Aussie pirates deleted by websites
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
ninemsn reports that almost 10,000 members of two Australian-based torrent sites had their accounts deleted following the news the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) was investigating their sites.
The members-only networks came under increased focus from the AFACT after users began sharing pirated copies of the first episode of Underbelly.
Several “cappers”, users who record and upload pirated videos to the sites, are believed to have gone offline amid fears they could now be the target of legal action.
“I think everyone in Australia who is a capper will be nervous,” a member of the network wrote in a secret members-only chat room conversation obtained by ninemsn.
“How the hell did they gain access to this place? What are the chances of a narc being in this room right now?” wrote another member of the pirate website, which investigators suspect is run by Australians but hosted in Spain.
The AFACT is expected to deliver a report about the illegal online trading of Underbelly to Victorian Police.
The Nine Network is also considering legal action after conducting its own investigation.
Source: ninemsn
7 Responses
A file uploaded via BitTorrent cannot be “deleted”, as it does not reside on any central server.
Once it’s out there, it’s out there for good.
Oh, and a human can’t be “deleted by a website”. A human’s account can, or a copy of the file they uploaded can be removed, but not a human. Unless you’re referring to the pirate copies themselves. Meh.
I’m sooooooo sick of hearing about all this Underbelly crap. It only convinces me more to stay away from it. Its causing more commotion on trivial things like being uploaded onto the internet, than actually being talked about as a series itself. When was the last time anyone talked about the show’s characters, plots or actors? That’s right, barely ever. Its mostly just jargon on how its been banned in Vic, how its being torrented and d/l’ed, etc. Who really cares?
I agree that with the last blog that 9 is the one in a panic.
They could have helped themselves with some simple research and by not trying to run a drama that has a pending court case in Victoria. Pretty silly really.
I think you will agree that 9 itself is more entertaining than anything they put to air.
Antiquated yobbo losers…
I would suggest that Nine is the one in a panic.
They lost 1 million viewers and are losing millions of dollars of advertising revenue.
A quick check around numerous torrent sites has found that there have been over 50,000 downloads of Underbelly in it’s various forms, an overwhelming majority would be from Victoria. I would suggest this is a record for an Australian television show by a long way.
The series is getting passed around all over the place. I would go as far as to say over 100,000 Victorians have seen it and possibly up to (and over) 500,000.
And they won’t be back for seconds.
And I agree with neonkitten. Many of the ‘facts’ in that article and other articles are not complete and not well researched.
And you know what they say in the torrent community, shut one site down, 10 more will appear.
They haven’t even scratched the thin film on top of the surface of this. And never will.
I only recently registered to be a member of one of the sites in question – but now mylogin is invalid 🙁 I guess they’re waiting for the dust to settle or my registration was removed in the panic?
If people wanted to download underbelly, they can easily get it from the countless international torrent sites. Has the Victorian Supreme Court banned the book ‘Leadbelly’ that ‘Underbelly’ was based on?
This is just getting silly. Let’s see a news article about this “investigation” that doesn’t come from Nine’s own news site. Oh, wait – Nine’s own site appears to be the only one reporting it! Aside of course from the News Ltd sites, which STILL persist in spreading the absolute FICTION that downloaders face five year’s jail just for being “caught with a copy” (they categorically do NOT face any such penalty).
I mean, the fact that this NineMSN publicity release… err I mean “report”… refers to “the internet’s elite illegal file sharing underworld” should ring warning bells that these people have no idea what they’re talking about.
The sites in question (one is a torrent discussion and listing forum, the other a Bittorrent tracker) were taken down for 24 hours by their owners as a precaution after all the publicity. No members were deleted.
The sites are back up and fully operational. There are no Underbelly torrents to be found there. However, the show is effortlessly downloadable from two popular international torrent sites that other media outlets have helpfully guided everyone to.
This “secret members-only chat room”? Err, not quite. It’s a public IRC channel.
Nine can deliver whatever they like to Victoria Police, who won’t give a toss and cannot find the people that “capped” and torrented the show even if they wanted to. People keep using the example of “the guy that uploaded the Simpsons movie”. But they forget that in that case, not only was the investigation spearheaded by 20th Century Fox (a few thousand times more resourceful than Nine) but also that the idiot who did so uploaded the film to… YouTube!
What else do we have in that NineMSN “news story”? We have the guy from noisy-but-pointless group AFACT saying “The Victorian Police are now recognising it as a very profitable crime.” Please, Mr Gane, direct me to the site where I can make a profit from uploading TV shows!
But the concluding paragraph in the “news story” says it all.
“I’m still downloading Underbelly,” said one user of an Australian file-sharing website. “And the hype is just making me want to see it even more, lol … Makes wonder if it isn’t all just some twisted publicity stunt.”
This anonymous user has hit the nail on the proverbial head. And there are a few too many hack journalists pretending to be crack internet detectives this week. It’s all quite comedic.