> I wish that if they’re gonna downrank “good” pirate content then they should do the same (or worse) for the bad/malicious ones.
I'm pretty confident they'd like to but it's a tricky problem. Based on this article, they're downranking based on number of legit DMCA requests - the good sites will generate a lot of signal on that front. The bad/malicious sites won't.
The malicious/scam sites usually come and go quickly, so it's hard to learn which ones they are - if you figure out one site is a scam, and a new one pops up.
A real solution would require being able to make an automatic judgement about whether a site is bad/malicious based on the content of the site, but that's really hard, and it's really bad when you get false positives, so you have to be super conservative about it.
> At the bottom of the page click on the DMCA complaint, you'll find all the URLs you shouldn't ever, never ever, click on~
I don't think everyone is seeing this, because sometimes I see this but sometimes not, seems to depend on the query. Searching for "piratebay" doesn't show it in the bottom (I live in an European country [also in EU]) and meanwhile, official thepiratebay website is blocked on a ISP level here.
> These sites seem to be run by idealistic individuals, rather than as a profit making enterprise.
You really think people advertising adaware 'Improve PC performance now' and 'watch XXX live with donkeys' are idealistic individuals fighting draconian copyright laws?
Also I don't know about kickass - but for example the /scrape endpoint is blocked on the piratebay tracker (and most other 'commercial' trackers) -- meaning that you can't get basic statistics (like leechers/seeders) about a torrent which is tracked by them without going through their advertisements.
> How do you mean The Pirate Bay is set up explicitly for finding pirated material?
I have a problem with his logic too. I use Pirate bay for finding free non copyrighted PDFs and bunch of non profit free to public copy videos and TPB search engine is the best and the fastest one.
I don't recall using it to search for illegal stuff even once, just because it has Pirate in its name. Federal Express has "federal" in its name, but it doesn't mean its a government entity...
> In short TPB does nothing in terms of contributory infringement that other indexing sites (Google, Bing, etc) don't do.
That is an argument that you are making, not a foregone conclusion. First off, the branding matters when it comes to intent. The name, "The Pirate Bay" leaves it pretty clear what they're expecting you to do with the site.
Also, there's the fact that Google and other search engines are responsive to DMCA requests, TPB is not. Finally, there's the political positions of the organization running the site.
Their service is much closer to cperciva's analogy than it is to a normal search engine.
> Can anybody explain what's the fuzz regarding pirate bay? I mean, there are tons of good torrent sites and search engines everybody use every day...
Such as?
No, seriously. This is why TPB going down is a big deal. There are plenty of other trackers, but most people don't know about them, and Google makes them somewhat difficult to find. And, of course, the really good trackers are by invitation only.
So enlighten us poor heathens and share some links. :)
Whats funny and ironic is that this actually makes finding pirated content much easier since only actual sites that contain pirated content are the ones that will be listed on DMCA complaint list
>The disincentive to start the next pirate website is the fact that the owners/operators of said website are subject to arrest and jail time.
But it takes only one guy who thinks "they will never get me as I'm smarter" to have your next KAT/Pirate Bay that will (allegedly) cause billions dollars of damage.
>Rights holders have been trying to get rid of sites like the pirate bay for more than a decade, and if anything PB is easier to find and more reliable to use than ever before.
Maybe I'm just older and have less free time, but public trackers seem less and less useful every year. And private trackers have a huge barrier to entry.
"Actually, worse might be that the pirate would send a DMCA takedown to your hosting provider." Now, that would be funny , lol . I shall probably send their hosting provider a short note about this.
Google has been downranking sites based on copyright takedown requests since 2018 at least [0]. And it's been very hard to find torrent sites or streaming sites through Google since then in my experience.
As many have pointed out, this just makes it easier for actually malicious sites to get traffic.
No, it doesn't try to suppress pirated contents as such, it tries to boost quality sites like those of Disney and its brethren. Reverting would bring all kinds of things to the top, good and bad, not just TPB.
To me it looks like the original pagerank plus a large dose of wishful thinking, and if it were implemented disney.com would rank 0.01 until manually boosted (in an act of "editorial judgment").
So that they can later justify draconian piracy laws.
"It took us seven years to get this one site down, a site that caused us over 110 million dollars in piracy, and we couldn't even collect any of it.
Within hours of a court order, the site was back up with a new name.
<Thus, you should require ISP's to filter their traffic, or whatever> "
Agreed
Removing links to exclusively pirated content is something I can accept, removing an entire website because it contains piracy I can't.
Even worse is the result manipulation, that is ridiculous, whoever pays more gets better rank?
This sounds like the same argument used when sites went after PirateBay for hosting pointers to content, even though they never hosted the content itself.
"I disagree strongly. The Pirate Bay is infested with malware, fake torrents, media monitoring companies, and lots of other undesirable stuff. It is difficult to navigate and use."
There is a rating system. If there is a virus, someone will complain. How is it difficult to use? looking for Photoshop? put it in the search box and click "search".
"Here's the way that record companies should make money: $20/mo for access to that company's entire catalog, unlimited download, well-organized, high-quality rips, vetted torrents (i.e., uploaded by the company itself, malware free), etc. If you've ever used one of the big private music trackers they make an excellent prototype for a for-pay service that would allow the rights holders to rake in even more money than they currently make. They were eventually able to figure it out with VHS, I don't know why it takes them so long with the internet."
The record companies already negotiated with terrorists and lost, why would they believe that this time will be any different. You can get songs for 99 cents, Netflix tons of movies, preview music through Grooveshark, Last.fm, and Pandora. Yet, it's still not "enough". Piracy is worse than never and there are a new set of excuses as to why you have a need (and a right) to downloading someone else's hard work for free.
I'm pretty confident they'd like to but it's a tricky problem. Based on this article, they're downranking based on number of legit DMCA requests - the good sites will generate a lot of signal on that front. The bad/malicious sites won't.
The malicious/scam sites usually come and go quickly, so it's hard to learn which ones they are - if you figure out one site is a scam, and a new one pops up.
A real solution would require being able to make an automatic judgement about whether a site is bad/malicious based on the content of the site, but that's really hard, and it's really bad when you get false positives, so you have to be super conservative about it.
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