so long, pirate bay
Yesterday, an 11-nation raid was conducted on various online pirate operations. Conspicuously absent from the list was Sweden, which is not part of the EU. Well, today Sweden passed some strong anti-piracy legislation.
The most obvious consequences are for The Pirate Bay, which is arguably the world's biggest bittorrent tracker site, and resides in Sweden. They've been particularly smug about their immunity from prosecution. Although TPB doesn't actually host copyrighted data -- the torrent files and trackers they provide simply supply metadata telling your Bittorrent client how to find peers offering the data -- it seems pretty likely that they're not long for this world.
It goes without saying that this won't actually stop piracy, but when TPB finally goes down there'll be a transition, the same as there was when Suprnova.org was shut down. Matt and I were talking about plausible future hotbeds for piracy just the other night, actually. Matt's bet was China, but I have my doubts. It's true that their government isn't keen to enforce intellectual property laws, but though they might be lacking the will, their nationwide firewall gives them a simple way, should they ever decide to. Eastern Europe? Nah; Suprnova was based there (although it used an elaborate -- and awful -- international mirror system). The glory days of slavic piracy have come and gone, and as countries jockey for EU membership they're keen to chalk up good records on IP enforcement. Africa? No infrastructure. Central or South America? Brazil's pretty wired, plus it's run by a bunch of anticorporatist hippies, so it's a definite possibility. But Russia is already in a computer crime class unto itself. If I had to bet, I'd say the next big tracker site's address will end in .ru.
Comments
I wouldn't discount Africa so easily. Much of coastal Africa, not to mention SA, is disproportionately 'wired,' ironically due to a mid-90's diplomatic flap between the US and France over whose telecom companies would gain access to the continent.
How about the rumor of Palestinian safe haven? Just a rumor (i.e., not sufficiently wired)?
Interesting point about Africa, Michael. But I still have my doubts. If nothing else, there isn't much of an African hacker culture. Not enough penetration of technology, I guess, given the drastic gulf between rich and poor in many nations there.
Justin, I think you're thinking of Earthstation 5, a centralized P2P app that popped up toward the end of Kazaa's dominance. As far as I know it actually *is* located in the Jenin refugee camp. Or, maybe, was. Its homepage seems to be dead. ES5 was loaded with adware, and eventually someone discovered some possible malicious (but more likely just badly-written) code that would let the ES5 creators delete whatever they wanted from your hard drive. People flocked away, and I think that was pretty much the end of that.
I'm confused by how regions can be ruled out due to their level of wired-ness. Am I way off base in thinking that all you need to run one of these sites is a single computer with a reliable internet connection? So why can't an individual, regardless of location, set something up?
Well, it's not so much a question of it being able to be set up, but of it being able to flourish. How many computer professionals are there in the area? How expensive is hosting relative to their income? How long can a site expect to be up before law enforcement notices, and will law enforcement *ever* care? Will the ISPs respond to legal threats from copyright holders?
There are a lot of tiny sites that never gain enough popularity to thrive. One can be set up anywhere, but it takes a lucky combination for it to thrive.
So yeah, it could happen anywhere. But looking at the odds, I think Russia is probably the most likely.
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