Looks like the FBI are having a crack down on the operators of the high-profile BitTorrent sharing sites at the moment. In the last few months many of them have been shut down and polite notices (like the one above) posted in stead of their usual content (quite what the U.S. Immigration authority have to do with it I don’t know!). My favorite line on one of the take-down notices from the MPAA was “You can click but you can’t hide” – really catchy that one! (lol)
What makes me laugh about all this is that ever since these sites came into existence cinema and DVD sales have been climbing year on year – whilst any link between the two would be tentative it’s not outside the realms of possibility that people consciously operate on a try-before-you-buy basis when it comes to music and film – i.e. I’m not going to buy a film I don’t like etc.
The real way to reduce internet piracy is to make more content available digitally at a reasonable price and without DMR restrictions which just annoy. Apple are doing a fairly good job of this with iTunes but it’s still to expensive and limited to make the impact it could.
Out of interest the creator of the BitTorrent protocol has just launched a Google-like torrent searching site. It’s supposed to only track legal torrents but my first search brought up illegal content so I doubt it will last long either. Looks cool all the same.
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