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 Ouze wrote:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
I'm in no way tech savvy, but how could they even get a hint of what the guy was doing without somehow monitering illegally his activity?

In this case, the employee in question mailed his credentials and his RSA token to the chinese employee. The Chinese employee would make a VPN connection to the employee's work PC to work. Security logs showed that they had an unknown Chinese IP connecting every day for months. The company contacted Verizon since t they suspected some sort of hacker activity. I can't find information on this one way or the other, but chances are strong Verizon was their ISP - I formerly supported several large companies, and in many of their locations Verizon owns the pipe.

Eventually they pulled backups of the customer's PC and found all the receipts for what he contracted it out.

In this case the employee in question had absolutely no expectation of privacy, as he was using company equipment to connect to a company pipe. They have every right to see everything on his work PC, as well as monitor it's connection to their network.

Just as you know, and probably do know, your boss can (and statistcally, does) listen to your work calls if made on company equipment, and your emails made on the company's servers. There are some limitations on how long they can listen to if it's clear the call was of a personal nature but they've got pretty wide latitude on this, and you probably signed something authorizing even more then they had to begin with.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining this in so much details, very cool of you.

 Seaward wrote:

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.

If this whole screed was meant to be ironic, it's brilliant.

If you're serious, I'm not sure what to say. Media companies make a lot of money, so they deserve to have their products stolen?

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:

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.

But they suspect they could be making even more money and that's what's driving this...

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 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.

But they suspect they could be making even more money and that's what's driving this...

True. I can't blame them for doing it, but personally I don't think they can win the piracy war, and the only people getting screwed are the honest buyers.

I'm no legal expert, nor am I tech savvy (took me months to figure out how to use the quote button on this forum )

but for the love of god, there has to be a 1st amendment/ supreme court ruling that will ride to the rescue and save the day. Hopefully, somebody, somewhere, will be drafting up the documents.

As for piracy, I remember the same arguments being trotted out in the 1980s about people putting songs on their own tapes and how the record and film industry would collapse. Is it still here? Hard to tell above the moaning

 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.

It's theft, plain and simple. Stealing from Warren Buffett is still stealing, despite the fact that he won't miss the money.

This is what's so disturbing to me about '90s kids who support illegal downloading. Rampant piracy has left them trying to pretend they're Robin Hood, when in reality they're just thieves.

 Seaward wrote:

 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.

It's theft, plain and simple. Stealing from Warren Buffett is still stealing, despite the fact that he won't miss the money.

This is what's so disturbing to me about '90s kids who support illegal downloading. Rampant piracy has left them trying to pretend they're Robin Hood, when in reality they're just thieves.

Hey now, I recently saw something about an old man who pirates movies and send them to soliders overseas, so it's not just the 90's kids

But yes, I have no doubt that what I'm doing is wrong, the thing I disagree with is the large companies saying that piracy will be their downfall, who have been saying that for decades, and who are now trying to get more laws passed (SOPA/PIPA) to protect their increasing profits.

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.

And here we are continuing the trend of "if you can't keep up with modern technology and offer a better service than pirates, just try to (ineffectively) snuff them."

As someone who ends up pirating a fair amount of music, I probably also spend well over 10 times as much as most people on music as well. It's not a piracy issue, it's a format issue, and it's the publishers failing to address it that causes piracy.

 Fafnir wrote:
And here we are continuing the trend of "if you can't keep up with modern technology and offer a better service than pirates, just try to (ineffectively) snuff them."

As someone who ends up pirating a fair amount of music, I probably also spend well over 10 times as much as most people on music as well. It's not a piracy issue, it's a format issue, and it's the publishers failing to address it that causes piracy.

Could you expand on this? I'm curious what your criteria is for either purchasing or pirating a piece of music.

 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.

Do you dislike those little sensors they put in clothes in department stores to prevent you from walking out with a bunch stuffed under your jacket, too?

Occupy Macy's! We are the 99%! Little red cookbook, little red cookbook!

Having your wallet stolen's unlikely to lead to your "downfall," so should it be okay for someone with less cash than you to lift it on the metro?

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.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
And here we are continuing the trend of "if you can't keep up with modern technology and offer a better service than pirates, just try to (ineffectively) snuff them."

As someone who ends up pirating a fair amount of music, I probably also spend well over 10 times as much as most people on music as well. It's not a piracy issue, it's a format issue, and it's the publishers failing to address it that causes piracy.

Could you expand on this? I'm curious what your criteria is for either purchasing or pirating a piece of music.

Well, first off, I try to buy my music when I can. But being Canadian, due to a lot of really restrictive copyright laws, a lot of sources to actually buy music are not available to me (for example, as a Canadian, I cannot purchase digital music from amazon.com). I will not use iTunes, because seriously, feth iTunes, and that typically leaves me with very few options to pay for music. In Canada, there's no real option for a digital retailer with a large library available outside of iTunes (and seriously, feth iTunes), so most of the time, it involves me having to find some obscure publisher's website, register for an account which involves creating and remembering an entirely new set of user information and having to sign myself up for a bunch of completely unwanted newsletters, and essentially involves far more work than it would take to just pirate the damn thing, and this is not even touching the issue of money, as in most cases I like to support the artists I listen to. I typically have to spend around half an hour or more just looking for a decent legal download of most albums I want to buy these days, compared to being able to pirate most albums in a matter of seconds.

My old criteria used to be that if I could find it online, in digital format (not iTunes, because seriously, feth iTunes), preferably without DRM, I would pay for it.

These days, I follow the same old ruleset, but now I no longer register for new sites. The moment I have to make yet another account, I'll pirate it.

 Seaward wrote:

 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.

Do you dislike those little sensors they put in clothes in department stores to prevent you from walking out with a bunch stuffed under your jacket, too?

I'm perfectly fine with those. When I bring my shirt up to the register to purchase it, the cashier will remove the beeper, I go home and wear my new shirt.

When I buy a video game, go home and try to play and it tells me I can't connect to their server (Either because I don't have internet access or their servers are down) and I can't use my legitimately purchased product, I get frustrated.

All this would mean is that you have to download loads of stuff 5 times then nothing.

It's too bad you can't use amazon. It has pretty much solved the music problem for me. I can get anything I want for cheap as dirt and the artists are getting paid way more than they get from itunes.

 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.

 Fafnir wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
And here we are continuing the trend of "if you can't keep up with modern technology and offer a better service than pirates, just try to (ineffectively) snuff them."

As someone who ends up pirating a fair amount of music, I probably also spend well over 10 times as much as most people on music as well. It's not a piracy issue, it's a format issue, and it's the publishers failing to address it that causes piracy.

Could you expand on this? I'm curious what your criteria is for either purchasing or pirating a piece of music.

Spoiler:

Well, first off, I try to buy my music when I can. But being Canadian, due to a lot of really restrictive copyright laws, a lot of sources to actually buy music are not available to me (for example, as a Canadian, I cannot purchase digital music from amazon.com). I will not use iTunes, because seriously, feth iTunes, and that typically leaves me with very few options to pay for music. In Canada, there's no real option for a digital retailer with a large library available outside of iTunes (and seriously, feth iTunes), so most of the time, it involves me having to find some obscure publisher's website, register for an account which involves creating and remembering an entirely new set of user information and having to sign myself up for a bunch of completely unwanted newsletters, and essentially involves far more work than it would take to just pirate the damn thing, and this is not even touching the issue of money, as in most cases I like to support the artists I listen to. I typically have to spend around half an hour or more just looking for a decent legal download of most albums I want to buy these days, compared to being able to pirate most albums in a matter of seconds.

My old criteria used to be that if I could find it online, in digital format (not iTunes, because seriously, feth iTunes), preferably without DRM, I would pay for it.

These days, I follow the same old ruleset, but now I no longer register for new sites. The moment I have to make yet another account, I'll pirate it.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
It's too bad you can't use amazon. It has pretty much solved the music problem for me. I can get anything I want for cheap as dirt and the artists are getting paid way more than they get from itunes.

I'll second Amazon too... they also give me great deals on the physical CDs...

 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.

Perhaps, then, I'm talking to the noble souls who've admitted pirating in this thread?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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.

Yeah, except no, it is theft. It's copyright infringement. The notion that IP has no value simply because "the majority of people" wouldn't pay for it is absolutely ludicrous. I wouldn't pay for a Porsche, but that doesn't mean it has no value.

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.

Regardless of whether or not it is, that has zero impact on your right to infringe on their copyrights. If it cost Sony 2 cents to press a Blu-Ray and they sold it for $500, and they used the money to buy Nickelback T-shirts, none of that gives you the right to download a copy of Spider-Man 2.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:but for the love of god, there has to be a 1st amendment/ supreme court ruling that will ride to the rescue and save the day. Hopefully, somebody, somewhere, will be drafting up the documents.

That would be a hideous, gross overreach and is based upon a severe misunderstanding of the purpose of the first amendment. To whit; the government ideally should not step into a willing contract between consenting adults. If you don't like the policies of your ISP, you are free to vote with your feet and find a different ISP that isn't a party to this agreement. I mean, it's a little complicated by the fact that some of the cable companies have government approved monopolies (another awful mistake), but I think the principle remains

Seaward wrote:It's theft, plain and simple. Stealing from Warren Buffett is still stealing, despite the fact that he won't miss the money.

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.

That being said, I still agree with you that the rationales posted here (and elsewhere) are generally terrible, and that this system, while not perfect, is still an improvement for every single party involved over the current system.

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?

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

Thank you for giving me some insight on that! Do you still purchase any physical media? Or are you striving to go all-digital?

Exclusively digital. No point in buying a CD if all I'm going to do is rip it and never touch it again, and it's nothing more than a waste of space (which I'm fairly conscious about, considering my apartment is only so big and I don't have room to even come close to fitting my music collection).

 Ouze wrote:
If you don't like the policies of your ISP, you are free to vote with your feet and find a different ISP that isn't a party to this agreement. I mean, it's a little complicated by the fact that some of the cable companies have government approved monopolies (another awful mistake), but I think the principle remains

If you think government approved monopolies over ISPs are bad in the US, you should see Canada. Up here, the principle absolutely does not remain. The big three (Rogers, Bell, Telus) telecom companies end up effectively managing the same government body that is meant to regulate them.

 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.

They're both dogs, though. And if you honestly think copyright infringement doesn't potentially carry criminal penalties, I'd suggest reading up on the relevant codes.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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?

Sure. It is not at all difficult to come by internet access in the Western world. Most of the games I play require it already, anyway.

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

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

My friends are comfortably well-off enough that they can afford to spend $60 here and there on a video game.

 Seaward wrote:

And if you honestly think copyright infringement doesn't potentially carry criminal penalties, I'd suggest reading up on the relevant codes.

Citation needed

 Seaward wrote:

 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.

They're both dogs, though. And if you honestly think copyright infringement doesn't potentially carry criminal penalties, I'd suggest reading up on the relevant codes.

Potentially, sure. That's why I hedged my post with "generally". Realistically, though, you're never going to see a charge unless you're running a major production operation. And rightfully so, anything less then that major infringement operation is IMO an enormous waste of limited law enforcement resources.

Posting "they're both dogs" is 110% ducking the point. Again, they're similar, but not the same. Copyright infringement is not Theft anymore then a Warmachine miniature is a 40k Miniature.

Fafnir wrote:f you think government approved monopolies over ISPs are bad in the US, you should see Canada. Up here, the principle absolutely does not remain. The big three (Rogers, Bell, Telus) telecom companies end up effectively managing the same government body that is meant to regulate them.

Yeah, I'm totally talking US only. I have no idea how it works in Canada and I'm not interested enough to research it but my hazy recollection says you guys already have a strike system of some sort.

 Seaward wrote:

 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?

Sure. It is not at all difficult to come by internet access in the Western world. Most of the games I play require it already, anyway.

Thanks for the response!

 Rented Tritium wrote:
Citation needed

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506

Click on "Criminal Offenses."

 Seaward wrote:
Yeah, except no, it is theft. It's copyright infringement.

They are two separate and distinct things.

The notion that IP has no value simply because "the majority of people" wouldn't pay for it is absolutely ludicrous.

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