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Pardon, Is This Your File?
Teknogeek writes "The BSA says piracy is thriving. At least, according to this article. Note one interesting statistic: '...the group found that 57 percent of respondents never or seldom pay for copyrighted works they download. And 12 percent admitted to pirating software.' How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?" On a similar note, an Anonymous Coward writes: "MIT Technology Review reports on the process of scanning the entire internet for digital signatures matching copyrighted work (watermarking not required), and automatically emailing threats to the offenders and their ISPs."
there is no more Carnivore! Quote from the Head of FBI in Minneapolis, MN today on MPR. There you go.
To me, a song counts as a copyrighted (copywritten?) work. Or an academic paper. Of course, I didn't read the link, so I'm probably just talking out my ass. But that seems like a really high number for open source.
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
"What we found is a disturbing behavioral trend that violates copyright laws and costs billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs every year,"
If they can't get it for free, what are the odds of them paying for it?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
>> "MIT Technology Review reports on the process of scanning the entire internet for digital signatures matching copyrighted work (watermarking not
>> required), and automatically emailing threats to the offenders and their ISPs."
"Duhn duhn duhn du-duhn...oh, what's this? Incoming traffic? Hmm...doesn't seem to be requested...well, you're not getting through. Duhn duhn duhn du-duhn..."
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
///Still feeling secure about downloading that latest single?///
Yep! I only use private FTP sites, all with nazi admins!
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
the BSA spends millions each year conducting audits and scare campaigns against pirates (a lot of them "alleged", i guess). And still, piracy is rampant and increasing every day.
Gee, could this mean a) their tactics don't work, b) they're not doing their jobs as vigorously as they should?
software is too expensive to go you and buy. when XP when it came out(who would want it anyway is beond me) it was 200$. Photoshop 6.0 is like $400. if they would lower the prices, people would go out an but shit like that. also with so many warez sites around, it is much more conveient to Dl stuff then go out to the store and buy it.
Still feeling secure about downloading that latest single?
Yeah, sure. Sharing it on the other hand may not be so anonymous. Who says it doesn't pay to be a leech?
Only 57% of users save pr0n? disappointing...
Actually, at least some of that 45% might be attributed to people who get their stuff for free from the internet, but would not consider themselves pirates. A lot of people don't want to admit that they are a "pirate." Of course, I'm practically certain a large portion of that 45% is open source. I don't know the statistics, but I'd bet that's an improvement over a few years ago.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Fight Spammers!
Is this supposed to be news? I'm pretty sure this is obvious. There's nothing that can be done to stop this, thus, it will never end. I think they should stop trying so hard to stop piracy. Instead they should find ways to lower our incentive to pirate, like lowering prices.
I intend to live forever... So far so good
If piracy is SO damaging for sales you have to ask yourself how did Harry Potter break box office record.... and what about Spiderman ? Hmmm makes you wonder who is actually telling the truth.
MIT Technology Review reports on the process of scanning the entire internet for digital signatures matching copyrighted work (watermarking not required), and automatically emailing threats to the offenders and their ISPs
The problem with this and all automated law enforcement schemes, be they traffic cameras or facial recognition, is that they create a substantial assumption of guilt that is almost impossible to refute. "The computer says you're guilty, so you must be"
People find it hard to believe a system that is actually catching lawbreakers can make a mistake, until the mistake lands *them* in trouble.
There is a problem with all survey's, everywhere and at all time: people often don't do what they say, or say what they do. Everybody says "[I] think that software companies should be paid for their work and [I] support efforts to protect intellectual property" (from the article). But way fewer people actually head out to the local software shop and hand over hundreds of dollars for all the software they "borrowed" off the Jones nextdoor...
I don't see how anyone can take people at their word when they have obvious conflicts of interest and hypocracy...
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
"No, man, I was just hostin' it for a friend, man!"
My question is what legal right do they have to storm in and do an audit? I wouldn't think that they'd just be allowed in, and I'm pretty sure they would have to go through legal channels to squeeze money out of people, unless they're dead scared. If a company is pirating and destroys all the evidence before the BSA gets them in court what sort of case do they have? I mean, "Yes your honor, we took a lead from an ex-employee hell bent on vengence, and we have no real evidence," doesn't sound like a case winner to me.
Whatever, my boss would just give them the finger if they showed up here, then probably call the cops.
If not now, when?
How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?
How much can you stand to lose?
I know lots of free and open source software is downloaded but come on there's no why that that 45% is all legit downloads.
Kudos to the 12% that admit to illegal activities. Do you really think everyone in the survey is that honest?
I'm a bit confused here...two different sources quoted in the /. article seem to indicate that copyright automatically implies licensing. Has there been some change in the copyright law in this regard? A copyright, under US Law, is automatic: The creator of the work is automatically granted the copyright. This post is copyrighted by me, and under the law I'm not required to note that anywhere (although doing so will make it easier for others to recognize the copyrighted nature of my work). According to BSA and MIT, the mere existence of this copyrighted work (my post) automatically implies a license between myself and anyone who chooses to view, cache, or copy this post. How have we allowed the notion of copyright to become so twisted?
How do they know my email address? I'm reasonably sure ...
... hang on I'll just check
Yup my username is not my email address, so it looks like their plan falls on one of the hurdles.
As to emailing the ISP, well Deutsche Telekom is my ISP and they have just announced a massive loss, so I don't think they will be too quick to try and get rid of paying punters.
Patriotism is the opium of the masses
I would like to see the questionnaire and how it was worded. One interesting problem is that the term "copyrighted" probably has a hazy meaning to most respondents. I'm sure many of them will automatically associate "copyrighted" with "commercial", so I really doubt that much of the gap is due to open source, etc. Still, without more specific details on the survey, it's impossible to interpret the results. There's also no indication of how they sampled and from what population.
They're probably right in concluding that people are stealing, but the statistics as presented are meaningless.
I recollect that while working at a previous employer, they sent around some software that compared the CRC of files on the hard disk against a database of commercial software CRCs and then flagged the matches.
This was rendered completely pointless since
1) The CRC they used was 16 bit. I worked for a large CAD company and every had a *lot* of files laying around as a result. The number of false positives drowned out the real positives.
2) It is a trivial excercise for anyone to create files with a predetermined CRC, so digital decoys can easily be scattered around the internet
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Yeah, those guys have been trawling the web for a while, looking for lord knows what. I have a ModRewrite rule in my httpd.conf that feeds them a bunch of garbage whenever they come by (thanks, Sugarplum). I ought to feed them some Jennifer Lopez files next time, see what happens...actually I should just firewall them away.
Cyveillance netblocks:
65.118.41.192 - 65.118.41.223
63.148.99.224 - 63.148.99.255
Anybody know what blocks BayTSP uses for their spiders?
I have no idea what that quote means. I went to the BSA press release, but the ZDNet wording is lifted directly from it. Moving on to the report itself, it says:
I _think_ what that means is that 57% of the people who download software, who make up 12% of all the Internet users in the survey have downloaded and used software in violation of the license terms. But, who knows? Clearly the person who wrote the press release couldn't make sense of it either.I really should just go home and watch the Simpsons...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Since it seems that they have the tools to effectively track piracy online, we can really see the _real_ intentions behind the CBDTPA and the DMCA. Its not about controlling piracy, its about controlling how, when and what we watch. Its about taking control and replacing open standards with closed ones so that way Tinseltown can sit and pervert the benefits of an internet that was built to promote freedom of information, not squash it. I applaud MIT's technology, for making it possible to detect copyright infringements without watermarking or digital rights management, without changing open standards, and for showing what a power move the CBDTPA and the DMCA really is.
What I think this questionaire looked like:
OK, so now 50% of the people or there abouts answer affirmitavely to question 1 . This splits the sample group into two halfs, those that have downloaded and those who haven't. Some percentage of those that have downloaded copywritten materials then go onto 2 and say that not only have they downloaded copyrighted materials, but they haven't payed for it. What about the people who haven't downloaded copyrighted materials? How do they answer question 2? If they answer yes it implies that they have downloaded copyrighted materials, so many will answer no. This, if you misinterpret statistics properly, leads you to the conclusion that 57% of web users have downloaded copyrighted materials and not payed for them.
This is the same thing I see every day on the various web polls on news sites. The questions are chosen to skew the statistics in some obvious way.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Since when did the Boy Scouts become software police?
In this day and age of information overload, I could not help but notice how the article sometimes let drop the "copyright" modifier describing the downloaded works.
Dropped.
As if there were no such thing as genuinely free software that was copylefted. Software that was free and legal to download without paying anyone any money.
I wonder if the BSA will succeed in giving the word download a bad connotation, or whether they'll have to invent a new term.
The word pirate has such a nice strong ring to it, while duplicator of copyrighted material just doesn't seem to get people's dander up.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
What I would like to know is how this security company can obtain a user's email address. Doesn't that mean that they must have access to all of the ISP's user's information? And if so, wouldn't that be illegal for the ISP to disclose that information?
mund freud.
45% = people not stupid enough to admit to the survey taker that they are breaking the law.
Dont answere the survey, its a trick!!!!
A survey found that 92% of apologists for the content industries thought that making unauthorised copies was morally equivalent to taking a ship by force, often brutally raping and murdering its crew.
The person breaking the law is the person with the file. You scan the internet for the files, write them tickets, and move on with your day.
In case y'all hadn't noticed, those copyright holders (yeah, remember the GPL rests on copyright law too) aren't just going to go away: they're going to keep trying to enforce the current law and make new laws to suit their estate.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
In theory, the United States is a democratic republic, where, eventually, public opinion can change laws to reflect the public opinion. One has to wonder how long current copyright law can stand, when so many people clearly don't support it as it is? Whether it's music or software or movies, more and more people want information to be free... even if they don't realize it yet.
Some people of course will say it will hurt the economy. But will it? I tend to believe it will shift the economy, and move it in a new, more promising direction.
But, this is all, of course, just speculation, based on the idea that our government actually represents it's people. I'm not sure if it really does anymore.
When are they going to realize that this kinda thing dosen't stop piracy? Millions, if not billions of pirated files get downloaded every month. Are they going to send all these millions of people threatening emails? Are they gonna get the peoples isp's to disconnect them? All I see this doing is pissing people off. Piracy has always been around, and it's only gonna get worse. They need to find ways to work with the way the world is now, instead of trying to keep their archaic business models. Doing that only loses them money.
Today's Software is much the same. Adobe for example charges big for Photoshop, but the success of Photoshop rides on the millions of Freeloaders who "Steal" it and learn how to use it. When they get a job - they "Prefer" Photoshop and the company has to pay the piper whether there is a less expensive alternative or not.
Enforcing licences is simply closure on a bait and switch marketing model.
AIK
"These online private eyes are using the latest digital fingerprinting technology to scan public computer networks for unauthorized copies of music files, still images, movies and software."
Public networks like bearshare, Kazaa, etc... what about private file sharing networks such as Hotline, KDX. They have no right to be on these servers as they will be violating the terms of the individual servers. This sounds like it would bring a lot of unconstitutional search and seizure suits into play.
Confessions of a Reformed W4r3z D00d:
In my MS Windows days every single piece of software I used was pirated. Windows 98, Office, Photoshop, the works. Now that I'm 100% Unix, I still get all my software for free, but legally now. I know that some of you never pirate software and MP3's, but you've got to admit that you know a whole slew of folks that do.
I don't think anyone contests that piracy exists, but even the existence of rampant piracy doesn't prove that software companies lose money due to piracy. Would I have bought a copy of Photoshop had I not been able to get it for free? Hell no! Same with Office 97 -- I wouldn't have paid hundreds of dollars for something when Lotus SmartSuite came free with my computer and worked just fine. The connection between unauthorized use of w4r3z and lost income is really hard to establish.
Steve
I've been ripped off too many times by these idiots.
1) I download and keep MP3's of things that I have the CD for.
2) I download things that I do not have for the purpose of trying them out.
3) If I like what I hear, I buy it. If not, then I delete it.
That's my terms. If you don't agree to them, then you obviously don't want my money.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
http://www.starterupsteve.com/dvd.html
I can buy my DVD's from canada, get them posted to the UK much cheaper than I could if I was to buy them in here the UK. This really p***es me off, and if I had the bandwidth I would probably be hitting the p2p networks much more often than I currently do.
The Business Software Alliance, a trade group that represents the major software makers, says that more than half of all Web users have downloaded software they have not paid for.
Oh no. Whatever shall I do with all that copyrighted software I've downloaded?!? Oh, wait, false alarm. It's all Free Software/Open Source. Whew. The BSA had me scared for a second there...
--
Because this is the way copyright law is supposed to work. They're the only ones allowed to distribute copies, and if they catch you, you're in trouble.
And I don't buy this "assumed guilty" complaint. If you're distributing an MP3 file that matches the checksum of a song they own the copyright on, they are entirely justified in trying to bust you. Busting folks that are sharing major-label MP3s is a lot less harmful than fiddling with the law, making it illegal for anyone to share anything.
Maybe their efforts will reduce the amount of major-label crap on P2P networks, and legal stuff (which is what everyone claims they want P2P for) will then make up a larger percentage of P2P content. Which will demonstrate the legitimacy of P2P networks.
314-15-9265
The MIT article claims that a digital signature is created based on the sound data in an MP3. Well, what if two people rip the same MP3 with the same ripper using the same settings? Wouldn't that create copies that were exactly alike?
Or are the record companies going after you for just sharing the music?
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
If these software companies are so good at proving some mythical number as far as software theft, why hasn't one company every shown it on a balance sheet or for tax purposes? They can't prove crap. Microsoft invented piracy when they stole DOS via a slick contract from Billys dad. Plus the software industry had anti-piracy stuff in the software but Micrsoft blasted there software out there without it so that they would own the market and now they cry about lost $$. If people couldn't run the free copies at home, they sure souldn't ask for it at work.
Who says you have to pay for copywritten anything?
My post is (c) 2002, but you didn't pay me for it, did you?
I hate stupid polls that ask leading, but innacurate questions as much as you.
How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?
How much do you want to bet that a study about software piracy conducted by the BSA is about as unbiased as a study about communism conducted by China?
Doing anything with these numbers is silly, we all know it's just a bunch of bullshit.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
Right. That's why I think the 57% number is low. If you've used the web at all you've downloaded copyrighted text, images or software. 43% of the people didn't realize they downloaded things that were covered by copyright or realized the intent of the question.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Personally I'm not stupid enough to re-share anything I find on the net.
And if they find anything on my machine they don't like, how the hell do they know I didn't import it with Windows Media Player off my own CD?
I think this is a risky bit of false accusing on sony and the others part.
The system then patrols the entire Internet, including the major file-sharing networks,...
What services do they use? Are they hacking into my local area network? this only implies that some of the services they scan includes major file-sharing networks, leaving open port scanning which I do recal a bunch of people getting nabbed for a while back. MY ISP will kill me in a heartbeat if I scan, so why not have these companies nabbedd for invasion of privacy?
my head is spinning from all this ranting...
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
Almost everything on the web is copyrighted. When you click on a link your browser downloads it in order to display it to you. 100% of web surfers never or seldom pay for the copyrighted web pages they read.
(There are a few specialty markets, e.g. academic journals, where copyrighted web content is available by subscription only. But most of the web is gratis to all.)
because the GPL doesn't require me to pay. The fact that a work is copyrighted doesn't mean it costs money, a fact that some people can't get into their heads.
In my view copyright is not mainly about making money, but about acknowledging the originator of a work and his or her right to decide what is to be done with it.
That is also why copyright infringement is not comparable to stealing but more a lack of respect for the work of others. The fact that the so called content providers see that differently is because they lack that respect themselves especially when they are only providers and not creators.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
"...costs billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs every year."
Of course, this assumes that the pirate would have actually shelled out the $600+ to buy Adobe Photoshop 7.0 to begin with. I know I have tons of pirated software that I never would have bought in the first place. It's simply a convenience factor. If I would have never purchased the software, but have it now, it's actually a wash when it comes to profit/loss statements. That's not even factoring how many people buy the software after they find they like it. But, hey, the argument works for MP3's, why not software? No, those jobs disappeared because your product sucks, not because of Piracy. I don't see Adobe folding anytime soon and last I saw, Id was alive and well despite how much Doom, Quake and Wolf were/are pirated. It's that new math, gotta love it.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Practically everying I download is copyrighted, including the slashdot page I'm typing this into. Most of it is freely available. Copyright doesn't imply that payment is necissary. It's unfortunate that the people with the most money available to buy laws with have the narrowest view as to how the existing laws work.
(1) They lie. Or at least mis-represent. 57% of people admit to downloading software they haven't paid for. So what? Whether the idiots at the BSA realize it or not, non-costware is much more popular among the people than is costware. Shareware, Freeware, Adware, OSS, and FS software are much much much more popular than costware; not only because they're free (or usually free in the case of OSS / FS), but also because they're just better. With OpenOffice, you get a completely functional presentation program (Impress) that can edit power-point files: for free. MS PowerPoint ALONE costs 300 dollars. Lets say that OpenOffice's Impress costed 1 dollar. Is MS PowerPoint really 300 times better than OpenOffice Impress? No, that's laughable; in fact, some claim that Impress is superior. So, in short, yes 57% of people probably have downloaded software from the internet without paying; its probably more like 100%, just the other 43% were too stupid to understand the question, or understand that at one point they probably DID download software without paying for it.
(2) Piracy costs "hundreds of thousands of jobs a year". LOL. Please, that is pure bullshit. 100,000 people in the US software industry were fired last year? Oh, sure, if you include janitors and other people that "work for software companies" but have nothing to do with software, then maybe 100,000 people were fired. Maybe. But come on, get real. 100,000 programmers were not fired last year. Lying bastards.
(3) On MIT tracking copies of pirated software. Traitors. Clearly sellouts for academics, siding with the powerful intellectual property industry against the academics who realize the importance of balance. As for them knowing "you" downloaded a song, bullshit. I'm sorry, but there's no way in hell they can track the activities of all the file-sharerers even in the US alone. Furthermore, let them prove it. All they have is digital records, all of which can be made up and faked. Finally, even if they convince some idiotic judge that you in fact downloaded the latest S. Twain song w/o paying for it, so what? Firstly, its not a criminal offense. Secondly, pay the $19 dollars that that CD albulm costs; big deal. You'll make up for it by all the stuff they didn't catch.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I don't believe there is going to be much to worry about regarding the "Scanning the Internet for pirated work". I'm assuming this largely includes images, ie: corbis, getty, eyewire, etc. The problem is, most of us take these files into photoshop and edit them, resize them, anything. The second we resave those files, those headers the file originally had are wiped out and replaced with the program that you used to manipulate the original image.
There is no possible way you could 'identify' these images unless the program had an incredibly complex compare code (which would literlly take hundreds of years to complete searching the entire internet) to compare pixel alignment.
Therefore, unless you are ripping images directly off these sites, there is no possible way to identify the image save the human eye (yet)
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?
I bet most of that comes from Winzip, Winamp, ICQ and probably Acrobat Reader as well. If you check out tucows top downloads you'll probably add Irfan View and Norton Anti-virus to the list. Yes the above list is prodominantly freeware but it's not open source.
Open source has produced some great software but your average Joe is not using Mozilla to view his local website written using Open Office and served up by Apache.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
. . . as to how this will have the same exact problems as the new face recognition software? And along those same lines, how long do you think it will be before people start "faking" files with the same signatures just to piss them off? I know it's hard to do, but it can be done.
One thing that I'm fairly sure will happen is that most of the "smart" pirates will just block access from these people's clients and servers. If they don't appear to be even running a web server, how can they be distributing illegal copyrighted content on the web?
Nathan's blog
Does this sound just a bit overblown to anyone else? I'm also curious to know exactly how they scan these files. My home network is behind a pretty heavy duty firewall, and we take security very seriously. If a 3rd party comes through to take a look at what's on our hard drives, isn't this illegal entry about which there are any number of laws on the books? How many of those laws get to be pushed aside in the name of searching for copyright infringement?
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
I have always felt that the message, unless you oppose copyright altogether, was that copyright owners should not be trying to sue away the technology (such as Gnutella, web sites, newsgroups) but rather be using their copyrights properly to punish those who actually make infringing copies of their works.
Ie. punish the infringer, not the tool.
But that's what this automatic scanning system is doing. Looking for actual infringements -- people offering up their copyright files or songs to anybody at all.
So should we not say, "that's great, this is what you should have been doing all along?"
i don't know about the rest of you, but i'm sick of all this bs about $billion$ in lost sales. why do they think anyone goes to the trouble of pirating? i'll tell you why - 'cause so much of the crap is ridiculously overpriced! i gladly pay $30-$40 for shareware that i've tried and like. but pay $200 or more for a product that is buggy and will cause me numerous headaches and hearaches?! forget it! until they either dramatically improve the quality or decrease the price than many will continue to go to the effort of pirating software. if we couldn't, i know many of us would never use it at all - we'd just find a way to do without. so don't tell me about the $ lost - it's money they'd never get anyway!
Now if they can do that whilst folks are using scp, ssl, OpenSSH etc.... I might be impressed. You're only going to catch morons using some lame Windblows file sharing garbage and I doubt if they can do that successfully.
The Final Word
Dang it, I hit submit too quickly. Dang first post instincts.
Another thing: this is a really good reason to host only open source/open content data. And host as much of it as possible. Mirror Debian, GNU, FreeBSD, etc, just so it takes their spiders that much longer to go through all 9 TERABYTES of your server. Then maybe add a filter to IPtables and traffic shaper to allow only one connection from them at a time, with a top connection speed of 10 bytes / sec.
Nathan's blog
respondents never or seldom pay for copyrighted works they download
By that logic a piece of shareware I tried, did not like, and deleted...I'm a pirate?
Sounds like the BSA's logic.
The Smart-Ass in me thinks; "Since when did the MPAA start offering SVCD's? I must have missed that announcement."
Oh, wait...
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Luckily I did the following after downloading the movie a few weeks ago:
$ uuencode spiderman-the-movie.avi spiderman-the-movie.avi > spiderman-the-movie.avi.uu
$ rm spiderman.avi
BayTSP.com seems to be on some sort of adsl connection though sonic.net. However they have their own ASN from ARIN (go figure)
Autonomous System Name: BAYTSP
Autonomous System Number: 14478
On a side note they have no active routes using that ASN.
Skew the respondent audience by making it a web survey
Spin the questions and couch them in terms with multiple interpretations ... and call it a valid representation. Check the so-called survey results... there is just short of zero (and I'm being generous) information about how this study was conducted.
I have downloaded copyrighted software and not paid for it. Was it illegal? No -- it was "free for personal use" (e.g. WebWasher.) You know how guilty I feel about that? Not at all -- until now. Now, I feel terrible, because I helped the BSA fudge better numbers by fitting into that 57%.
Jackasses.
Oh dear, I must have been doing it wrong.
I paid the optional (I think it was) $10 for WinAmp when they were soliciting payment for their product after I donwnloaded it and found it useful.
I paid for Paintshop Pro after I downloaded a trial version and discovered that I liked it.
I paid for MultiEdit after I downloaded it and discovered that it was a pretty damned good programmer's editor
In fact I'm so dumb that I've paid for all commercial or semi-commercial software I've downloaded and found useful.
Hell -- I hope the BSA don't trace this posting, they'll probably send a hit man around to take me out so that I don't skew their stats!
Apparently capitalizing the first word of each sentence and spell checking your work is also too expensive.
Minutes to write a flame response: 2.
Minutes before it gets modded down as a troll: 30.
The look on the face of the luser being flamed for poor grammar: priceless.
For everything else, there's Folgers Crystal Meth
AHAHAH .. so you sit 20 (okay, just one) /dev/urandom devices down on a keyboard and get Shakespeare? Man, thats even cheaper than the monkeys I'm employing now ...
"Old man yells at systemd"
Note that the quote doesn't specify software. I'll bet that a lot more people download music than download unlicensed software.
software vendors like to use disclaimers to deny all liability for damages or loss of data that is caused by code they write and sell. why cant there be a disclaimer for people that share pirated software? something like "you dont have permission to download any of these warez." and then let them download them anyway. that way they cant be sued. i am aware of the fact that if i dont like it i dont have to use it but legal disclaimers and license agreements that companies like microsoft use make me sick.
If I record a song from the radio and play it back later, that's legal, right? (time shifting)
If I convert if to mp3, that's legal, right? (format shifting)
If I have a mp3 of a song I've heard on the radio, what's the substantial difference?
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
the group found that 57 percent of respondents never or seldom pay for copyrighted works they download.
I would have to say that I fall into this cateogry, since all of the copyrighted software that I download is FREE!, in one or both senses of the word.
We also always hear that 50% of all marriages fail, but they never tell us how many FIRST MARRIAGES last for life. I'd guess around 70%.
Other studies show that 100% of all smokers die.
Please don't use the world pirate as a noun or a verb to describe copying bits. Seriously -- when you use this bullshit terminology -- "they" have already won the first battle.
In the last few years various entities have *really* learned to use the language against us, we drive "pre-owned cars", we "pirate" music, we get blown up by "suicide bombers" (although some news stations are now calling them "homicide bombers"). We don't goto war we have "operations" ... I could think of a million others
When someone wants to call a thing something i'ts not -- they are trying to color your perception
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Here's a copyright violation (?) from the BayTSP FAQ.
Q: Can your technology penetrate a firewall?
A: Yes. If you suspect your stolen content is located on a pay site, our technology can effectively get around some firewalls and scan for copyright infringements.
I wonder how they do that. Maybe the BaySpider can steal porn from pay sites!
And here's what appears to me to be conflicting information. Since when is the entire internet only usenet and the web?
Q: Do you search the entire Internet for stolen content?
A: Yes. Our BaySpiderSM applications continuously spider the publicly accessed portions of the web. In addition, we can target our spiders to specific web sites and news groups that we suspect may be posting your copyrighted content.
Q:Can you track stolen content from people who download my content to their home PC?
A: No. We are able to identify the e-mail addresses, however, of the individuals who repost the content to news groups.
If it shows up on your website and you don't have a license to use WS_FTP are you screwed?
Egads.
I don't even use any of it. I just pipe it right to /dev/null. That way, I'm assured of always using my "unlimited Internet connection" from Crapcast. They may screw me on the TV (60 channels for $75, and I only watch the damn thing 5 hours a week!), but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let my 'net connection lie idle!
57 percent of respondents never or seldom pay for copyrighted works they download. And 12 percent admitted to pirating software
How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?
I'll take that bet. C'mon, how many people do you know who paid for netscape back when it was shareware? How many people you know continue to use WinZip after the free trial period? I bet the percent of people who are pirates is closer to 90 percent than 57.
If they put up a warning that you have copyrighted material on your drive, what can they do if you say ok but i also own the cd's. If they take you to court but you go out the day before and buy the music cd's than how can they prosecute?
Seems a dumb idea
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF JOBS EVERY YEAR?
Give me a break. Not only is that figure rediculously inflated even for the very imaginative, but I have yet to see any evidence, statistical or otherwise, that there is a NET job loss because of software piracy.
Much of the meaningful software piracy I've seen (beware the sample of one) is by people who need it to get a certain job done but who can not afford it at the moment. The intent is eventually to pay for it, most likely with a version upgrade, once there is money in the bank.
I think this is especially prevalent in software startups, which need the cash relief immediately but which intend to pay later. This type of "piracy" has probably generated more jobs in the past 10 years than it has cost. (Count up the new lawyers and lobbyists, for a start!)
But now that I know that hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost every year due to piracy... wow, that must mean that there was no internet crash and that all those failed dot-coms were actually pirated out of existence rather than going bankrupt due to mismanagement!
SHEESH.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
The US arrests 750,000 pot users a year (88% for personal possesion) while a country like Britain has just (dont expect reading about this in the US media) downgraded cannabis to a class C offence, which is basically the equivalent of a parking fine, Belgium allowed personal use last year, Portugal decrimed all drugs and so on.....
Most of Europe has pulled away from the American mentality and what's the answer in the states?
Put more money into the drug war....
Its good to hear that the drug war isnt the only place where this kind moronic propaganda thrives.
I think the problem with studies like this is that they consider every pirated copy they run across a lost sale.
Let's say Little Johnny Pirate is a freshman in high school, has no job, and has $5000 worth of pirated software on his PC. If there was some magical way to stop piracy, would Little Johnny Pirate go out and buy every single software title that he previously had for free? No! He'd never be able to afford it. He'd just have to be content with what his parents bought him for his birthday or Christmas.
If the pirated music/software out there is easy to access for free, people will probably illegally download it for free, just cuz. I might download an Eminem MP3, but I'd never go buy one of his CDs. I wouldn't even buy the song for a buck if I could. If I couldn't get it for free, I'd just move on with my life.
If you take the retail price of every illegal piece of software out there and add it all together and it equals $54 billion dollars, that doesn't mean that the industry has lost $54 billion dollars. Sure, they're loosing money, but not THAT much.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
"How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?"
Absolutely nothing. As much as we on slashdot like to pretend that Copyright restrictions are evil and everything should be free... you can't deny the fact that there are alot of people that download commercial software with no intention of paying for it. How many pirated copies of photoshop do you think are out there? And do you think everyone running XP paid for there copy?
Look, if you want to argue that software is too expensive, then make sure that you criticize the $80k salary that developers pull down. If you want to argue that people who pirate software probably wouldn't have bought it anyway and thus the manufacturers aren't losing revenue, I'll buy that arguement. Do I think that the BSA exagerates figures with unsubstantiated and highly hypothetical claims? Absolutely. I can believe that the problem isn't nearly as bad as the BSA claims... but don't argue that there is no problem at all. To do so is to ignore the hard work and time of software programmers around the world.
In a counter survey, 92% of those administering the piracy survey admitted to speeding.
TO JAIL WITH ALL OF YOU!
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
If you think you are safe in sharing copyrighted stuff just because millions of people are doing it, watch out. The U.S.A. are not afraid of throwing millions of people in prison just to protect the profits of rich bastards.
Check out the history of marijuana, to see what could happen to the p2pnauts. The number of grass smokers is probably as large or larger than the number of p2pnauts. Yet everyday people (probably most non-white) go to jail for taking the smoke in. Guess what, in that case, the corporations WON. So it's very likely that the RIAA will win this one too.
Just wait and soon we will see things like: 'A recent study found that gnutella makes black men rape white women' on the news.
The computer is your friend!
Happiness is mandatory!
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Billions of dollars... blah blah blah.
The truth of the matter is that the so-called pirates don't cost the companies anywhere near the amount they suggest. In fact, just the opposite is probably true.
They would have us believe that every single mp3 file downloaded is by some dark, sinister character in his basement re-burning them onto CD's to sell in a back alley in New York.
But if we categorize the downloaders by their intentions, the picture is much different. Let me suggest the following list. (A different list could be made for uploaders, although there's a lot of overlap)
1) The aforementioned dark, sinister character. Yes, there are some of them out there. Yes, they are costing the industry money. And yes, they need to be punished. But I assume that these are only a tiny fraction of the whole.
2) People who would have paid for the files if they couldn't get them for free through less legitimate channels. These also cost the industry, and this needs to stop. I would guess that this group makes up a larger fraction than #1, but still insignificant.
3) Robin Hood. (Okay, not really, but it's a good metaphor) These people are violating copyright out of principle. Rob from the rich, give to the poor. Stick it to The Man. Civil disobedience. That sort of thing. You can argue about the ethics, but these people would never have paid for the content.
4) People who have no political agenda or moral stance, but still wouldn't pay for the stuff. My guess is that this is well over 50% of the whole, and probably closer to 99%. Although this is still somewhat unethical in my opinion, it's wrong to count these people when totalling the losses due to piracy. They don't cost the copyright holders a DIME!
5) People who download the Warez, mp3's, etc. and then like them so much that they go out and purchase the original. Try-before-you-buy. Free advertising. As long as these people are making up a larger group than #1 and #2, then the truth is that the "pirates" are actually increasing the sales of the copyright holders. I suspect that this group is larger than any of the content producers are willing to admit. Don't believe me? Look at the numbers. The RIAA was making record-breaking profits right up until they shut down Napster.
I don't have any numbers to back up my claims. But if you acknowledge that I might have a valid point, you have to acknowledge that the numbers from the content producers can't be taken at face value either.
News fucking flash, Einsteins: if you don't want people to copy your material?
STOP SELLING IT.
I'm not joking. Do you think X many people downloaded copies of the Spiderman movie because it was an artistic high-water-mark for filmic experience? How many people download copies of the best indie art films versus the worst Hollywood experiences in cynicism and lowest common denominator?
It's not even ABOUT the content. It's about the marketing. Some people seem to not even care what the hell they're producing- they'll tailor it to their crude notion of what 'everybody' will like, and then dump tons of money into marketing, trying to get everyone without taste to go 'duh, I'm gonna see that!' And they are surprised when people end up doing this in unauthorised ways?
I have a dream- perhaps it is an unrealistic dream, but it is my own- that one day, if I spend years of my life producing say a film or CD or something, and have no resources left for MARKETING, that it will go out there into a world where groups of people, innovative companies, Big Media outlets have taken on the role of scanning through all the Content people have produced all over the world. Not searching for unauthorized copies of overmarketed, cynical garbage, but searching for stuff that's GOOD. Finding ever-finer subgroups of people who'd think a certain thing was good. Finding ways to hook those people up to the other people in the world producing Content.
That I'll see a day when George Lucas goes on strike... and nobody notices.
Anyone with me? If you are: screw the mass market, find something you love and do it to within an inch of its life. The weirder, the more personal, the better. Be READY. Because we can't have this world until we give up being consumers and start being human beings, individuals, until we're ready to say 'you know, come to think of it most people WOULDN'T like this thing that I like, but I don't even care anymore'.
What happens when someone changes one insignificant thing on the song? (e.g. an extra drum beat, second of silence at the end, etc.)
This would change the hash that they search for. (This obviously applies to people who've altered company logos on Photoshop, etc.)
Trying to stamp out the illegit stuff out there is too big of a task. The only way that they can maintain their hegemony is to ONLY allow their "legit" stuff to play...hence the recent actions of companies to lock down home computers, DVD players, etc.
It doesn't matter if the media companies get their way regarding copyright. The more consistently they can find and punish ALL copyright violators, they more they will hurt themselves. Every person they send a nastygram to will be one less customer. "Oh, I don't buy XYZ records anymore - they're a**holes". The real danger is when they see their bottom lines continue to dip because of the inevitable surge in "open source" music, and they try to draft laws that PROHIBIT people from giving their own material away if they so choose. Don't laugh - there's folks trying to do that right now with regard to open source software. But until then, I say let these companies bury themselves - save us the trouble.
Scanning the Internet for pirated things? I'm sure they will find a lot, but they won't find all of it by far.
If the problem is with things like KaZaA, BearShare, and the like... I don't think this scanning will do any good.
Only a moron would list their real address in the information. If they are talking about scanning IPs or websites, fine... they may crack down on some crackers (pardon the pun), but the millions of people who share things on Kazaa will most likely not be affected. Let them threaten me based on my KaZaA info.. If you're silly enough to put your own personal info there, you're begging to be caught anyhow.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Can they defeat www.freenetproject.org ?
Don't think so:)
We (Americans in general) have become lazy. America has become decadent. There have always been greedy, selfish people who will take advantage of any chance to screw others over if it means they get "more". That chance has come and hasn't left yet.
Nathan's blog
Everytime you hear discussions on proposed bills like the CDBTPA which would make hardware manufacturers responsible for copyright protection there is a lot of the response that, "why should they be responsible for this, it's the copyright holders responsibility to enforce it"... and this is exactly what they are trying to do here.
you cant have it both ways, and given the options of either crippled hardware, or the RIAA trying to track down indivual violations at their own expense, i would certainly say the second the second option is far and away the better solution.
The RIAA practically brings this on themselves. They complain about how people are downloading singles of their songs adn never actually paying for them. Many times I have heard a song on the radio and gone searching for a CD single. But guess what??? It aint there!!!! Im "forced" to turn to downloading songs off the p2p services or of the internet free of charge. If they could put out more singles and whatnot i'm sure their problem could be solved.
I think the BSA needs to "study" some more. They're really missing the boat if they can't fudge figures better than this.
Suppose I have the following warning in my website: "downloading these files for any law enforcement purposes is hereby prohibited". Will UCITA let me sue them on licence violation issues?
Need to start zipping those MP3s
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
"MIT Technology Review reports on the process of scanning the entire internet for digital signatures matching copyrighted work (watermarking not required), and automatically emailing threats to the offenders and their ISPs."
But what if you have written paper from your ISP's lawyer which states that you are not their customer because you don't pay them. But you still have legally binding contract (including no rules from them to obey) with them to use their bandwidth legally (you just don't pay them directly). So can ISP still shut your (non-customer) connection legally?
Yes I know that this might sound little confusing..
Honest!
I guess the BSA downloading my shared files "to see if their digital watermarks match" isn't piracy also, is it?
But you didn't ask, you just wrote it there for me to see. If you told me there was a fee to read your beautiful english prose viz. I hate stupid polls that ask leading, but innacurate questions as much as you I surely would have sent my 5c through paypal.
But I think the eula or local equiv on /. gives the board a non-exclusive, royalty free licence to use your posts in anyway they want. That includes letting me read it for free.
There are (at least) a couple of problems with this approach.
They actually have to download all these files to analyze their content. That's going to take some major bandwidth and processing power. Or do they just take the first few KBytes from each file to look at? Maybe their real goal is to keep every gnutella node so busy that it can't service any other requests.
What's to stop people from putting content in zip, rar, zoo, arc or whatever format happens to be popular at the time? If they are going to look inside these files then they definitely need to download the entire files. You would think that they would learn from the copy protection fiascos that technological solutions are quickly met with technological counter-measures.
So, I checked the ZDNet article. It said the same thing. "Ah," I thought, "typical ZDNet incompetence, twisting the words of the press release."
Next, I checked the press release, and found the same claim yet again. Now I was starting to get worried, but at least the press release provided a link to the actual report (PDF). The report says,There you have it. In the (distressingly significant) opinion of the Business Software Alliance, any individual who downloads a copy of Linux, Netscape Navigator, the latest Windows Service Pack, or any other software provided without charge, is "knowingly violating copyright law." That's terrifying.
(I apologize for taking so much time just to repeat what was said in the original submission, but accurate hyperbole is so rare on Slashdot that I thought it should be highlighted.)
As an aside, I'm actually very surprised that 41% of those surveyed indicated that they pay for downloaded software "most times" or "every time." I've been on the net since Pipeline NY (those were the days...), and I have paid for downloaded software perhaps 3 or 4 times in my life. Even in today's "internet economy," it's awfully hard to find someone who will sell you software without including an oversized box and ten marketing flyers. I strongly suspect that this survey was poorly designed, and that the results are garbage; however, that only makes the BSA's interpretation of it more disturbing.
MSK
If 57% never or seldom paid and 12% admitted to pirating software AT MOST there would be 31% left over! You can't subtract 12 from 57 to get the remaining percentage!!! That would total 114%.
Chowderhead.
I was hoping that in 200+ messages SOMEONE would have caught this stupid error.
How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?
I'd much rather wager that the 45 percent gap is the group of people who don't know what "copyright" is, beyond a vague sense that it's the little © symbol that's pictured next to the Hamburglar characters on a McDonald's placemat cartoon.
[
How much did it cost them to develop this software? To use it? To track people down? I'm guessing more than they will get in return.
Sue them. That's what you guys do in the US, right? ;-).
After all they are performing a sort of a DoS by checking everything you have, it's even borderline trespassing, so unless they have a searchwarrant (which I doubt) anything they discover is not permissable as evidence in court. Also if you are "clean" you could perhaps squeeze in a slander charge seeing as they wrongfully accuse you (by searching) of stealing software/other copyrighted material.
And post the "needed" parts of works that will for sure "trigger" the signatures and by the way... the critic is copyrighted... so hands OFF!
Cheers...
And this post is also copyrighted! [authorization granted for slashdot for posting]
Just make a Atomic read with some lab equipment of the box... That way you can (or may can) reconstruct just what you want of the CD's and then no EULA, no licences!
Cheers...
it implies the appropriation of a good from the legitimate owner... It doesn't apply also to copyrights... may only apply to the copied pieces by themselfs if someone hits a discostore or a bookstore...
As for hackers... bah... a hacker is a nifty wise programmer... the rest is history... mayhappen some bloks should learn how to speak it's own language before applying terms that they don't understant!
Cheers...
That moderator was a fucking idiot.
Actually, note that 57% of respondents didn't pay for "copyrighted content" they downloaded from the Internet. That includes music. The 12% that pirate software probably don't pay for their music either, but it's a completely seperate issue. It's not surprising that fewer people pirate software. First, there's the virus problem. Second, software is on the whole more reasonably priced and/or comes with your computer.
...is when the people in charge of the government hear that. They won't realise that the true figure is the 12%, and not the 57 "unpaid for" software which is simply shareware or freeware... they're ignorant, and the BSA is milking it.
Another example is 3D Studio Max 4.2 That i have which i didn't pay for..... I got it through the First Robotics Competition for free (i can license it to myself with no problem... it's what im supposed to do), and that will fall under that 12%... yet again, the government "decision makers" won't know the difference, and legislation will be passed on numbers which don't tell a bit of the truth...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Was that an 8 on that license plate or was it a 3? Sure, they're both Ford Tauruses (Tauri?), but you own a red one and this one is...well, it's hard to tell with monochrome film.
But then the prosecution introduces a series of expert witnesses (at $10K per appearance) who will swear that the system is infallible and that it's an 8 on the license plate, while you've had to take a second mortgage on your home just to be able to afford a semi-competent defense attorney (while your tax dollars pay the District Attorney's salary as well as the cost of that photo radar that nailed you).
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Imagine being the CIA and saying "there's no one spying on us". It's about the same as being the BSA and saying "no one is pirating software".
Whether the threat is real or not: You can't have a crusade w/o someone to crusade against.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Someone said this about piracy further down in the comment-swamp:
They run a business, by their terms, not yours. If they want to charge $900, they can. But, people won't buy it, and they will in turn, lower their prices. If you pirate it, you are proving the point it is worth its value.
The problem is, if they don't lower their prices first, Adobe will never know how much their sales might have gone up (yes, they probabably have done focus groups along the lines of "How much would you pay for Photoshop"). The devil's advocate (to the above view) is that by pirating, you are actually showing that it is worth less. The thing is that there is no way to tell how much less, because there is no where you can say, "I pirated Photoshop, but would have paid x dollars for it if it were available at that price.
Everyone has their price point. For a professional digital photography shop that sells 8x10 retouched photos or montages for $200 a piece to very wealthy people, Photoshop is probably worth about $1000. For the 12-year old, who wants to mess around, but have the potential of using more of the power than is included in Photoshop Elements, it's worth $50-$100. For a college art major, it's worth $300. The only other "segregated market segment" in the pricing equation is the academic market, which hits the $300 price point. But even that doesn't work, because to a non-art-major, PS may only be worth $150.
So people pirate, partially because the market does not give them the price point they want. The problem of course, is that as they say, it is hard to beat free. You (the vendor) wants to charge up to the point each particular customer will pay, but not less than that.
I think the music market is much the same, but perhaps even more so, as there is also the variable of how old the song in question is, quality, whether it has the original studio backing tracks and MIDI sequences separated out so you can do your own remix (I do hope they start offering this with SACD - whether I will be willing to pay $30 for it is another matter).
Piracy is the beginning of a question, but it is an answer to nothing at all. The true answer to the question (a market that will better seve all people's price points, hasn't been thought of yet, though I'd love to know if any economists are thinking along these lines.
It would be quite simple to do. While they would presumably have a very large pipe, bandwidth limiting would be infesable. However, if we make them invest as much computer time in reading the files as bandwidth, then the bottle neck becomes the computer.
Basically, when a file is requested from a client, during the negotiation a challenge is sent out. Something like a key encrypted by another key. So, key A is used to encrypt key B. Key B is cryptographically secure, generated from only the highest quality random numbers. Key A is also random, but weak, perhaps there are only a few billion possible combinations, so that a mid range computer can run through the possible permutations in a few minutes. So after figuring out Key A, you now have Key B with which to decrypt the song.
So now, lets consider the evil RIAA computer downloading these songs. Lets say the have the bandwidth to download 100 songs at a time, with the average song taking 20 minutes. However, this computer can break keys at a rate of one every 2 minutes. Which means, that even though they've downloaded 100 songs, they can only get at 10. We've reduced their effectiveness by 90%
Further more, we can argue that this was created for a perfectly legitimate practice, to curb abusers.
crap...i'd better pay for these debian disks before they find me
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
try "DumbAss". dumbass {dumb - ass} n. 1. One who blows himself up intentionally to improve the world."Man, I'm a dumbass! I never drank beer or ate ham. Everyone around me is eating swine! I'll fix that.." 2. A repressed idiot. "Those [insert race/country] piss me off! They think my people are violent! I'll show them that I'm no dumbass!" 3. A terrorist or wanna-be. Hey Mommar, is that gunpowder on the floor? Put away that infadel-made MagLight and gimme a match YOU DUMBASS! 4. One who realizes the error of his ways. I can't believe my dumbass wasted time typing this, or that YOU read this far. see also suicide bomber
A while ago I stopped using pirated software and listening to mp3s of musicians who don't distribute them freely. It is theft and as such morally wrong, I think it is worrying that people will not care about right or wrong as long as there's personal gain. The interesting thing to me is that piracy is apparently a "socialist" thing as it is about sharing, but is deeply rooted in a savage capitalist philosophy of getting an advantage regardless of the means. The numbers may be wrong, it doesn't seem to be a well conducted survey, but those numbers aren't even important in face of the real issue of piracy being censurable even if it's consequences are/were mild.
Arr, maties, tis true, tis true. I be usin' this bloody GNU junk, y'know? Arr, I tell ya, ya salty scaliwags, ya don't even need t'worry bout them damned Spanish galleon's'n shit comin' to yer island'n whinin' 'bout yer booty.
Arr. I be thinkin' if they be callin' me a pirate, I should be runnin' em through, keel haulin' em, and takin' their wenches.
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Depending on type, they will, upon finding unlicensed copyrighted material in your system:
History is written by the victorious...
er, I meant: ©bots (alphabetized under c-bot)
If these don't exist now, they will in short order. And, I can see a consortium of major copyrighted-material producers (software, music, video companies) joining forces. The license for anything you legitimately install/download/play from any one of these companies contains a clause that you will allow ©bots to access your system looking for unlicensed material from any consortium member.
"By installing the Software I agree to allow access to my information storage devices for the purposes of copyright protection only...."
theres alot of that going around isnt there...
too many of dickhead-twat-arsed-fuck-knuckle-wanker moderators out there.
this term is already in use for some mighty ugly figurines at this site
Firstly, [copyright infringement is] not a criminal offense.
Yes it is, at least in the United States. When you unlawfully copy a copyrighted work, you are deriving "private financial gain" equal to the manufacturer's suggested retail price of a copy. Deriving private financial gain from a copyright infringement is a federal felony (17 USC 506).
Secondly, pay the $19 dollars that that CD albulm costs; big deal. You'll make up for it by all the stuff they didn't catch.
No. In the U.S., even not considering criminal penalties, copyright infringement makes the infringer liable for something called "statutory damages" of up to $150,000 (17 USC 504), no matter how small the actual damages to the copyright owner.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Personally, I think this is a GREAT idea ... let the labels, studios and the BSA pay their private cops to scan the 'net for bootleg (I REFUSE to call them "pirated") |\/|p3z, \/\/4r3z and |\/|0\/13z (damn, that last one looks like a regex I once typed) ... let them pay for the bandwidth it wastes ... let them pay for PRIVATE counsel to pursue CIVIL actions against infringers ... I SUPPORT PRIVATE enforcement of copyright.
... and I MIGHT go see Spider-Man when it hits the Dollar theater ... as for Attack of the Clones? I have no desire to go see YAABGLTMTF (Yet Another Attempt By George Lucas To Milk The Franchise).
... yet ... my math tells me that it would take about 7 HOURS to download a DVD ... 1.5 hours to DL an iso of a vcd ... I just don't see bootlegging of movies to be a reasonable activity. If I wanted a PARTICULAR movie, I might download it ... but ... pay for the bandwidth it would burn to share the DL'd copy out to a bunch of strangers??? Not a chance. I pay for the pipe for MY use and there aren't enough "coolness points" in the world to reimbuse me for what it would cost to share out bootleg movies on a Napster-like network.
... I'm behind a packet filter AND a TIGHT proxy server ... all my content is legal and I'm prepared to prove it, but THEY have to come up with probable cause for a warrant before I have to furnish ANY proof.
What REALLY pisses me off is when these multi-billion dollar corporate purveyors of crap content want the government to spend MY tax dollars to enforce THEIR private property rights!
I paid a total of US$20 (including popcorn and Coke) to see LOTR:Fellowship of the Rings. It was an entertaining flick, but I haven't seen anything since that has motivated me to go back to a movie theater. I DID spend $80 to take a date to LIVE theater, though
I have approximately 90% of a T-1 pipe available at home 24/7, on average. For a home connection, that's a damned fat pipe
I guess the upshot of this rant is that I don't CARE what the ??AA do, privately, to enforce their rights. When they start calling on the government to enforce their rights FOR them, my back goes up and my claws come out.
Besides
BTW, IAA (non-practicing) L
utter rubbish
Okay ... time to hit geocities with the /. effect ...
... and since the "automatic copyright" has been in effect since 1978, I'd say, from personal experience, that the "non-paying download" percentage is closer to 100%.
I've never received a penny from the couple of hundred hits my personal website has gotten in the 5 years it's been up (updates are kinda spotty, though),
<Proudly using Free (as in speech) Software (for everything but gaming, but we're working on that) since 1997>
utter rubbish
I'd like to drive a BMW but it's too expensive. If only those greedy Germans would lower the price I'd buy one. Or I can get someone to steal one for me.
Yes, I'm referring to using the library to consume written (and audio-visual) works for free, without paying a dime. Maybe you've heard of this, the library? It was brought to our culture by Benjamin Franklin, publisher and promoter of the patenting concept which gave rise to the notion of intellectual property.
Infact, there is nothing discongruous between a patent or copyright and a library where such works are consumed freely by many people. Sharing a work wasn't the crime--misattributing someone else's work as one's own was the offense. But I digress.
Where is the concept of the library of software? If my local library began offering donated titles on a check-out basis, would not Microsoft, through its front called the BSA, demand it to cease and desist?
Today I spent the day at a library and at a Barnes and Nobles reading technical books on a subject I am not familar with, trying to (1) become familar with the subject matter and (2) to find good references that I would then purchase for my own collections.
If the BSA went after published works as well as software, I would have had to purchase 30 books on Java, XML, RMI, XML-RPC, RSS, EJB, etc., to accomplish what I did today. It wouldn't have happened.
Actually, I do the same with software. I'll borrow a friend's copy or use LimeWare, et al, to find a working copy of a program I want to evaluate (unless they have a true trial version to use; Office X preview was not a true trial version--it didn't work just like the real thing). Once I try it I'll make a decision: buy it or delete it. I don't continue to use it unless I buy it, because I want the updates and other goodies--and if I like it I don't mind paying for it. Just like my book scouring at the library/bookstore.
I propose that we establish software libraries--donated purchased software licenses that can be checked out (for evaluation purposes and short-term use). I propose that these be mandated by law to accompany the ever stricter copyright/patent laws so that the "intellectual" benefit to society of Intellectual Property not be lost ensuring the "property" benefit to private concerns.
Free software, on the other hand, falls into the library/copyright paradigm perfectly. Freshmeat, SourceForge, Savanaugh (sp? sheesh), are today's libraries for software. And it is Microsoft, not the FSF, that was fined for piracy--passing off the work of another as one's own. BSA and Microsoft: against casual sharing (like a library) and not respecting the copyright law. How un-American!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?"
That would be, by any standard, quite a leap of speculative faith.
It has been my experience that people, myself included, simply steal their software and music. Unapologetically. Hell, I know at least one POLICE DEPARTMENT that is a hell-bent software and music "pirate den." I always hear the argument about music downloads that people who download music invariably buy more music. I have never seen that argument proved in practice, quite the opposite. They are the same people who invariably criticize when someone remarks that they have bought a CD. "Why did you buy the CD when you can get it for free?" I have never heard someone say that they downloaded this really rad song or program and they like it so much they're gonna rush out to Fry's and buy a retail copy in the morning. Never.
Derek
Ummm, it wasn't mentioned in the Zdnet article - but was in another source I saw this "survey" mentioned in...
The method used to construct the sample wasn't revealed. No one knows whether it was random, what the demographics were, or what questions were asked.
Thus, the whole thing is absolute bullshit... don't believe a word of it. It's just more RIAA/MPAA/BSA/ crapola.
Not Shakespeare, that's public domain.
/dev/urandom gets you Brtiney.
One
I do not, repeat not, see this being viable. Quite aside from technical issues, this sort of fishing expedition is illegal, as is the idea of an autonomous program altering people's systems or bank accounts. Sure, they may say they're only looking for X, but what's to prevent these bots from being subverted by other entities - note that these 'entities' can be external to or within whichever body creates/deploys these things - for their own purposes?
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
Sounds like a good way to deal with the problem. Just set up encryption for all networked transactions, everywhere. Checking email, downloading whatever you wish to, even viewing webpages. Alright, the last one will be more difficult to implement, but scare tactics such as these from the so-called BSA should only push any intelligent (ahhh, there's the rub) users to assert their privacy.
Take it or leave it.
- "Re: mod parent up quickly" by: Hemos (score: 4)--
, [stileproject.com] and [rotten.com] contain disturbing imagesI have nothing witty to say, so I'll just inform you that
Why do you people take so much notice of such bad journalism? This is a piece of sensationalist rubbish. A mountain is being made out of a molehill, for the sake of justifying the actions of the BSA. While we're on it, how about mentioning that the Business Software Alliance should not steal the use of the acronym BSA, which rightly means "Birmingham Small Arms", manufacturer of motor and pedal cycles (and perhaps small firearms, too).
I don't remember ever paying for a file (be it a piece of software, of music, or a pictorial image).
The nearest I have got to this is downloading a limited, evaluation copy of a program before ordering (by post) or buying (in a shop) the full version. I guess that I have done this approximately three times in the twenty three years that I have been using computers.
The article doesn't mention anything about the users who download an evaluation version of copyrighted work X, find it's a piece of rubbish, and never buy the full monty. But these people are counted, I am sure, in the group of "thieves" who "never pay for downloaded software". So, I'm in that group, too.
On the other hand, I have downloaded source code and pre-compiled binaries totalling probably something like twelve gigabytes of copyrighted works, entirely legally, without paying for it. There gain, the BuSofAll Boys want to count this as being theft.
So, a dodgy organisation carries out a dodgy survey (1026 people... where did the last two dissappear?) gets a dodgy article in a dodgy publication. I fart in the general direction of Ziff Davis, of the Business Software Alliance, and of anybody who takes this whole story with anything less than a very big pinch of salt.
sofaik, evrything on the internet is stil under copyright, or at least i should make attempts to find out who the copyright holder is and ask there permission before i download there webn site before viewing it offline!!!!.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?
None at all. That's a bet I simply won't take.
You're not only being unrealistic, you're being naive.
Most people don't even know what opened source is, and in those same people's eyes, freeware is a mythical thing that you only chance upon once in a blue moon. Or worse, freeware is anything you can get away with copying and not paying for.
To recap a conversation I recently had with a friend of mine, paraphrased of course...
Him: I need to burn a copy of Office.
Me: Why? Just get Star Office, it's free.
Him: Uh, I'd rather just have the real thing.
I tried to explain to him the advantages of just using free software, but he wouldn't have any of it. He sadly represents the vast majority; The same type that will pirate Windows instead of using Linux or FreeBSD.
When people pirate commercial software, It's also a loss to the free software cause!
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
All that one has to do is zip the mp3 file and those pesky digital signatures won't be a problem. Though it's funny to see all the studios flex their muscles and think that they're going to slow down the distribution of copyrighted material.
- In principle of course it's perfectly awful, analogous to random strangers poking through your cabinets at home looking for whatever evidence they can find for hanky-panky.
- This doesn't mean it won't happen. Illegality depends on which laws are in force. Laws can be changed.
- If you give permission through a license, it's probably legal right now (I am not a lawyer).
- Taking money from your account and turning you in are both extremes. Erasing the data is more likely. Like someone coming in your garage, finding that Weed-Eater you borrowed last year, and taking it back without saying a word to you.
During the latest round of talks on changing Canadian copyright, the copyright board requested input from the general populace, and published the results on their website.
Because they had so many submisions, they also published a document entitled An Overview of Submissions on the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues.. an interesting excerpt from this document is this:
"There were also submissions that characterized all activities on the Internet that involve unauthorized copying or communications as "piracy" rather than "infringement." It is unclear how this characterization was intended to relate to the traditional understanding of copyright remedies and sanctions."
So it looks like SOMEONE in power (somewhere) knows the difference.
As a programmer, I have to deal with piracy all the time. As a full-time student also, I don't have the money to shell out for programs.
The humor behind it all: I myself pirate software constantly. Why? For two reasons: 1)Software is too expensive, and 2)I can. $200 for a program that doesn't always work like it's supposed to? Why would anyone pay that, when they can get the same defective software free?
If for some reason I could not get a legal copy of the software I make, I would even pirate that!
$15 may not seem like too much for a CD (although it's about $10 overpriced, but that's a different article...), but when you start to figure that I have a few hundred albums in MP3 format from Gnutella, you can see how much this adds up. Do I feel bad that gigantic bands like Metallica didn't get a few more dollars from me? Absolutely not. Do I feel bad that the hard-to-find bands like Blue October didn't get a few more dollars from me? Absolutely not. I support these bands in other ways, such as T-Shirts and Concerts. If Metallica would come anywhere near Nebraska, I'd support them by paying $500 for a ticket (actually, I think that's a little low for their prices...)
Would I stop pirating software if I could afford it in a legal way? Absolutely. $50 for WinXP still seems overpriced for what it is, but I'd be much more willing to pay it than $200+.
CODITO, ERGO SUM: I Code, therefore I am.
It can be rewritten several times subsequently.