Anticipated Closure of BitTorrent Sites Spurs Panic Downloads In China 114
hackingbear writes "Beijing Internet users are scrabbling for downloads from BitTorrent websites following speculation that authorities will shut them down as early as this week. Internet experts told China Daily the failure might be caused by an overload of users seeking last-minute free downloads. As the largest BT download website in China with 5 million downloads each year, VeryCD has been on the verge of closure after the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) shut hundreds of similar peer-to-peer file sharing sites, including the 50 million-user BTChina, during the last 10 days in its latest attempt to fight pornography and piracy online."
For those not in the know... (Score:2, Informative)
... for those not in the know, the SARFT is basically a bribe-as-you-go organization. Plus, they hate the cute and adorable Cao Ni Ma (the Grass Mud Horse [wikipedia.org])
Re:So, Essentially (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scrabbling? (Score:3, Informative)
See definition 3a of the intransitive verb. It actually made sense.
Re:I'm confused (Score:1, Informative)
Two things:
First, Copyright and IP in general are civil matters, not criminal matters. There is a BIG difference (in the law) between stealing a record and burning a record. This is not to mention that in burning a copy, you don't actually TAKE anything from the person you're copying from.
Second, Piracy has generally (at least seemingly) allowed software that would otherwise be too expensive to spread far and wide. The piracy of Windows, for instance, has allowed Microsoft even more leverage than they would otherwise have - for good or for evil.
Re:I'm confused (Score:3, Informative)
They're not talking sense - they're promoting theft.
By definition, he isn't.
Re:So, Essentially (Score:3, Informative)
I've been to Thailand in 2000 and 2007, last I checked they still had a growing VideoCD market of new movies. I don't know how they make them, but a van driver was playing VideoCD movies in a van we rented in 2007 to tour Thailand with. It was one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies that had just come out and it was in Thai with no English subtitles. When I went back to the USA it was still playing in theaters so I paid movie tickets for my family to see it, in English and in big theater format. I didn't want to rip Disney off of the price of tickets and I didn't understand enough Thai to get the VideoCD format.
But they sell them in flee markets and mall tables in Thailand and I am told most Asian nations sell them. The VideoCD is in PAL format and wouldn't play on US NTSC systems and modern DVD players in the USA don't play VideoCD formats anymore.
I am told the Asian pirates use VideoCD formats because not everyone can afford the DVD players and VideoCD players are cheaper. In a bad third world country more people buy the cheaper VideoCD players than DVD players to save money and then buy cheap VideoCDs from the street, flee markets, or tables in a mall somewhere. A movie can take up to 3 or 4 VideoCDs because a VideoCD does not store as much as a DVD does.
Yes most people either don't know or don't care that it is illegal, and the local police don't crack down on it either nor does the national government. All they know is for $1 to $5 they can get cheap VideoCD movies in their own native language.
The Playstation systems were sold with a Mod-Chip already in them, and they sell cheap PS1, PS2, and I assume now PS3 games. But I heard that Sony of Japan cracked down on that and sued companies that installed mod chips in their Playstation units, which lead to the population stopping from buying Sony Playstations and switching to PC games that were easier to counterfeit and pirate.
Re:So what now? (Score:1, Informative)
> nobody has come up with a de facto distributed, anonymous replacement for trackers. Now some of the biggest BT trackers have
> gone down or been blocked.
Except for the "magnet" DHT links TPB just switched to, you mean? (If you can't reach tpb, it's being blocked by your ISP or government, the site is still up).
Re:So, Essentially (Score:1, Informative)
Japan's population is only a small fraction of that of China, but population density around hot spots(Which is what really matters), is similar. China and India are really huge countries with a pretty high population density. If each of the many nations and ethnicities oppressed by the central governments were to become independent, each of them would be nothing more than a typical country of the region. Densely populated for sure, but nothing anyone would be scared about.
Re:I'm confused (Score:2, Informative)
Is the internet analyst saying that piracy is good for the market?
Makes sense to me. If copyright laws are stifling the market, then bypassing them is good for it. If it weren't for Napster, we probably wouldn't have online music sales, for instance.
The surprise, of course, is that he's saying it.
Re:So, Essentially (Score:2, Informative)
India's has even worse poverty and overpopulation, yet you don't see an autocratic government there.