I would be interested to hear how you suggest that pirates are caught. Since the Internet is worldwide, it is going to be virtually impossible to stop piracy.

The only way I can see that piracy can be reduced dramatically would be to have said artists and producers reduce the amount of royalties they expect to make from their product to a point where the pirates cannot make a profit from it. There will always be pirates that do not make any money from downloading copyrighted content but the high price of IP has, IMO, created these pirates.

Personally, I would prefer for, music performers specifically, to provide their musical content for free. This way thay could, in theory, build up a large fanbase, who would be prepared to pay cash to see them play live. That’s going to take a ballsy artist to attempt that!

Seems like another way to be anonymous but it tends to be associated with attacks only.

Servers@home is definitely something on the cards for me for the future..

What I was meaning was that – when I’m at college and want to look at websites such as this one here, darknet, I can’t do that because they use software like ‘websense’ to block websites by reading what is in their keyword meta html.
So I had a list of proxies and thought I’d use those to circumvent it – only to discover that they use keywords in their meta that flag them as being proxy sites; therefore the ‘websense’ blocks them as well,

so when they claim to be all about getting around things like ‘websense’ they haven’t done their homework very well or they wouldn’t advertise in the meta that they are proxy sites.

Tor sounds interesting, and another name that also has resonant import in offline reality too (Damballah was another one mentioned here recently – a voodoo snake-gods name! Glastonbury Tor is a very special place of the Avalon Isle).

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080315TDY01305.htm

/quote
The Yomiuri Shimbun

The nation’s four Internet provider organizations have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of users found to repeatedly use Winny and other file-sharing programs to illegally copy gaming software and music, it was learned Friday.

The move aims to deal with the rise in illegal copying of music, gaming software and images that has resulted in huge infringements on the rights of copyright holders.

Resorting to cutting off the Internet connection of copyright violators has been considered before but never resorted to over fears the practice might involve violations of privacy rights and the freedom of use of telecommunications.
/quote

Thing is though – I’d intended to try some proxy sites today, from a connection where I can actually get decent internet speeds for downloads etc (not for music, legal or otherwise – just apps like are listed here), but – since they all use meta keywords that say things like ‘proxy’ in them……they don’t work.

What’s the point of saying you have proxies that can get around censor stuff like websense, when you then put the very keywords into your websites meta and descriptor, which are exactly what the likes of websense uses to block sites with…..

I can’t get on darknet there either, cause it must have ‘hacking’ or something to do with ‘hack’ in the meta.

For proxies do this – have sites with the keywords that list them, so’d they show up insearches; but then DON’T indicate in the meta or anything else of the actual proxy site / page itself that it is a proxy service, and don’t put any info in it that would flag it as a grey-area kind of place on the web.

True, the effectiveness would be zero. It’s quite funny to see how ineffective the RIAA/MPAA is in prosecuting copyright offenders, eventhough their budget seems to be unlimited.

But the thing is bureaucrats aim not to solve the problem but simple provide a ‘solution’ that appears to work (without giving shit about the costs). It all has to do with FUD. Bureaucrats will want to create Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt so people will listen to them. They then will come up with a partial solution to the problem they themselves have created and herald they have squashed the problem (and move on to creating the next ‘hurdle’). The people will reward them for handling the ‘crisis’ by re-electing them. The same goes for the music and video industry. They state that artists (and they themselves ofcourse) are earning less and less, the reason being piracy and the distribution of their ‘property’ through digital means other than they control/get their cut from. As a solution they start a wild goose chase (actually more of a witch hunt) to bring down these bad music/video exchanging internet users. It’s rather funny they have, so far, only put some small fries on the stand.
It’s funny that they are so preoccupied with the protection of old shit (see ‘the mickey mouse’ law) and are not investing in new and innovative products.

Indeed bringing/slowing down hackers is by far more sensible.

I am quite fond of the remark: “Copy and improve”