DutchKillsRambo wrote:
For someone that's so outspoken about gun freedoms I find it odd you don't mind giving up personal freedom online.

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:
I meant more the freedom to let others dictate what they do with your property.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
When you want someone to stop doing something, you have to get evidence and sue them. This allows the studios to just kind of say so and your ISP goes along with it.

I'm against torrenting material you don't have rights to as well, however I am also for due process and the neutrality of common carriers. I am not ok with the media companies being able to demand that my information be turned off when I do not have the same right to monitor them and demand that theirs be turned off.

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:
Your computer with the internet service you pay for. This system, at face value, allows someone else to decide what does and does not constitute illegal file sharing. Something that's not very well defined in the courts. And then they punish you for it. With the only recourse being a further punishment of money to even try and get an appeal. Would you watch a DVD on your computer if your friend lent it to you? Would you be happy if your ISP suddenly slowed down because of that? Its just not a good system to fight piracy.

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:
Of course you don't own the service but you own the right to access that service. If I stop paying my bill I violate the contract just as if they stop providing the service, they violate the contract.

Out of curiosity Seaward what is porn's approach to piracy? Because I see more now than ever.

 LuciusAR wrote:
My ISP should have no more right to monitor what I do on-line than my phone company should have to listen in on my calls.

It’s disturbing how many people seem willing to give up their privacy rights to protect big companies profits.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Ok, the rage has subsided a little.

The problem is, piracy can't hurt anyone who doesn't, honestly, deserve it. The recording industry's future is withering away because of the massive proliferation of independent artists who don't feel like being beholden to some cokehead suit, and so should be ignored as insane and already dead. The film industry is making money hand over fist, boasting record breaking profits with every year, and so should be ignored as quite blatantly lying. The games industry is also making money hand over fist, with consistent and honestly ridiculous growth in a very short time.

The people in the center mainstream benefit from it, as people are more likely to chance what money they do spend on a sure bet so far as quality is concerned, and the people who are on the fringe because they are unknown benefit from the effective publicity piracy of their works brings them. The only people who suffer are those who are on the fringe because they produce a terrible (in quality terms) product, like the porn industry, or the more insufferable and reprehensible proper film directors (like Uwe Boll and whoever's behind those "[genre] Movie"s these days).

The further galling issue that a communication's service can be disrupted by unsubstantiated allegations from a quite demonstrably unreliable source has been covered quite well by others already.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
For me it's the fact that they're still making large profits. Somehow, despite this HUGE problem with piracy, media companies still manage to pay artists millions of dollars, AND make more money than they did last year. That is why I don't believe that piracy is the bane of all media companies.

When it comes to things like video games, I use Diablo 3 as an excellent reason to possibly pirate a game. Activision-Blizzard made the choice to require an internet connection to play their game from day 1. Their server couldn't handle the launch, and people who bought a legitimate game were left in the cold and unable to play it. Did it stop piracy? Hell no, I'm not sure on the timeline, but I suspect the pirates had a working copy before the legitimate players.

And now I hear rumors about the next generation of Playstation and Xbox requiring an internet connection to play. However that is just a rumor I heard at one point whose source I can't remember.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
Edit: Also I have no Robin Hood illusions, what I'm doing is for personal greed and a dislike for business practices that are becoming more and more prevalent.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
Seaward, you seem to be laboring under the impression that one must either be a dirty infringing pirate all the time forever or one must completely support all DRM and all anti-piracy measures.

I assure you that this is not true. It is completely possible for one to not pirate and oppose piracy and still not like the measures being used to stop it.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
It's theft, plain and simple.

It's not theft, since the original still remains and can be sold. It is like printing out a photo of the Mona Lisa and framing it on your wall... you don't then have swat busting down your door because you have "stolen" the Mona Lisa. You have duplicated it. It still remains, in many cases, illegal to share and download music/films/etc because laws have been put into place to that effect. It isn't stealing though, no matter how much they try and tell you it is.

There was a survey done some time ago about how much people valued the music on their mp3 player... ie how much they would pay for all the music they had... the majority of people said they would not pay for the music on their mp3 players; it essentially had no value.

 Ouze wrote:
Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft is universally a criminal offense, whereas infringement is nearly always a civil offense. Words have meaning. A Chihuahua is not a Rottweiler just because they are superficially similar in some ways.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
Seaward, dropping the argument about piracy being wrong, what is your personal limit to DRM?

I'm not sure what your hobbies are aside from miniatures, but assuming you play video games, would you be okay if the new consoles came out with a requirement of always being connected to the companies servers?

 Fafnir wrote:
Would you be okay with not being able to let your friends play your games as well?

 Rented Tritium wrote:
Citation needed

 SilverMK2 wrote:
They are two separate and distinct things.

That wasn't my main point, simply an aside to illustrate how many people feel about the actual value of music.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
That's for bootlegging and doesn't apply to the piracy you're referring to ITT.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
I've got professional experience reading statute, thanks. I'm good.

 Ouze wrote:
No matter how much you wish it to be so, 2 + 2 is not going to equal 5 to anyone other then you.

To put it differently, I know 9 people who disagree with you on this exact point.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
I strongly suggest you read the whole thing, including the definitions.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Quite possibly. I just recall it as an interesting factoid.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
I just cited it. Go back and read the section that says "definitions", specifically the one for "being prepared for commercial use"

That statute specifically deals with unreleased and limited release content and does not apply to commercially available products.

 Ouze wrote:
Here's a citation: My ability to read plain english, FFS.

Uploading a "pirated game for download" your example, would only be subject to that statute if the game 1.) Was uploaded to a site where you made some financial gain from doing so,

 whembly wrote:
Wait... I'm confused... is the ISP providers doing the investigation on this?

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
Is it really all that interesting, though? I'd imagine most criminals look for a way to rationalize their behavior.

To go back to your point about the value of a car; it has value that most people can see. Even car thieves can see the value of a car (which is why they steal them a lot of the time, though not the exclusive reason to be sure). Compare a physical object with real world utility to music, or games, which have no intrinsic value and you can see how people, even if they do not pirate music or games, or support that activity, saying that they would not pay for digital media.

Hell, if I was unable to download music (if I did, obviously) I would just listen to the radio for free... which incidentally is what I do. The record companies still aren't getting any money from me no matter how harshly they want to deal with "pirates". I don't think I've bought any music (other than the odd CD my wife wanted) for over 10 years. Hell, I've bought more vinyl than I have CD's - this is all old stuff from the 80's that is second hand, so record companies still aren't getting anything from me even when I actually buy music

Perhaps we should outlaw second hand record shops since they are stealing mone... erm... bread out of the record companies mouths...

 Alfndrate wrote:
if games gave me an offline mode, I wouldn't care... but forcing me to play a single player game with an internet connection is a royal pain in the butt.

 whembly wrote:
Okay then... so unless you're hosting massive torrent sites personally, it's really a moot point then.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Ah, so what you are saying is that as long as one person pays for the music, it is ok for thousands of other people to listen to it for free? I'm glad we have sorted that out

 Fafnir wrote:
The problem being that there's no real way to effectively monitor how much a game is actually pirated. A lot of times, publishers will blame piracy for poor sales when there could be a myriad of other reasons responsible, such as the game being poorly developed, or intrusive DRM.

 Fafnir wrote:
You can't honestly cite piracy as the cause of your lack of profits if you can't actually know how many people pirated your game in the first place, let alone if they would have even bought the game otherwise. Most of the time, you just have publishers making obscene estimations concerning piracy rates for their products, and little else.

 Fafnir wrote:
Of course content producers are within their rights to protect their product. But when that DRM ends up becoming intrusive to the point where the pirates actually have an easier and better time using the product than the actual intended consumer base, there is an incredibly obvious disconnect. And that disconnect only gets bigger when the producers continue to do it even though it has been proven time and time again not to work.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
Steam is pretty much proof that user restricted DRM can be done in a way that is not just unobtrusive but actually PREFERABLE to traditional disks.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
What part of "piracy objectively causes no financial harm to anyone but pornographers" translates to "media companies make money so let's rob them" in your head?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
It's illegality all comes down to rather illegal subversion of the lawmaking process by wealthy businessmen, so arguing that it's wrong because some cokehead suit once bribed some legislators is a rather odd way of approaching the situation.

And for third time in this thread: research has shown that the biggest pirates are also the biggest customers of the media companies.

There is only a finite amount of money to be spent, of which only a portion can go to media, and the biggest consumers of media consume far more than they can actually afford, while buying all that they can. it is not physically possible for piracy to harm the media creators, as they are already receiving all the money that can be spent on their products.

There is no evidence to suggest that piracy actually harms sales, except in the case of products that are grossly overpriced. To the contrary, there is some that suggests it's basically just free advertising, and is particularly beneficial to small companies/independent artists who need the publicity.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
It all comes down to power. They've lost absolute control over their products, and flail madly, harming countless innocents in the process, in some vain hope it will restore the authority they once had. They feel they've lost face, and think nothing of subverting the law to serve their own personal vanities.

The idea's been floated before, but it gets shot down for the reasons enumerated above; they want absolute authority, and will tolerate no debate on the subject.


At least most of the new generation of creators, those who comment on the matter anyways, have practically grown up with the internet, and understand the situation far more clearly than the old guard. As I said earlier in the thread: the war is all but won, for our generation and those who follow know the right of the matter, and will be the establishment when the old guard has retired or succumb to age.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
That's a rather silly and grandiose way of putting it. "Taking from the rich" would require, you know, actually taking something from them. Considering the meteoric rise of the media industries (either of the establishment, as with movies and games, or overall, as with music and games) coincides with the rise of piracy, the only legitimate connection you could draw from the numbers would be that piracy is positive. In the case of independents, it very much is, disseminating their unknown product and spreading their name around, where otherwise they would inevitably wither and die in obscurity; many of them are aware of this, and outright admit it. These are the people who will be the establishment tomorrow (metaphorically speaking), the ones who actually know what's going on, and aren't just lashing out at anyone who dares question their authority.