According to Reuters story, Download Site SuprNova Closes Amid Hollywood Crackdown (Dec. 21, 2004), one of the major sources of links to pirated movies, the SuprNova.org site in Slovenia, was closed down after pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America. Essentially the same process of legal pressure followed by the RIAA is now being used by the MPAA to discourage the growing P2P sharing of movies. Will we see the same incentives like iTunes to legitimate acquisition of movies online? I think the general principle is, “if the pirates show that it works then its time for a service.”
SuprNova apparently used the BitTorrent “tit-for-tat” file distribution technology which is described in a paper on the The Official BitTorrent Home Page and is analyzed at The Register in an article on The BitTorrent P2P file-sharing system by Johan Pouwelse, Dec. 18, 2004. BitTorrent has legitimate and pirate uses.
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