Slashdot Mirror
Korean Brothers Arrested For File-Sharing Site
HarlanC writes: "This story discusses the arrest of two Korean brothers who run a website [warning, page requires Korean language support] that allows peer-to-peer file sharing. Note that the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports local companies lost $154 million in sales in 2000 due to use of the program, even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999."
Is this because of the pirates?
:)
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Is RJ Reynolds guilty because I decided to kill myself using a product manufactured by them? Apparently so, if all these billions being paid out in the US are true.
Yeah, a bit trollish, so sue me :) Just never forget, legal systems don't have to make sense, they just have to garner headlines.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Theft is depriving me of the thing YOU stole, not the *potential* loss of value of something I already own.
Right. That's where I think the difference is between theft and copyright infringement.
People have already pointed out that "losses" due to *potential* sales not happening are completely bogus. You know this, I know this.
Also correct. In fact, I made that same argment here.
Just because somebody got something for less than *you* sell it for does not mean they would have paid for it had they not had the opportunity to get if for less. And it doesn't mean they "STOLE" the price difference from your pocket.
Agreed. If I, for some reason, download the new Backstreet Boys CD, I wouldn't classify that as stealing in a strict definition of the word because, without a gun to my head, I wouldn't have paid for it. But it's still morally wrong in my book. For whatever reason, I apparently want that CD. But I'm not willing to pay $15 for it. Am I willing to pay less? Maybe, but that's not an option at this point in time unless I want to take to XYZ file-sharing protocol and download it.
In summary, I agree that there are differences between physically stealing something (depriving someone of that object) and infringing on somebody's copyright. My question is, how do you propose we handle this intellectual property? How do we deal with the repercussions of lifting these copyrights? Who is going to produce music and movies and books if they aren't compensated in some way?
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Guess what. That last attitude isn't ideological. It's cheap. When enough people believe in the cause of free music enough to actually do the former, then maybe somebody will pay attention.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Don't make up straw-men slippery-slope arguments about what might be illegal. People who excuse this or Napster because someone, somewhere may occasionaly have a non-infringing use are out of touch with reality. Lots of things are banned even though they have legitimate uses. Lock picks are illegal in most states, yet that doesn't stop you from going to the hardware store and buying things that have mostly legitimate uses.
Well, at least it's good that Free Korea is trying to learn something from the US right?
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Good luck trying to lock up an infinite number of Ferrari's. You'd have to pruchase and infinite number of locks.
If you had an infinite number of Ferrari's, do you think people will pay you $x for it, where x == 0?
Yes. We're assuming that people can only get Ferraris from me. I think it's a fair assumption in this analogy. They're free to buy other sports cars from other people or to not buy from me at all. Why does the fact that I have an infinite supply matter when I have a monopoly on the product?
Good luck trying to lock up an infinite number of Ferrari's. You'd have to pruchase and infinite number of locks
Does not keeping them locked give people the right to take them without paying?
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
FTP -- no, FTP has a large number of legitimate, legal uses.
Gun -- Yes, because guns are a tool for murder and should be outlawed.
Just because sales went up does not mean that sales would not have gone up *more* without this "interference." Of course not a popular thing to say here.
/. posters who justify their theft with "Well I wouldn't have bought it anyway."
You're absolutely right, but just because 300 CDs worth of songs were downloaded doesn't mean that sales would have gone up by the total sales price of that 300 CDs.
The record industry's absurd claims about how much money is being lost to piracy is just as ridiculous as
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Wait a minute. You preface your comments with "I can't speak for everyone else", and then go on to assume that everyone else is exactly the same as you. I can't speak for everyone else, but I think that's a bullshit way to prove a point. QED...
You must consider a wide variety of users (everyone from teens to stereotypical cash-starved college students to working adults to...), a wide variety of listening habits (some people listen to music while at the computer, some listen in the car, some listen to the radio instead), and a wide variety of "accessories" (modem vs. DSL, in-car mp3 player vs. CD player, whether the person owns a CD burner).
Furthermore, at the end of the article, they even have a quote from one of the users talking about how he finds it stupid to buy the CD when you can download the tracks for free. I don't know how typical it is, but there's obviously at least one person who feels differently from you, making your absolute decree about lost revenue dubious.
I "steal" music to evaluate it. If you don't let me "steal" the music first, I will not buy it.
Don't like it? Tough. I can live without your music WAY longer than you can live without my money.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
... and I bet Horse and Buggy sales dropped quite a bit when the automobile was introduced.
It's called PROGRESS.
It worked in Blazing Saddles.
Well, if there were any credibility of these companies in reporting that they are taking losses, they would report what their projections were for the previous two, three, or four years (prior to the year in question). Next, adjust the year in question's projected sales by how historically close (above or below) they've been and see where the numbers fall out. Since no one has actually done this type of thing which is very easy to do, I suspect that there is merit to the claims that sales have actually been improved, or worse case, there has been no actual losses.
If you think about it, they have only biased reasons to lie about these types of things and not a single reason to say anything counter to their position. Thusly, anyone that's breathing should take EVERYTHING they say with a very large grain of salt.
Aside from the point made about imprisoning someone for making software, that remark was made in general and not just as a comment on this particular "injustice". Without going into a whole diatribe, comparing the events that lead to the American Revolution (what other revolution would I be referring to in english, and how often is the term 'Revolutionary War' used to describe anything else) to current abuses perpetrated by the private sector, would need to include deaths caused by HMOs, deaths caused by drug companies (cures aren't as profitable as expensive, long-term treatment), corporate slave-labor, crimes against the environment, bribery, money laundering, I could go on and on. So yes, the revolutionary war started over less.
Well, technically, I think it would go something like this:
Let's say they sell 2 million CDs, at $15 a piece.
Now let's say there's 10 million copies of the CDs floating around in Korean cyberspace.
Ergo, to the marketdroids, those 10 million copies at $15 each equal $150 million in CDs they should've sold.
Not that they would ever sell that quantity of CDs in the first place, but then marketing and logic don't always go hand in hand these days.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Some bands (Dave Matthews Band and Metallica come to mind immediately) do not discourage the taping of concerts (that said, some venues, most of which are owned in one way or another by some form of government discourage it.)
I think there are two factors underlying the ripping-off that one gets at a concert. The artist/entertainers are forced into overcharging at the concerts because they get screwed over by the record industry. The other reason is pure economics. When you go to a concert, you're not really obtaining the use of IP. Each concert is different than others, especially if you're going to a concert by a great live-entertainer (changes to songs, jam sessions, etc.), but even if you're not, then there is the atmosphere, the collective experience of being with n other people who have an interest in the same music. There is a scarcity of tickets to such events (with the exception of fire code issues, this is not granted by law). There is a scarcity of parking spaces around a given location.
What possible connection could there be between the Mahatma and a bunch of kids downloading free music?
One was willing to fight, suffer, starve, and die for his beliefs. The others are just opportunists.
Find a better metaphor, eh?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Furthermore, even if their figures were remotely accurate, the willingness of people to ignore the middleman should tell the IAA's something about the flaw in their business model. High prices, total unwillingness to provide decent online service, legal wars raged against those who do, etc...
Dyolf Knip
And he may well beat himself up (so to speak) about his impure desires.
College age guys managing to not look at porn, despite the strength of any religous conviction, would be an impressive thing.
Quick! Someone go d a study on the level of pr0n traffic fromr religious schools compared to non-affiliated schools. There's a thesis in there somewhere...
...j
When you go to a theater, you aren't just paying for the intellectual property in the movie; you're paying for use of the theater.
:)
Point taken. If we assume that my use of the theater doesn't cost the owner anything in depreciation and that nobody would have bought a ticket for that seat anyway, does that change anything? You're (not) paying for the use of the theater to watch the movie, and with MP3 copyright infringement you're (not) paying to listen to the music.
The second example, taking meat from a grocery store, is a clear moral wrong. The fact that it would have gone to waste is irrelevant. It was still theirs, and you did not have a right to take it from them.
Obviously I agree that it's wrong, but I don't see how it differs from not paying for a CD while you still get to listento the music. I don't think the fact that you're physically taking the steak is relevant since it would be thrown away anyway. You're still getting the benefit of the product without paying for it.
Note that this does not apply for "pop sensations" like Britney Spears, but really only applies for true artists. The ones who are not doing it for the money, but can still appreciate it. The ones to whom ten bucks now and then will actually make a difference.
The band of whom I speak certainly doesn't need my money. If I stopped going to concerts and buying their products nobody would notice. Likewise if I pirated all of their music and snuck into all of their concerts nobody would notice. But I flat-out think that such behavior would make me a bad person, which is why I don't behave like that.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
The MORALITY of the situation is therefore that some law gets broken. Which law? The law that says content producers get to profit from works for a limiet time.
So - has any of these works passed into the public domain? Does anyone producing content have a fair shot at the market? Once you remove the immorality equating the crime to theft, the immorality of the entire situation surfaces.
So, while this is not a defense of the copyright infringement, you can see what exactly the inequities the system preserves. That should give anyone perspective, I think.
I have not seen many concessions to the local market. VCDs are fairly cheap but that's about it.
You'd think that the whole pesky "burden of proof" thing would stymie the IAA's in court, but they seem to think statistics to be as good as a smoking gun. If the odds of my winning a lottery are a million to one and I buy a million tickets (over a period of several drawings) without ever winning, do I get to sue since statistically I should have won by now?
Dyolf Knip
Ok, lets ignore for one moment the fact that no-one would run out and buy the tens of albums a week that some people take from servers just because they are there.
Since most people copying mp3s don't care that much about the sound quality, they wouldn't be buying the $15 CD. $9 cassette tapes for them! Or can they play a game where just because REM's Reveal album comes in a hyper-expensive limited edition book version mp3ing it counts as $40 business lost, not $15?
Come to think of it, if I were to post some of my vinyl rarities up could my local collectors shop claim $100 per track in lost business?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Maybe you should leave the thinking to the horse; they got much bigger heads than you do. Instead of 'I really don't think', why don't you enlighten me and try to explain why they did write those copyright by-laws.
Even so, the Recording Industry Association of Korea has no right to publish patently false damage claims. I don't think any person in their right mind can possibly believe that national record sales would have been 535% higher without this web site.
Media and software companies have been publishing ridiculously implausible damage figures for years, and it's time they put a stop to it. The reality of copyright infringement is bad enough; there is no need to falsely inflate the damage.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
I think the difference is almost negligable. I believe the fact to which you refer is that stealing is (loosely) defined as taking something from someone thereby depriving them of that something. Copyright infringement, if you ask me, is taking something from someone illegally, depriving them of payment (or whatever).
So basically the difference that I see between the two is that stealing deprives the victim of the object while copyright infringement deprives the victim of the object's monetary value. I think you're splitting hairs a bit too thin here.
While a difference exists, I don't see how you can argue that one is less morally offensive than the other.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Remember back during the Cold War, when Soviet Russia was the Great Enemy of Democracy and Freedom? Its government closely monitored all copying equipment, and you could go to prison (or worse) for owning an unlicensed photocopier - let alone actually using the thing.
I'm dumbfounded by the number of people posting to slashdot about how "they pirated/stole music so they should go to jai" - bloody hell, read the damn article, they're NOT being arrested for stealing books, they're being arrested for the equivalent of building a photocopier and letting anyone use it!
*That* is what you tell Joe American Sixpack. That the US government arrested a guy for making photocopier software, just like the Soviet Union used to do during the Cold War, because the corporations don't want anyone using anything without paying a corporation for the privilege.
(yeah, so not all corporations are like that - but the corporate profit mentality is one of the biggest field demonstrations of abuse-of-power::power that I've ever seen)
And now South Korea is following suit. Oh, and by the way - Happy Korean Liberation Day! *choke*
I really don't think the people who wrote the original copyright by-laws would refer to widespread, global, profitless redistribution of their product to millions of people "fair use".
Except using these original copyright laws the vast majority of these songs would be public domain in the first place.
My provider, http://www.giganews.com, already has a "Click here to submit DMCA removal requests" button.
(Besides, I hate the thought of using Usenet to distribute large binary files. Physically copying huge blocks of data all over the planet is just not the right way to do it. Sure, it works, but it's still a ridiculous waste of bandwidth and storage.)
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
So if you had an infinite number of Ferraris you would complain if some were stolen?
If I had an infinite number of Ferraris for which I was asking a sales price of $x and some were stolen, yes, I would complain.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Ok this has to be a dam low blow from the corporate world. We got Dmitri Sklyarov in jail for basically giving a presentation. Napster basically shut down from RIAA who believe that napster is lowering sails when all I can see is napster increasing sales. I bought more cd's when I was on napster then ever before. So this all goes to show that the corporate world will go as low as they need to go to make 10$.
My 2 cents plus 2 more
Dude, you need a chill-pill :)
We are on that long, scary road of analogies and straw-men arguing... ;-)
If Smith and Wesson sold weapons that were intentionally engineered to be convertable to full-autos, then yes they should up against in the wall. If Smith and Wesson set up shop on the corner of Gangsta & Hoodville and started selling guns called "The Killaz Choice" and "The Smoke 'em 10000" to drug dealers, and they marketed them to hold-up crews, and they knew that >98% of them were used in murders, then yes they should be held against the wall.
It is offensive when corporations hide behind laws and rights, and it is equally offensive when people hide behind rights to allow them to pursue anti-social activites: Saying "Gosh darnit, I'm just letting people share files!" doesn't wash when the overwhelming majority of users are using your site to trade copyright infringed material. See Napster as a great case in point.
God damn it. Yet another Korea-centric article. When are the Slashdot editors going to realize there's more to the world than just Korea?
If we assume that my use of the theater doesn't cost the owner anything in depreciation and that nobody would have bought a ticket for that seat anyway, does that change anything?
Maybe if you wear a sealed suit (so you don't drop hair and dead skin anywhere) and have "anti-grav" boots (so your feet don't touch the floor) and you don't sit in the seats. Then maybe the condition would be satisfied...
That's a funny statement. You imply, probably without meaning to, that the people who wrote the laws are in the industry. But it's true. Copyright is not a natural property right. It has to be artificially created and enforced.
Tape-trading went on for years without people being arrested and thrown in prison for manufacturing cassette tapes. Almost certainly because first of all the cassete tape was a "product," and there was a way for the industry to extract their supposedly "lost" profits from blank media. And almost certainly because there was no way to track how many times a .60c cassette tape was used to copy the latest Duran Duran hit (or whatever).
So now we have a publicly visible excrescence of this phenomenon, and now people are seeing how much their product is worth. How many people are willing to actually pay for what they can easily copy from a friend.
The fact that everybody does it doesn't magically make it legal, proper, or morally justifyable in any context.
The value of what you put in the market is what people are willing to pay for it. If that's $0, you don't have a business model. Clearly people are willing to pay for a physical copy of a CD to put in their car, for the lyrics sheet to read and bip along to, for the pictures of the artists (if any). But the actual music is easily obtained, and it's worth $0. It only looks like theft because laws have been written to ensure this business model. But a law which is trivially violated and impossible to trace or enforce makes no sense.
The record industry is suing the Yang brothers because they're available to sue. They provide a tangible target for their so-called "loss." Why doesn't the record industry try to sue the millions of "pirates" out in the marketplace? They're the ones who actually violated the law, by taking that which they did not "own." Right?
Of course, then the recording industry would probably end up facing a massive consumer revolt, a class action lawsuit from their millions of defendants, and of course the impossibility of getting all those people in the courtroom at one time to hear the charges against them.
It may be that there is simply no market value for a stream of bits, whether that stream is music, video, text, or the recorded sounds of me farting in the shower. It may be that after all this, the record companies are still making money, and ought to be happy that they can. I still buy CD's. Plenty of other people do.
You don't see big acts going out of business because they can't sell enough CD's. N'Sync played in my town just a few weeks ago. I don't recall seeing them out on the corner panhandling before the gig. You don't see record company executives selling their children for scientific experiments. Obviously, they are still selling their product. They just think they're supposed to be selling more.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
So. This one example of casual abuse is clearly indicative that everyone is pirating CD's at an astonishing rate. It's amazing that the record companies aren't spilling employees into the street, looting their corporate assets for the last dime, and closing up shop.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
AOL Instant Messenger already allows file transfer. It is certainly already happening.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
One time while portscanning for port 80 (out of boredom, not for any malicious purpose) on my former dorm's subnet I came across a directory that the individual probably didn't want to have shared: the one containing the history file for his browser.
His webpage portrayed him as a nice, churchgoing young man. But some of those URLs would suggest otherwise...
"But I was sure www.girlongirl was a scripture quote site!"
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Let's do a little editing and see what happens...
Justifying imprisonment on trumped up charges by saying "Well, the RIAA is still making $500 million dollars less than they could have because of peer to peer file sharing!" is more absolute bullshit.
I can't speak for everyone else but In the last year I have purchased exactly the same number of CD's that I would have had P2P filesharing not been available. The RIAA or RIAK or whoever claiming that they've lost revenue because of filesharing is bullshit. I'll say it again: Based of my spending habits, there is no more revenue for them...no more! Do I have to whack them (and all the other "sharing is stealing" whiners) in the head with a stick to make them understand that? The best that they could possibly hope for is that their potential for increased revenue is unquantifiable! Quit trying to sell me this BS line that "we lost x millions because of Napster etc..."! That can't possibly be known. I say the number should be zero (the same as their IQ's).
You're using her as bait, Master!
And people HAVE been arguing that one is less morally offensive than the other for as long as copyright laws have existed in this country. You clearly read
Information has the unique property that you *can* copy it without "destroying" the original. Why not harness this property, rather than make it look like a limited good?
The purpose of an economy is to distribute a limited good fairly and equitably as possible. Information is NOT a limited material resource. At worst, it is a common good (in the economic infrastructure sense), and at best it is a completely unlimited resource. In both cases, it has zero mariginal cost.
In short, the following is a valid *opinion*: "Copying information is not as morally offensive than stealing my physical property, or depriving me of my freedoms."
You may argue that this opinion is false, but you certainly can't tell me it is NOT a topic for debate.
Are you unaware that our founding fathers debated this topic as well?
I still have a problem when people try to cite facts like these as being evidence that pirated music improves sales. Now, throw out of your mmind all of teh number fudging and erroneously reported numerical values. The fact is that their sales increased from 1999-2000. But did this happen despite the piracy, or in spite of? In other words, who here can say how much their sals should have changed without the piracy? Would the lack of piracy have meant more sales jthus increasing their improvement? Or would the lack of piracy have meant less exposure so people would buy less new music thus having a neagtive impact on their potential sales growth.
You can't simply look at one tiny piece of data and say "uh yup, folks, lookie thar... that thar proves I should steal music."
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of sharing music (especially from the standpoint that current copyright terms are unconstitutional and harming the public domain). But if you're going to complain about it, don't use fuzzy math. Leave that to the politicians.
I think you're right on about people not considering the morals of their actions when dealing with IP issues. There certainly is a difference. If I download some random MP3, listen to it once and then delete it, I don't lose any sleep over it. It doesn't make me feel like a bad person. If I download an MP3 of a song that I like and keep it on my computer to listen to, I still don't feel like I should be repenting for my sins. But if I was downloading CDs of my favorite artists because I'd rather use that money for something else, I'd find that wrong. Seems to me that it's a bit of a slap in the face to an artist that I like not to pay them for their work. Makes you wonder what kind of "fans" these people really are.
The reason there is no moral wrong associated with copying intellectual property is because you never take something away from someone else. They have not lost anything - so how could you have "stolen" something from them?
I'd argue that you have taken something from somebody else (the artist, in the case of MP3 piracy): rightful compensation. How many people consider sneaking into a (not sold-out) movie to not be morally wrong? What about the grocery store that doesn't sell all of its meat before the expiration date. Is taking that steak without paying OK because they would have just thrown it out anyway?
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I sometimes wonder why moderators like comments like this one.
This is not a matter of opinion; it is a simple fact that the injustices the parent comment is referring to is not
"making copied cd's illegal"
it's "arresting people for writing software".
The fact is that these guys were not arrested for copying cd's illegally. They were arrested for writing a program that people CAN use to pirate music. I can use FTP, IRC, or even Apache and a web browser to do this.
The exploding point for the issue is when people who write web servers and ftp servers are legally responsible for what people use them for - and the authors of Apache are arrested for "sharing illegal content".
"You'd be a fool to buy CDs when you can get songs on the Internet for free," said 17-year-old Lee Yong-suk...
What bothers me is that people like Mr. Yong-suk don't seem to understand that what they are doing is wrong. Often it's justified by talking about the evils of Big Business. The record companies suck, if you ask me. They screw over the little guy in an attempt to make a buck (times 10^6) off of consumers. It's exploitative. But so are other corporations (and individuals, for that matter). But that doesn't give us free reign to break the law.
Piracy is going to happen. If you want to take what's not yours, go for it. Use whatever excuse you want. But don't call someone a fool for doing the right thing.
Note: this is addressed more at the individual quoted in the article than at the poster
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
In my experience the downloading of MP3's have served to promote artists, not to deprive them. This can also hold true when it comes to software. I am a professional designer who uses photoshop and the like at work, yet as a student I used warez versions simply because I could not afford the price of the software. Later, I land myself a job and ask the boss to buy those same packages for me to use professionally. Theft or promotion? If it wasn't for warez not a single designer would have enough experience to land their first job!
Now I don't mean to get off on a rant, but...
Someone remind me how the RIAA can charge $15 per CD, get $14 of that, and say that they aren't getting enough money? What about the artists, man?! I'd hope that they deserve something. I mean, god forbid that the RIAA would ever have to lose any of their precious, precious money. What are they even managing to spend it on that they need it so badly? That'd be an interesting story: Where The Money Goes: A VH1 Exclusive Look At The Lives Of Record Company Executives.
The most pathetic thing is they don't realize that by trying to squeeze every last dime out of the market they're pissing more and more people off and, in effect, endorsing the P2P transferring.
While I think the RIAA should crash'n'burn, at the same time, some things I agree with them on. Downloading entire albums should not happen (support artists!), but unfortunately human instincts are to Cheat, to Lie, and to Steal (and the artists don't get much, anyway). I mean, can anyone honestly say that they haven't ever been tempted to cheat on a test, or that they haven't ever lied to get out of something, or ever wanted to steal something so they wouldn't have to pay outrageous prices (see: Adobe, heh). No, I didn't think so.
I seem to have gotten a bit off track. I think that someone (or some people) should start a new music union. Fuck if I know how it'd manage to grow, but I think that if there was something like that that would give more money to the artists, charge less for CDs, and, most importantly, not combat P2P sharing but support it, the world would be a better place.
"Don't you hate pants?
I hope he tells us to burn our pants."
[insert witty comment here]
Try http://www.soribada.com if you want to see the site mentioned int he article.
I'm not disagreeing that there's a chance this program hurt record sales to some degree. However, I see no reason to believe that sales would have been quintupled without the presence of this program. At the very least, this would likely have been accompanied with a corresponding increase in CD player sales, for instance...
Do they actuually report this kind of loss on their finincial statements? I'm not sure what it's like in Korea, but I remember being really pissed off here (the US) when companies were claiming losses in the hundereds of millions over what Kevin Mitnick did, and then turning around and telling their shareholders that things were never better.
Does anyone know the laws behind this kind of thing? (either US or Korea)
Slashdot, the best source of legal information on the net!
..Although one might argue that a law that cannot be enforced consistantly (i.e, you're only punished if you somehow "stand out" from all the other violators) needs to be refined or clarified somewhat.
What I really don't understand about all this is that the persons arrested were running a peer-to-peer filesharing service. Now, the peer-to-peer paradigm of filesharing really shouldn't be considered intrinsically illegal (the sorry case of napster comes to mind, but then so does that of gnutella). Should the maintainer of the service be punished, or the individuals using the service for illegal activity?
If someone runs someone down in a car, do we sue the person who built the road in the first place?
Who would be left to build new roads? Who would be foolish enough to build one? More importantly, who would walk down the street at all, knowing that there are no repercussions for vehicular manslaughter?
Peer to peer filesharing -can- be legal and -can- coincide with fair use provisions. When it dosent, the lazy governments just attack the target that's easiest to find, even if it's the -wrong one-, just so the recording industry can feel like all their bribe money is being put to good use.
What's next? Is someone going to be monitoring my AIM file transfers to make sure i'm not sending copyrighted material to my friends? After all, to be consistant, you would have to sue AOL for making such copyright infringement possible, right? Of course, not all companies (napster) have enough money to alter legal reality (AOL/TW)
And if someone tried to buy content from you, would ever forget to ship the CD? Or would that be theft?
Not that that would ever happen, Bowie... No, I suspect it's just slipped your mind (despite the fact that I dropped by IRC to bug you about it... twice).
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
There is no way this figure would hold up under close scrutiny. Many stable businesses consider annual sales growth of 10% to be solid. This sort of thing is found in the annual reports for companies. I would really, really like to get my hands on the sales forecasts in the annual reports for companies in the Recording Industry Association of Korea (translated into English of course). It is highly unlikely that they actually predicted this sort of phenomenal growth in their sales forecasts. More likely, they have made up this figure out of thin air based on the number of files transferred.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
2. Placing music on media that cannot played (like on a CD-ROM drive) without warning the purchasers is bad.
3. Point-to-point transfer of commercial music to combat otherwise inability to play above media currently owned is good and well within the moral rights of the f**ked consumer (even better in lossless format).
4. Regardless of imaginary losses to piracy (not necessarily to real ones, which are not always avoidable), the ability to sample music in lossy formats to enable the consumer to effectively direct their dollars towards satisfactory music is good, often even to the evil beings trying to destroy the sharing networks.
5. The warped notion that purchasers should be forced to pay full price for polluted (watermarked) audio is bad.
6. The next time I see (insert overexposed crap-'musician'), I want to see (said musician) on one of those flaming crosses in the background of a Madonna video.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
In a word, hypocrisy. While I can't cite specific examples from memory, his homepage suggested an image of a wholesome nature that's consistent with what the Baptist denomination believes to be good. In short, he made an effort (by going to church, having religious items on his webpage, etc.) to appear one way while behaving in another. I could care less what webpages he goes to, but I'll lambast someone who makes an effort to maintain an image (and hold others to that standard) while behaving differently.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I tend to make a distinction between "real property" and "intellectual property" whereas you do not, from what I can tell.
I think we've reached our fundamental difference. While I do make a distinction between physical property and intellectual property, I do not think that distinction justifies taking something without compensating the owner.
I do not believe "intellectual property" is property at all. There is nothing physically there. A song can be converted into a series of mathematical equations and back again. It has no substance.
Am I correct in assuming that you feel the same about movies, books, etc.?
A movie theater has substance. (Still grey though, because you're watching a movie).
But in my admittedly oversimplified example, you're just (not) paying for the right to use that good/service. This is of course assuming that you aren't costing the owner anything by watching the movie (be it theater depreciation or a seat that he would have sold to somebody else had you not been there). Just like with the MP3 you're getting a good/service without paying, and although you aren't costing the owner anything, you're depriving them of what you would have paid. Ok, so there's the point about what if you wouldn't have paid. That's a very grey area to me. Do you still have the right to receive the good/service even if you wouldn't have paid? I don't think so. From our discussions I think that you might feel differently.
Meat has substance. Period. You take it... then it's GONE. It isn't there anymore.
I still think you're adding complications to my simplified examples, like with the movie theater above. You aren't costing the grocery store anything because the food would be wasted. What you're doing is depriving them of potential income. You're getting the benefit without paying a dime.
Manufactured money-machine pop music is only there for the purpose of taking your money, and I have no problem ethically with not paying for that.
In practice neither do I. In theory I do have a problem with it. It's borderline hypocrisy (maybe not so borderline), but stealing from the devil is still stealing. Although that doesn't mean I'll never do it.
Bands that do not need my money, but still deserve it are: (snip)
We have more in common in musical taste than we do in IP opinion.
...and these are people I have no ethical problem trading mp3's of occasionally.
So where does one draw the line? If we expect consumers to police themselves, I fear the market for music, movies, books, and other types of IP would collapse. Reminds of of when Lisa drags Homer to the museum with the whole "suggested donation" fiasco. "Good luck lady, you're gonna need it!"
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Gleim Publications. I sent you an email a while ago. Sorry for never replying -- the product was released (sans tiles) a few days later, so it became a moot point, and things have been pretty hectic with new projects since.
Valid point, but what other metric would you suggest to measure their loss (and I think you would agree, there has been *some* loss along the way.
30% would have bought if they didn't have pirate copies?
45%?
It's not easy to say (I'd venture impossible), and since it's in their interest to hype up their claims, the RIAK & co haven't bothered to establish a rational sounding amount.
Well, most suits like that are called frivilous, hence the nature, make outrageous statements, that will mark the 'offending' side as automatically guilty - in eyes of the public that is. Read Mitnick case, he was thrown into jail, for corporate losses, by public companies. I sure as hell would like to see the losses show up in the end of the term reports to investors. I bet these losses will not show on the credibility of the company or industry as a whole. :wq
Well, I wouldn't mind the Apache lead developers being jailed, so long as they snag the developers of IIS too..
We'll have Microsoft's high paid lawyers defending Apache, in a way..
.sig: Now legally binding!
The GDP for South Korea is $13,300 (according to the CIA World Factbook) compared to $33,900 in the US.
So is it any wonder then that such countries have more piracy? Relative to their wages, Koreans are paying 2 or 3 times as much for their music, videos and software. How many people in the US would pay $50 for a music CD or $100 for a DVD?
And South Korea is a relatively rich country. The GDP in places like Thailand, Indonesia or Vietnam is less than a tenth of the US. Imagine paying $400 for a computer game or $2500 for Windows XP.
No one in the right mind would, which is why piracy is so rife. If the music, video and software companies had any brains they would lower the cost of their products so that people could actually afford them.
OK, so let me get this straight, total sales are 31 million. But they are claiming that they lost 150 million in sales due to this program? I've got to be missing something...
Note that the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports local companies lost $154 million in sales in 2000 due to use of the program, even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999.
So they're claiming that they were expecting $185.5 million in sales in 2000? A 535% increase over the previous year? And I thought the RIAA was stupid...
Stop this already! File sharing should not be illegal! At least not the technology allowing it! File sharing is SO MUCH MORE than just porn and copyrighted mp3s!
Find nice cocktail recipes @ www.spitzy.net
Woohoo! did I get first post??
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
"Soribada is probably affecting our business, but there is no concrete evidence," said Cho Jin-bae, who handles online marketing at the Seoul office of the EMI record label. For an industry that claims to be losing to piracy 5 times more money than it takes in, all from one source, the lack of concrete evidence suprises me. Or maybe the South Korean RIAA wannabees are even more mathematically challenged than their American counterparts. Frankly, I'm suprised they can crank in $30 million or so a year, what with 2 college kids in their way.
South Korea. Read the article, numbnuts.
Quoting from reply:
i had 183 confirmed kills in korea and i'm proud of every one of themOh, you're running the script which shuts down Code Red / IIS-infected machines, huh? Sounds like fun. Judging from my log files, the Koreans don't seem to be really keen on patching their servers.
Quoting from article:
Note that the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports local companies lost $154 million in sales in 2000 due to use of the program, even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999.To paraphrase the ever-illustrious American National Drinkin' Buddy, George Dubya Bush, that sounds like some fuzzy math.
Ever have someone give you a CD that you'd have never bought, and you threw out or gave away because you didn't want it occupying the real estate on your CD rack?
Then, there's music that you keep for the sole purpose of mockery. Emimem. Madonna singing American Pie. Name your boy-band or rap "artist" du jour.
Why can't the RIAA, etc. understand that the MP3 simply liberates music that they'd have *never* sold anyway? Of course, they'll count every file transferred as another dollar/yen/peso/lira/mark/franc/whatever lost, even when it probably falls into either one of the above categories or is a duplicate download to find a specific version of a song.
I've boycotted all forms of purchased music until the recording industries start to recognize that this isn't the end, it's the beginning. And that Napster was only the first.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
You're forgetting the movies.
;)
And the occasional app or game.
And sometimes people's cookies.txt. (I found one with Amazon one-click shopping once!
Hey, I think we might be able to make a case for the legality of downloading someone else's cookies.txt! Score one for p2p!
Fascism knows no borders and no political affiliation. Communism and capitalism, it makes no difference. We are all a bunch of slaves wherever we go.
Who's going to protect the people when their liberties are being trampled by the very governments that are entrusted to protect them? Governments have turned into police states that continually spy on their own people. They are armed to the teeth and they won't give up their power easily. First they lie to you and tell you that you are living in the land of the free, then they disarm you, and then they enslave you without you even noticing that you're a slave. Anybody who thought that the internet would stay free and anonymous for long was just dreaming.
Who are we gonna call? Ghostbusters? I am afraid we're all shit out of luck.
War? Is that what capitalists that behave this way want? I mean, goddamnit. I'm a pacifist, but I'm also a realist. How many people can you harrass, deceive, and imprison before someone blows their fucking lid and torches a corporate office? In some countries, there are already riots inspired by this sort of abuse. I remember reading about a McDonald's being vandalized, and the golden arches becoming a hood ornament on someone's car. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR WAS STARTED OVER LESS. Jesus Christ. This bulllshit is never going to end. The only solution is to make money obsolete.
I assume that they are calculating based on some sort of assumption that every d/l'ed song would have been purchased at full price, and while that's an obvious over-simplification it's difficult to come up with any other measurement. What the hell -- it seems reasonable to me that scale plays a part here, and scale implies measurement.
Certainly if physical assets had been swiped we'd be pretty comfortable saying that "$145M worth of goat-scented dildoes were stolen", even though the total market for such a product might be just that one guy (you know the one), and he doesn't have $145M to spend.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I fail to understand what is it that they are guilty of. They just wrote and hosted a file sharing service. Like, you know, millions of FTP sites out there, and newsgroups and whatnot. How are they guilty if people using their service decide to use it for some illegal purpose? Is Smith & Wesson guilty because I decided to kill someone using a weapon manufactured by them?
But if our IQs were higher, would Slashdot exist?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Not yet, but give it a few years.
Pathetic.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
today is korean liberation day
cognitivedissonance = on
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Can you imagine if the DMCA was around or the RIAA was around a decade ago?
News FLASH
AP Wire
Today, the RIAA and MPAA sued the Defense Department for violating the DMCA, charging that this new "Internet" constitutes an illegal circumvention device. Said a head lawyer for the RIAA "This internet will be a haven for criminals and piracy, causing the US economy to plumit. It must be stopped now."
How many future possibilities do we kill with every shutdown of a new information sharing system?
I suggest reading the article located here which contains the more believable numbers
the industry says album sales in South Korea totaled $315 million in 2000, up from $292 million the previous year. .
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
So let's deal. OK?
does anyone even look at the fact that (yea maybe I have some software that I didn't buy) but I don't use everyday to make money, I personally would only use it to learn it and if I did want to use it for business I would buy it why would I buy something that I can't return for 500 dollars without knowing how to use it and if I like it enough to buy it and use it for business in the first place
YOU CAN'T FIX STOOOPID
As pointed out by another poster, the actual figures in the article are an order of magnitude larger (and yes, I did read the article, I just misread the figures). Even so, claiming $469 million in total sales is an increase of 61% over the previous year, which still seems pretty unlikely--though it would be nice to have figures from earlier years to compare.
There is another way to change the law: Mass Disobedience. Gandhi led India to freedom from British rule using this tactic. Marijuana use was decriminalized in many states in the 1970s because of mass disobedience to the laws. When the legal system is corrupt, using legal means to change the system may not be sufficient. We need to call on all of our resources, the whole repertoire from lobbying to political organizing to protesting to encouraging mass disobedience. Any other response is self-crippling.
I myself wasn't expecting a reply, and I'm replying late due to a trip, but here goes
Metallica's stance on taping is not as strong as DMB's or the Dead's: they generally tend not to fight arenas that restrict taping. That said, they do, wherever possible, try to make it possible to tape. As far as I know, their objections to Napster did not cover live trading (though it could be argued that Napster themselves were trying to profit from the trades, which is something they (and DMB) take a dim view of).
As to governments propping up anti-taping laws, they are at least complicit in it, by which I mean that most arenas in this country are A) owned by a state university (thus gov't) or B) owned by either an actual governmental unit or by quasi-governmental authorities which pay their surpluses/profits to the governmental units at a rate of 100%. In the latter case (and occasionally the former), ClearChannel/SFX essentially purchase management rights to the arena, in return for a percentage of the gross revenues (similar deals are made wrt concessions). While the managers may actually make the rule, the authority will either provide explicit approval, or provides implicit approval (in the form of not vetoing them). And of course, they could conceivably explicitly bar taping-bans in the management agreements.