Slashdot Mirror

This movie had the best comments I ever saw about intellectual property. http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/ Hmm right after Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso's comment "Good artists copy, great artists steal".

The pirate bay is down/up so often is it worth reporting everytime? If it was going to go down for an extended period then yes, but its barely been 24hrs.

One of the hot battles, firefights, front lines, of this copyright war, are the success or failure to keep any large, visible, wide-distribution information-sharing center up, be it a website, p2p technology, or DVD swap meet on a street corner. So I believe we're actually discussing the legal push and pull of our society's copyright law battle, The Pirate Bay is simply a symbolic, and perhaps strategic terrain, a battleground to be won or lost by each side. The particular battle that's lost or won is not important, it's the long term fight to conquer the public mind-share, in favor or against intellectual-property law.

From the point of view of money, the math of the fight is simple. They will keep fighting only as long as they see lots of money down the line. When they believe there is no possibility of making enough money on it anymore, they will start to give up. P2P is taking money out of the business, but not all of it at once. So it's a threat if it grows numerous, not if it simply exists in small numbers. If it stays in small numbers, they use written law, legal means. When it starts growing, they start getting tempted to use force, the abuse of power, any means at all. Just watch http://www.stealthisfilm.com/

You know, domain names are case-insensitive. It could just as well be http://StealThisFilm.com and avoid being misread as http://StealthIsFilm.com.

And by using the anchor tags yourself, you can even add spaces: Steal This Film.com vs. Stealth Is Film.com. (See also "Pen Island".) And that also avoids including the period in the URL.

You know, domain names are case-insensitive. It could just as well be http://StealThisFilm.com and avoid being misread as http://StealthIsFilm.com.

And by using the anchor tags yourself, you can even add spaces: Steal This Film.com vs. Stealth Is Film.com. (See also "Pen Island".) And that also avoids including the period in the URL.

You know, domain names are case-insensitive. It could just as well be http://StealThisFilm.com and avoid being misread as http://StealthIsFilm.com.

And by using the anchor tags yourself, you can even add spaces: Steal This Film.com vs. Stealth Is Film.com. (See also "Pen Island".) And that also avoids including the period in the URL.

You know, domain names are case-insensitive. It could just as well be http://StealThisFilm.com and avoid being misread as http://StealthIsFilm.com.

And by using the anchor tags yourself, you can even add spaces: Steal This Film.com vs. Stealth Is Film.com. (See also "Pen Island".) And that also avoids including the period in the URL.

The best comments I've ever heard on copyrights were on http://stealthisfilm.com./

Well, whether you are against patent and copyright law or not, China is doing it's best to erode the spirit and application of these laws. For most intents and purposes, those laws do not work and barely exist there. Ideas circulate freely, DRM-free, patent-law-free, and copyright-free. Not legally - but in practice they do. Just as at Pirate Bay. If you ask me, the strongest political force to modify patent and copyright laws is piracy, not open-source. The reason is, there is strength in numbers. Many more people use pirate-sourced products than commercial or open-source. Therefore, the Pirate Party, and http://www.stealthisfilm.com/.

So, just to make it clear I'm playing the devil's advocate there, I really think we should make shirts saying "I am a Pirate", and "I copy mp3 music", and explain the legal and historical precedents of the Corsicans and of intellectual property, such as in http://www.stealthisfilm.com/

Please review the documentary Good Copy Bad Copy http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/

That was pretty interesting.

Along the same lines is Steal This Film:
  * http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/download.php

Both Parts I and II available at the linked location.

Not going to say that it is unbias, but it is my interpretation of information presented in Steal This Film, part II. There was a book industry, it was just small and individual books were very expensive, which also contributed to very low literacy.

Tedious in the extreme? In those times? Are you joking? I would think it would be a great honor. Communication through writing was considered magical and mysterious. What do you think literacy rates were before the printing press? Writing is much easier than historians that had to REMEMBER everything that had ever happened. In both cases, history was very sacred and it was an important responsibility. You think that job was just given to anyone? I know there isn't much care or respect for history by much of anyone today, but I think it is because people just know if they wanted to know something, they can just look in a book, or today, just look it up on wikipedia... a lot of people really take it for granted. Anyway, so long as you are making the assertion that it was "tedious to the extreme" and "very error prone", might you be willing to cite a source that these monks were both lazy and hated their jobs?

I think that is an important point. The Pirate Bay is a central location on the web to find stuff that is heavily protected by copyright law AND things people want they don't feel (at that moment) they want to pay for (or at least the asking price). I think you also have to consider the dual marketing of both The Pirate Bay AND the Recording Industry makes albums that are marketed around the world are going to get proportionally larger global attention. The world is big enough that minor global attention generally beats out any kind of regional dominance; just being very popular in China OR United States doesn't mean you are going to be close to being #1 in the world. Just doesn't work that way.

Pirate Bay is about "illegal" sharing; it is a place where you can get stuff that you can not get elsewhere. If artists are sharing their music freely, because they use a Creative Commons license, what motivation is there for pirates to rescue it? There isn't anything to save.

It is like you have a headache. Some people swear my THC, because it is safe, natural, and minimal side effects compared to many other medications. However, in this legal environments, many countries outlaw cannabis, so they need to hit up their local drug dealer. But lets say you just want an Asprin; your drug buddies may have Asprin with them, but why not just go to the store where it is cheap and readily available? A closer analogy is probably amphetamine, because there are so many more varieties. Caffeine is cheap and in many food products, and popular, but not powerful enough and too many side effects compared to alternatives. Ritalin, Dexedrine, and their many flavors and varieties are popular and promoted by drug companies and doctors, quality controlled, but also patent controlled making it very expensive, especially if you do not have health / prescription drug insurance. Again, your local street dealer is going to give you a cheap alternative, except they may keep less fancy notes about what they think you are going to be using it for. And while it is still going to still be a bit more expensive, I'd bet plenty of street dealers keep plenty of prescription drugs on hand. I do not see it as ironic at all that street dealers would keep expensive and illegal drugs available, but won't sell generics or OTC. It is just economics; the financial motivation of the dealer, and the value to the customer just don't meet in those areas.

I used to "pirate" music in order to figure out what I wanted to buy. When the legal environment became hostile, the only thing I stopped doing was buying music. In recent years, I have not pirated any music for a variety of reasons, but my final reason is that I am not interested in hearing the voice or message of artists that actively or passively support a war against the consumer or free culture, with the exception of Last.fm and Sirius Radio. My preference and what I share with friends are links from archive.org and creativecommons.org such as Jamendo and Librivox. I also take the same approach with software.

As the OP pointed out, things are still very centrally controlled. This war isn't about piracy, it is about maintaining control, particularly in the realm of perceptions. There is more I could say, but nothing that hasn't already been said better in Steal this Film, Part II.

Screw those stats though: If you haven't seen a revolution in the freedom and availability of indie music, film, software, and all "IP" for that matter in this "digital age" you haven't been looking.

But Pirate Bay seems to take the view that because something is technically possible it is acceptable, or at least no one can stop us. I just don't have much sympathy for that point of view. I watched their agit-prop Steal this Film and it seems to me that Pirate Bay is unable to distinguish between Free Speech and Free Beer.

You're welcome for the link. You may be interested that The League of Noble Peers have released all the footage shot for the making of the film into the public arena, to do with as you will: http://footage.stealthisfilm.com/

There's some great footage of Bram Cohen lauging insanely and inappropriately when discussing Bittorrent :D

Disclaimer: Of course I realise that he's a genius and that my tiny mind can't comprehend the many wanderings of it, otherwise I would grasp the appropriateness of the intensity and timing of the laughter, still it's amusing to me nonetheless :D

You mean Steal This Film

Indeed. I found out about the quote here: http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php, and it felt very spooky to read that and get some sort of insight. Without very strong IP-laws, the US has nothing. For the US, it's more than worth to go to war for, in order to make sure all other nations will respect it.

Then perhaps you'd like to purchase the rights for public demonstrations of the "happy birthday" song that you will inevitability sing when something increments their age count.

Yes the "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted and still collecting fees to this day from radio stations, etc. It's set to expire in 2030 apparently (i'm sure copyright extensions will prevent that).

The real question that should be asked is, at what point does a piece of music become part of the public domain culture? What's next? A patent on Christmas?

For an awesome (legal download) documentary on piracy, copyright, etc I highly recommend Steal this film 2.

I don't believe they do it for the love

I hear you, but the consumer has some pretty good lobbying groups going for him these days too. Check out savetheinternet.com. You have these guys largely to thank for the fight for net neutrality thus far.
I'm not one for protests or taking part in debates, so I show support by donating. I give these guys and stealthisfilm.com a little $$ now and then, because they speak in a voice that can be heard better than mine. It's a lot more effective than online petitions, but should also be used in conjunction with regular letters to your congressman, senator, etc.. See my sig, as it's actually appropriate to this discussion. Worrying about this problem in here does almost nothing.

I'm not a friend of DRM, but it's likely to stay around for a while

Have you seen Steal this Film II? While DRM is not its main focus there are some interesting ideas in there that have heavy repercussions on DRM. If you follow that film's arguments, the public simply won't accept DRM any more than people did accept censoring of content back when the printing press first came around. You had to get a state-approved license if you wanted to print a book. These kinds of laws didn't really manage to stay around for a long time though. I really hope history is repeating itself here.

OTOH I haven't really come across any DRM'd content worth consuming yet. I guess back than books might have had relatively more important content than mainstream media today (e.g. books helped to bring about the french revolution while today's mainstream media is mostly about making a few rich people even richer).

Becuase I have bittorrent installed to download Mandrake, I *MUST* have illegal things on my machine?

• debian-40r1-i386-DVD-1.iso [1180675963]
• debian-40r1-i386-DVD-2.iso [402297137]
• debian-40r1-i386-DVD-3.iso [24379392]
• debian-40r1-i386-netinst.iso [0]
• debian-update-4.0r1-i386-DVD-1.iso [3342336]
• openSUSE-10.3-GM-Addon-Lang-i386-iso [917504]
• openSUSE-10.3-GM-Addon-Lang-x86_64-iso [1261568]
• openSUSE-10.3-GM-DVD-i386-iso [180797440]
• openSUSE-10.3-GM-DVD-x86_64-iso [819200]
• StealThisFilm.Part1.mov [428353952]
• strip_souffle_high.wmv [0]

Looks like someone finally got around to watching Steal This Film.

=Smidge=

That's way too old.
It has been circulating around for about a year or so ...
It appeared shortly after the movie Steal This Film

see the movie "Steal this Film" :

it's explained quite good . there are also other , more offical articles about it .

i am basically for stronger enforcement of copyright laws.. does this make me 'anti-tech' or 'pro-tech' in this survey view?

anti-tech, you douche.

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1763
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=01 97

http://jorge.cortell.net/
http://www.benkler.org/
http://www.dklevine.com/
http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/
http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

http://swpat.ffii.org/
http://creativecommons.org/
http://www.piratbyran.org/
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/
http://www.cambia.org/
http://www.plos.org/
http://www.fsf.org/

I actually ment Steal this film, like from here

Ooops, of course they are in the website, but it seems to me that just part 1 is available as a torrent: http://www.stealthisfilm.com/torrent/StealThisFilm .Part1.torrent.