MPA Lawyers Are Trying To Shut Down Pirate Anime Giant Nyaa.si (torrentfreak.com) 40
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Documents obtained by TorrentFreak dated September reveal the MPA, acting through legal representatives, attempting to pressure individuals who they believe are important at [anime site Nyaa] and could have the ability to shut the site down. Information suggests that several people in North America, Europe, and Australia have all received similar correspondence. The letters allege massive copyright infringement via the Nyaa site and include a sample of copyrighted works, to which the MPA's members hold the rights, that were allegedly infringed via the platform.
The MPA clearly states that none of its cited members (Disney, Paramount, Universal, Columbia, Warner Bros, and Netflix, in addition to Amazon) have granted their permission for the works to be made available via Nyaa or the BitTorrent network(s) that underpin it. As a result, "significant, irreparable damage" has already been caused to the copyright owners by the site's activities. While emailed threats are still a common anti-piracy strategy, we are informed that at least two of the individuals were personally served with legal documents at their homes. Others were served with similar documents via regular mail. We are currently unable to determine exactly how many people were served in total. At the moment the suggestion is around five but that may not be the full picture. What we do know is that some or all stand accused of being part of the mysterious 'Anime Cartel' supposedly behind Nyaa. "With immediate effect, recipients have been told to take all necessary steps to ensure that Nyaa is completely shut down," the report adds. "The MPA also wants to take control of the site's domain -- Nyaa.si -- a common tactic in other anti-piracy actions. Overall, recipients are warned that they must cease-and-desist any and all of their activities related to the site, including making available the copyrighted works of the MPA's members."
"In addition to receiving settlements, it appears that the MPA also wants information on the Nyaa service and its operations. The MPA also wants the rights to the Nyaa site and any technologies connected to it, wherever the recipient has the ability to transfer those rights. The MPA also demands that those entering into a settlement agreement should never infringe its members' rights again."
The MPA clearly states that none of its cited members (Disney, Paramount, Universal, Columbia, Warner Bros, and Netflix, in addition to Amazon) have granted their permission for the works to be made available via Nyaa or the BitTorrent network(s) that underpin it. As a result, "significant, irreparable damage" has already been caused to the copyright owners by the site's activities. While emailed threats are still a common anti-piracy strategy, we are informed that at least two of the individuals were personally served with legal documents at their homes. Others were served with similar documents via regular mail. We are currently unable to determine exactly how many people were served in total. At the moment the suggestion is around five but that may not be the full picture. What we do know is that some or all stand accused of being part of the mysterious 'Anime Cartel' supposedly behind Nyaa. "With immediate effect, recipients have been told to take all necessary steps to ensure that Nyaa is completely shut down," the report adds. "The MPA also wants to take control of the site's domain -- Nyaa.si -- a common tactic in other anti-piracy actions. Overall, recipients are warned that they must cease-and-desist any and all of their activities related to the site, including making available the copyrighted works of the MPA's members."
"In addition to receiving settlements, it appears that the MPA also wants information on the Nyaa service and its operations. The MPA also wants the rights to the Nyaa site and any technologies connected to it, wherever the recipient has the ability to transfer those rights. The MPA also demands that those entering into a settlement agreement should never infringe its members' rights again."
Hahahahaha (Score:2)
Shutting down a torrent site is like ripping down a poster with magnet links on it.
China! (Score:1)
"Infringe rights"? (Score:5, Insightful)
What MAFIAA calls "rights" is actually a legal monopoly, which is about as harmful to the economy as any other monopoly.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
You say this until you become a content creator. Then you get extremely pissed that there are people ripping off your work, and profiting off of it, while you don't get a dime.
Shop Lifting isn't a serious crime, unless you are the store owner.
Re:"Infringe rights"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I say this because this is what it is, regardless of whether I'm a content creator or not.
The real question is how much of the harm that his "intellectual property" monopoly is supporting the creators, and how much of it benefits the class of leachers that have sprung from it, like the MAFIAA lawyers.
It isn't a stretch to claim that the cottage industry of lobbyists, lawyers, various enforcers and politicians that is feeding from that monopoly isn't taking more from the creators than the infringers.
And it is probably quite likely that a tax-sponsored system based on actual consumption statistics will deliver better payouts to the creators than the MAFIAA regime.
Re:"Infringe rights"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people work once and get paid once. After I set up a server or write a piece of software, I get paid for that work, and after that I don't see a dime of the money it produces/saves. Why is it different if the output is an audio or video file instead of source code or a set of computer software?
Heck, I only get paid once for audio and video editing jobs too, much like the animators who grind away on these shows for low pay regardless of how much or little the shows get pirated or how profitable they are.
The only people really profiting from work-once-get-paid-forever copyright are pop princesses and media company executives.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most people work once and get paid once. After I set up a server or write a piece of software, I get paid for that work, and after that I don't see a dime of the money it produces/saves.
That's because you have made the choice not to be rather than take the risks involved in running your own business and getting paid for every sale (or some maintenance contract as the case may be) - or because you don't have the clout to insist on a contract that pays royalties.
That would appear to be your problem (or not, if that was the conscious choice you made).
Re:"Infringe rights"? (Score:4, Insightful)
So we all just need the clout to get infinite pay for finite work, like a pop diva or media company executive, and it's the fault of 99.9% of humanity for not having it because we're a bunch of basic slackers. Got it.
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So we all just need the clout to get infinite pay for finite work, like a pop diva or media company executive
There are millions of small or one-man-band outfits that sell things they make themselves where the creative work is done once and paid for via some form of replication and charge, whether it's software or t-shirts.
It's true that most people don't, but as I said, that's a choice because running a business isn't simple and many people don't want the hassle or risk. That's not slacking, that's making a rational choice.
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rather than take the risks involved in running your own business
The US Constitution got it right:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times"
It says nothing about running a business. Five minutes after you put your pen down, you cease to be an author or creator and become a businessman. It's up to you to decide whether you want to sell your creation to a publisher or try to live off the cash flow yourself. But now it's time to get back to work and create something new. That whole 'promote the progress' shtick. Also, the day that
Re: (Score:2)
rather than take the risks involved in running your own business
The US Constitution got it right:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times"
It says nothing about running a business. Five minutes after you put your pen down, you cease to be an author or creator and become a businessman. It's up to you to decide whether you want to sell your creation to a publisher or try to live off the cash flow yourself. But now it's time to get back to work and create something new. That whole 'promote the progress' shtick.
Also, the day that you put the pen down, your creation has some value. That value is based on either the price you can sell your rights for or the present value of the possible future cash flow your work will provide. Now as any first year econ student knows, cash flows out at 20 years or more in the future have a tiny present value. So extending that cut off date beyond 20 years adds no present value to your work. Unless you have been sitting on your ass for the last 20 years, not being creative. The key here is 'promote'. Which is both a carrot and a stick. Yes, you may profit from your work. But not forever, because the Constitution specifically says 'progress'.
Well, I agree and I would put the limit at 14 years myself. But I would not scrap it completely.
Re: (Score:3)
But I would not scrap it completely.
Nor would I. But a long time ago someone picked a number (20 years?). That's fine. Bu since then, nobody has made a sound argument for changing it either way. Shortening it is taking property. But lengthening it creates very little value (the added income being far off in the future).
I certainly would not extend the term retroactively. And not where the original artist is dead. No matter how generous the terms, Walt Disney is not going to be drawing any more Mickey Mouse cartoons. No arts are being promote
Re: "Infringe rights"? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
* If media creators like movie studios only got paid once for a movie, only The Rich would ever see a movie because it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to see one. Either that or all movies would be low-budget movies, and actors would get paid next to nothing, meaning no one with any real talent would bother being a movie actor.
* If the above became true then movies in general would probably rarely be produced because not only would
Re: (Score:3)
You say this until you become a content creator. Then you get extremely pissed that there are people ripping off your work, and profiting off of it, while you don't get a dime.
Maybe it's time to abandon the rent-seeking business model wherein people expect to be paid literally for the rest of their lives (plus 75 years or so) for creating something. If I build a nice chair, I don't expect a nice royalty check every time someone sits their ass in it.
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The problem is that it's not "rent-seeking"
Rent-seeking would be seeking fees for retaining access to content, eg netflix and crunchyroll. The problem is that these services pay the content holders, and the licenses move around. So if I pay for Netflix and Crunchyroll, and the show I want to watch is over at Sony-Funimation who has decided to not play ball and only ship films and anime on BD for 10 years unless you own a PS5, rather than have it on all platforms simultaneously.
Step 1: Produce a work
Step 2:
Re:"Infringe rights"? (Score:4, Insightful)
You say this until you become a content creator.
So tell me, how do the things that the MPAA and RIAA lobbied for help me as a content creator?
Re: (Score:2)
The system should work exactly like torrent seeding settings. You produce something, and profit of it until you receive an income equal to X times the investment. X can be adjusted, of course, to a decent value.
Say you invested 10K dollars in a digital product, you get up to 30K off sales, then it becomes free.
Excepting live events such as concerts, shows, etc., where you get extra.
Re: (Score:1)
Wrong. The entertainment cartel has government in its pockets and uses armed government thugs to kick in doors of kids. Copyright law has been mutated from allowing art and content to flow into culture after reasonable time to making everything be their sole possession for generations. They are out of control. This is only about their interests.
Re:"Infringe rights"? (Score:5, Insightful)
> You say this until you become a content creator
Quick! Someone tell the Fashion Industry [ted.com] that they can't survive without copyright! /s
Gee, because no one ever put their music into the public domain or CC0 before! The GPL must also be a figment of my imagination! /s
> Shop Lifting isn't a serious crime, unless you are the store owner.
False equivalence fallacy.
Copyright infringement is NOT the same as stealing. The Laws, and lawyers, precisely makes a distinctinction and uses different terms because the action is different.
* Stealing = Depriving owner of original product
* Copyright Infringement = Copying without permission. Owner STILL has the original product.
While Stealing and Copyright infringement are disrespect towards the owers -- there IS a subtle difference. In the US originally copyright was for a LIMITED TIME as a compromise:
1. People could make money off their inventions, and
2. The public got to share it with everyone free of legal threats after X years.
This was a Win-Win for everyone. Corporations were NEVER supposed to hold Culture hostage. This greed is destroying the country. Piracy MAY be thought of "civil disobedience" to bad laws.
Funny, how humanity survived for 200,000+ years BEFORE copyright was even invented. Who knew!
Re: (Score:1)
Definitely related to Crunchyroll (Score:5, Interesting)
This is probably being done entirely because Sony is buying up Crunchyroll, the largest (legal) streaming anime site. Crunchy's subs are known for being crap, but a large amount of the content on Nyaa is ripped from them - funny enough, the main scene group for that is called Horriblesubs.
They've been pirating Netflix's "original" anime for years and no one has seemingly cared, and this whole thing reeks of Sony trying to force people to sub to Crunchyroll, which I won't do unless their sub quality improves dramatically.
Realistically, if they kill Nyaa, a new site will spring up because plenty of other people hate Crunchyroll as much as I do.
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I would put money towards a .nya or .nyan tld instead.
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Horriblesubs has closed (a farwell message on their site). As I remember, github (pre-microsoft) removed a crunchyroll kodi plugin after some sort of dmca complain.
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They had a great opportunity to work with the fansub scene to produce decent subtitles for anime, but they decided they would do their own terrible ones. It's their own fault people prefer the pirate versions.
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Morons (Score:3)
Some 15-20 years ago you had to hunt ftp servers and irc chats to locate some translated content. It was a niche in the West with most people equating anime to either "cartoons" or "tentacle hentai". That's why western distributors didn't bother to bring anything over. the few bits that made it over here were mostly translated and promoted by the Japanes studio.
When torrents became popular, a lot more groups could afford to release subbed anime, as they didn't have to pay for huge hosting infrastructure. This made a lot more content available and gradually anime became mainstream in the West. Even Netflix now produces original content in this format.
Nyaa.si? (Score:4, Funny)
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Anime is a little different (Score:2)
How moronic can they be? (Score:2)
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Looking at the bright side (Score:5, Interesting)
Coming from the early 2000s, piracy was essentially the only way to get anime except for a very small selection of shows.
If you wanted something other than DragonBall or studio Ghibli films, your only legal option was to learn Japanese and import overpriced DVDs from Japan, and watch them on a zone 2 compatible player. Otherwise, it was either bootlegs from Hong-Kong or fansub releases. Piracy was tolerated simply because no one cared about that market.
It was nice having all that stuff for free, and fansubers did a really great job, but that's not what's going to support the industry and have anime being taken seriously.
Now, finally, producers are starting to pay attention. We now have properly licensed anime, and Netflix have a nice library of it. We are even starting to see anime being funded from outside Japan, which is great.
But of course, all that means that the industry can't ignore piracy anymore, just like with music and Hollywood movies.
So the fact that the MPA is involved, while annoying, is actually a good sign for the state of anime outside Japan. It means that local producers are invested in anime and want to protect their investment. Whether or not it is the right way to do it is another debate...
I may be crazy, but I want MAFIAA to win... (Score:2)
Now, don't get me wrong. MAFIAA are assholes that has a special circle of hell reserved for them, and they do destroy the lives for a *lot* of people.
But here is the thing... MAFIAA rules are so abusive at this point, letting them through would quickly ruin a lot of peoples lives. 2-3 years of MAFIAA madness, and maybe, just maybe, some judges' friends and families start to get affected? As well as some senators?
Better to give it all at once, than to piecemeal boil the frog. Until the scene stops resisting
Are they DMCA's IP that isn't their's? (Score:2)
All those well-known producers of anime! (Score:1)
When I think of anime producers, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Columbia, Warner Bros, Netflix, Amazon are not exactly the first names to spring to mind.