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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."
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 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 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.
From the GNU site:
Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as ``piracy.'' In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them.
If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word ``piracy'' to describe it. Neutral terms such as ``prohibited copying'' or ``unauthorized copying'' are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as ``sharing information with your neighbor.''
"...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
What about giving them /dev/urandom for downloading?
Reminds me of when I was in high school. This was 1997 and the school had to be online (just don't ask why the emperor is naked). So the school sprung for a new lab of 486s running Windows 3.11 and a box that had a 56k modem and a TCP/IP stack that did NAT - now the school could harness the power of thespot.com and the Trojan Room's coffee pot.
Before you can let anyone actually use the computers, of course, you need them to sign an agreement saying that they won't do anything evil, like express negative opinions about the school online. Personally I never saw an end to the school's dictatorial powers that would necessitate signing away any rights, but I'm sure that there were some lawyer-parents who would if their perfect child got in trouble for downloading pr0n.
So I was reading the agreement and anyone who signed it agreed not to download copyrighted material online. I pointed out to the vice-principal who was handling the signings that all material online was copyrighted, either explicitly or implicitly. She said that if I was downloading copyrighted material I was pirating software. I finally convinced her that it was only unlicensed software that was piracy (I'm still not a fan of that word) and she said I should just sign it because they weren't going to enforce it anyway. I didn't sign and didn't use the Internet at school that year, not a big loss as the only thing the computers were used for was seeing Yahoo.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
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!
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.
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.
I think the BSA needs to "study" some more. They're really missing the boat if they can't fudge figures better than this.
Isn't their mirroring the sites they visit a copyright violation in itself?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Every reasonable person on the planet knows the US is the most violent and unjust nation in the world (at least in foreign policy issues).
If this is true, then 99% of the population of the US are not reasonable people.
I don't know if you're an American or not (I am), but it is terrifying to see the lengths people here will go to to ignore any and all evidence that America is not absolutely 100% the only free country in the world and we would never do anything that wasn't perfectly morally pure.
I was talking to one of my brothers about some of the things going on and since he actually takes seriously his responsibility as a member of a free society to inform himself, he knew about what I was saying. His wife on the other hand didn't want to hear it and when questioned said, "I just don't want to know".
She actually wants to have kids.
How sickening is that that a person who is scared to even look at the world she lives in wants to force aniother person to live in it.
I'm not ranting against people who have kids, but if you don't do it with your eyes open you are a very disturbed person.
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
One reason to steal a license plate, is so that if a cop runs a random check on it, it will come back clean. If the thief is driving a different make/model, the cop will know right away. So a thief would likely steal a plate from a car of the same make, model, and color. Of course, if the thief is smart enough to do that, they will probably be careful enough not to run a red light.
I would hope that simply stating under oath that your license plates were stolen would be grounds for dismissal.
This still doesn't address my biggest concern. At a place I used to frequent, the parking lot exit was right next to a stop light.
I would exit the parking lot and enter the intersection while the light was green. The light would turn yellow, and then red before I left the intersection. It happened all the time. The yellow light always seemed long enough when I drove down the street at 30 MPH. Checking the speed doesn't matter since my car has picked up speed by the time the light turns red. If there were a camera at that intersection, I would have gotten a half dozen tickets.
One more problem. A person does not know they've been accused until a citation shows up in the mail. To contest the allegations in court, you have to remember the incident. How is a person supposed to remember every single intersection they have driven through for the past couple days?