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 Jimsolo wrote:
Wait, what? Doesn't Anonymous protest social injustices? Whether real or imagined? This is just crime. Granted, petty crime no one usually cares about. Do they have some kind of idealistic angle I'm not seeing?

They were probably coming from the 'free access to all information' angle.

Anonomous stoppe being about anything.
Besides, they all probably want their free stuff anyway.
godforbid you pay for something

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Anonomous stoppe being about anything.
Besides, they all probably want their free stuff anyway.
godforbid you pay for something

I almost feel sorry for "hotsauceman1"...

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Anonomous

Delightful typo. I giggled. I'm sorry, but I did.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Wait, what? Doesn't Anonymous protest social injustices? Whether real or imagined? This is just crime. Granted, petty crime no one usually cares about. Do they have some kind of idealistic angle I'm not seeing?

Anonymous is anyone who says they are a member of Anonymous. Go through any news article about Anonymous and do a copy-paste for "some guy on the internet" and you'd get a more accurate picture of the situation.

 Carlson793 wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Wait, what? Doesn't Anonymous protest social injustices? Whether real or imagined? This is just crime. Granted, petty crime no one usually cares about. Do they have some kind of idealistic angle I'm not seeing?

They were probably coming from the 'free access to all information' angle.

Am I out of my mind, or is that a ludicrously childish point of view?

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Carlson793 wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Wait, what? Doesn't Anonymous protest social injustices? Whether real or imagined? This is just crime. Granted, petty crime no one usually cares about. Do they have some kind of idealistic angle I'm not seeing?

They were probably coming from the 'free access to all information' angle.

Am I out of my mind, or is that a ludicrously childish point of view?

No I always thought it was BS personally. I had multiple roommates in college that loved downloading tons of stuff off sites like Pirate Bay and others. Most of them weren't all self righteous about it, one was. The feds years ago shut down some site that let people do this stuff and he called it censorship. Yea...

 Alpharius wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Anonomous stoppe being about anything.
Besides, they all probably want their free stuff anyway.
godforbid you pay for something

I almost feel sorry for "hotsauceman1"...

Im sorry? What? What was the point of linking t my profile and saying you feel sorry for me?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Anonomous stoppe being about anything.
Besides, they all probably want their free stuff anyway.
godforbid you pay for something

I almost feel sorry for "hotsauceman1"...

Im sorry? What? What was the point of linking t my profile and saying you feel sorry for me?

He's saying that Anonymous is about to hack your profile. (Fetches popcorn).

 Jimsolo wrote:
Wait, what? Doesn't Anonymous protest social injustices? Whether real or imagined? This is just crime. Granted, petty crime no one usually cares about. Do they have some kind of idealistic angle I'm not seeing?

Anonymous is just a group of people hiding behind their computers, there's no organisation and their aims are whatever group of people happen to be focused on something at any one moment. The media can't get their head around this, they seem to think anonymous is like a secret society with a particular agenda, whereas in fact the people acting under the banner of anonymous this week supporting illegal downloading are not the same people who will be attacking Scientology next week. When anonymous act on any one issue, it's the equivalent of an online flash mob assembling, it's not following the chosen actions by leader of an organised political group, which seems to be the only way the media can comprehend it.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Doesn't Anonymous protest social injustices?

No. Anonymous protests perceived injustices that are sometimes real injustices but often are just slights that they've chosen to respond to childishly. (more seriously, depends on what 'Anonymous' you're referring too. Every hackivist under the sun uses the name and they all have different ideas about what Anonymous means). Some groups using the name can be rather sensible, others are as crazy as a sack of sacks.

Do they have some kind of idealistic angle I'm not seeing?

They protest stuff they don't like cause feth that stuff.

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Carlson793 wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Wait, what? Doesn't Anonymous protest social injustices? Whether real or imagined? This is just crime. Granted, petty crime no one usually cares about. Do they have some kind of idealistic angle I'm not seeing?

They were probably coming from the 'free access to all information' angle.

Am I out of my mind, or is that a ludicrously childish point of view?

Not ludicrously childish, just unrealistic. It's the basic rationale of a post-scarcity society, and in terms of data the internet is post-scarcity, the problem is it exists in a world where scarcity(and thus the need to earn a living from your labour, whatever form that labour takes) very much exists and further a world run according to an economic doctrine that doesn't just acknowledge scarcity but actively encourages it.

Copyright law is ridiculous and out of control, and personally I don't see the issue with people who wouldn't have been able to afford to access entertainment anyway downloading it(in that regard the lack of scarcity is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration, and in my experience people who advocate the "tough luck, poors, live without" line are coming at the issue from a position every bit as ideological as the other side - theirs being "being poor should be as monstrous and soul-destroying an experience as possible, or else for some inexplicable reason nobody will ever want to better themselves despite that being a core driver of human behaviour"), but at the end of the day people have to eat and that includes folk who work in creative industries, so it's a bit early to be declaring we live in a post-scarcity information utopia.

Personally Im of the view point that TPB needs to be placed on a Blimp, crewed by real pirates

Of course one can imagine the Governments reactions

 Yodhrin wrote:

Copyright law is ridiculous and out of control, and personally I don't see the issue with people who wouldn't have been able to afford to access entertainment anyway downloading it(in that regard the lack of scarcity is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration, and in my experience people who advocate the "tough luck, poors, live without" line are coming at the issue from a position every bit as ideological as the other side - theirs being "being poor should be as monstrous and soul-destroying an experience as possible, or else for some inexplicable reason nobody will ever want to better themselves despite that being a core driver of human behaviour"), but at the end of the day people have to eat and that includes folk who work in creative industries, so it's a bit early to be declaring we live in a post-scarcity information utopia.

You know I would feel sorry for them except it ain't homeless people downloading all this crap. In order to use a site like this you need a stable internet connection, a computer, and a place to store the data. All that takes money, people are not consuming all this entertainment for free anyway. Besides I have seen people download stuff like Micheal Bay style big blockbuster movies that take millions of dollars and thousands of people to make, the fact that the company that paid for all that up front wants some $$ for their trouble doesn't make them cruel.

Besides entertainers and normal people provide tons of material for free online and otherwise. Musicians put albums online for free, youtube is free, etc. All of that is legal and FREE. So it ain't like they have zero options here if they can't afford to pay for entertainment. Besides shouldn't the people producing the entertainment get to decide whether or not it should available for free?

Every person I have met that uses sites like Pirate Bay (and yes I understand this anecdotal) doesn't do this because they can't afford it, they are doing it because they're cheap.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Copyright law is ridiculous and out of control, and personally I don't see the issue with people who wouldn't have been able to afford to access entertainment anyway downloading it(in that regard the lack of scarcity is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration, and in my experience people who advocate the "tough luck, poors, live without" line are coming at the issue from a position every bit as ideological as the other side - theirs being "being poor should be as monstrous and soul-destroying an experience as possible, or else for some inexplicable reason nobody will ever want to better themselves despite that being a core driver of human behaviour"), but at the end of the day people have to eat and that includes folk who work in creative industries, so it's a bit early to be declaring we live in a post-scarcity information utopia.

You know I would feel sorry for them except it ain't homeless people downloading all this crap. In order to use a site like this you need a stable internet connection, a computer, and a place to store the data. All that takes money, people are not consuming all this entertainment for free anyway. Besides I have seen people download stuff like Micheal Bay style big blockbuster movies that take millions of dollars and thousands of people to make, the fact that the company that paid for all that up front wants some $$ for their trouble doesn't make them cruel.

Besides entertainers and normal people provide tons of material for free online and otherwise. Musicians put albums online for free, youtube is free, etc. All of that is legal and FREE. So it ain't like they have zero options here if they can't afford to pay for entertainment. Besides shouldn't the people producing the entertainment get to decide whether or not it should available for free?

Every person I have met that uses sites like Pirate Bay (and yes I understand this anecdotal) doesn't do this because they can't afford it, they are doing it because they're cheap.

Some people use it a a preview, if the film is ok they buy the dvd. One of my neighbors does this, and he then buys most of the things he's watched.

 loki old fart wrote:

 Blood Hawk wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Copyright law is ridiculous and out of control, and personally I don't see the issue with people who wouldn't have been able to afford to access entertainment anyway downloading it(in that regard the lack of scarcity is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration, and in my experience people who advocate the "tough luck, poors, live without" line are coming at the issue from a position every bit as ideological as the other side - theirs being "being poor should be as monstrous and soul-destroying an experience as possible, or else for some inexplicable reason nobody will ever want to better themselves despite that being a core driver of human behaviour"), but at the end of the day people have to eat and that includes folk who work in creative industries, so it's a bit early to be declaring we live in a post-scarcity information utopia.

You know I would feel sorry for them except it ain't homeless people downloading all this crap. In order to use a site like this you need a stable internet connection, a computer, and a place to store the data. All that takes money, people are not consuming all this entertainment for free anyway. Besides I have seen people download stuff like Micheal Bay style big blockbuster movies that take millions of dollars and thousands of people to make, the fact that the company that paid for all that up front wants some $$ for their trouble doesn't make them cruel.

Besides entertainers and normal people provide tons of material for free online and otherwise. Musicians put albums online for free, youtube is free, etc. All of that is legal and FREE. So it ain't like they have zero options here if they can't afford to pay for entertainment. Besides shouldn't the people producing the entertainment get to decide whether or not it should available for free?

Every person I have met that uses sites like Pirate Bay (and yes I understand this anecdotal) doesn't do this because they can't afford it, they are doing it because they're cheap.

Some people use it a a preview, if the film is ok they buy the dvd. One of my neighbors does this, and he then buys most of the things he's watched.

That happens too. One guy I knew brought over his illegal copy of the first Thor movie before it was even released to my apartment so him and my roommates could watch it. That copy didn't have most of special effects so a lot of scenes had the blue screen for backgrounds and stuff.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Copyright law is ridiculous and out of control, and personally I don't see the issue with people who wouldn't have been able to afford to access entertainment anyway downloading it(in that regard the lack of scarcity is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration, and in my experience people who advocate the "tough luck, poors, live without" line are coming at the issue from a position every bit as ideological as the other side - theirs being "being poor should be as monstrous and soul-destroying an experience as possible, or else for some inexplicable reason nobody will ever want to better themselves despite that being a core driver of human behaviour"), but at the end of the day people have to eat and that includes folk who work in creative industries, so it's a bit early to be declaring we live in a post-scarcity information utopia.

You know I would feel sorry for them except it ain't homeless people downloading all this crap. In order to use a site like this you need a stable internet connection, a computer, and a place to store the data. All that takes money, people are not consuming all this entertainment for free anyway. Besides I have seen people download stuff like Micheal Bay style big blockbuster movies that take millions of dollars and thousands of people to make, the fact that the company that paid for all that up front wants some $$ for their trouble doesn't make them cruel.

Besides entertainers and normal people provide tons of material for free online and otherwise. Musicians put albums online for free, youtube is free, etc. All of that is legal and FREE. So it ain't like they have zero options here if they can't afford to pay for entertainment. Besides shouldn't the people producing the entertainment get to decide whether or not it should available for free?

Every person I have met that uses sites like Pirate Bay (and yes I understand this anecdotal) doesn't do this because they can't afford it, they are doing it because they're cheap.

And this is exactly the sort of thing I mean, if you're not literally living on the streets people these days have been brainwashed by neoliberal bollocks into believing you should just be happy you're not lying in a doorway somewhere frozen to death. People are not born unemployed they can have earned money and bought things like computers previously(it hardly takes a £2000 mega-rig to play a few movies), charities exist to give people on low incomes/benefits recycled PCs, people have families that might be capable of clubbing together to buy them a PC as a one-off but still aren't well off enough to support them, and these days a basic entry-level internet package is pretty cheap and even necessary if you have any hope of effectively searching for employment. Not once in my post did I make any of the arguments you're ascribing to me; I didn't say companies don't deserve to get paid, or that they're cruel for charging money for their product, and I didn't say people have zero other options, I just don't get where the harm is - these people literally cannot be costing the entertainment industry money, because even if they stopped downloading they'd have no money to spend.

And if you want to deal in anecdotes, fine; I spent a period on disability benefits. I had fething nothing except the PC I'd built myself for cheap at the job previous to that time. If I budgeted every last penny of my social religiously, I could just afford the cheapest broadband connection available in my area. No going out to see friends even on the rare days I was capable(I don't even mean drinking or hanging out, I mean I literally didn't have enough room in the budget for busfare), no TV package to watch(no TV, that went to pay a heating bill), nothing. Downloading stuff was literally the only thing that kept me from going completely wonko. So yeah, I find it hard to judge people with little or no money who use file sharing to find a few shreds of entertainment in their otherwise miserable lives.

 Yodhrin wrote:

And this is exactly the sort of thing I mean, if you're not literally living on the streets people these days have been brainwashed by neoliberal bollocks into believing you should just be happy you're not lying in a doorway somewhere frozen to death. People are not born unemployed they can have earned money and bought things like computers previously(it hardly takes a £2000 mega-rig to play a few movies), charities exist to give people on low incomes/benefits recycled PCs, people have families that might be capable of clubbing together to buy them a PC as a one-off but still aren't well off enough to support them, and these days a basic entry-level internet package is pretty cheap and even necessary if you have any hope of effectively searching for employment. Not once in my post did I make any of the arguments you're ascribing to me; I didn't say companies don't deserve to get paid, or that they're cruel for charging money for their product, and I didn't say people have zero other options, I just don't get where the harm is - these people literally cannot be costing the entertainment industry money, because even if they stopped downloading they'd have no money to spend.

If the only people using those sites were the sort you described then maybe but that hasn't been my experience. I doubt that group makes a very large percentage of the people who use these sites, and also seriously doubt that the people pushing the governments to crack down on them will be convinced by this argument either. When I was in college most of the people on my floor file shared either online or just burning CDs of games/movies/ etc. for each other. These were college kids you could afford to buy this stuff, they just saw it as a cheaper and easier way of getting what the wanted.

And you did say "and in my experience people who advocate the "tough luck, poors, live without" line are coming at the issue from a position every bit as ideological as the other side - theirs being "being poor should be as monstrous and soul-destroying an experience as possible, or else for some inexplicable reason nobody will ever want to better themselves despite that being a core driver of human behaviour". Which implies that a company being angry that their product is available online for free when they have no intentions of making it free is advocating for that argument. That somehow shutting down Pirate Bay means they want to punish the poor. Which I viewed as basically saying they are cruel.

 Yodhrin wrote:
And if you want to deal in anecdotes, fine; I spent a period on disability benefits. I had fething nothing except the PC I'd built myself for cheap at the job previous to that time. If I budgeted every last penny of my social religiously, I could just afford the cheapest broadband connection available in my area. No going out to see friends even on the rare days I was capable(I don't even mean drinking or hanging out, I mean I literally didn't have enough room in the budget for busfare), no TV package to watch(no TV, that went to pay a heating bill), nothing. Downloading stuff was literally the only thing that kept me from going completely wonko. So yeah, I find it hard to judge people with little or no money who use file sharing to find a few shreds of entertainment in their otherwise miserable lives.

But you just said they have other options that are free, it is not like file sharing is literally their only option. Now if you said that is was the only option to access to the entertainment they wanted than ya I would agree with you. I understand these people choices, it is just that hasn't been my experience.

Edit: And last thing, entertainment, paid entertainment is not exactly all that expensive online anymore, I mean hell a netflix subscription costs far less than any internet access per month that I have seen.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

And this is exactly the sort of thing I mean, if you're not literally living on the streets people these days have been brainwashed by neoliberal bollocks into believing you should just be happy you're not lying in a doorway somewhere frozen to death. People are not born unemployed they can have earned money and bought things like computers previously(it hardly takes a £2000 mega-rig to play a few movies), charities exist to give people on low incomes/benefits recycled PCs, people have families that might be capable of clubbing together to buy them a PC as a one-off but still aren't well off enough to support them, and these days a basic entry-level internet package is pretty cheap and even necessary if you have any hope of effectively searching for employment. Not once in my post did I make any of the arguments you're ascribing to me; I didn't say companies don't deserve to get paid, or that they're cruel for charging money for their product, and I didn't say people have zero other options, I just don't get where the harm is - these people literally cannot be costing the entertainment industry money, because even if they stopped downloading they'd have no money to spend.

If the only people using those sites were the sort you described then maybe but that hasn't been my experience. I doubt that group makes a very large percentage of the people who use these sites, and also seriously doubt that the people pushing the governments to crack down on them will be convinced by this argument either. When I was in college most of the people on my floor file shared either online or just burning CDs of games/movies/ etc. for each other. These were college kids you could afford to buy this stuff, they just saw it as a cheaper and easier way of getting what the wanted.

I'm sure many people who download torrents could afford to pay for what they download. I'm not sure what that has to do with my point, other than perhaps you're again doing what you admit to doing below; inventing motivations and further meaning and ascribing them to what I've actually said.

And you did say "and in my experience people who advocate the "tough luck, poors, live without" line are coming at the issue from a position every bit as ideological as the other side - theirs being "being poor should be as monstrous and soul-destroying an experience as possible, or else for some inexplicable reason nobody will ever want to better themselves despite that being a core driver of human behaviour". Which implies that a company being angry that their product is available online for free when they have no intentions of making it free is advocating for that argument. That somehow shutting down Pirate Bay means they want to punish the poor. Which I viewed as basically saying they are cruel.

I know the whacky American court system has decided corporations are people, but thankfully elsewhere there's still some sanity floating about. People who advocate that line, people. Other than claiming ridiculous and impossibly large amounts of money are being lost to file sharing, and occasionally hiring deranged marketing agencies who put out ads equating file sharers with people who violently rob sweet old ladies in the street, the corporate side of the anti-piracy lobby are usually fairly reserved(likely because A; regardless of what they say in public they do understand that there's a pretty big overlap between people who buy their stuff and people who pirate their stuff, and B; they have the ear of governments and traditional media, so their "official" position doesn't need to be completely insane); my point was that the people who wander around on forums or show up as talking heads on TV and pull the "Well I wuz poor once and I never dun robbed my local Gamestop! Dagnabbin' freeloadin' lubrul poors!" shtick are seeing the issue through their existing ideology(ie being poor should be a terrible experience to motivate people to stop being poor, because obviously only lazy people stay poor etc etc).

 Yodhrin wrote:
And if you want to deal in anecdotes, fine; I spent a period on disability benefits. I had fething nothing except the PC I'd built myself for cheap at the job previous to that time. If I budgeted every last penny of my social religiously, I could just afford the cheapest broadband connection available in my area. No going out to see friends even on the rare days I was capable(I don't even mean drinking or hanging out, I mean I literally didn't have enough room in the budget for busfare), no TV package to watch(no TV, that went to pay a heating bill), nothing. Downloading stuff was literally the only thing that kept me from going completely wonko. So yeah, I find it hard to judge people with little or no money who use file sharing to find a few shreds of entertainment in their otherwise miserable lives.

But you just said they have other options that are free, it is not like file sharing is literally their only option. Now if you said that is was the only option to access to the entertainment they wanted than ya I would agree with you. I understand these people choices, it is just that hasn't been my experience.

You're missing my point again; why does it matter? Scenario; Person A cannot afford to go to the movies, buy games, etc etc(genuinely cannot afford to, not "spent the money on other entertainment products"). Person A chooses to download a movie from TPB despite the fact there were free options available(not nearly as many as you seem to think, by the way). Now, please explain how Person A's actions have negatively impacted whoever made, distributed etc the movie they chose to download?

I'm not saying downloading stuff is some moral imperative because "infurmshun gotta b free dawg!", I'm just saying that I find it difficult to judge people in a specific situation(which has no relation to other people in other situations) when what they're doing hurts nobody as far as I can tell, and brings a wee bit of joy to someone who is likely having a pretty gakky time of things.

Edit: And last thing, entertainment, paid entertainment is not exactly all that expensive online anymore, I mean hell a netflix subscription costs far less than any internet access per month that I have seen.

That would be the internet connection they're not supposed to be able to afford, for the computer they're supposed to be too poor to own, yeah?

Is this their longest outage? I don't really remember one that went more than a 2 or 3 days really.

I don't use TPB but I am quite fond of it because it's really good at keeping attention on itself.

 Ouze wrote:
Is this their longest outage? I don't really remember one that went more than a 2 or 3 days really.

I don't use TPB but I am quite fond of it because it's really good at keeping attention on itself.

How long were they down?

Because they've been back up for a while now...

Are you sure?

 Yodhrin wrote:

I'm sure many people who download torrents could afford to pay for what they download. I'm not sure what that has to do with my point, other than perhaps you're again doing what you admit to doing below; inventing motivations and further meaning and ascribing them to what I've actually said.

No the point is that isn't the only group that uses them.

 Yodhrin wrote:
I know the whacky American court system has decided corporations are people, but thankfully elsewhere there's still some sanity floating about. People who advocate that line, people. Other than claiming ridiculous and impossibly large amounts of money are being lost to file sharing, and occasionally hiring deranged marketing agencies who put out ads equating file sharers with people who violently rob sweet old ladies in the street, the corporate side of the anti-piracy lobby are usually fairly reserved(likely because A; regardless of what they say in public they do understand that there's a pretty big overlap between people who buy their stuff and people who pirate their stuff, and B; they have the ear of governments and traditional media, so their "official" position doesn't need to be completely insane); my point was that the people who wander around on forums or show up as talking heads on TV and pull the "Well I wuz poor once and I never dun robbed my local Gamestop! Dagnabbin' freeloadin' lubrul poors!" shtick are seeing the issue through their existing ideology(ie being poor should be a terrible experience to motivate people to stop being poor, because obviously only lazy people stay poor etc etc).

I no idea were you got the corporations are people bit from sense I never said anything even remotely close to that. You are trying to some how tag me as a talking head type because I view file sharing as illegal and stealing, which it is.

 Yodhrin wrote:
You're missing my point again; why does it matter? Scenario; Person A cannot afford to go to the movies, buy games, etc etc(genuinely cannot afford to, not "spent the money on other entertainment products"). Person A chooses to download a movie from TPB despite the fact there were free options available(not nearly as many as you seem to think, by the way). Now, please explain how Person A's actions have negatively impacted whoever made, distributed etc the movie they chose to download?

It matters because people do have have other options which you both admit and then turn around and act like file sharing is only way to get a few shred of entertainment in their lives. Not having access to entertainment at all is different from not having access to the entertainment you want.

 Yodhrin wrote:
I'm not saying downloading stuff is some moral imperative because "infurmshun gotta b free dawg!", I'm just saying that I find it difficult to judge people in a specific situation(which has no relation to other people in other situations) when what they're doing hurts nobody as far as I can tell, and brings a wee bit of joy to someone who is likely having a pretty gakky time of things.

I understand your point about the people who are poor and how they wouldn't have bought the new Hobbit movie on DVD anyway and how they don't cost the industry anything. People often over exaggerate the problem of file sharing in terms of lost revenue but that doesn't mean it isn't still a problem. It isn't just that lots of people who download this stuff can afford it but also these sites and the people who use them aren't saints. I mean from letting people host naked pictures of celebrities that hackers got a hold of by hacking the cloud where this data is stored, to the stories about people putting malware in the downloads, and even these sites using their profits from their sites to buy out the people that produced the stolen content in the first place. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/mindgeek_porn_monopoly_its_dominance_is_a_cautionary_tale_for_other_industries.html

 Yodhrin wrote:
That would be the internet connection they're not supposed to be able to afford, for the computer they're supposed to be too poor to own, yeah?

The point is that online entertainment is cheaper than you think. Maybe things are different in the England but many areas in the US internet ain't cheap for people and you often have very few choices, sometimes just one (Comcast). http://www.extremetech.com/internet/178465-woe-is-isp-30-of-americans-cant-choose-their-service-provider If you can afford that you should able to pay something out of pocket for something, it may not be anything impressive mind you but its something.

That would be the internet connection they're not supposed to be able to afford, for the computer they're supposed to be too poor to own, yeah?

Quite a few of the poor in America can't afford the internet. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/internet-access-digital-age_n_1285423.html It is not something that everyone just has and it is more expensive here than it is elsewhere.

 Ouze wrote:
Are you sure?

Yes, quite sure.

... it's still down. I'm not sure what site you're going to, but I don't think it's actually The Pirate Bay, whose URL is thepiratebay.se

I use a third party DNS server so even if my ISP blocked it in DNS it shouldn't matter.

New info-sharing tool set to beat Japan’s anti-whistleblower law

A Japanese activist and academic has created a website to facilitate the secure leaking of sensitive information to media by civil servants, challenging Japan’s controversial new state secrets law.

The website, set up by Surugadai University economics professor Masayuki Hatta, enables government workers to share documents with the media. The tool allows journalists to retrieve transferred information using a secure digital access key, operated by Tor, a popular free anonymity enabling software, Hatta says.

The site, unveiled Friday, uses an open source platform developed by Europe-based Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights.

“I want to create a secure channel that people can use to transfer information without putting themselves in jeopardy,” the professor was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“I’m not entirely against the protection of sensitive information, but I also believe the new law has many problems.”

After a year of protests, the contested state secrets law went into effect last week. Under the new regulation, whistleblowers could face up to 10 years in jail, while journalists and others who encourage secrets leaks could be imprisoned for up to five years. However, Hatta does not think that merely providing a tool for whistleblowing is punishable under the law.

The law has come under fire from critics who worry it will muzzle journalism and see it as part of a larger crackdown on dissent. Critics fear that officials may use the law’s vague language to conceal information from the public.

Reporters Without Borders has decried the law as “an unprecedented threat to freedom of information.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe defended the law, citing a growing need to safely share intelligence with the US in light of the encroaching regional threat from China’s military buildup and uncertainty surrounding North Korea’s nuclear program.

Abe has said that the law will only apply to leaks threatening national security and will not jeopardize media freedom.

 thenoobbomb wrote:
Uhh, I can reach TPB again since yesterday, I think. Not on .se, but on .cr

 Alpharius wrote:

 thenoobbomb wrote:
Uhh, I can reach TPB again since yesterday, I think. Not on .se, but on .cr

That's not the same site. It's a clone site, one of a great many, and it's not run by the same people or even off the same domain. Be careful, as Sigvatr was right - a bunch of those clone sites really are infected with malware.

Good to know!