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by csydas 3622 days ago
Treaties. The nebulous amount of treaties across the world, specifically with the US can make it incredibly easy for just about anyone to be subject to its jurisdiction in some manner. As long as the US is politically active and persuasive enough to get foreign governments into these agreements, their reach will extend very far. As an aside, it's part of why Britain's EU Exit is such a mess; all the treaties and agreements formerly drawn up were based on Britain in the EU - those agreements were discussed for years before being agreed upon. There are thousands of discussion points and it takes a really long time.

As to why keep attacking KAT? (or any other torrent site for that matter?) To scare your average citizen. When Napster was huge in the US and the RIAA got involved, you'd have almost daily stories in newspapers or on TV about the RIAA suing college students, high school students, etc, with huge lawsuits. You'd think this would result in a revolt against the RIAA, but the reality is that these had sticking power in the US courts. Most US citizens, despite the relative wealth they have compared to other countries, could not pay off the few thousand dollar per song fines they would receive if sued. Most couldn't even afford a single $1000 fine. The idea for the RIAA/MPAA wasn't that you need to stop every download every - it's that you need to make a big enough splash to scare the majority of citizens into not downloading.

While many streaming and download services have arisen since that time, offering cheap and legal options for on-demand shows/music, the companies still would rather that stuff went back to the way it was, with only their authorized publishers being the source for media. Attacking torrent sources isn't about recouping loss from piracy - it's about recouping losses from the media conglomerates' inability to rapidly adjust to new technology, and the change in how many citizens choose to get their entertainment.

1 comments

>> Attacking torrent sources isn't about recouping loss from piracy

Actually it's part of the battle preventing something extremly easy like popcorn time becoming great, easy, and safe - because if that happens, the media industry will be in big trouble.

The current spat of cheap Android boxes preloaded with Kodi (which itself isn't an issue) and all of the third-party stream-torrenting plugins (the real issue), are posing enough of a threat for big Canadian telcoms to go after them here. They're too easy to use, not to mention stream a lot of sports which is the last bastion for many cable companies to hold onto subscribers.