Tech Reaction

The popular web tracker Mininova has recently been ruled by the Dutch court to remove all its illeagal content, like many other popular torrent sites in recent years. They tried to retain the torrents that were not copyrighted, but no matter much they tried, they could not remove 100% of the illeagal torrents. They will still however will allow users to upload their own content for distribution. Following the removal of these illeagal contents, the number of hits to the website has dropped dramatically and will probably not recover those visitors.

 I see this as a step in the right direction, with the recent downfall of many torrent sites, it is becoming harder and harder for people to obtain pirated movies, software, games, music etc. This allows the companies who produced the materials to take back what was rightfully theirs from the pirates and in turn generate more revenue from sales of their products. Since the volume of people who have downloaded illeagal content, is extremely high, the closure forces more users to purchase the materials they would have otherwise downloaded for free. There have been solutions proposed to try and prevent antipiracy, for example, in the game Batman Arkham Asylum, the game developers developed a method in which illegitamate copies of the game could not pass the first level, since batman could not glide. However, the community of downloaders quickly found a way around that. A solution that could potentially decrease computer piracy is to go ahead with Web based operating systems, in which software is bound to your account.

Good riddens to another torrent site!