back to article Torrent sites: Here today, gone tomorrow and no one even cares

Dutch anti-piracy group Brein claimed last week to have closed down 422 torrent sites in the first half of this year, but shockingly* nobody actually noticed until today. TorrentFreak belatedly reported that it had failed to read Brein’s press release, dated 8 July, and the freetard-loving site apologised to its readers for …

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  1. Dr Christian

    No one cares

    Because you take down a few torrent sites and fifty more spring up. There's always IRC for your warez and a plethora of ftp servers with terabytes of content. Who gives a damn. You can get whatever you want whenever you want and this isn't going to change.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who cares

    the thing is I still get my torrents every day as normal so this made no difference whatsoever.

  3. Squirrel
    Thumb Up

    you basically copied their article.

    what you didn't get was the right level of sarcasm.

    1. Kelly Fiveash (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: you basically copied their article.

      shurely shome mishtake?

  4. fearnothing
    FAIL

    Maths fail?

    384+29+6+5=424. Were two of the sites actually legal then?

  5. Dazed and Confused

    Usenet

    views censorship as damage and routes around it

    Same is going to apply here

  6. Chris Eaton
    Pirate

    Maybe they will win one day - I mean good guy always should

    surely taking torrent sites down doesnt really have much effect and that is the whole point because the content isnt hosted on them

  7. Kevin 9

    DPI

    The only way to ever control it is to outlaw encryption and deploy DPI tech on every connection throughout the world, policing every packet sent across every network. I don't think most of us would stand for anything like that, so I think the filesharers are safe.

  8. Matthew 17

    Don't need torrents until September

    As all US shows are on their summer hiatus, nothing to watch, nothing to download.

    I'm sure though come September it'll be just as easy to find somewhere to download from.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Lots of new shows this summer

      The 2nd season of White Collar started this week, new shows like Covert Affairs and Rizzoli & Isles premiered this week, Memphis Beat started 3 weeks ago, along with Rooky Blues, Scoundrels, The Gates, the 2nd season of Royal Pains, among others.

      Some of them are even watchable.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No US shows til September?

      Hmm, let's see what's regularly showing now...

      True Blood, Psych, Unnatural History, Memphis Beat, White Collar, Covert Affairs, Warehouse 13, Huge, Lie To Me, The Glades, The Gates, Leverage, Haven, Eureka, Louie, Rookie Blue, The Good Guys, Penn & Teller's Bullshit, Persons Unknown, Scoundrels, Sons Of Tucson, Futurama....

      Yup, there's nothing worth watching from America ;)

      1. Stevie

        Hmm...

        I'm partial to Royal Pains and Burn Notice, both of which just started a new season for the summer.

        1. robert247
          IT Angle

          @ Stevie... Burn Notice!!!

          Has the over smug twot not managed to get his job back yet?! Burn Notice is AWFUL and only redeemed by Bruce Campbell not taking it seriously on any level whatsoever ;-)

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Go

        Feck!!!

        There's a new season of Futurama!

        Why was I not told?

        To the torrent sites batman!

        1. Jonathan 29

          Re: Feck!!!

          Most shocking of all is that that the episodes so far are really rather good. A whole lot better than the DVD specials.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Nothing worth watching

        Nothing you ever intending paying a penny to see at any rate eh?

        Freetards...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Black Helicopters

          Nothing worth watching

          Ooh, that reminds me, must cancel my full Sky subscription that I've been running for the last 7 years, as I rarely watch the TV and download the Eps to watch at a time convenient to me.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Stop

          not paid a penny??

          they'll be on tv over here sooner or later and i have paid for not only my tv license, but also a sky subscription.

          seeing as i'd be recording it so as to be able to fastforward all the shitty adverts anyway, what does it matter what hard drive i source it from?

      4. No, I will not fix your computer

        I've always wonderd about the legality....

        ...of being in the UK and downloading a US series, is it illegal to download or is the sharing illegal? Sounds like it should be illegal, but don't know what/who's law is being broken.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Paris Hilton

          RE: I've always wonderd about the legality....

          Working within the letter of the law it is illegal, technically any recording of broadcast material is supposed to be made by yourself for purposes of time shifting, not created by someone else and copied by you (and I am sure many other reasons).

          I like to think that as I have a fully paid up TV license and Sky subscription I am working within the spirit of the law as far as TV content goes, but I'm fairly sure it wouldn't stand up in a court of law.

  9. Drefsab

    I love this

    While the anti-filesharing groups see this as a victory personally I see this as nothing more than highlighting their fail. They spent all that time effort and money to achieve nothing, sure some sites got shut down, more came back in its place so much so in fact that no one even noticed. It takes news articles after the fact for people to find out.

    That's not having a major impact that's just plain ineffectiveness. The problem is filesharing and software piracy is never going away. Even if every torrent site and usenet site in the world was shut down it would still exist, even if all sharing of files over the internet was stopped people would share them using physical means (hard drives are getting damned cheap). Trying to stop it isn't working and the sooner they realise this the sooner they will look at new approaches that may have more success.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Black Helicopters

      ....since the internet began...

      there has been files shareing going on....

      the 'problem' only became apparent when napster arrived on the scene. IT made it simple for people with very little computer knowlage to grab music from the interwebby net.

      if they were to shut down all the freetard sites, yes shareing will still go on, but it will be in the hands of the more techno savvy person and not so much perceived fiscal loss to the music/film/games industry....

      for the masses to get hold of warez, it will be back to getting a disk of some mate of a mate for a few quid....

      black helicopter, becausae they ARE out to get you !

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Gates Horns

        William Gates III

        Ever since Bill Gates & Paul Allen 'developed' Altair basic Gates has been whinging about 'theft' of software, complaining (in his famous letter) where he said "one thing you do do is prevent good software being written".

        Spot on there, Bill.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I'm fairly certain I was sharing files long before the interspazz

        If not, what was on all those tapes? It certainly wasn't music.

        1. Chika
          Black Helicopters

          The Compact Cassette

          I'll freely admit that I was sharing and recording long before I had any dealings with computers, but I also remember that the same people were moaning about that too. They even tried to slap levies on blank media just to bolster their profits.

          The trouble is that those same people seem all too convincing about what they stand to lose until you actually ask them to provide figures *and back them up*, especially when it comes to who actually gets the money from the sales of music and so forth. There were pirates in the business long before file and tape sharing began and mch of the reason for the moans is down to them not wanting the competition!

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Happy

          Yes

          What was that special tool you had to use to copy Apple ][ games disks when they had intentional error tracks? I remember using that back around 1982. On 360K floppies.

          1. No. Really!?

            re: Yes

            I don't remember the name of the tool either, but there was a copy in our computer lab.

  10. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Small sites probably

    What I found quite a while ago was there were a few huge torrent sites, a couple dozen large ones, and then scores and scores of other torrent trackers... either private (and with just a few members as far as I could tell), with very few torrents (sometimes just 4 or 5), or a bunch of torrents but EXACTLY the same ones the "main" torrent sites had.

    The private trackers, I figure were groups of friends exchanging files maybe.. if they are diligent about not letting outsiders in they probably don't get shut down either, since it's impossible to tell what the content on them is without becoming a member. The rest... is it to draw in google traffic and make a few bucks on banner ads? Just a hobby machine someone ran out of the house? I don't know. But I didn't find them real useful since they had nothing new. So, basically noone would care if a few hundred of those shut down.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    I think there is an understanding fail

    Maybe if the author of this Reg article actually understood anything about torrents she would have realised that the Torrentfreak article was filled from top to bottom in sarcasm. Torrentfreak didn't apologise for not reporting on BREIN's press release as this piece claims, but on missing the SUPPOSED shutting of hundreds of sites.

    Anyone who knows anything about torrents would know where they are coming from. Hundreds of sites weren't shut by BREIN at all and Torrentfreak didn't miss anything. <sigh>

    1. Stef 4
      Thumb Down

      Erm,

      "Maybe if the author of this Reg article actually understood anything about torrents she would have realised that the Torrentfreak article was filled from top to bottom in sarcasm"

      Yet you somehow managed to miss all the sarcasm in the Reg article? The whole article is about Torrentfreak's sarcastic posting.

      "<sigh>"

  12. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    The tighter they squeeze ....

    ... the more slips through their fingers.

    BREIN is just a bunch of hypocrite crusaders who claim to represent the creators, but the money they rake in vanishes in their own coffers never to be seen again.

    I love how they stompfoot like a spoiled little brat whinging that it ain't far and the world just ignores them.

    Epic fail in action. (Anonymous for obvious reasons)

  13. hehe
    Grenade

    freedom

    the day the entertainment industry realizes that there will always be file-sharers from every generation the world will end

    file-shares will always have a fight on there hands; at the moment this is pretty pathetic (just look at the digital economy act!!)

    as mentioned above shut down one site and a whole new breed or P2P sites pop up

    encryption is just getting better and better so RC4 eventually will be defunct

    ..long live the pirates and freedom

  14. Chigaimasmaro
    FAIL

    Its like a gray hair

    Its like the old wives tale, you pull one gray hair out and two more grow in its place. With people setting up ultra exclusive invite only torrent sites, the many open trackers, and just the fact that you have so many thousands of torrent sites, its really hard to notice when a drop in a bucket full of water is missing.

    maybe one day when the corporations have been the other into submission, they'll realize that people want to SHARE stuff ANYWAY cause its part of what we like doing as humans and they'll crash and burn cause they won't be making money. Its an Utopian hope, but one I wish would come true.

  15. Arnie
    FAIL

    Yeah but

    Robbie williams is back with take that!!!!

    With a bit of luck polydor records will be able to sue the ass off a single mum for sharing thier new album. which will go some way to pay for rob's chop habit.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Good luck with that!

    After all this, how many DVD sellers will be round the pubs tonight? How many mums swapped a DVD/CD of movies and MP3s , outside the school gates today? How may sales of hookey movies at the "booties" over the weekend, across the country?

    How many people have now gone looking for new torrent sites? How many miffed CS students with a bit of coding skill are working on a way to protect themselves from this?

    I appreciate this has to be done, but it's like the war on drugs. Bill Hicks, "The war on drugs, eh? A war on drugs suggests two "army's" are fighting and the dope-heads are winning!"

    1. Michael 28
      Happy

      Looking to the future....

      .....in-car wi-fi? Even with a short range , you could turn the daily log-jam on the M4- M25 into a big LAN party. And if it's just the.torrent files you're swapping, even better.

      1. Chris Harries
        Black Helicopters

        This is the 18:34 South Eastern service to Torrent

        The number of us that train it in to London Terminals and back everyday could surly just do the same. Just open then tablet/mp3/phone/netbook/notebook/thingy-of-the-future and have a carriage of shearing shit. All connect up to the trains wifi, I'd have a full 2 hours of swearing like the bloody share bear I am

  17. Jonathan 29

    rss feed

    Rather than a specific torrent site I would recommend using a torrent aggregator like showrss. You select the shows you like and they update your rss feed when they come out. I schedule utorrent to run overnight on my htpc, it reads the web feed and I never have to bother visiting the main websites.

  18. bruceld
    Welcome

    Title

    No one has anything to worry about because file sharing is here to stay and is unstoppable.

    The technology already exists today to hack the firmware of any wireless router to enable it to link to other hacked wireless networks that could effectively create a "free" network grid in large urban centers. Data could be swapped/shared through torrent technology WITHOUT the internet. This has the potential for 10/100's of thousands of people creating an urban grid. Although unnecessary because there will still be the main internet, special direct-client software could also be encoded for instant messaging/chat, web browsing, media streaming, and basically everything else that is available today.

    Then we can still have the state/government/corporation controlled internet which we all know they all want to control and monitor.

    I can see a future where we all have no choice but to control our own network where no one can own it and no one can control it. It's just "there" for all of us to use and enjoy.

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