema? No thanks. I stopped going back when ticket prices jumped to £6.30

    Hah and not forgetting the anti piracy speil "You wouldn't steal a car, so why steal a movie?"

    Two points,

    1: It's not stealing, stealing would involve depriving others of said movie.

    2: If I thought I'd get away with it with an almost zero chance of being caught I'd totally steal a car.

    1. Ole Juul

      Re: Eh

      I agree that filesharing is not stealing. But stealing a car very much is and like all physical stealing destroys the trust and general well being of society. Not getting caught does not change that one bit. Shame on you.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Shrimpling

        Re: Eh

        You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet....

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Eh

          Probably not no, unless it was with a tranq gun and I was Snake.

  4. Mystic Megabyte
    FAIL

    Modern Cinema

    Because I live in a remote place I rarely go to the cinema. But last week I was in Glasgow and went to see Gravity 3D at the Odeon. The ticket price was over £12 and I had to endure about 30 mins. of adverts.

    The most annoying was for some phone based "app" called Cineme which they encouraged you to play in the fecking cinema. WTF!

    I will never go there again.

    1. wikkity

      Re: Modern Cinema

      Maybe the cineme app detects when a video is being recorded on the phone and notifies the cinema to catch people recording the movie. Though why anyone would want to watch a recording by someone sitting in the audience is beyond me.

  5. e^iπ+1=0

    Survey

    I think it's nice that when you follow the link from here to the survey, complete the survey, then click the finished link at the end you get forwarded to tpb, in case you didn't know how to get there.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My personal

    "anti mobile phone device" goes with me ANYWHERE where there should be silence.

    Nothing worse than some twat croning on about what they did last night or whatever when they should be sat / stood there being fucking quiet.

    If they don't have the common decency / manners to do that then I will enforce that understanding on their behalf. Both for my benefit and for others who don't have the technological resources to do so..

  7. Steve Knox

    "legitimate laws"

    From the pedant to the paranoid, just about every El Reg commentard stereotype should have an issue with that turn of phrase.

    (No icon, 'cos I can't attach 'em all.)

    1. Al 24

      Re: "legitimate laws"

      Why? I don't.

  8. RobHib
    Devil

    Pirate Bay -- Survey comments as expected but intersting.

    Those pirate Bay survey comments are as I'd expect, but nevertheless very interesting.

    They confirm the view I've held for years, which is that even with all the copyright hoopla most people don't really consider intellectual property in the same way they do physical property. For most, information, no matter its source or value, is fair game to be disseminated to all and sundry as they see fit.

    If you don't want information to spread, then keep it secret--Coca-Cola knew this years ago and kept its formula under lock and key. Trouble is that music and other such information just spreads--it cannot be contained. If artists want to be heard then they have to expose themselves to the public domain, and once a song becomes known it cannot become unknown (as audiences remember the song it automatically enters the public domain whether the artist likes it or not).

    Copyright only ever worked properly when the information was spread by hard-to-make books and records, its main function was to stop another manufacturer reproducing hard-to-make media, but that paradigm has now broken down--so people revert to doing what's instinctive when they receive information, that is they spread it!

    Sooner or later, the copyright model will simply break down and have to be abandoned or replaced with a more workable schema. For example, take TV/video. Video resolutions are increasing all the time, the latest is the move from 1080i to 4k, and eventually it'll be 8k, 10k and so on until the law of diminishing returns sets in (understood to be about 12k, as that's close to 20/20 vision).

    Well, whilst Hollywood Inc. comes up with tech anti-copying schemes such as HDMI, eventually it'll all be irrelevant when screens are 12k and people place 12k cameras in front of such screens. Irrespective of the anti-copy measures, the copy will be so superlative that nobody will notice any quality loss, thus HDMI and its successors will be effectively rendered useless.

    The Pirate Bay-ers instinctively know all this, it just oozes out of everything they say. Intellectual property is just a fabrication and most people instinctively know this. Also, everyone knows that intellectual property is just information, thus attempting to corral it makes herding cats look like kids stuff.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My Downloads

    Most of the stuff I download I can get via my normal Pay-TV with VirginMedia but I'm not willing to wait 6-12 months to get the shows so that I can discuss them with friends in the US over the web.

    It's also a pain to go through the hassle of copying them off the Tivo when someone has already done it for me.

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