By Adam Pasick
LONDON (Reuters) - SuprNova.org, one of the Internet's most popular
sites for finding links to download pirated movies, has been taken
offline by its creator amid a legal crackdown by Hollywood's copyright
cops.
Slovenia-based SuprNova offered thousands of special files that
enabled users to download movies, TV shows, music and other content
using the BitTorrent file-transfer network.
Earlier this month, the Motion Picture Association of America launched
a barrage of lawsuits against people that operate the so-called
"torrent" files, as well as servers on the eDonkey and Direct Connect
networks.
SuprNova's creator, who goes by the name Sloncek, took the site down
over the weekend, citing the increased legal pressure on those hosting
torrent files. In addition to MPAA's civil lawsuits in the United
States and Britain, criminal charges were filed in France, the
Netherlands and Finland.
"SuprNova.org was more like a hobby that took most of my free time
away. And now with current situation, there's too much pressure and I
don't have the time for it," Sloncek told the file-sharing Web site
Slyck (http://www.slyck.com). He did not respond to an emailed
interview request from Reuters.
In a message on SuprNova, Sloncek said: "We are sorry to inform you
all, that SuprNova is closing down for good in the way that we all
know it. We do not know if SuprNova is going to return, but it is
certainly not going to be hosting any more torrent links."
BitTorrent has quietly grown into a file-sharing behemoth, devouring
up to one-third of the Internet's bandwidth by one research firm's
account. Bram Cohen, the programer that created BitTorrent, has warned
against using the software for illicit purposes.
BitTorrent's "file-swarming" software breaks a digital file into many
pieces, shares the pieces among all users who have downloaded the
torrent file, then stitches them back together. It is also used for
many non-illicit purposes, such as sharing non-copyrighted music and
distributing video game demos.
The shutdown of the premier source for movies and TV downloads through
BitTorrent was welcomed by MPAA anti-piracy chief John Malcolm, who
has railed against "parasites leeching off the creative activity of
others."
"I'm pleased. It was the most popular torrent site," he said. "They
took that action voluntarily, so obviously they were concerned about
their conduct. It was something we were studying, so I can understand
why they were concerned."
Hollywood is desperate to avoid the fate of its corporate cousins in
the music industry, who have yet to recover from the illicit MP3
downloading boom that began with Napster. The large size of video
content has prevented movie and TV downloads from catching on as
quickly, but higher bandwidth and improving compression technology
means that it may not be safe for long.
"We are a little bit ahead of the curve in the sense that the movie
industry is still making money. Downloading and uploading video has
not become, thankfully, mainstream activity the way that downloading
and uploading music became," Malcolm said. "We've also gotten out
ahead because our industry has not been decimated -- yet."
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Path: telecom-digest.org!ptownson
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 23:39:14 EST
From: Lisa Minter <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Sex Tape on Internet Roils Indian Public
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By VIJAY JOSHI, Associated Press Writer</i></font>
NEW DELHI - It was a private act of two hormone-charged teenagers that
lasted 2 minutes and 37 seconds on digital video.
But offered for sale on the Internet, the fuzzy images of the
17-year-old girl having oral sex with her high school sweetheart has
sent shock waves through urban India, exposing the growing friction
between the conservative middle class, its increasingly Westernized
progeny and modern technology.
"It came to me as a surprise that kids are having sex so soon," Barkha
Dutt, who hosts the country's most popular television talk show on
social issues, said in an interview. "Even we are not aware of how
much things have changed."
India may be the birthplace of Kama Sutra, the 6th century sex manual,
but sex today is a generally taboo subject. Premarital sex is not
widely condoned, and public displays of affection draw frowns.
Caught in the scandal's stinging sweep is Avnish Bajaj, the
Indian-born American who heads eBay's Indian subsidiary Baazee.com,
where the video clip shot by the schoolboy himself using his cell
phone camera was put up for sale.
Arrested last week under an ambiguous Indian law on cyber porn, Bajaj
was freed after posting bail Tuesday, but his U.S. passport remained
confiscated.
Bajaj's arrest triggered a diplomatic spat between the United States
and India and a threat by eBay executives to reconsider doing business
in a country that would toss one of their top managers in jail as a
scapegoat.
"This incident has certainly given us pause and raises concerns about
the safeguards that are in place for businesses operating in India,"
said Henry Gomez, an eBay vice president in the United States.
"This situation is one of concern at highest levels of the
U.S. government," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in
Washington.
Bajaj set up Baazee.com in 2000 and sold it to San Jose, Calif.-based
eBay, the Internet's leading auction company, for about $50
million in June. The Harvard-educated executive has since headed the
Bombay-based subsidiary.
The sex clip was recorded weeks ago and passed on by the bragging
schoolboy to three of his friends and eventually made its way to video
disc sellers in New Delhi. It did not draw much attention until an
engineering student at a prestigious Indian college listed it for sale
on Baazee.com.
Now the girl's parents have sent her off to Canada. The 17-year-old
boy, the son of an affluent businessman, is now in a juvenile
detention center. He went to Nepal to escape the media glare and was
arrested at the airport when he returned to the capital on Sunday. A
judge on Tuesday ordered him held until Jan. 4 for questioning to try
to determine how the video clip reached the man who tried to sell it.
The controversy over the clip; it's the talk of urban India, an
obsession of newspapers and talk shows; is typical of a society
in transition, said Dr. Ranjana Kumari, the director of the think tank
Center for Social Research.
India's recent economic boom has created unimaginable wealth among the
tech-savvy urban population, who live in a globalized world dominated
by the Internet, international brands and Western lifestyle with its
relatively liberal sexual values.
Kumari says urban India is being pulled apart by these new values and
its own centuries-old social conservatism.
"It is this transition which is resulting in a lot of confusion,"
Kumari said.
Observers like Kumari think a variety of people share the blame for
grossly amplifying this sex scandal including the authorities
who arrested Bajaj and the boy, who remains unidentified because of
his age; the teenagers' parents, who weren't aware of their children's
activities; and teachers, for sidestepping sex education in schools.
Many are outraged by the arrest of the schoolboy, who along with the
girl attended one of the capital's best known private schools, The
Delhi Public School.
"What are we trying to say here?" asked Dutt. "What do we believe is
wrong? Was it that he had sex? Was it that he sent out the clip? Which
part is the disturbing part?"
Of greater concern to many in the business community is Bajaj's arrest
under the Information Technology Act of 2000. The law makes a criminal
offense of "publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any
information in electronic form, which is obscene." But it also says an
Internet provider or Web site manager can't be held responsible if he
acted diligently to remedy an electronic offense after learning of it.
Baazee.com maintains it yanked the sex video listing as soon as
customer service managers noticed it, and Bajaj had traveled to New
Delhi to cooperate with authorities.
Pawan Duggal, a cyberlaw expert, said Bajaj's arrest has serious
implications, especially when Internet usage in the country is rapidly
growing and foreign investors are increasingly looking to India for
e-commerce opportunities.
"Ultimately we have to see bigger picture. We want to increase
Internet penetration. All this will only happen if you allow service
providers the freedom," he said. "The law needs to be more industry
friendly and more pragmatic."
AP Technology Writer Rachel Konrad contributed to this report from San
Jose, Calif.
For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily
media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . New articles daily.
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receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the
understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic
issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I
believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish
to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go
beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner, in this instance, Associated Press.
For more information go to:
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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Vijay Joshi, the writer of this article
for the Associated Press noted that this incident caused a diplomatic
squabble between India and the USA. I am reminded of the similarity
between this incident (minors and consensual sex) and an incident on
September 25 in Iraq: one of Bush's Onward Christian Soldiers raped a
seventeen year old boy, an Iraqi soldier. It is discussed in detail in
Yahoo News Tuesday evening (let's see if I can get this URL correct):
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=101&e=4&u=/po/20041222/co_po/americansoldiershootsiraqiaftersex
You may need to use a Yahoo login to deep link into that page, and if
the link does not work for some reason, go to Yahoo News (my.news.yahoo.com)
and read the 'Planet Out' news section, for the story 'American Soldier
Shoots Iraqi After Sex'. It seems that National Guardsman Private
Federico Merida, age 21 shot and killed a 17-year old Iraqi boy
following a sex act between them. At his court martial, held in Iraq
about a month ago, Merida shot the boy eleven times with his carbine
following the sex act. At first, he tried to blame it on the boy,
saying the boy had demanded money following sex. Then he changed his
story and said the boy had *forced him* to do the sex act. Later he
admitted to 'getting agressive with the boy' and when the kid
threatened to tattle on him, he decided to shoot the kid. Merida was
found guilty in the court martial, sentenced to 25 years in prison in
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in what the Army euphemistically refers to
as the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks. The parents of the
Iraqi boy are understandably livid about it; and according to Yahoo,
the Army has been covering up the court martial records. Tsk, tsk.
Like the two children in India and the E-Bay video, we may hear more
about this problem in Iraq. PAT]
Lisa Minter (lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com)