BitTorrent Community Running For Cover?

govatos writes "Bandwidth issues and DOS Attacks brought Bytemonsoon, a popular BitTorrent page down, but now pages are closing for scarier reasons. Torrentse.cx 'recieved a cease and desist letter during the day of Wednesday, July 16, 2003 for copyright infringement. The entire website has been removed and will not return.' Will corporate pressure kill the BitTorrent movement, or will it keep flying from site to site before it settles somewhere 'safe' like Sealand's HavenCo?"

if you didn't download the hulk by now...

[sweeney37]

Well, on the plus side, the summer movie season is almost over.

Mike

DOSed?

[CowboyTodd]

Well if the DOS didn't take bytemonsoon down, the slashdotting certainly would have.

I thought this was a DOS attack

[andy_from_nc]

According to my server Slashdot is the most sophisticated Denial Of Service attack ever written... Distributed no doubt!

We shall fight them on the beaches, in the streets

[PeteyG]

We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength on the Internet, we shall defend our BitTorrent application, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!

-Winston Slashdot

A fond farewell

[cca93014]

I'm sure the last thing the site needed whilst it was in its death throes was a good slashdotting... ;)

TUBGIRL!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the .cx link /. - I now get to see a picture of some asian woman spraying shit on her face.

Gee - I'm glad they pixelated her vagina or that picture would've been quite offensive!!! Phew!!!

Re:Torrentse.cx

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, that was goatse.cx

Incidentally, I used the goatse site "as contact me info-page" in a reply to one of the Nigerian scammers. Suffice to say that, he was none to happy, as the following reply shows :

From: xxxxx

Subject: Bastard mother forker

Bastard u fork you bastard mother forker.

Re:Don't click on a *.cx link.

[Anonymous Coward]

Incidentally, I used the goatse.cx site "as contact me info-page" in a reply to one of the Nigerian scammers. Suffice to say that, he was none to happy, as the following reply shows :

From: xxxxx

Subject: Bastard mother forker
Bastard u fork you bastard mother forker.

Offended by what ?

[Anonymous Coward]

A girl has to make a living. I used to be an html coder but since the crash I haven't been able to find work. They paid me in cash to take that picture, sure it was nasty, but after showering and brushing my teeth it was over and I had enough to pay the rent.

--Tubgirl

Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside

[beacher]

Maybe we should all move to gopher for a while cause the rest of the net has no idea wtf that is.
-B

Re:So what?

[Suppafly]

Honestly, hosting a Bit Torrent seed for a copyrighted file is no different then hosting the file itself, other then the lowered bandwidth bill.

this from someone that has his own bt tracker site for porn..

Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside

[Waffle Iron]

The redhat iso is about 0.00000000001% of all bittorrent traffic.

WWGD? Let's see...

So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom; but Abraham still stood before the Lord. Then Abraham drew near, and said, "Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" And the Lord said, "if I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake".

[ At this point, the mortal Abraham, ignoring some thorny philosophy issues, dickers with the omnipotent creator of the universe and gradually sweetens the deal until the Lord concedes... ]

"For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it"

So the standard appears to be 10. If even 10 RedHat ISOs have been transferred, then BitTorrent must be spared.

Re:I'm stupid but....

[DarkZero]

DoS attacks are so simple that a thirteen year old child with a decent program and set of instructions passed down to him from an older, better hacker can easily create an effective one. That means that for any given site, especially a high bandwidth one, to be shut down, all they need is for there to be one jackass on the entire internet. Unfortunately for the BT sites, the internet is the natural habitat of the Bipedal Jackass. The internet, filled with lush gardens of Morons, Suckers, and Pseudo-Intellectuals amidst a backdrop of easy hacking targets and Asian girls doing things that could make you go blind, is positively irresistable to them. In fact, you could even say that, fundamentally, Jackasses are the internet. So the BT sites are pretty much screwed.

On a slightly more serious note, though, it doesn't help that all of these BT sites are lawbreakers. Sure, they're breaking petty little copyright laws that, in the grand scheme of things, rank somewhere five spots below shoplifting and not saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes, but they're still breaking the law, and lawbreakers can't exactly stroll up to Johnny Law and ask him for help. If you break the law, then you forfeit the basic protections of the law (the ones ranking below having your murderer, rapist, or car thief found and prosecuted), because the cops have no interest in helping you get your illegal copyright infringement site back on its feet. This sort of Wild West system, where the victims can't run to the police for fear of incriminating themselves, makes the BT sites free target practice for hackers. Microsoft and Amazon, on the other hand, have no such legal restraints and can easily prosecute their attackers.

Re:Explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we really need more serious illegal file distribution websites out there.

Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside

[Jonboy X]

So, umm, at what point was the RIAA granted the title of "God"?

I would

[SHEENmaster]

but since the MPAA killed Archie, I can't seem to find the source for the server.

Microsoft remembers it as "that virus thingy." They've classified the authors as unamerican terrorist communists.

In other news, UUCP piped through ssh is the latest warez craze. The MPAA is declaring war on Canada to kill off the OpenBSD developers. (Terrence and Phillip as well.)

Re:you are forgetting UseNet

[KiahZero]

Quiet, you fool! You'll ruin it for everyone!

Re:As an attorney...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Just like coal miners and town cryers have been
>superseded, so now have shit artists!

Like programmers involved with internet-related projects?

Re:Is Sealand's Havenco all that safe?

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA can't even keep their web site up. Get back to your Brotherhood of War novel or STFU.

There's no "bittorrent movement"

[Mawbid]

...just like there's no FTP movement or IRC movement. There is however an already substantial, and rapidly growing, movement of spoiled techno-brats who not only think they can enjoy the fruits of other people's labor for free, but also that they're entitled to.

This is me announcing my opposition to that movement, that way of thinking. One datapoint to be counted against all the others and a reminder that not all Slashdotters (and not all spoiled tehno-brats ;-), think alike.

Re:The bigger picture

[Cyno]

It was a mistake to create the internet without consulting the RIAA and MPAA first. What were we thinking?