TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- Is There ANY Part Of The Copyright Monopoly That Meets Legislative Quality Bars?
- Demonoid Domains Go Up For Sale
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 13 Aug 2012 01:08 AM PDT
The Hunger Games is the most downloaded movie. The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Is There ANY Part Of The Copyright Monopoly That Meets Legislative Quality Bars? Posted: 12 Aug 2012 01:44 PM PDT Any new law that is being made somewhere needs to fulfill three quality criteria to be legislated – honorably legislated, at least. It needs to be necessary, effective, and proportionate: It needs to be necessary – the law being made needs to address a real (or at least perceived) problem. It needs to be effective – the law being made needs to solve the targeted problem, if enacted. It needs to be proportionate – the law being made must not create worse problems than the one being solved. Let’s see how these legislative quality criteria measure up against the different copyright monopolies, shall we? There are four parts of the copyright monopoly. To begin with, you have two commercial monopolies, those on duplication on fixation of a work and of performance/broadcast of a work. Sadly, these two are treated quite differently in law, but are indistinguishable with the advent of the internet – which is why you see stupid legal constructs that try to assert that there is some kind of server-side difference between streaming media and downloaded media. (Hint: there isn’t.) Going out on a limb and assuming that these two monopolies can be reconciled into a general commercial “remote duplication” monopoly, is it necessary, effective, and proportionate? Whether it is necessary depends on your point of view – and above all, what problem you are trying to solve by writing the copyright monopoly into law (or keeping it there). You will hear as many justifications for the copyright monopoly as you hear copyright monopoly advocates. Originally, it was enacted on May 4, 1557 in order to stifle political dissent, when Queen “Bloody” Mary persecuted Protestants and wanted control of subversive pamphlets. That justification would hardly fly today. Would such a unified commercial monopoly be effective, then? Well, that again depends on your original justification. If the idea is to allow artists to make money – well, 99.98% of artists never see a cent in royalty under the current copyright monopoly system, so the effectiveness can be… disputed, to express ourselves with a slight understatement. On the other hand, if the idea is to legislatively lock in a market for obsolete middlemen, then it is most certainly effective. But where the commercial unified and imagined “remote duplication” monopoly falls is on proportionality. Any digital channel that can be (and is) used for private communications can also be used to transfer works that are under the copyright monopoly. Therefore, enforcement of the monopoly needs abolishment of the postal secret: you can’t sort legal from illegal without looking at it first, which breaks the postal secret. A commercial monopoly that breaks the postal secret, a fundamental right and a fundamental liberty, is clearly disproportional. So let’s take a look at the two other monopolies in the copyright monopoly umbrella – the so-called moral rights. The first moral right is the right for an artist to prevent a performance of the work that violates the integrity of the artist or the work. I fail to see what problem this law tries to solve. Surely an artist could object to a development of his or her work – but that’s what art is: its beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not in the pen of the artist. No artist gets to own the perception of his or her art after it has been released. What problem, what real problem, is this law – this monopoly – trying to solve? The second moral right is the right for artists to be associated with his or her work. This right carries significant social support – so much support, in fact, that the social penalties for violating this association are severe, and significantly harsher than any laws upholding this monopoly. After all, if you plagiarise part of a thesis in academia, you get fired from the profession for life. A €100 fine is hardly going to make a difference in that context. Thus, while the norm carries public support, adding a €100 fine to the social penalty does absolutely nothing and is unnecessary. In summarizing, the copyright monopoly rates abysmally in terms of legislative quality. It has no place in our laws if quality is a virtue for legislators, and it should be – for legislators as for every craft – but the monopoly needs to be dismantled gradually due to its infiltration everywhere.  About The Author Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy. Book Falkvinge as speaker? Source: Is There ANY Part Of The Copyright Monopoly That Meets Legislative Quality Bars? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Demonoid Domains Go Up For Sale Posted: 12 Aug 2012 06:04 AM PDT
After days of silence, last Thursday the IFPI took credit for the complaint behind the takedown. "The operation to close Demonoid was a great example of international cooperation to tackle a service that was facilitating the illegal distribution of music on a vast scale. I would like to thank all those officers involved in this operation to close a business that was built on the abuse of other people's rights,” said the IFPI's anti-piracy director Jeremy Banks. Last week a source at ColoCall, Demonoid’s former webhost, said he believed that the site’s management was based in Mexico. It was later confirmed that a criminal investigation is underway in the country and that a number of arrests and asset seizures had already taken place. However, in the middle of all the chaos and arrests TorrentFreak maintained contact with the site’s technical admin who still has control of the site’s domains. Due to his presumed position of freedom hope remained that one day the site would return, but today that seems more unlikely than ever. The three key Demonoid domains – Demonoid.me, Demonoid.com and Demonoid.ph – are now all up for sale on Sedo, a popular domain name and website marketplace.  Selling the domains now while traffic to Demonoid remains high should ensure a good price for the vendor, but it seems unlikely that any buyer would look to relaunch as a torrent site. Of course, “up for sale” doesn’t mean “sold”, but at this stage hopes that the site might one day return appear to be dwindling faster than ever. Later today we hope to obtain a comment from Demonoid on this latest development and will update this post accordingly. Source: Demonoid Domains Go Up For Sale | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This week there are four newcomers in our chart and one returnee. 
With an army of passionate fans, Demonoid was spoken about fondly by many in the torrent community. Just two weeks ago it was one of the world’s largest and most thriving torrent sites but a DDoS and hacker attack followed by a | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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