pancakes

MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Author Topic: Withdrawing URLs?  (Read 6543 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Microbius

« on: July 19, 2010, 08:18 »
0
I was thinking, with regards to Hero turko and other sites which basically exist to redistribute stolen goods, would it not be possible to contact the registry and ask them to withdraw the URL?
I mean, I know you can get them taken away for, for example, maliciously registering them to extort money from companies with similar names. Where does the law/ do the rules stand with using them for illegal activity? I hope that internationally governments are looking into this as it seems like a good way to make life more difficult for thieves.


« Reply #1 on: July 19, 2010, 09:31 »
0
I would suggest that if the much larger games, film and music industries have not been able to do this, smaller fry like stock wouldn't be able to either.

Microbius

« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2010, 09:39 »
0
I was more wondering why they haven't been able to do it (the sites that give away stock photos also give away movies etc.) There are central agencies that control urls, like Nominet for example, that are subject to legislation in their respective countries. Do you know if there have been attempts to tackle the problem from this angle? it would just be interesting to find out what rules they play by.

« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2010, 09:58 »
0

I don't think I want to trust anyone to pull registry entries for websites.  That is too much like a bunch of cops telling me what I can connect to/read.   The power is there an probably utilized but it must be minimized if we are going to have democracy.

fred

Microbius

« Reply #4 on: July 19, 2010, 10:21 »
0
I don't know, I think a bit more policing of the internet would be a good thing, especially when it comes to sites like Hero Turko, which have existed for years solely to distribute stolen goods.

rubyroo

« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2010, 11:31 »
0
I agree.  If it's a clear case of blatant theft, I don't see that as 'Big Brother' ish at all.  If I, as the person robbed, report a burglary, and it is investigated with the perp taking out of action because I reported it, that doesn't constitute an invasion of freedom for any innocent parties.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2010, 11:36 by rubyroo »

Microbius

« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2010, 13:53 »
0
That's pretty much where I stand. It's not  like there's a couple of things on there that are dubious, the site has been exclusively dealing in intellectual property theft for years!

« Reply #7 on: July 20, 2010, 06:14 »
0
I don't know, I think a bit more policing of the internet would be a good thing, especially when it comes to sites like Hero Turko, which have existed for years solely to distribute stolen goods.

So, who do you trust to censor your reading?  It is a slippery slope.

fred

Microbius

« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2010, 07:14 »
0
That's what IP is all about, you don't pay you can't display. The law already censors what you can see, for example you're not allowed to read an in copyrighted novel on Hero Turko. If he chooses to display it his site should be taken down.
Your viewing is already censored in any-case like with child pornography, it's against the law, you host it you get shut down and hopefully caught and prosecuted too.
His host should already have pulled the site as it's almost certainly against his terms to redistribute stolen IP. Withdrawing his URL is just a far more reliable way of doing it.
You break the law then action is taken. It's not a freedom of speech issue.
Rapidshare etc. should be held responsible for all the content they host too. True it would mean their business model would no longer be supportable, but tough sh*t, you fence stolen property you should be held responsible. It would be time to think up a new model that doesn't involve the theft of other people's hard work!

« Reply #9 on: July 20, 2010, 08:33 »
0
That's what IP is all about, you don't pay you can't display. The law already censors what you can see, for example you're not allowed to read an in copyrighted novel on Hero Turko. If he chooses to display it his site should be taken down.
Your viewing is already censored in any-case like with child pornography, it's against the law, you host it you get shut down and hopefully caught and prosecuted too.
His host should already have pulled the site as it's almost certainly against his terms to redistribute stolen IP. Withdrawing his URL is just a far more reliable way of doing it.
You break the law then action is taken. It's not a freedom of speech issue.
Rapidshare etc. should be held responsible for all the content they host too. True it would mean their business model would no longer be supportable, but tough sh*t, you fence stolen property you should be held responsible. It would be time to think up a new model that doesn't involve the theft of other people's hard work!

Nope. I am not talking about legality I am talking about enforcement.   Some kind of "de-registration" power given to enforcement authorities  for copyright abuse is over the line as far as I am concerned.  It should be enforced but not through measures that are easily abused by the powers that be.  Matters of public safety - child abuse, etc. are entirely different from copyright abuse and to my mind it would be too easy to stretch such enforcement power to cover censorship of materials necessary for an informed public.

I suppose what I am saying is it is "more complicated" than just pulling material off the web for copyright abuse.

Calling copyright abuse "theft" is inflammatory and not accurate.  Theft involves depriving the owner of the use of the stolen property.  Copyright abuse does not strictly fit this description.  I am not saying it is right - it is certainly illegal and immoral - but it is not "theft".

fred

« Reply #10 on: July 20, 2010, 08:40 »
0
I don't know too much about the IP thieves and their distribution channels online but I'm sure we (photographers and "regular" internet users) are way behind in terms of what they get away with or not.

Heroturko is a major warez listing site. Not only that they get away with a disclaimer stating that they don't host the file but they also have a strategically designed network of secondary servers and backup DNS routing.

So even if the web hosting company, decided to put an end to Heruturko on their servers, Heroturko already has set-up backup DNS once the primary web host becomes unavailable (normally due to a server outage).

Large warez sites are making serious amounts of money through ads, clicks, referrals and even donations. As with anything that one does "for a living" you make sure to protect that as best as you can.

I've found some of my images on a web site for desktop wallpapers. I wrote to the host as well to some other photographers whose images I found there. Within a matter of hours the site was down and the account suspended.

24 hours later the same site was up and running again, just with the reported images missing.

Usually these guys register their domain with a different company than the web host, so that these two go completely independent. Once a web host drops you, you can re-set your DNS to another (even free) web host and continue business as usual.

What I don't like about web hosting companies is the fact that you can even buy web hosting for a month or 3 months. That obviously shows how easy it is for these guys to get their operations running. If they had to purchase web hosting for 12 months upfront you'd have less of these sites because the initial start-up costs are higher.

Well, anywho as I'm saying. We (or at least I) don't know enough about their practices but it has to be clarified that the internet is an almost lawless space. There is no internet police. And most likely there will never be one. Who is going to pay for that? The users? We? Do I want to pay an additional monthly fee for an internet police? And will "regular" people pay that fee that don't deal with IP related stuff?

It's quite complicated and convoluted.

But for sure it's a great business idea. If someone can come up with a company that would get these things automated etc. that may work then...
« Last Edit: July 20, 2010, 08:43 by click_click »

Microbius

« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2010, 10:14 »
0
@ click_click I think we're talking about two different things. The site can change who it's hosted by, these are just registrars who sell on domain names and provide the servers to host the site. The actual URLs are controlled by a handful of agencies eg the Public Interests Registry runs all the .org domains in the world. They could revoke the URL, which would have no easy comeback for the thieves (theft= taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent).
The internet is like the wild west used to be, all it takes to regulate it is the will to act. A lot of the chaos is illusory, when you get to the bare bones there are ways of enforcing the law.

« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2010, 10:56 »
0
@ click_click I think we're talking about two different things. The site can change who it's hosted by, these are just registrars who sell on domain names and provide the servers to host the site. The actual URLs are controlled by a handful of agencies eg the Public Interests Registry runs all the .org domains in the world. They could revoke the URL, which would have no easy comeback for the thieves (theft= taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent).
The internet is like the wild west used to be, all it takes to regulate it is the will to act. A lot of the chaos is illusory, when you get to the bare bones there are ways of enforcing the law.

I understood what you meant, I just started elaborating about more general stuff around those pirate sites.

You are correct about the registrar but in order to revoke them you need to have a massive amount of people ready on stand-by to deal with the massive flood of DMCA claims from all over the world.

That's what I was referring to.

If in any given country the government cannot even get the upper hand on child pronography online, do you believe they will set-up an emergency phone line for us Microstockers to call and have them remove URLs?

I doubt it.

« Reply #13 on: July 20, 2010, 14:42 »
0
You still don't understand that huge percent of the world's economy depends on pirated software? Most countries in Asia and Eastern Europe still use pirated software in their companies. Do you really think it's so easy to get rid of this problem?
There is also powerful mafia behind it.

This question is similar to the everlasting question about narcotics: Why Afghanistan still produces 80% of worlds opium when NATO is there? Everyone knows that 80% of all heroin and cocaine in the world comes from Afghanistan. Only small amount of it gets caught in Turkey (few tons every year), which is 10 times more than the amount of drugs that gets caught in whole Europe every year.
Now, 80% of that amount is traveling through Kosovo to reach West Europe and America. Kosovo is also under KFOR control, but narcotics don't get caught even there.
And yet, everyone here knows for that problem. It was even on the TV many times, and even one Italian reporter made a movie about it.

Someone obviously earns BIG money on piracy....and someone earns BIG money on drugs. Both are powerful enough to pay certain people not to take any actions about it, because, unfortunately, everyone has the price.

« Reply #14 on: July 20, 2010, 15:22 »
0
You still don't understand that huge percent of the world's economy depends on pirated software? Most countries in Asia and Eastern Europe still use pirated software in their companies. Do you really think it's so easy to get rid of this problem?
There is also powerful mafia behind it.

This question is similar to the everlasting question about narcotics: Why Afghanistan still produces 80% of worlds opium when NATO is there? Everyone knows that 80% of all heroin and cocaine in the world comes from Afghanistan. Only small amount of it gets caught in Turkey (few tons every year), which is 10 times more than the amount of drugs that gets caught in whole Europe every year.
Now, 80% of that amount is traveling through Kosovo to reach West Europe and America. Kosovo is also under KFOR control, but narcotics don't get caught even there.
And yet, everyone here knows for that problem. It was even on the TV many times, and even one Italian reporter made a movie about it.

Someone obviously earns BIG money on piracy....and someone earns BIG money on drugs. Both are powerful enough to pay certain people not to take any actions about it, because, unfortunately, everyone has the price.

Sounds like we should all just give up then, right? Let the pornographers go free, let the drug dealers go free...we can't do anything about it anyway.  :-\  We had this discussion another time and I don't think I will ever agree with your mentality, Ivan. I totally understand where you are coming from and I don't disagree with what you are saying. I just don't think throwing our hands in the air and giving up is the right thing to do. I don't know what can be done, but there must be something.

« Reply #15 on: July 20, 2010, 15:37 »
0
I'm just saying that I see that all the time, every day, all my life everywhere. To me, it looks like we won't live enough to see the world without piracy.
For you, world probably looks much different, and much better.
I was in America for 6 months, and I can understand that. I would like to live in such surrounding, that will give me the picture of a world that follow some rules. Unfortunately, majority of the world still lives in some kind of chaos.
That's why I'm not growing big hope about killing criminal of any kind, and I don't think we can do anything about it.

But, I don't say we should give-up. I'm saying (like I said in the thread where Microbius and I had discussion), that we should stick in chasing people who steal from us. We can't kill piracy. But we could probably make things better in microstock world by shutting down posts with pirated images stolen from microstock.
I think there is enough photographers on this forum to kill almost all posts with pirated images. Just everyone of us should every day report few posts with images from pirated sites to rapidshare, megaupload etc...
And soon, the number of pirated images will fall enough.

But when I said this in the last thread the discussion went in some other way..

« Reply #16 on: July 20, 2010, 15:46 »
0
If you want, I could start by finding all pirated websites that I can find, and posting links here. Then, everyone of us could search some of those sites everyday, to find stock images.
All these websites have their own search engine, so you can just type "stock", and you will get results with posts with pirated stock images.Then you have to open the post to see where images are uploaded (to rapidshare, megaupload, letitbit, deposit files...etc) and to report whet you found to those sharing services. They will then delete pirated files from their server.

Some of these pirated websites don't show links to guests, so you will have to register an account to be able to see the link.

If you think the idea is not bad, I am ready to help. If you still think that you don't have time to do it, than I'm afraid you can't expect that anyone else is going to help you (unless you pay him/her).

microstockphoto.co.uk

« Reply #17 on: July 20, 2010, 16:37 »
0
they may actually benefit from being linked from a high-level blog like this, giving them a better placement in search engines

if we do this list, we should write links as broken urls, with spaces in between or some replaced characters

« Reply #18 on: July 20, 2010, 16:41 »
0
they may actually benefit from being linked from a high-level blog like this, giving them a better placement in search engines

if we do this list, we should write links as broken urls, with spaces in between or some replaced characters

sure

Microbius

« Reply #19 on: July 20, 2010, 17:30 »
0
what, I'm not sure why you are trying to start up the same argument again, unless you just love whining on about how awful everything is ad nauseam.
All I was doing was asking if there was a better solution then contacting the sharing services which we all know just results in the files being immediately reuploaded.  I'm not sure why you think contacting Rapidshare is a great idea but asking if there is anything that can be achieved by contacting PIR is somehow not understanding the issue.
If anyone wants to look up the old thread I'm sure they can see what you said and how much it resembles what you are saying now. In any case I have no interest in trying to pin down your ever-shifting opinions again. I've wasted far too much time on you already.

« Reply #20 on: July 20, 2010, 17:46 »
0
I think it's worthwhile for everyone to post sites they find here. As was mentioned, maybe we need to not make them a link though, a broken link. That's a good idea.

I hear what you are saying, dreamframer, and I agree with what you say.

« Reply #21 on: July 20, 2010, 17:57 »
0
Microbius,
this thread was read 562 times, and no one gave you some other answer. I was reading how you struggle to find some solution, and first I didn't want to say anything. Later I decided to say few words about the only real solution, but frankly, now I regret. Because you don't want to listen. I live where piracy exists in it's worst form, and I am offering my help. Because you don't want to accept the fact someone knows something better than you do, I give up.
And let me tell you something, I was the one who wasted a lot of time, not you. Go, and fight alone. You will need a lot of time just to learn half of what anyone who lives here knows about it. And you can be sure I won't interfere your battle against "evil ghosts".

Just, there is one truth. You can't win against piracy. Not with that attitude, and especially not without help.

I wish you good luck!


Also, if anyone wants to join me in my battle, I am ready to open new thread called whatever you want, and to start posting broken links of pirate sites.


 

Related Topics

  Subject / Started by Replies Last post
12 Replies
6164 Views
Last post May 18, 2018, 18:17
by Jeffrey

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors