Australian P2P Sites Disappear Overnight

An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of a raid on an Australian ISP, local P2P site operators are shutting down operations in droves, according to community site Whirlpool. The raid was the result of an investigation by Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), who claim they have a number of targets lined up for future raids. Overnight, a number of sites have shut down or been shut down, and ISPs are reporting major drops in bandwidth usage."

Comments

Won't stop anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: There's money to be made in P2P networks
Fact: If it's not legal in X it's legal in Y
Fact: If company is hassled in X, it goes to Y

You cannot stop P2P, you can only hassle it in the short term.

Re:Good ridence

[Spad]

I pay higher prices for software and music because of the rampant theft.

That is weapons grade FUD and you know it. You pay "higher" prices for software and music because the companies know they can get away with charging those prices. If anyone questions it they can just claim that they were "forced" to raise prices because of piracy.

When was the last time you saw anything come down in price after yet another "successful crackdown on piracy"? In fact, with the exception of the recent drop in CD Album prices (Because they realised that people really aren't willing to pay £15 for one), when was the last time that the price of *any* media product went down instead of up?

Re:Good ridence

[ThosLives]

Actually, you *shouldn't* be paying more for software because other people are "stealing" software. The reason for this is another Econ concept (probably Econ 201 though, rather than 101).

The issue here is that software is not a "limited commodity" in that when I'm using a piece of software I am not preventing someone else from using that piece of software. This is different than, say, a hammer: if I'm using a hammer, you can't use the same hammer. The solution is to create a second hammer, which has an appreciable cost. The replication cost of software / music is almost zero though. A DVD, however, is a limited commodity, because if I'm watching a DVD at my house, the guy down the street can't be watching the same DVD at his house. That's why I'm willing to pay for a DVD; I like the quality and exclusivity of the thing.

Because software / music / etc. is not a type of thing where use is exclusive, the traditional models people use to set prices and make purchases breaks down.

This is like folks saying, "We lost $5M last year due to downloads"; that's not true, that's "we couldn't convice people to pay us for our product." That's not "lost sales" or anything, that's "poor marketing" (I include price setting in "marketing").

That's the real core of the matter though: ownership rules on software and such aren't the same as for automobiles. The old idea of copyrights and stuff isn't going to work any more and we're seeing the first sign of it. What "authors" and "performers" need to do is say, "I'll keep making stuff as long as I get enough people to pay me enough for me to keep doing this." This is a change of outlook from "I want to get as much money as I can from this". Put it this way, if I write a decent piece of software, and people want me to keep writing software, they will be willing to pay me for my programming services. If they don't pay me, I will do something else - supply and demand at its simplest. Under this new scheme, people will still pay musicians because a performance is an exclusive thing - you can only get the experience of being at the performance by, well, being at the performance.

The higher prices you pay for software are to pay for the enforcement of rules, not to protect the software! The other way to look at it is this: If I'm building cars and I need to sell 1,000,000 to pay for the people to make them, I better hope to get that many sales. With software, if I need to sell 1,000,000 to pay for the people to make them, I'd better set my price so that 1,000,000 people pay for it. If I get that sales volume at the price I set, I've done my job; if I want more profit I'd be better to adjust the price / features to get more people to pay me. If some people *don't* pay me, though, I should not care because it doesn't actually cost me anything if they don't pay me. Note that this only applies to downloads and copies, not purchased media (because of the exclusive nature of media)!

While I would advocate a massive reform of intellectual property law in general (including trademarks - what's up with the crazy trademarks I see on logos and stuff?), I also submit that there are currently laws on the books that should be honored. The appropriate course of action isn't to ignore or openly disobey the laws, but to put pressure on the appropriate channels to change the laws.

Re:Good ridence

[cpt kangarooski]

I don't understand how people think that downloading cracked copies of software isn't stealing.

Because it's not. It's illegal, it's just not stealing. Arson isn't stealing. Trespassing isn't stealing. Murder isn't stealing. If they're wrong, they need to be wrong for reasons that stand on their own, rather than by trying to stuff them into a category in which they don't belong.

Generally, I find that there are good reasons for copyright infringement to be illegal, but that most people who throw around loaded terms like 'stealing' don't know what they are, and can't actually make a good argument for their position. They're just appealing to emotion. Don't do that. Appeal to reason.

Simply make the people that are caught pay double the full retail price for each piece of stolen software.

Heh. You should take a look at 17 USC 504. The level of damages you suggest are tremendously low (and kind of vague) in comparison.