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Movie Industry to sue File Sharers
Wack Valenti writes "SiliconValley.com reports that the motion picture industry, taking a cue from the RIAA, is planning to file copyright infringement lawsuits against file sharers it says are illegally distributing movies online. The first suits could be filed as early as tomorrow."
I look forward to the morning mail.
from the juast-a-matter-of-time dept.
That's exactly what I thought (only without the typo.) The RIAA has been doing this for so long, why is the MPAA only doing this now, I wonder?
It get's worse and worse everyday. Eventually though, maybe they'll get a clue. Suing customers sure as hell don't bring em back. I know i sure as hell won't be seein any movies anytime soon if this happens. ben
I got a warning letter from my friends at MGM and bay TSP about illegally sharing my 2 episodes of stargate atlantis. I thought, hey, they are tv shows, and they arent on dvd... why would they care. Well, they did care, and they sent me a letter. And you know what? because of that letter, I havent used a p2p app since. I think that if they just focused on scaring people with letters, they would get the job done just as well, without looking evil like the RIAA
this comes right after bush gets re-elected.
seriously though, it is kinda interesting that after a couple years of wait and see, they've suddenly decided to file these suits after bush (friend of corporations, etc) is firmly back in power
mod me down as flame-bait if you want, I just find it an interesting point, not conspiracy but it makes sense; they waited until they knew the party that would support them was going to be in power for a while before they moved.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
We all saw this coming. What's the surprise?
Personally I don't care anymore. I've quit sharing music and movies not because I'm afraid of a law suit but because it encourages my friends to support groups / movies they like. Yeah they groups may not get all of the money, but through the "process" they are rewarded.
It wasn't all that long ago that the EFF suggested that the entertainment industry should be suing infringers.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Shhh.. don't say anything about Usenet
NOOOO!!!! I havent finished downloading all the episodes for my "Doctor Who" collection..
The Spiderman 2 DVD comes out this month as well as the final extended cut in the LOTR series. Guess I'll be in line with the rest of you to fund these lawsuits.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
If you are at a school that is an Internet 2 node,get on i2hub. It's only open to schools on I2, so the MPAA cannot get on to see what's going on. Additionally, d/l speeds are icredible, at about 300-400KB/sec.
I have fully moved to private networks like this, and my University's DC++ hub. I was shocked when i saw all these people at school using public networks like Kazaa (corrupted now) and Ares and BT.
I was told I was actually a target, by our dean of men here at my college. I have no idea why - I wasn't downloading or sharing any movies, nor could I even CONNECT to p2p networks because of the filtering systems in place (I use p2p to share security docs and my own music I have written). Yup. He said the MPAA had contacted the school and was prepared to sue if it was in necessary, or something like that. I guess I'll find out tomorrow if he was full of crap or not, won't I? :)
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
'Sharing' of these copyrighted works is not legal in the first place. While it's not going to engender any great love for the film industry, this move is one of the many legal recourses that they have against copyright violators.
To be honest, I'd rather see a return to the days of 5 dollar tickets and extra extra buttered popcorn and a Coke for a couple bucks more than see the movie industry devolve into this legal sewer. With DVD sales doing well, it becomes more and more reasonable to watch a movie in your house. With the proliferation of file-shared movies online, the quality of playback becomes less an issue as viewers get attuned to the lower bitrates.
Personally, I'd rather go see the films in a theater and don't mind paying a couple bucks to do so. Lately, it's been getting outrageously expensive, well passed the point where one could argue that it was merely inflation. I'm not saying that file sharing would be curbed by cheaper theater tickets, god knows the addictive powers of the free movie drug. But I do think that they could really recreate the concept of the "blockbuster" with a little less take at the box office.
In short, file sharing copyrighted works is illegal. The movie industry probably shouldn't do this, but are well within their rights to litigate. I'd like to watch movies at the theater but not pay so much.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What protocol will they be choosing?
Hope it's not bittorrent;)
I always wondered why USENET is not targetted.
Rent a DVD from blockbuster
Play it with VideoLan client
Open up dvd smartripper
Rip the DVD
Run the ripped files through DVD2One
Burn to a DVD
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Golly, people whine on and on about the RIAA and the MPAA as if there is music and movies out there that are worth listening to or watching.
The fact is, the stuff that comes out of the "Entertainment Industry" is 99% A-Grade crapola, and the sooner people come to realise that fact the sooner we will cease to care what these dinosaurs do to their ever-shrinking customer base.
Get over it guys. Who cares what these numbnuts do? Go read a book and stop lining the pockets of these cretinous music and movie execs for a change.
They're simply not worth all the angst.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
cos its working for the RIAA right ?
we all know hollywood has ditched the innovate department with their remakes of remakes of remakes because they are lazy and greedy, you will not be rewarded for that
so all thats left is the litigate bit
incidently the biggest movie industry in the world (bollywood) does not mind filesharing and is embracing it, better people see your film than not right ?, ask Microsoft if it works for them
Interesting that this is upsetting. I read an earlier post that considered a spammer "stealing" their time as part of a justification for it being a crime. That may be debateable, they got a good mod though for the thought, but it isn't debateable that the downloaders are stealing some one's work. The work was done for the purpose of making a living. It was a legitimate business and harmed no one. Somehow the spammer is a criminal for stealing time yet the downloader is somehow extercising some nonexistent right of free exchange of information. How is this not a double standard? Just because one benefits you and the other harms you?
From the article:
"The movie industry has also tried to battle piracy by running ads in movie theaters and elsewhere designed to dissuade people from file-sharing films by stressing the risks of identity theft and liability."
How the hell is identity theft involved?
best quote:
claims the health of the industry is at stake
I will never pay for an MPAA movie in theater or on DVD again.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
You do the crime, you pay the fine.
Seriously. If you illegally copy a movie, and you're caught, you have only yourself to blame.
Dear MPAA, My ipaddress is 199.2.120.89. My slashdot username is my real name. I download most of my movies off suprnova.org. Oh yea, and I'm not afraid.
It sure is going to suck when they try to take my neighbors to court. Someone doesn't know about unsecured wireless modems.
Now that we have proven we are sheeple who will roll over for just about anything as long as the spin is right, why *SHOULDN'T* they sue?
As far as I am concerned, at this point we should all be doing our best to hasten the decline.
Everybod jump on the pendlum and push. It's gotta swing trough it's arc before there will be any relief. The United States of America has to legislate and litigate itself into its role as a backwater far off the information super-highway, before anything here can get fixed.
The sooner the rest of the world leaves us in the economic and Intellectual Property [sic] dust, the better.
In fact, if the corporations can make enough of a mess SOON ENOUGH, it could even prevent the stupid legislation.
Sue Away, MPAA! (hey it rymes, it should be their new slogan! 8-)
As environmental pressure increases, the organisim is forced to evolve.
So it will be _best_ for the world if we can all get the pressure up as fast as possible.
Plus we know how much credibility the US now has overseas. The more they win here, the freer the rest of the world will be. They *know* (hopefully) that if they follow our lead, then they will enevitably end up with a Bush of their own.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I always fall asleep in them, and when I don't, it's usually cause somebody nearby is pissing me off with their talking, or I'm getting chewed out cause I'm pissing someone ELSE off somehow. For me, viewing movies outside of a relatively intimate environment like my home, or a friends, is not enjoyable.
And anyway, releasing only to theaters initially is essentially just a way to control distribution and inflate ticket costs via artificial scarcity. Why do we put up with this shit?
Oh that's right, we don't, and that's why they're suing us.
No one waits to see who will be President to file copyright infringement lawsuits. The President has no affect whatsoever on the outcome of civil lawsuits to which the Executive Branch of the U.S. Goverment is not a party.
Maybe you're confused about the shameful treatment of the DOJ/Microsoft case?
sigs, as if you care.
mount
Glad I live in Canada and not some oppressed nation where you can go to jail for stealing a movie. Boy, you guys should get some better leadership...oops sorry wrong day. Go ahead mod me to hell.
Stay tuned for new sig...
So now the RIAA are going to go after people for violating copyright law and screwing them out of their profit. *Sigh* Not that it's the same people in charge now... but still. Anyone want to vote hypocritical bastards?
This was obviously going to happen at some point. It may be somewhat easier for them to crack down on because movie piracy isn't as mainstream as music sharing. My MOM knew how to use Kazaa, but never will be able to figure out IRC or BitTorrent. The mainstream "average joe" may not have a high speed connection or a DVD burner to make it worth his time. However, since the idea behind BitTorrent is that everyone shares with everyone, it may be more widespread than I think. Downloading movies hasn't become "mainstream" in my definition. Many people I asked recently had no idea that movies could be downloaded or what BitTorrent was. I think it is more isolated. Maybe not. Next will be the TV networks, cracking down on those crazy idiots who download entire seasons form unsecure BitTorrent networks, and then sell them on eBay USING THEIR FULL NAME AND ADDRESS, sometimes before the season has even ended! Why dont they just have their paychecks directly deposited into the coffers of the networks, because they will get sued sooner or later. So much for something for nothing...
A few years ago, I recieved a letter requesting that I stop sharing a movie or be sued. Problem was, I didn't have the movie, nor was I running the service which they claimed it was being shared on (eDonkey)
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Interesting... my ISP just forwarded a C&D email from the MPAA aimed at my IP address. I'll be curious (an understatement!) to see if they are successful in getting my snail mail address out of my ISP after the Verison decision.
/had/ a wireless router running to provide access to anyone in range (it'll be back up after I get around to blocking off everything but 80 and 25, i guess), but I'm assuming that the whole "common carrier" exemption to network traffic only applies to corporations large enough to buy their own congressman.
I
So... is this the end of offering open access to your neighborhood? I have no interest in monitoring traffic over my network, but it looks like the buck stops at the little guy (as usual).
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Just a thought for consideration.
Perhaps the RIAA's actions are objectionable not because they are protecting Intellectual Property rights, but because they are using illegal search techniques and shotgun accusation techniques in a clumbsy attempt to do so.
I for one would have no objection to the MPAA suing people whom they have determined are offering copyrighted material for download based upon public web pages or other public directories. And where they have actually downloaded enough of the file to verify that it is indeed the copyrighted material and not just a matching file name.
It's a good thing I've gone legit. While I might have MP3s that are considered illegal, I'm working hard at replacing those with positively legitimite ones, by actually buying the CDs.
I used to be big into downloading possibly infringing movies, mp3s, etc., but I've wisened up to the fact that, even though they may charge horrible prices, I might still be stealing. It also helped that I have a semi-steady paycheck now, so I can afford to get the legit copies/versions of what I might have had.
I could still use the filesharing programs to download a movie/song to try it out. There's not a good rental place in the area, and you can't rent CDs anyway. I don't want to buy a $16 CD because I liked one song. I'd prefer to hear the full thing first.
they must steal your identity as part of the payment for piracy
For making nothing but shit, year after year.
Um, last time I checked, stealing movies for free does not make you a customer. Somehow I dont think they are losing any sleep over losing your "business"... LOL
Uhm,
DvdDecreptor..
Pop movie into Dvd Drive. Pop a Dual Layer DVD-R
in the Dual Layer'd DvD burner and with one click
you will have a exact copy.
Why DVD2One?
Why The other steps?
Green day song playing.....
.af [applefans (at) spymac(dot) com]
We have been sued by the Motion Picture Industry, and we are here to anoounce in front of ONE Hundred Million people. That we are still going to download movies off the internet.
Introducing the iFlixs Movie Store.
A promotion for Pepsi?
I simply quit going to theaters. It seems like movie ticket costs have gone up and up and up over the past 10 years yet the quality of movie theaters has stayed the same. There are too many things to even list that piss me off in theaters.
Poor government knows no party.
This is incorrect. Poor government is on a first name basis with at least two parties.
USENet isn't really all that centralized, and it isn't as well known. Nobody _really_ "administers" it and nobody with money really runs it.
It is peer-to-peer and egalatarian as hell, but everybody (with linux anyway) already has the software and you have to search it *by* *hand*. It is SUPER EASY to forge a message, especially if the forger is an admin of a host system.... *any* host system in the net.
Nobody really has the power to unilaterally remove any of the content in particular, and even the venerable "cancel message" can be blocked. As long as any USENET backbone exists almost any message can "pibby-back" through the "blocked" parts of the net as a crosspost.
It is just too soft a target to really take any action against. Don't beleive me, just look at what is flowing there. The borderline kiddy-porn that is in the alt.binaries.(whatever) group is unstopable.
Besides, there are enough stupid people involved that you can't keep titty-pictures out of alt.sex.pictures.erotica.gay.male. What a dumb waste of time to try to *send* those pictures in that forum. What a DUMB waste of time trying to STOP those pictures from being sent in that forum.
What an _incridible_ waste of time trying to filter, find, and catch every single USENET server site in an attempt to really trace the sources of movie fragments....
If *you* had to "go after" USENET where would *YOU* start?
P.S. Remember: Drugs, Terrorisim, and Kiddy Porn are the root passwords to the US Constitution.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Shortly after Verizon announces Fiber to the Home
The incredible huge File Sizes is really the only thing that have stopped movies from being copied as commonly as MP3/audio. Broadband is just getting fast enough and common enough that that you can download full DVD length movies in a day or less.
I wonder if the new even more republican congress that just squeaked in will have any more nuts like Orin Hatch.
Actually if you look at inflation films have barely kept pace. Remember the old quote from Hardware Wars? The one about kissing three bucks good bye? Well that was over twenty five years ago. Gas was around $.75 a gallon and dinner out for two would run around $10. You could rent an apartment in LA for a couple of hundred and a small two bedroom house with a pool for around $450, I looked at several in the early 80s for that much. Now gas is $220, dinner out will easily set you back $25 or $30, or much more, and a cheap house in LA will run $1,200 to $1,500 if you can find it. At the same time film budgets have gone from moderately high budgets of 8 or 9 mill, the budgets of Star Wars and Alien, to 80 to 250 mill. Given the fact the budgets alone have increased 10x to 30X one would expect a greater increase than 3x. The increase does reflect inflation. The only reason costs haven't gone up more is new markets. A growing foreign market and video and cable sales have offset the increased budgets. If piracy becomes a serious issue that offset will be largely gone and films will no longer be profitable. Translated few will be made. Or costs will go up.
Also as a side note to the victimless crime defense for downloading, wages haven't really gone up in the film industry since the late 1980s. Union rates have increased some but nonunion rates have been flat. At the same time inflation has gone up considerably. I've seen rent alone double in that time. People are desperately trying to make a living and downloading isn't helping. It's just becoming another reason to go out of country as profits drop and margins tighten. It hurts people.
Logially, this must follow from your complaint, right?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Then tonight, we download!
How does it fit as news? I thought we already knew about this...
What if the movies you were sharing were pR0n? I have been sharing my flicks originally from Stile Project. Am I in trouble?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Where can I get one?
I downloaded movies all summer on a connection I only had for 2 months. Towards the end of the second month, someone asked me to download a copy of Moulin Rouge for them (too cheap to rent it).
Almost 22 movies later, I get a letter saying they caught me downloading it using BitTorrent, and if they caught any more being downloaded, they'd take "legal action".
I've since moved to another connection. And another state.
"In short, file sharing copyrighted works is illegal. The movie industry probably shouldn't do this, but are well within their rights to litigate. I'd like to watch movies at the theater but not pay so much."
Wasn't someone saying the last time we had a "file sharing" story, that the MPAA was doing it right because they was giving good bang for the buck (DVDs), as compared to the RIAA?
And yet people treat them the same way as the RIAA.
" But I do think that they could really recreate the concept of the "blockbuster" with a little less take at the box office."
Maybe because we're more jaded than before, and it takes more to impress us enough to go see a movie?
Movies were cheaper when they were in black and white and crude special effects.
Dear Sirs:
If you sell your music CDs and movie tickets for $5, I will stop trading them illegally.
Signed,
Epistax
On a couple of occasions, I liked the movie so much from downloading that I went out and bought it. Equilibrium is a good example. I couldn't watch it in theaters because it wasn't playing anywere. I just happened across the file and liked it a lot so went out and bought the DVD.
I guess it's my thought that the amount of times a movie is downloaded does not represent the number of sales that would have occured had that download not been available.
I actually got a letter from my ISP for p2ping a episode of a tv show. Now this is getting extreme.
"Ohhhhhh Canada..."
"'Sharing' of these copyrighted works is not legal in the first place. While it's not going to engender any great love for the film industry, this move is one of the many legal recourses that they have against copyright violators."
Remember someone saying DVDs were a good deal compared to CDs? And yet we treat the MPAA the same way as the RIAA.
"Personally, I'd rather go see the films in a theater and don't mind paying a couple bucks to do so. Lately, it's been getting outrageously expensive, well passed the point where one could argue that it was merely inflation. I'm not saying that file sharing would be curbed by cheaper theater tickets, god knows the addictive powers of the free movie drug. But I do think that they could really recreate the concept of the "blockbuster" with a little less take at the box office."
And movies were cheaper when things were in black and white, and special effects were crude. We want good movies, that will cost.
One way to fight the movie industry is to use freeway blogging. The movie industry is different from the music industry. A lot of their revenue comes from concentrated sources--namely these huge cineplexes that are frequently located near high traffic areas such as freeways. You could hurt them and cost them some money by placing signs on these high traffic roads near the cineplexes. The signs would tell people about the lawsuits.
More on Freeway Blogging.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Yeah, damn them for having to pay money to make their movie.
Damn them for asking money in exchange for viewing their film.
You see, it's not a matter of the method being easier, it's the matter that PEOPLE WANT SHIT FOR FREE. That's all.
Yeah, well, I'll never pay for an RIAA CD at an MPAA theater again!!!
Since you are so concerned with grand generalizations that most people understand to be speaking about American copyright law rather than some non-existant global copyright law, why don't you help us out.
You can start by providing a list of all the countries in which it is legal to copy and distribute copyrighted works without consent of the copyright holder. Then append another list of all the countries in which it is legal to come into possession of a copyrighted work through a means where the the work was copied and distributed in violation of the copyright holder's copy rights.
With that list, when you read a post that would normally prompt you to spew some pedantic crap about how the poster is claiming that copyright violations are illegal, you can understand it to be directed at those countries not covered by your two lists.
Thanks!
This kind of news is getting old
/. pr0n like suicidegirl =)
"Sue this, Sue that" and we always get away with it. Why would people still be surprised by these turns of events?
Bring back some of that
I think it's more to do with declines in cinema attendance. By the time a movie is on DVD, people aren't going to see it at the cinema anyway, and the industry still profits from DVD rentals..
The lawsuits will probably be targeting the "0-day releases."
I've been guilty of downloading things like this, but mainly because I'm in Australia and some films aren't released for a month or two after the US/UK release date.
When there's a buzz created by the global internet, it feels like we're being treated poorly by being made to wait so long.
"You'd be correct if you said: file sharing of copyrighted works is illegal in the USA and other countries holding to the Berne Convention, if done without the copyright holder's permission."
Guess what countries US movies are released in?
"Stop trying to say that US law applies globally. It doesn't."
Doesn't have to. Just the countries the movies are released in. If you want to fuck your country over? Be my guest. So when is your country going to produce something worth stealing? Oh, no! Wait there's no incentive. Good job guys.
And trying to make it so that they can't work anymore?
I will never pay for an MPAA movie in theater or on DVD again.
If you really want to be official don't ever watch an MPAA movie again.
"The signs would tell people about the lawsuits."
Oh this should be good. What are you going to put on those signs? You're paying for the movie. We're not. Ha Ha!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If everyone takes your stance it will cure the problem. No films will be made or records released. The good movie and record fairies don't make them. People and money make them. If there's no money to pay the people to work on them, let alone the expenses involved, there won't be any made. All those people will simply find other careers. In the meantime you'll be without those forms of entertainment.
Does anyone know which networks the RIAA and MPAA are generally monitoring so I know to stay away? I DC++ is a pretty safe bet, but what networks are "lawsuit-safe"?
TerraIM - my pet AIM client project.
The RIAA has been doing this for so long, why is the MPAA only doing this now, I wonder?
Hey, who cares? No self-respecting geek clutters up their hard drives with the drivel that the MPAA members produce. Now if the Porn Industry Movie Producers (PIMP) start cracking down on sharing Miko Lee and Jenna Jameson flicks, then us geeks are really going to be in trouble.
watch this
"Dear Sirs:
If you sell your music CDs and movie tickets for [1], I will stop trading them illegally.
Signed,
[I have no limits]"
[1} $5? $5? Do I hear $4? $4 anyone? $3? $3 anyone? How about $2? $2? OK how about $0?
Crowd: Hell yeah! Free movies. Now that's the way I like it.
*stage whisper*
You guys weren't planning on staying in business, were you?
Does anyone really try to download movies over Kazaa or whatever the current popular client is?
I remember years ago when it was hard to find quality movies on Morpheus. They all turned out to be some home made porn crap or something cleverly titled "The Matrix" or some damn thing.
I would have to guess that P2P networks are not the prime way of distributing the quality copies around the Net. I would guess torrents are the current popular trend. They seem to have a torrent for everything these days. It is excelent to catch the latest episode of Enterprise when I forget to record it on my ReplayTV or something though. Thank god for the internet.
distributing copyrighted material without permission is illegal. You know the law. Don't be so shocked and horrified that companies start making use of it. Companies have grinned and beared it for quite awhile.
Nobody cares if you copy movies and share amongst friends. But when your "friends" are anyone who happens by, no duh you're going to get in trouble. If you and a few friends swipe a bit of candy from the Brach's candy bin, chances are the store isn't going to give a shit. But if you advertise "free candy" and help the neighborhood out to "free" candy, you can expect to escorted somewhere by security.
I don't fear loaning movies/music to actual friends in private. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for that. When you do it publically and to a large audience, what do you expect to happen?
I see and buy lots of movies. I know the value of old films so I rarely pay more than $15 for a DVD. I only pay more if it's a really really good movie that recently came out. And you can always buy used or rent. There is no justification for piracy of mainstream movies which is what the MPAA is going after. There are plenty of legal options available to you regardless of your budget.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Perrier horsey :-)
I'd go after a "premium" news service provider, using the argument that they knew and profited from the fact that most of the traffic they carry is copyright infringement. Mainstream ISPs already severely limit what binary groups they carry and impose bandwidth/transfer caps on their NNTP servers.
USENET could, in fact, be one of the targets of the currently stalled INDUCE Act and its spawn.
No, it wouldn't kill USENET, but it sure would put a dent in its usability in the part of the world that honors U.S. copyrights.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
If you are new to this topic, check out Downhill Battle or EFF or my website. By the way, the Xmas season is almost upon us. Time to remind people that CDs make crappy presents.
Test 1 2 3 4
"I for one would have no objection to the MPAA suing people whom they have determined are offering copyrighted material for download based upon public web pages or other public directories."
Awful nice of the illegal filesharing community, to not use obscuring technology like what's found in some P2P apps. What a bunch of swell guys.
I mean, damn, what am I going to pirate now? I'm running out of things that people aren't filing lawsuits over. *sigh*
Well, if anyone needs 'cracked' copys of homosexual furry fiction, I'll have a torrent up shortly...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Uh, no. I am a regular user of i2hub, and though I am at a school that is part of Internet2/Abilene, (Indiana University), such speeds definitely do NOT translate to the residence halls, nor does i2hub exclude schools that are not on Internet2. "i2hub" is just a name.
Everyone seems to love to say, "we're so cool cuz we're on internet2, omg wtf lol!" Just do some research before saying stuff like this. It seems to me that i2hub only allows hosts with a .edu TLD, or maybe has some sort of list of schools to allow.
The other thing I should mention is that the DC protocol is truly terrible. There are a huge number of things wrong with it (no unique node identification system, no multi-source downloads, no nick registration, bulky connection negotiation protocol, slow file hashing, no unicode support, etc.) and it doesn't seem like they'll be fixed at the moment.
However, for those of you screaming that i2hub isn't free, actually, it is free, and it's open to many operating systems; I'm on Mac OS X, for example, and use a client called Direct Connect.
You might want to try it out--for a little while. All told, there is a huge selection, but it's slow and shitty, the people are complete idiots ("ppl, how do u ply a divx!?"), and I've found Gnutella to be far more useful for obtaining music, and BitTorrent for movies.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Am I the only one who is spooked by the number of posts here that claim that gee whiz, "we got a letter from the MPAA or RIAA, or just plain got scared of getting arrested, and now we have completely stopped filesharing"? And don't we feel so much cleaner?
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Three Squirrels
Because dual layer DVD-Rs are much more expensive, and most people don't have compatible drives? For movies under two hours or so, especially if you're getting rid of Spanish dubbing etc., Single-Layer DVDs look fine.
Back when the RIAA started suing file sharers, the Slashdot party line was that the RIAA should learn from the MPAA. The MPAA, it was argued, wasn't suing its consumers, but was instead producing a higher quality product that was actually worth buying. Unlike CDs, where you paid $14 for only one or two tracks actually worth owning, DVDs came chock full of goodies that made people want to shell out the $20, like alternate endings and director's commentary.
At the time, I called BS, and said that the only reason that the MPAA wasn't suing yet was because video piracy wouldn't take off until Internet connections got a bit faster - given that video files are much bigger than audio files.
Well, guess what, that was exactly the case. I assure you, if FTTH becomes a reality, this will become an even bigger problem. Please, let's stop fooling ourselves that pirates are making a pseudo-moral decision that pirating from certain evil companies is ok, but pirating other products is not ok because those products are actually worth the money.
People pirate what is easy to pirate. That's how I pirate! Audio and video cassettes made pirating copyrighted materials easier, but not particularly easy, because it takes too long to copy and distribute copyrighted materials that way.
Computers and the Internet made this type of piracy an order of magnitude easier. Each time we get faster connections to the Internet and bigger hard drives, it gets easier still.
Stop pretending that the companies can offer you something to stop you from pirating their products. Or next, will you be saying that, actually, while the director's commentaries and alternate endings are great, DVDs are too expensive at $20 and need to come down to $10, otherwise you'll pirate them?
And then, what will stop you from demanding $5?
Listen, either you're ok with pirating copyrighted works, or you're not. But stop pretending that you're only ok with it because the system is rotten. Because there is no evidence that if the threat of lawsuits were lifted and prices dropped, anything would change.
And, also, please stop pretending that it's because the RIAA and MPAA are fighting the Internet or computers or modern technology. Last time I checked, Outkast just went platinum from online mp3 sales. iTunes sells millions of songs per year, online. The RIAA and MPAA have no problem with modern technology. But they need to make sure it works in such a way that it doesn't enable unrestricted piracy.
These sorts of threats can only result in anonymous networks like Freenet becoming better. And it'll take years, but as the abusive nature of the current regime of perpetual corporate copyright is demonstrated, lawmakers will be forced to rein in those excesses.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
man if you can get busted for porn downloads...i'm screwed
Truthfully, it's getting to the point where going to see a movie is primarily attractive just because it's the only way to see something that's just come out.
It used to be, while that was a big factor, it was combined with seeing it on a "big screen" with a "great sound system", and of course the social aspects.
With the advances in home theater systems, plus the high ticket prices making folks a lot less likely to just "gather up a big group to go see movie X or Y", there's not much left besides the thrill of "seeing it first".
I think THAT might really be why they're so afraid of p2p movie sharing. The new stuff is leaking out in some cases BEFORE it even hits the theater, so paying for a ticket no longer really even means you get the bragging rights of seeing it first.
"If you're really concerned about i2hub users wasting your valuable tax dollars, perhaps you should contact the appropriate people and convince them to implement systems to route P2P traffic over the regular Internet."
Put all the dorms onto the regular internet. The ones doing actual RESEARCH and EDUCATION will get Internet 2.
"Besides, it might actually be CHEAPER for all this data to go over the Internet2..."
Easy to say when you're not the one footing the bill.
The entertainment industry realizes that they are being hostile to the internet and offending many potential consumers with the lawsuits. The problem is that there is no viable alternative at the moment.
Honestly, look at the alternatives they have:
Put heavy copy protection on DVD's or TV broadcasts.
Overturn Betamax - make all recording illegal.
Shut down the programs which allow filesharing.
Lower prices to point of where it is not worth stealing.
Sue downloaders / sharers.
The only one that seems to be non-hostile towards the internet is lowering prices, but that one also hurts the industry the most. Betamax and heavy copyright protection would annoy the whole populace as people would not be able to record or have to upgrade their dvd / tv / vcr players. Shutting down the programs has already been tried and that failed.
Therefore, it kind of makes sense that they sue the users. It is a fright tactic - one that they will use until a better alternative pops up. It only hurts the guilty (for the most part - there are exceptions...) and does not cost them extreme amounts of profit.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
I think it's more to do with declines in cinema attendance. By the time a movie is on DVD, people aren't going to see it at the cinema anyway, and the industry still profits from DVD rentals..
:) I really don't have a problem with this though, since the last time we took the whole family out to a "new" release it set me back over $40. (back in 2001 anyways) Another on the cheap, at least here in Montana is I get unlimited dvd rentals for a whole $20 a month from the local store. Then again, I live in the lowest wage paying state in the union. ugh!
Actually, here we have a "dollar" theater, so Monday through Thursdays it $1.00, Friday - Sundays it's $10 for two adults, with a large popcorn and 2 sodas. (kids under 12 are still a buck btw)
Of course, all movies come to this theater AFTER the dvd is released, but then again... some movies are a must see on the big screen.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
It is not as flawed as you presume. The period is highly unstable and subject to external forces, but eventually it swings.
When you repress your own businesses, the market goes elsewhere. That is the free market theory at least. To date the swing of the pendlum often leaves countries totally devistated in its wake if it goes to far, but the regions recover even if the political systems don't.
I beleive that the current economic trends are tanamount to disaster and if the "ugly" can come on fast enough to be noticed by the populace they may act to fixe it.
We are boiling frogs here (to mix a metaphore). If the "Broadcast flag" (for instance) were to "suddenly go live tomorrow" it would be gone in a year. If we let it ease in slowly we may be stuck with it for decades.
As it is now, the "rising rate-rate of litigation" (yes, rate twice) is enough that our economic partners around the world are starting to notice and scatter. But consider that this change of rate has been exhibited almost solely in my lifetime (or more correctly in Ralph Nader's professional lifetime). It has not yet become ensconsed in our "perminant" way of life, it hasn't outlived a generation cradle-to-grave. It isn't "tradition", so it is possible to escape it *IF* we can get the public to see the precipice.
I don't really "wish" for the colapse as some kind of nielist orgastic ideal. I have just become convinced that it is essentially enevitable.
(To continue to mix metaphores) we *really* need to pull the band-aid(tm) off quick, or we are going to lose a _heck_ of a lot of hair... 8-)
But even if the entire United States colapses economically (which would be hard to do given that we grow lots of food) business and creativity will simply rise somewhere else.
It's not a pretty pendulum. It's not a "local" pendulum. But the cycle persists.
Wehn it gets totally out of wack, we (editorial we not royal or possessive we) throw a war...
Oh wait...
How many wars does any given "we" get before the world calls a time-out? 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
USENET binary groups are very well organized, USENET is very easy to search, all the "scene" releases go to USENET (and they are clean, working, and high quality), there are less viruses and false stuff on USENET than any of the p2p networks, and people on USENET post alerts if/when a virus is posted and discovered. .par (parity) files WORK.
Fills for missing parts of scene releases are easy to obtain, and
just by clicking on details you can see the ip adresses for everyone your connected to. I am amazed it got so big for pirating movies.
But what exactly does that have to do with filesharers?
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
Fuck Cox! How dare they listen to someone who's not their customer without contacting said customer before acting. These are the type of jerks that pass out ip-timestamp info sans subponea.
At least Verizon went to court sucessfully defending their customers ids!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Have you ever wondered why E-books haven't taken off?
The book industry despite rumours to the contrary aren't fools.
They've seen what technology has done to the movie and music industry(1).
"People pirate what is easy to pirate. That's how I pirate! Audio and video cassettes made pirating copyrighted materials easier, but not particularly easy, because it takes too long to copy and distribute copyrighted materials that way."
The same can be said for books. Plus the book industry can outpublish any pirate.
(1) Also technology hasn't outbooked the book.
until I called my ISP and said I'd never do it again. Hopefully I'm not one of the 200.
That does not seem *much* easier. Sure typing that out verbatim would be easy, I'll grant you that. But it takes time to find out which switches need to be enabled and can take quite a few tries to get the result you are looking for. dvdgrowisofs is a program right? How would I know I needed that, and is there some list out there that rates which programs (that do basically the same thing) are most liked by users? In addition, do you know of any newbie friendly sites that list why commands are called what they are, IE CRON = runs scheduled tasks, but why is it called CRON? I am basically looking for a site that tells me what I should type to install programs but also why I typed it. Like use the -d switch so it will expand directories. (i made that up) I was raised on DOS so command lines are not new, I just want a site that tells me WHY as well as HOW. Thanks in advance.
Thats how dude
Here in AU , there was one small food shop in the cinema complex giving away FREE POPCORN with a coke for $1.50, now the cinema complex people (village road show) got really pissed of at this and tried their hardest to find excuses in their lease to kick them out, because it was eating into their $6.50 popcorn sales (or $11 for drink/popcorn combos).
Seams like normal CAPITALIST competition is but a fake dream CON ARTIST job in the real world where pure 'mafia musolini' style monopolies are the rule of thumb.
Paying the same $$ to see a $5M movie vs a $200M movie isnt fair, sure its easier for people to have one price for all, but really if they started having a tiered pricing scheme for older/smaller movies the customers arent gona complain, they just wont see the full price movies as a first choice and thats what the big guys want. Its not a free market , its a rigged/controlled market. A real true free market would have fixed cost + margin deals on movies, so each movie would be a diff price. But like I said, this would price out the big block busters and make smaller independant movies more attractive.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I think all the freeloader downloaders filesharers are actually cutting into underground mafia profiteers and street corner sellers. Which are probably run by people with in the industry any way, so perhaps to 'increase' their profits, they want to 'stamp' down on the freeloaders which are giving zero profits to their 'mafia' friends/associates.
Eh Tony.
buda bind
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Start playing whack-a-mole with usenet and we get alt.veggies.leek.die.die.die or similar.
Wonder how long it takes before sysadmins at large ISPs realize that it's less time consuming to filter the traffic to and from the RIAA than it is to filter usenet. Occam's Razor and all that.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Listening to inconsiderate people answer their damn cell phones, as well as make comments like "Oh, watch now, he's going to die!" before it happens, and twits who bring their small children in because they can't find a babysitter and the kid cries through the entire movie.
I'd go to the movies more often if it were (a) less expensive (last time I went with my wife and kid, it cost us over $40), and if the theaters would actually remove people who were not considerate of the other patrons. The staff are so afraid of pissing a customer off by asking them to shut up or leave that they piss customers off by not asking the inconsiderate ones to shut up or leave.
Given that, I'd much rather pay to rent a film and watch it at home - sound system in the house isn't much less impressive than the modern theater anyways...
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Hey, speaking of solving problems, I know there have got to have been some other slashdotters who have commented on your sig - Dr. Spock was some sort of child psychologist in the 70's, and Mr. Spock was from Star Trek. Are you really quoting the Dr. in your sig, or are you quoting the Leonard Nimoy character?
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Ok, maybe I'm being a bit naive, but are you people who are getting C&D letters using SafePeer or an equivalent? And if not, why not?
Or is SafePeer just proving to be ineffective?
-- Gary F.
I think that a lot of people download movies/songs over peer to peer simply because "they can".
The desire to actually watch a particular movie or obtain a particular song may not be all that great . But you've got a lot of bandwidth and you can pull the movie for free so why not?
Once some sort of real cost is added to that people will start thinking twice. They lived without downloadable movies before and don't really need the MPAA following through on their threat so they will just stop.
Of course, that doesn't mean those people will necessarily be handing over more money to members of the MPAA.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Ashcroft is retiring!!! Then again, I might want to marginalize my previous statement, since I am placing my negative karma in the hands of a dude that looks a hairy Comic Book Dude from the Simpsons. . .
http://www.drudgereport.com/
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
So easy to get around that....
keep a system on a website database of who has what CDs, and trade using the uni postal system or bar trading.
Burn 20 blanks, swap for another 20 movies.
1. much faster
2. face to face
3. untraceable (at least more so)
Sure its more effort, but you get more at ONE session.
Do a 'copy party' like in the 80s too, lotsa beer + music, and 10 PCs with burners gallore going at 52x for 8hrs nonestop. Or bring your firewire 200G hd to swap REAL FAST!!!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Yeah, the people downloading it don't want to pay shit.
No amount of "cheap" will beat free.
And I imagine they didn't need the lawyers to talk them into pursuing copyright violators, if I had shit that was getting warezed to no end I'd pursue one or two myself.
It's not yours to give out. If I catch you, you're fucked. If you don't like that, work to change the law, don't just ignore it and act all indignant and justified when you get screwed.
The MPAA should stop suing people and instead concentrate on hooking people up with boyfriends and girlfriends.
Couples got to the movies more often than individuals.
In part that is so they can stop having to talk to each other for a while without risking offence.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Let's be honest. The costs of tracking these people down, having lawyers send out letters and to even bother to threaten legal action in parallel to the RIAA is far too expensive.
What's the average settlement been for people sharing Britney? Roughly 3000$? Its not a viable source of revenue, its certainly not PR friendly and it definetly won't get people into theatres.
It would be much nicer to see that incentive put in to making movies affordable. Up North here, its about 10$ for a movie ticket. Now take your wife and 2 kids to see the new Disney crapathon, buy a coke and a popcorn for everybody, and you've just hit 60$ to take the kids out to a flick. Its terribly unaffordable.
Not that its a reason to "steal", but even then, the product downloaded (unless its a DVD) isn't comparable to the product the RIAA puts out. A cd is a cd in your discman or in mp3, ogg (insert format of choice here). You can't yet substitute a screen the size of Brando's ass on your computer yet. I've downloaded a couple of flicks to see if they were worth seeing on a big screen with friends, and they weren't, but just like music is now, I have a means of checking before buying. Critiques of films mean nothing, everything gets 3 thumbs up.
This litigation is totally out in left field relative to the problems (if any) downloading causes to theatre revenue, and irrelevant to the people who download significant amounts of movies.
I'm just guessing (yeah, dangerous) that the MPAA picked up the people off kazaa or something. I doubt it was BT, seeing as the RIAA hasn't tracked anyone down through that anyways (I could be wrong).
And truth be told, if you're significantly downloading DVD rips, its not off Kazaa.
I note that the most adaptive/innovative industry to online content suffers the most copyright violations, still makes money hand over fist, and does not seem to indulge in mass-market litigation: the porn industry.
Given that the porn industry probably suffers more copyright violations than the RIAA and the MPAA combined (at least online), where are the great crusaders like Orin Hatch to protect their rights?
Why no speeches of how downloaders are taking the very food out of porn star's mouths?
Yeah, it's great that everyone can get on their high horse about protecting IP until there is a blowjob involve (hi stinky dead princess).
And I note the porn industry is adapting to it's new digs quite well, and wonder if the RIAA/MPAA feels abashed that they might have to follow the porn industry's lead in offering content.
Until the bullshit level on both sides of the P2P debate lessens, know that the litigation and downloading will continue to increase, and the escalation may ruin it for all.
Meanwhile, wouldn't it be funny if porn ends up taking a bite of the MPAA's market share by going legit?
Since the lawsuits have started, I have quit buying any products from companies represented by the RIAA. Now I will also boycott MPAA products.
So far, my quality of life is no different than before. Maybe slightly improved by the additional money in my pocket. I spend some of it to see live music. I buy wine and books with the rest.
It's gotten to the point where the best thing to do is to shoot your TV and spend more time taking the dog for a walk. And don't buy another CD or DVD until they end the shakedown. 86 the bastards. It's a luxury, not a necessity.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Lesssee here. You willingly re-elected a president who has done more damage to the bill of rights than any person in the country's history. A man who has shown a clear preference for the interests of large corporations over the people he is supposed to lead. So the *AA's abusive and heavy handed tactics are surprising... how?
It seems that this is clearly the kind of thing Americans want. If the capacity for outrage doesn't exist for prisoners of war abused in Iraq, if it doesn't exist for voting machine manufacturers pledging money and support for only one party, if it doesn't exist for the zero accountability expected of the Enron, Worldcom, and Haliburton criminals... why should any American give a second thought to the people who will be fscked by the MPAA?
As has been said by people more eloquent than I, it's too late anyway.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Tired of the boring ol' "Spot the Fed" game at Defcon? In this article, we can play "Spot the Astroturfer"! No t-shirts, just pride, but then again you don't have to try to expense a Vegas trip to an increasingly suspicious finance dept. So I think it works out even.
Pay special attention to phrases repeated by supposedly different posters (even though that's also a staple of genuine Slashdotters), and ACs replying to themselves with "I agree!".
Get spotting, and post your Astroturfer-spotting tips here!
"The MPAA just went to the ER screaming that they're on death's door, suffering from a painful and spreading illness, but when the doctor asked them to point to where it hurts, they said 'I'm not going to tell you.'"
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I don't think this is smart on their part at all. As someone who knows about the process of digitizing footage and the whole encode/decode thing I can tell you flat out this won't work. The movie industry is even more screwed than the RIAA and here is why.
The RIAA has to compete with people sharing their cd's amongst their friends and on file sharing networks. Due to the files small size the later is more prevalent and their greatest challenge.
The MPAA has to compete with blockbuster and netflix that for $15 dollars a month will send you unlimited DVD's of all your favorite movies (barring new releases in theatres) and file shareing of increasingly broadband using households. They can try and take down the file sharing aspect as the RIAA has but will fail miserably as the RIAA has. A lengthy debate on this could be had but suffice to say p2p is not going anywhere anytime soon. Even if they do succeed in making a dent in p2p those same people who were spending days and hours downloading films will simply take the safe way out and start getting unlimited rentals from their local blockbuster or netflix and if they are serious and expediant could get everything they ever wanted in better quality and faster and safer. I could run to the blockbuster down the street get a $15 dollar pass and run back and forth from my house copying 3 movies on each run. The MPAA is only going to push people from one thing to another, and once they go to the other the people at blockbuster are going to be mighty surprised by the strange account activity.
It is peer-to-peer and egalatarian as hell, but everybody (with linux anyway) already has the software and you have to search it *by* *hand*.
.There's also probably even more viruses and false stuff on usenet than P2P networks
.nzb files were introduced. You may take these posts on Newzbin and import all the associated headers into many usenet binary programs now with these .nzb files. No need to manually update heades and search through them. Just search newzbin, hit the button, make sure .nzb is associated with a supported program, and the your download begins.
.nzb and complete header indexing service, you must pay a small monthly fee. An experimential release of grabit, http://www.shemes.com/, however, allows you to search through recent headers posted throughout usenet and then select them for download. This latest build is avaialbe in the announcements forum.
Usenet can kind of be a pain to search sometimes . .
No need to anymore. http://www.newzbin.com/ indexes all the binaries posted to usenet. Newzbin sorts groups of headers into single posts that you can search through for free. Relatively recently
However, for the
Also, http://www.packetnews.com/, an IRC search engine, has a currently unavailable option to also search usenet. I'm not sure of the details, but it does say (soon!)
As I understand the US law, when a duality exists in some form of technology, when it has the potential for both legitamate and illegal use, as long as it can be show that the technology is at least capable of having widescale legitamate uses, it is legal. Usenet is ancient among internet standards, dating back all the way to 1979. For much of its existence it was used solely for communication; this fuction is still used to a large extent today. Even while it is being used for illegal purposes, it cannot be shut down anymore than knives and axes can be banned for their continued role in crime and murder.
"Of course, suing thousands of naive kids and tech-illiterate grannies"
Guess they never saw those PSAs on TV or Radio about copyright infringement.
"...isn't really going to stop an onslaught of millions of infringers, and does have a chilling effect on legitimate uses such as mine"
Now who would have thought that people using a legitimate (1) technology in illegitimate ways would have such bad consequences. Bet we didn't see that coming.
"... and does play right into the old line about making all citizens into criminals to keep them under control."
Is that their line, our the copyright infringers? Because I've never heard them say they're "making all citizens" (just the ones who infringe) into crimminals for the purposes of control.(2)
"So even though it's the right way to do it, I'm not sure what good it does."
You never know till you try.
(1) Obscuring of identity throws the whole "legitimate use" argument into a shaky gray area.
(2) Maybe people are mad because what they want to control isn't citizens, but their property. Gee I know it makes me mad when I can't control the citizens who want to steal my property.
You represent a drop in the bucket. Background noise.
Quack, quack.
Um..no?
/mnt/movies/
Seriously though, vobcopy -l -o
Thats what big drives are for (I really only hoard a few movies at any given time..)!
Quack, quack.
Why use a i2hub?
Over here in Sweden, we have all the unies connected through an own network with a good connection to the other ISPs of Sweden.
So with a good DC++ hub (read ancient][spirit (only 10Mbit+ users with proven 600KB/s upload speeds allowed entry)), even me with community fiber, get a speed at around 800KB - 1MB/s most of the time.
You also won't have snooping up your arse as of yet.
Buy all your crazy japanese videogames from
"Here in AU , there was one small food shop in the cinema complex giving away FREE POPCORN with a coke for $1.50, now the cinema complex people (village road show) got really pissed of at this and tried their hardest to find excuses in their lease to kick them out, because it was eating into their $6.50 popcorn sales (or $11 for drink/popcorn combos)."
I thought that Australia is socialist (like canada)? Anyway I wasn't aware that guns were involved in the purchasing of refreshments. When I go to a movie, I either buy the smallest or do without (just say no to obesity).
"Paying the same $$ to see a $5M movie vs a $200M movie isnt fair, sure its easier for people to have one price for all, but really if they started having a tiered pricing scheme for older/smaller movies the customers arent gona complain, they just wont see the full price movies as a first choice and thats what the big guys want. Its not a free market , its a rigged/controlled market. A real true free market would have fixed cost + margin deals on movies, so each movie would be a diff price."
Funny how people complain about region controls and different prices on DVD's, but apparently not when it comes to the common Australian and his/her movie. Anyway we in the states already have that. You can WAIT for a few weeks, then go to the cheap theaters, or go on weekends which is cheaper. Your complaint is similiar to someone complaining about the high price of the NEW video card that just came out. Just WAIT, show some self-control.
"If big actors like Tom Cruise didnt demand $25m per movie, then overall movies would be cheaper as all the other sub actors / contractors wouldnt ask for so much either. Is any actor really worth >$5000/day ? If they just asked for $2m and 2% of royalities that would be fairer."
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!
*falls out of chair*
Oh I'm sorry, but I find this too rich for words.
On the one hand we have the RIAA and the infringers argument "But the artists isn't making any money.", while on the MPAA hand we have the infringers argument "But the artist are making too much money."
I swear I give up. You can't win with this crowd. Nothing you will ever say or do will be good enough for them.
"Inflation is the govts fault for 'inflating' the money supply (check the feds m1/m2/m3 supplies) by lending out so much money for home loans and CCs. If every year you get a 5% increase in cash circulation then you have more $$$ looking for fewer goods which equals higher prices to counteract the imbalance. 5% inflation is the same as 5% hidden tax, except theres no way OUT of it for the average 9-5joe6pack."
Translation: all the reasons for infringing involve "it's all their fault". No "I can look inside myself and find the fault".
(begin sarcasm)
/. tried to download the 30MB movie they have on that site... (not saying that it should be attempted. or anything. *cough*)
"Illegal downloading is rated I: Inappropriate for all ages"
Illegal downloading hurts Jane Phillis, the animal food-tray cleaning team supervisor!
(end sarcasm)
I wonder what would happen if everyone on
Disclaimer: This comment was generated by a Flock of Trained Microsoft Programmers for Aqua_Geek.
alt.binaries.leek
I remember when that happened, too damn funny.
But, I think the only reason we haven't seen a massive legal attack on usenet is that it is still an order of magnitude more complicated to use than the p2p client of the day.
Even the premium services are known to react to DMCA take-down notices and delete content from their servers. A concerted effort to send out tens of thousands of DMCA take-down notices would result in so much overhead cost that any ISP that was not primarily an NNTP provider would immediately cease carrying anything that even looked like a binary and might even just cancel their news service compeltely.
The premium guys would either go under or raise their rates and once a sizable chunk of the usenet hosts had caved, propogation would go down the shitter severely reducing the "product quality" from the premium services to the point of losing customers.
Now, if anyone thinks this is a brilliant analysis or whatever, don't mode it up else the various Ass's of America might just possibly get some ideas.
Sometimes I have to ask myself, what do I get out of copyright as it stands today? Public domain is stale with little adding to it while production of copyrighted works and profit from them is at an all time high. The works I want aren't (legaly) avainlable here anyway, not to mention insane prices compared to typical income. What do I get? Marketing to get me excited over things I can't buy, thank you copyright!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
..movie pirates in China and Phillipines are complaining about people illegally distributing the movies that they so painfully pirated.
how many copyright infringement lawsuits are carried out in asia where pirating has been going on for years? could it be that asian organized crime is to powerful to mess with while us normal people are easier to pick on. is the peer to peer pirating far more harmful that the organized pirating that goes on all over the world. or is it a loss that the entertainment companies have the guts to go after. can u imagine the entertainment lawyers insisting on going after pirating operations in let's say....north korea, how about nigeria,serbia, armenia, burma or china! yeah right. it's alot easier to go after mom and pop on the cox network for the songs their kids are down-loading.
"If Iran sent me a notice saying that I'm violating so shariat laws, I'd send an equally vocal and Fuck-you letter to them."
:).
I liked your whole letter, but this part especially. Good examples bring it all into focus
You should donate to freenet or a similar anonymous p2p application. This will allow you to share again in the future.
This kind of applications will you pausible deniabilty.
Note that the anonimy is reached by routing your traffic through other peers so this is inevitably slower than kazaa/torrent/emule/dc/...
Why doesn't people use WASTE when sharing??
...waste as a kio_slave proto!!! MOD ME UP!! START CODING NOW!! I'LL DONATE MY CHEERING!!
Why isn't there a WASTE plugin for existing tools??
Why isn't there a native Linux client??
Why don't I do it myself (ok, I know that one...I can't find the time for it).
Oh shit, I just got this idea
I was joking! Seems like the moderator either is a religion fundamentalist or has no sense of humour et al.
Your head a splode
But what about all the mental piracy? Surely that counts for something...
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Or an easier way:
1) Walk to [store of your choice]
2) Buy DVD
3) Walk home and watch
You don't lose any of the extras and that movie you bough might just get a sequel because of the money you spent on it. PLUS it looks hell of a lot better on the shelf than blank DVDRs =)
"I got a warning letter from my friends at MGM and bay TSP about illegally sharing my 2 episodes of stargate atlantis."
The focus of these discussions always centers on how wrong it is for someone to be sharing or how wrong the **AA are to be suing people for piracy.
I think we have a spelling problem. The issue is not piracy, it's privacy.
People are so interested in whether or not they should be allowed to share. No one seems interested in the fact that they KNEW you were sharing. Did they get a warrant? That should be the issue.
The suits are not the problem; they are a symptom of the ability of others to know what you do in your home.
The US system of government & justice is built around the idea that (to use a Star Trek metaphor that will be easily understood) The rights of the one outweigh the rights of the many.
The right of the individual to privacy in their home should outweigh the right of the many to have copyrights.
Without a warrant & just cause, stay out of peoples houses.
A monopoly *does* exist when the barriers to entry are high. Your post seems to imply that it would be no more difficult to get a movie into your own cinema than to open up an ice-cream parlour?
C'mon
That reminds me - I had purchased an interesting Miles Davis double-album, and I had taken it to work. A co-worker, who was "into" Miles Davis, the first words out of his mouth - "Wow, that looks like a cool album... can I make a copy of it?". The first words out of his mouth.
See, that's when I think that the culture needs to be reworked a little bit. What my co-worker said bothered me. LITERALLY the first words out of his mouth "Wow, that's cool, can I make a copy of that". Is that rude or am I just out of touch?
I changed the subject and I have been avoiding that individual. I can appreciate that he might enjoy jazz or whatever, and I am not trying to be a jerk about this, but there is just something about the way he said it, the ease with which he said it, as if it was the best course of action... I just didn't think that was right.
So generally speaking, I think that when the culture has gotten to the point where making copies is the default, then yes, there is a problem as far as the artist-audience connection. People ought to be in a situation where they realize that their financial contribution to an artist is making it possible for that artist to continue to produce works of art that people will continue to enjoy. Sneaking around and copying this and copying that only seems to be a correct course of action to many people because they can't see how it will hurt anything if they make a copy. It's a small person vs big record company attitude, instead of a beneficial audience-artist connection, audience contributing to artist as a form of appreciation and to encourage further development of artwork in the future.
On the other hand, I do think that boxed sets, and many things, as a matter of fact, when you can't afford them, seem to be a lot better than what they actually are. The music albums / movies take on a more spiritual, dream-like quality when you can't afford them, but when you finally save up the money and finally have the money to afford it, all too often it's not really as wonderful as you imagined that it might be, kind of a let down sometimes.. but you aren't willing to admit it to yourself, having saved up your money for so long. There is too much HYPE and not enough creativity going on - mainly as a result of there not being enough opportunities for artists, musicians, and filmmakers to express themselves.
Furthermore, file sharing is also one of those thing that eventually people will get sick of, and, as such, "fighting" it isn't really going to accomplish anything, because the "fight" that needs to be taking place should be happening in the artistic and creative parts of the mind of the consumer - in other words - deliver a quality product, and help the talented individuals reach the consumers, and create a culture where the consumers can feel free to explore their own personalities, likes, and dislikes, while enabling a greater variety and diversity of filmmakers and musicians an opportunity to cater to the evolving likes and dislikes of the audience.
This is not happening - people are "high" on file-sharing, and eventually they will come down, because you can't share something that doesn't exist. Just like if you won the lottery and could buy any music or movie you wanted to... eventually you would sort of come down. You can't buy something that doesn't exist - the problem is that these things could exist - it's not so much how the consumer acquires it, the problem is how do you make it happen - how do you turn it from an idea in someone's head into a real live work of art? Making this process more real, more visible, more personal to the consumer, instead of the typical Hollywood "shock and awe" marketing and promotion that many films, and to some extent new music releases recieve, will allow individuals to make that crucial connection to the artist, the hard work of the artist, and infuse the consumer world with concerns about the future well-being and continued success of that artist.
MPAA, RIAA?
There being awfully tough on us although I think I can take it, but what's next....
Oh dear god...
My porn, my beautiful porn.
Wrong... you don't need a DVD burner. I find the quality of an OGG movie with XViD encoding, when appropriately sized to fit on a regular CD, more than sufficient.
When you can walk into a store, pay $16.99 for a DVD, new release, or less for an older movie, and you get not just the movie, but trailers (who watches these?), commentary, featurettes, and subtitles, I think this is a reasonable price to pay for a DVD. I see no reason to share these movies with strangers.
Now, paying $16.99 or more for a CD with 10-12 songs, 9 of which I couldn't care less about, that's another story. While I haven't and won't share, I can certainly understand the argument.
So I don't really have a problem with MPAA doing this, as long as the prices stay where they are as a result.
It's a shame, really. I guess the MPAA just don't like making money.
It's been a long time.
I agree. If it's a "must have" then buy it. If it's an "I'd like to see that but am not sure I will like it" then rent. If it's a "piece of shit" then ignore it. Don't get me wrong, I love bittorrent, but only for stuff that I can't get otherwise. Besides, Pokerstars runs like crap when I'm downloading large files. Not acceptable. ;-)
They are going after the wrong people. The could stop about 3/4 of the piracy by cleaning up their own studios. A lot of those early DVD screeners all get out because of insiders and movie cam captures are a problem with theaters. Stop piracy there not at the end.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
...that these conglomerates (RIAA, MPAA, OHS) release statements such as this one to the press, wait a bit for all of you/us to piss and moan about it, then troll for posts such as; "I NEVER download pr0n/movies/music/CCNs from Razaa, Morpheum or Sploogenet!"
In this way, every bitch-fest and tirade generated by their comments/suits gives them that many more places to FIND A REASON (evidence) to justify another round of suits.
My advice? STFU and let them blow smoke. If you don't download, pin a gold star on your balls - and good for you. Dissent if it makes you happy, but don't fuck it up for everyone else.
-TPH.
... ice is cold.
Is there anyone out there that doesn't already know this? Tell me if this sounds familiar:
1. The ??AA Sues a file sharer.
2. Jane Doe, spokesperson for the ??AA reports "File sharing is bad".
3. The EFF steps in on the side of the defendant, stating "Information wants to be free". 4. ??? 5. Profit!
Not a troll, but the whole story should be modded -1 Redundant.
Caffene is a diruetic, so that could explain it, especially if he's drinking mass quantities.
Yeah, right.
eom
Movie warez is a drop in the bucket. Right or wrong, warez is not costing the MPAA anything. The MPAA spends more on marketing than list at retail every movie downloaded.
The true and measurale loss is the actual theft and bootlegging of movies. The guys standing the street corner selling movies are the real criminals here. Stop that, and you ought to see a reflection in sales figures.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Are there any P2P clients out there that are effective in hiding your identity as a sharer? I know I read that when the RIAA started suing people that it was just a matter of time before someone invented a client that protects those who are sharing files, but I wonder if it's even technically possible. The Gnutella protocol effectively made SEARCHING for files anonymous, but actually transferring a file establishes a connection to the IP address, which can always be traced. Any ideas for accomplishing something like this? Is it technically possible? I am familiar with the freenet project, but to my understanding this isn't really for large file sharing. Any thoughts?
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Trading many movies is nearly imposssible in the USA.. However the MPAA is probably powerless to sue traders in other countries where a 2 hour movie takes a few minutes to download.
The people who will buy, buy. The people who won't, don't. The people who *may* don't exist.
...it is those that will, not the people that may which doesn't exist. I can only speak from my collective experience with friends, co-students, family, friends of my parents, co-workers, people I have met in work relationships and so on. Many of them fall into the "pirate some, buy some", few into the hardcore "pirate *everything*" but also very few in the "priate *nothing*" department.
In my experience, the biggest customers are also some of their greatest pirates. I got friends that are into music; gigs of mp3s and lots of CDs. Friends that are into movies? gigs of divx and lots of DVDs. Though I also know people with lots of mp3s and divx, but barely any CDs or DVDs.
What happens when you have some content which you don't get online, and some that you do? It is the car alarm principle. As long as you're the only one with the alarm (protection), they steal (pirate) the rest and skip (buy) yours. Once everyone has an alarm, it doesn't do anything at all.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Excuse me for objecting and excuse me in advance for possibly starting another flamewar on physical versus intelctual property.
By what logic is going into a WalMart and taking physical goods which will need to be replaced the same as downloading a tv-show that has been broadcasted on public radiowaves/cable/whatever?
Yes. I do understand the issue of not watching the show with advertisement theoretically reduces the networks income, I do. But ads being as braindead as they are really don't stand a chance in hell increasing sales from any normally intelligent person. Modern advertisement is offendingly stupid. I can't remember last time I bought anything being advertised for. I can remember buying stuff I downloaded first though.
I will be honest and admit that I fully remembver downladoing stuff, sampling it, screaming "freakin' crap", deleting it and never ever wanted to see that movie, that album or whatever it was again.
But you can sample music in the record store. Why not use the net instead for sampling? You cant however sample dvds in the store. I say the net has it's purpose on this one.
And guys, remember, copyright is a priveledge granted on the basis that things be released into the public domain after a limited period of time. Copyright now being perpetual... Well screw copyright.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
-
I suspect the answer is "no". They don't make any money when you watch a download. If you pay for it on DVD, or watch a sponsored TV station, then they get money and they're happy.
Way, they make money - didn't killjoe just say he follows the series? (on the TV) - So from that one can conclude he pays he's monthly (or quarterly, how ever they do it in the USofA..) (cable-) TV fee?So he has allready payed for the *damn* thing.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
It's when you use the internet for something people have been doing for as long as we can remember (almost) you are funding terrorists and threaten the existance of multi-million incomes for the **aa-executives. Then it becomes illegal. That's pure logic.
Ok. It's posted. Now you can mod me down.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
sooo bush has moved from hilter to the anti-christ...??
BWAHAHAHHAHAHAAHHAA
You LOOOOOSERS just can't MoveOn.org can you...?
you lose
again
hard
move to europe like you keep bitching about, pussies...you are done here
You have no rights.
You are not a corporation.
Your imagination outstrips your power.
Just which file sharing systems are being sued these days? KaZaa obviously. dc++ at some colleges. Who else? Are some system proving more resistant than others to legal assault?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now isn't that obvious?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have a Comcast cable connection that is NATed. I have a 192.168.0 address on their side of my cable modem. If I were to use Azureus to download a torrent of some illegal movie, how would the legal team at the MPAA trace me? I am assuming they would see some sort of gateway/proxy Comcast address make a peering connection to them (if they were the ones posting a torrent for download - isnt that entrapment?). They would have to then reverse map that IP back to Comcast who would then have to identify my node as having sent/received torrent streams from all the nodes sharing the gateway/proxy. Anyone out there work for Comcast or know how an individual user would be identified in this scenario?
Various examples:
RELIGION:
=========
Catholic censorship <-> Protestant Reformation <-> Catholic Counterreform.
Bible fundamentalism <-> Atheism <-> Stronger bible fundamentalism <-> NeoPaganism (wicca, new age).
Bible fundamentalism <-> Evolutionism <-> Creation science.
POLITICS:
=========
Imperial Colonialism <-> Islamic extremism <-> semitic extremism <-> Terrorism <-> Operation Iraqi freedom, Yee haw!
So, if the pendulum analogy works on the things MOST SACRED for men (religion and their view of the world), what tells us that it won't work for file sharing?
file sharing <-> lawsuits against programmers <-> more file sharing <-> lawsuits against sharing networks <-> even more agressive file sharing <-> lawsuits against individuals <-> underground (encrypted) file sharing.
We're already seen this last stage of the pendulum. File sharers are beginning to use more cryptic activities, and closed networks to cover their tracks. Eventually, this is leading to whole underground encrypted networks (the Freenet project, the WASTE subnetworks, etc).
Place your bets.
[SIMPLE]
They sue the "owner" of that cable connection.
You pay for it.
You make it available to whomever your choose.
You have become responsible for whatever happens in regard to it.
[/SIMPLE]
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I am not referring to the fact that it could be my wife's, or son's machines, but how does Comcast identify my account? As i said, my whole Cable connection is NAT-ed upstream at comcast.
Oh good lord, movie piracy has nothing to do with civil disobedience. It's a large mix of a) People who don't even know it's wrong. b) People who know it's illegal, but much like j-walking don't care, or don't think they'll get caught, so it's worth the risk. c) Minors who don't realise that the law applies to them too or d)The people who are either b or c, and want an excuse. What the MPAA is doing is applying the law to those who are breaking it. Bravo for them.
millions of people are breaking the law, and we can solve this by taking a couple of hundred of them and fucking them over in a way they nowhere near deserve, in order to scare everybody else.
The penalties for copyright infringement have been well know for a long time and the MPAA has always been good at letting the consumer know what the penalties are. Just because the digital age has made it much easier to violate copyrights does not make it more legal. People don't do it because they are making a point, they do it because they don't think they'll get caught and don't want to pay for the product.
Retail DVD movie prices have dropped steadily since I purchased my first player in 1998. I can now buy a movie for less than it would cost to buy two tickets and a bag of popcorn at the theater, they even come with tons of extra content. Or I can rent it for next to nothing. These people are too cheap to buy the movie, AND too CHEAP AND LAZY to rent it and return it. So I say, sue away MPAA, that's what the law is there for!
If you have a complaint, complain about the methods the MPAA and RIAA use to discover the accused infringers. But don't whine about them having a law enforced.
Downloading music/movies/whatever is NOT stealing. It should not be considered a crime by our legal system.
How's this for a solution to film piracy? 1. Make film (Citizen Kane: starring Adam Sandler or something). 2. Make a VCD cut and make blank label vcd's, using the economies of scale, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate vcd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies. 3. Sell the film as a download for the same price as you get for the vcd. ...wait a few weeks
4. Make a nicer, longer dvd cut of the film and sell this on no label media like the the vcd.
5. Sell the dvd cut online at the same price as the DVD wholesale price. .... wait some more
6. Theatre release of film in lovely THX/35mm
7. Boxed set dvd release with extra everything.
8. Forget chasing 'pirates'
9. Profit!!!
By doing this you make money from the guys selling 'pirated copies' of films and money from people who can't be bothered to find a torrent of your film.
The money saved on lawyers and advertising would probabley pay for setting up the servers.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
You wanna swap? Crime here is rising fast, coincidentally you are not allowed a gun, mace or even pepper spray to defend yourself.
Booby trap your house so a burglar breaks his leg? He will sue you and win. Meanwhile the government will prosecute you for infringing safety laws.
But surely it is safer with no guns? No. Drive-by shootings are getting quite common. Shootings of all kinds are common. Cops have guns, crooks have guns. You get to stand in the middle.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
This would be roughly equivalent of a band distributing a sample through Kazaa along with an 800 number to purchase the full track. Their advertising, their material, other people's bandwidth.
For me, I pirate music, games, videos, porn, practically everything. So? There are alot of reasons here (atleast for me.)
.. so who cares if I play it?
1) First and foremost: Frankly, I don't give a shit about whether its illegal or not. If its easy to do and hard to catch, I will do it. This is backed up by the next 3 reasons.
2) I am a very poor person. I can only really afford the internet to give me all my entertainment needs, and in general can't buy shelf after shelf of games. Although, after dl/ing the game, I will buy it if I liked it (This is why I have bought practically every blizz game there is, and also some mechwarrior games. Also, on the music front I have purchased some Elvis Costello cds.) However, there are tons of games I would of simply not bought (I woulda played a MUD or something)
3) Many times, movies and other things are simply not released on DVD. I find it rediculous that I cant get something just because its not for sale, when it exists somewhere. If it isn't for sale legitamately, and is a legit product, I should be able to get it anyway! Case in point: when Firaxis stopped selling Alpha Centauri for PC, the only way you could get it was warez, or $100US on ebay. Thats rediculous.
4) Although in the short term, any material I do not buy hurts the "artist", in the long term, artists will gravitate towards itunes/ebay-model (that basically a site charges a small % to release music on the web, just like ebay) and the middle man (read: RIAA/music industry/bad labels) will be cut out of the loop. I understand this point isn't justification for not buying music/etc., but im just pointing out this is the way it's gonna happen.
5) Information deserves to be free, and this whole "IP" crap is completely bogus. Although one would argue that 'well if you were a musician, how would you like it if you didn't get paid?', there is a more serious issue at hand.
You see, allowing this 'Intellectual Property' crap is going to push us further and further. It's not a surprise that companies want to charge you, and they will start charging you for using products every second you are using. Imagine a windows (ok maybe you use *nix but just think) where they billed you for using it per second. Or what about a song that charged you for each playback? I don't want that crap, and I'm sure other people don't want it either. But that's what its coming to, eventually.
So although pirating stuff is just done because _we want the stuff_, it serves a bigger purpose of not letting mega-corporations get everything they want. This is why I see no reason to encourage people to stop piracy.
In conclusion: although piracy has selfish motives, the bigger effect it has is that it will eventually cut out the middleman, which is ultimately good for everyone involved (minus the nasty corporations.) So, even if I was the artist, I wouldn't want piracy to stop just yet. Too bad humans are just super-short-term thinkers.