MPAA Files Lawsuits Targeting Major Torrent Sites

diverge_s writes "Slyck news reports on a new wave of lawsuits the MPAA has filed against major Bit Torrent search sites including: Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub. From the article: '"Website operators who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of copyrighted works by millions of people are not anonymous - they can and will be stopped," said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. "Disabling these powerful networks of illegal file distribution is a significant step in stemming the tide of piracy on the Internet."'"

Comments

In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

You're either with us or you're with the terrorists

And we've seen what happens to the terrorists

Pick a side

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

And we've seen what happens to the terrorists

they get all bent out of shape and trample each other and loot and burn buildings over a picture a 7 year old could draw

Re:In other words

[darkain]

i read that as "You're either with us or you're with the torrentists"

Re:In other words

[iezhy]

they get tortured, humiliated made fun of?

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

And we've seen what happens to the terrorists

But unfortunately, first we've seen what happens to us.

Re:In other words

[take5]

The word is "torrentistas".
We are talking about a guerrila group here
(like, for example, "Sadinistas"),
not a political sect (like "lefists").

Re:In other words

[smchris]

And we've seen what happens to the terrorists

They die of old age because their dad is best buds with a couple Commanders-in-Chief?

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

There you are you dirty, naughty little troll! I was wondering when you would crawl out of your hole so I could find you.

Re:In other words

[Catbeller]

which terrorists are you talking about? They all died on 9/11, crashing their planes into their targets

The people you are talking about are brown, poor, worship the wrong god (satan, according to one Pentagon big boy), and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. there aren't any terrorists in our Club Torture gulag. The "terrorists" are long dead.

We were torturing the brown people long before they started fighting back effectively, becoming "terrorists" because we conflate brown middle eastern people with the 19 or so hijackers on 9-11.

if they were involved in 9-11, they would have been charged long ago. they weren't and they won't be, because the only "information" we have we cut, froze, beat, and murdered out of over 1000 men. Every time someone cracked and made up a story, Cheney and company announced another color alert to Tom Ridge, much to his surprise. A lot of the people implicated in "terrorism" were fingered by men being drowned in tubs.You'll say anything when they cover your face in plastic wrap and pour water on your mouth. CIA ops who knew it wasn't lethal cracked in minutes when they were tested under the same conditions. Torture is bullshit, torture is worthless. All Bushies got was constant verification of whatever they wanted to hear. Over 90 men died, and the rest will be basket cases until they die.

There aren't any "terrorists" in our custody. To be a terrorist, one has to kill civilians to shock and awe the enem-- wait a minute... Um.

We're torturing the people because of what we IMAGINE THEY MIGHT DO, not for what they've done. They don't dare let any of them go free; they'll turn on us like tortured pit bulls as soon as they get clear. I would, if I were them. They are Iraqi "V's", the men from room V, and they will gun for us until the day they die. We've made the enemy we are so pathetically afraid of.

If anyone in custody is now willing to kill Americans, it's because we manufactured that desire by years of kidnapping wives and kids, torturing the men, hiding the bodies, hiding the crimes. We've made an entire country want to kill us.

And now, with perfect logic, we will point to that willingness to kill us to retroactively prove that the country was full of terrorists. Excuse me. I really want to be sick now.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you move to the middle east to live then you stupid asshole. I'm sure it will be somewhat different than your comfy liberal nerd chair where you posted this drivel from.

Shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

I've bought about 200GBP of DVDs this year as a direct result of downloads from bittorrent. Just thought I'd mention.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[PorkNutz]

Blanks don't count!

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[laughingcoyote]

I know your comment was a joke, but actually in many countries there's a tax on blank media that goes to content providers. So...in many cases, blanks DO count.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Pants75]

Haha. Mod this guy up...

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[m4ttbrian]

I download about a Gigabyte of data via torrents everyday. Take a look at how small my DVD collection is:

http://img351.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mycollect ion0hi.jpg

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Kyoushu]

GBP = Great Britain Pounds

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[jackjeff]

In France for instance it is the case :) At the same moment the government is about to vote the controversial DADVSI law (that some nickname not without reason the "Vivendi-Unversal Studio" law). One of the goal of this law is to suppress the right French ppl have had so far to make a private copy for personal usage of DVDs (they don't suppress for audio CDs though... go figure.. :). So far you have had the right to transfer the videos from the DVD you bought into your iPod (even though you have to hack the DVD protection for that), make a DVD copy of Nemo (in case the kids destroy the original), etc... This also has legitimated the royalites the movie industry gets from the tax on storage devices (CDs, DVDs, Hard Disks, USB keys, iPods, etc... ) And of course they wish to remove the possibility to make copies but WITHOUT SUPRESSING THE TAX AND THE ROYALTIES to the movie industry!! This law was planned to be voted by night on Dec 23rd (yeah, no joke!!), but some congressmen rebelled and added amendments to legalize p2p instead and drag media and public attention to this "hidden" law, planned to be voted in secret on christmas eve. I don't think the law will hellp their decreasing profits (on the contrary), but it will harm our economy for sure... Now... maybe if they made it attractive to "buy" things.. like no fucking DRM, cheaper fees, ppl would actually buy more and they'd make money out of it :) Who would bother dowbload a movie of bad quality on a P2P network and wait days or weeks, while you could buy it for 5 bucks, of better quality, without DRM, and with a faster d/l ?!! But apprently the trend is to double the fee for the next generation DVDs.... they don't get it yet... go on like that and you will file for bankrucpcy and jail half your customers :)

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[cyclomedia]

same here, most of the films, music and games you find on the torrent network are either

1. paris hilton porn 2. not another teen movie 5 3. britney spears 4. mega maina mmorpg tm

or something like that, and being the type of person who prefers obscure films and music and i've already got a copy of #1. and i only have a ps1 and mostly only play doom, sim city 2000/3000 and transport tycoon on my pc.

so yeah, i do download a couple of gigs of torrents a week, but fortunatley i'm "forced" to pay for my favourite things

in other news i'm also a cinema buff and got ripped copies of each lord of the rings film to occupy me in between seeing it at the cinema and buying the boxed set of all 3, and because i'd seen each really big on a big big screen first i was happy to put up with the crapness in the mean time. (oh and i own bladerunner on laserdisc, niiice!)

and quite a few things i've downloaded i already own (generally mp3 copies of music i already own on vynil, or films i have on vhs). in fact i downloaded an albumn the other day i alrady actually haev on cd, but couldnt be bothered to dig it out of the gigantic box of cds that still largely hasnt been unpacked since we moved house last summer. all probably not fair use according to some laywers.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

That is correct. The case in Canada is remarkable.
First, the Canadian Music Industry said "Well, we can't stop online pirating, so we will propose a bill to tax all blank media", which basically included everything from hard-drive, USB sticks, and, of course, blank CDs and DVDs. The bill was passed and the levy went into effect.

About a year later, they said "Well, we *can* stop online piracy, so we will propose a bill that makes it illegal and we will make additional income from legal bullying and litigation".

My biggest problem with that, is that they "forgot" to remove the levy. So now, file-sharing is basically illegal, *and* you have to pay a levy on any media "just in case". Another thing that pisses me off, is that in Canada, you must be considered innocent until you are proven guilty, but that is obviously not the case since you must pay up-front just in case you might be guilty.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[msobkow]

The problem I see is that they take down legal content in the pursuit of pirated DVDs. Why should the BT community that isn't pirating DVDs be paying for the abuse of a few?

With the approach the MPAA applies, bars, clubs, etc. would be shut down when a couple patrons are arrested for drug dealing or prostitution because they're "enabling" the illegal activity. For some reason, there doesn't seem to be a lot of precedence for the *AA approach of shutting down entire businesses when pursuing a few criminals.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[dwandy]

The problem I see is that they take down legal content in the pursuit of pirated DVDs. Why should the BT community that isn't pirating DVDs be paying for the abuse of a few?

Because the *AA's have done such a good job of convincing everyone that copy==pirate that there is no such thing as legal content...

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[DeeKayWon]

First, the Canadian Music Industry said "Well, we can't stop online pirating, so we will propose a bill to tax all blank media", which basically included everything from hard-drive, USB sticks, and, of course, blank CDs and DVDs. The bill was passed and the levy went into effect.

Of the four storage media you list, only one has the levy applied to it — blank CDs. The levy applies to "blank audio recording media", and according to the way they define that, hard drives, USB sticks and blank DVDs are not affected. At one point, the Copyright Board, who decides what media have the levy applied, applied it to portable digital audio players, but the courts struck that down.

About a year later, they said "Well, we *can* stop online piracy, so we will propose a bill that makes it illegal and we will make additional income from legal bullying and litigation".

My biggest problem with that, is that they "forgot" to remove the levy. So now, file-sharing is basically illegal...

Wait, wait, wait. Lost somewhere in your story is the point at which the bill you refer to (bill C-60, I presume) became law. And bill C-60 has not become law. So I don't know what you're on about.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[wubboy]

It would appear that the most (over 51% for sure) of the folks pulling from BT are not grabbing the latest version of linux. No numbers to back such a bold claim, but I'd still stake my next paycheck on it.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Scarblac]

I know that BitTorrent was created to solve a distribution problem, and has plenty of legal uses. The cliche example is Linux CDs. Distributors can cut down on bandwidth use by letting the downloaders share among themselves. It's rather unfair that BT is mostly known for its widespread copyright infringement use nowadays.

However, when I think of a "BT community", I don't think of downloading a Linux CD from Redhat's tracker found on Redhat's website. I think of people swapping torrents to lots of huge files they found, almost all infringing. Face it, if I'm going to download a Linux ISO, I'd go to the distro's site and get the distro's official torrent, I don't download it because I happen to spot a link to it on Torrentspy.

So my main question is - is there really a substantial legit "BT community"?

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Politburo]

With the approach the MPAA applies, bars, clubs, etc. would be shut down when a couple patrons are arrested for drug dealing or prostitution because they're "enabling" the illegal activity. For some reason, there doesn't seem to be a lot of precedence for the *AA approach of shutting down entire businesses when pursuing a few criminals.

Hate to burst your bubble, but this happens all the time. Establishments where illegal activity persists will find that they have a hard time renewing their liquor license or other bureaucratic necessities (occupancy permit, fire/health certificates, etc.).

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Crizp]

Strange, I actually use torrent sites to _find_ obscure films etc that I can't find anywhere else.

And DC is good for finding obscure or old (or both) music not available on CD or vinyl (unless you want to pay big $ for a collector's item).

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[6*7]

"So far you have had the right to transfer the videos from the DVD you bought into your iPod (even though you have to hack the DVD protection for that)"

Welcome to the EUCD.
It makes circumvention of copyprotection illegal.
Since the EUCD was ratified the only legal copys of my DVDs I can be obtain are downloaded with P2P.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Sugadadee]

Unfortunately you are incorrect, it not only included blank CD, but also a levy on the media storage a music device used/contained. So if you purchased a new iPod here, it was slightly more expensive than you should have paid due to the levy. That or Apple was just trying steal a few more bucks ;)

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[mwood]

Now try to download OpenOffice from the official site. Last time I was there, all you could get was a pointer to a torrent.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[drgonzo59]

So what exaclty would stop you from ordering a 100 pack of blank CD from U.S. Or come visit, go to Microcenter or some office store and get youself a 5 year supply of blank CDR for you, your family and friends. Unless, of course the CMI nazis would find you out at the border, beat you down, rape your family and kill your dog all for a pack of blank CDRs...

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Xaositecte]

If club\bar\etc. owners are aware (and it can be proven they're aware) of illegal activity occuring in their establishment, and they do nothing to stop it, you can sure as shit count on them being shut down.

I'm not sure what you're talking about in regards to the abuse of a few, easily 90% of the traffic I've seen on Bittorrent sites is illegal to one degree or another

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[cayenne8]

"Strange, I actually use torrent sites to _find_ obscure films etc that I can't find anywhere else."

I'm quite a bit like you in this, but, instead of old movies, I look for old 'boots' of concerts and performances. I've found some neat old Rolling Stones stuff from the early 70's, that hasn't ever come out available to purchase...one was previously a theatrical release I think (Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones), and what appears to be a small club performance...etc. I've come across the full Led Zeppelin show at Knebworth....many gems like this. I find this stuff to be very fun to watch/listen too, and would purchase it if ever marketed by the groups. But, till then, I'm looking for what I can find that's not commercially available.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[smellsofbikes]

>With the approach the MPAA applies, bars, clubs, etc. would be shut down when a couple patrons are arrested for drug dealing

You don't mean like the recently passed US law that holds event organizers liable to felony convictions if people smoke pot at the event in question, do you?

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[cayenne8]

"Now try to download OpenOffice from the official site."

Hmm...I just do:

emerge openoffice

And voila...it installs on my system.

:-)

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Kaa]

With the approach the MPAA applies, bars, clubs, etc. would be shut down when a couple patrons are arrested for drug dealing or prostitution because they're "enabling" the illegal activity.

You think you're just kidding? Look up the RAVE act...

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[mwood]

Yeah, you guys who use distributions can do something like that.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[merreborn]

American blank CDRs that are specifically labeled for audio also have part of their purchase price diverted to the RIAA.

Specifically:
"The Audio Home Recording Act specifies that royalties must be paid on blank CDs marketed for home audio recording. These royalties are placed into a pool to compensate for the loss of royalties from illegal CD duplicating."

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[DeafByBeheading]

Right. Amusingly, from what I've heard, that's all there is to the distinction: marketing. "Data" CD-Rs work just fine for burning music CDs, because the only distinction is whether they *call* it a "data" or "audio" CD-R.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Bahumat]

Importing them back into Canada is where the issue comes into play. They can and do assess the levy on imported discs, and if you're caught with a stack of blank CD's, the customs official WILL assess the levy and apply it.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[davidphogan74]

Many pornographers put some of their products onto Torrent sites amid pirated offerings to create a buzz. People download a few lower quality, shorter clips with ads, and supposedly then go pay to download the "full" versions instead.

It seems like a smart marketing technique.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[wirelessbuzzers]

They're trying to shoot themselves in the foot, but they're using blanks?

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're caught with a stack of blank CD's, the customs official WILL assess the levy and apply it.

...or do the beating/raping/killing thing that the parent mentioned. One of the two.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[DaWorm666]

ISTR that some (most?) of the standalone CD-Recorders will only work with CD-Rs marked for Audio. I think it encoded on the blanks much like the max speed information that keeps you from trying to burn a 4x disk at 40x.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[geekee]

"I know your comment was a joke, but actually in many countries there's a tax on blank media that goes to content providers. So...in many cases, blanks DO count."

Blank media tax is what socialist countries use to excuse copyright infringement. If it's ok to infringe copyright under these conditions, then I have the right to distribute modified GPLed code on these taxed disks without source code since I've paid the tax.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Em Adespoton]

American blank CDRs that are specifically labeled for audio also have part of their purchase price diverted to the RIAA.

Welcome to Socialist America :)

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Catbeller]

Actually, the word you want is "commie", or "red", or perhaps "pinko". Much more semantically honest.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[laughingcoyote]

Ah, the old GPL troll! Is that still floating around?

Personally, I don't believe there should be any restrictions on personal, not-for-profit copying, and no "license" should be able to change that. That should be true whether said license is standard copyright, the GPL, or the MS EULA.

On the other hand, -commercial-, for-profit copying, is what copyright is intended to, and should, regulate. In that case, you should be restricted-whether by the GPL, standard copyright, the MS EULA, or anything else.

For regular consumers, it should be you pay the tax and do as you like. Long as you're not profiting. If they would reform copyright to such a reasonable state, I would gladly grant that you too would have the right to distribute GPL stuff as binaries-so long as it's not for commercial purposes!

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[msobkow]

There is a lot of illegal BT traffic, no doubt of it.

Personally I treat it as a Tivo replacement (as I'm no longer in the US.) No TV, no TV tuner card, but I pay for a cable subscription with the internet access. I see no issue whatsoever with viewing a BT "tape" instead of buying a clunky VCR.

The *AA would very much like to convince everyone that such activities are illegal, and they seem to be succeeding. But it was settled a long, long, long time ago that taping broadcast is legal as long as it's not commercially distributed.

So the *AA and their attempts to rewrite case law and history need to wake up to the fact that it's their repressive, obsolete business model vs. the IT industry. Guess which one is bigger, employs more people, and has more contracts with government?

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[jp10558]

I'm pretty sure the GPL doesn't prevent personal copying/redistribution of altered source code.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[jp10558]

Currently - not so much. But it's getting bigger - Opera is moving to torrent distribution, and of course there's World of Warcraft patches. Not to mention many small sites that use torrents to distribute their content - say AutoPatcher (I think that's legal).

For legal, authorized content, it seems like it might be a no brainer. I mean, they can't ever get worse performance then they would have with HTTP, and often will get better (assuming they maintain a seed on their "big pipe").

OTOH, if ISPs continue to throttle torrents, then it may kill it for legal content too.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bill C-60 died on the Order Paper after only the proforma stage of
introduction and first reading. One of its main proponents, Sam Bulte,
erstwhile chair of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and who
received cash from recording industry supporters of the Bill, got
knocked off by the NDP in the election. Liz Frulla, the minister, went
down to the BQ. "

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[laughingcoyote]

Oh it doesn't, it encourages it. Parent was referring to distributing a GPL program as binary without the source code, which it does prohibit.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[bram]

Couldn't help but expressing my opinion.

This is all a bunch of crap.
I'm not a heavy leecher, once in a while I download a movie, look at it, dump it.

Artists are people who make Art.
Art is not taxable it's something people which are talented do.
And people who appreciate that talent pay the Artist to keep doing what s(he) does.

All this big companies who are trying (successfully for the moment) to make a buck out of this are temporary.

They saw a way to lure people into paying them and have it going for a while.

That's all changing with the p2p networks and other new technologies that I'm sure we will have.

So MPAA exists in the US, the US law system is over used and is bound to break at some time.
People are too eager to use the law where humanity must come first.

Just another temporary thing.

Other countries are not so quick to follow.

So let's not worry too much about it.
Real Artists see the value of being well known, they will give their music/movies/whatever away for free and let the experiencer decide for themselves wether they think it's worth it or not.

Wether we use p2p, copy a friend's CD, go to the library or whatever, it will always be there.

And DRM is a flawed technology, just like copy protection before and region based DVDs.
Let them learn from their mistakes.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[jesterpilot]

Don't forget 'nazi' or 'terrorist' or 'failed' or 'narco'.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[jp10558]

What I meant is I think as long as you keep it within the house/family/company - you can use the GPLed code any way you want - no restrictions at all.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

Art is not taxable it's something people which are talented do.


Tell that to the IRS (or the equivalent national government organization in your country of origin).

'Uncle Sam' *ALWAYS* gets his cut, one way or another.... =/

Other than that, a rather insigtful post, bram :)

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[ubergeek65536]

You're absolutely full of shit. The media levy only applies to cds and 90% of the time it's ignored by vendors. You can go and buy a 50 pack of brand name cd-r disks at best buy for $25 (levy included). Let's see.. at $0.59 per disk the levy is $29.50

also see http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/08/08/A rts/levy050808.html

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[Sugadadee]

I believe the article actually proves my point. Also the fact that vendors ignore charging the levy (see Pacific Mall, cash only transactions, etc) does not mean a levy was supposed to be charged. Which reminds me I should see if I can still apply for my refund....

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[squiggleslash]

So can we make the dramatic and hitherto unbelievable conclusion from all this self-congratulatory DVD-collection-size-boasting that many people who like movies have large DVD collections and also make use of other methods, legal and illegal, such as infringing copies via filesharing networks, to get movies?

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[squiggleslash]

Nope, what was settled a long time ago was that selling devices for the purpose of recording TV shows for later viewing, where some TV show producers were consenting to such recordings, is legal. Assuming you're talking about the Betamax case.

The Betamax case didn't "legalize" half the things people think it did. We could do with a law that does, but don't get the idea that just because you can come up with a bizarre, convoluted, argument comparing something to recording it with a VCR, that it's legal. The Betamax case didn't even say that all time-shifting was legal. It just said it was legal to sell devices to time shift (given many TV producers in the 1980s were happy for such time shifting to occur.)

The argument, for example, that as one can record a movie being shown on TV onto a tape for future viewing, and that a friend might be in the same house when you view it later, that it must also be legal to copy a CSS-encoded DVD onto a PC, and distribute it to millions of anonymous strangers, falls down on two counts: The first is that the original claim may well not be true. Betamax was about VCR makers, not VCR users. And secondly, the two things are not alike in any real way.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[neuromancer2701]

How would the Betamax law or any other apply to TV shows that are taped not DVD rips. I have watched the first 4 seasons of 24 in HD and you can't get those on DVD and they have those little show promos on the bottom of the screen. If I miss a episode of BSG I don't have to worry about how that is going to effect my viewing experience because I can download it the next day. I think this is very important to shows that have story arcs (24, lost, BSG) because missing an episode is more important in the shows history than missing a Seinfeld episode. But it still may be illegal, thoughts

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[DeeKayWon]

The media levy only applies to cds and 90% of the time it's ignored by vendors. You can go and buy a 50 pack of brand name cd-r disks at best buy for $25 (levy included)

$0.59 is the levy on Audio CD-Rs, i.e. the ones that stereo component CD writers require. The levy on normal CD-Rs is $0.21 per disc.

But noone told the sites be sued?

[sandstorming]

From the article: The operators of these indexing sites appear surprised at the MPAA's decision to sue, as they have yet to receive any notification. "Funny, they didn't email me," Gary from ISOHunt said. "I'm not too concerned because we deal with copyright requests everyday, some of them from studios MPAA represents." "Justin" from TorrentSpy echoed Gary's skepticism. "I guess I will learn more when I see what they have filed exactly. [I'm] not sure why they are suing when we comply with DMCA requests but I guess we will learn more down the road."

Re:But noone told the sites be sued?

[Romancer]

In other news, MPAA goes completely insane and sues Microsoft for supplying the OS to use Google.com to search for the movie "This film is not yet rated".

Re:But noone told the sites be sued?

[damsa]

Under the Civil Rules of Procedure you have certain number of days after filing the complaint to give notice to the defendant about the suit. I think it might be 90 days. Not sure why the MPAA filed suit, it seems like they like to send a cease and desist first or try to settle before filing suit. Not a lawyer yadda yadda.

Re:But noone told the sites be sued?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for the AC BUT When i got sued by the MPAA i found out on slashdot when i got to work in the morning. I didn't get served papers untill several months later.

Re:But noone told the sites be sued?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Sounds like bullshit to me.

Re:But noone told the sites be sued?

[Anonymous Coward]

I cant talk about the case, but thats what happened.

isohunt seem like nice guys

[johnjones]

like bittorrent see http://isohunt.com/dmca-copyright.php

Re:isohunt seem like nice guys

[tibike77]

But you can't beat THESE guys...
http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php

Re:isohunt seem like nice guys

[Anonymous Coward]

I know why they didn't get any notices. Their email was listed as "copyright{REPLACE_WITH_THE_AT_SIGN}isohunt.com". I'm sure the lawyers couldn't figure out why their mail was bouncing back.

FYI

[Kawahee]

A quick glance at TorrentSpy shows that they haven't given up, they're still dishing out torrents. They have a news story about it, but they don't seem to be too concerned.

I remember when the MPAA did this last time and the torrent sites shut down completely because it was in their subpoena (sp?) thing, so does this mean that TorrentSpy is defying the MPAA and (potentially) putting themselves up for harsher penalties?

Re:FYI

[Kjella]

I remember when the MPAA did this last time and the torrent sites shut down completely because it was in their subpoena (sp?) thing, so does this mean that TorrentSpy is defying the MPAA and (potentially) putting themselves up for harsher penalties?

Well, from the interview it seems they haven't recieved anything from the court, only been informed that a lawsuit has been filed. Once they do get a court order (I believe subpoenas are only request for information), and have something like 24-72 hours to comply (I don't remember exactly), we'll see if they're going to stick to their guns.

Re:FYI

[Ngwenya]

A quick glance at TorrentSpy shows that they haven't given up, they're still dishing out torrents. They have a news story about it, but they don't seem to be too concerned.

Isn't TorrentSpy based in the Netherlands? Can't remember what the Dutch equivalent of the MPAA is. (BREIN?) Either way, I suspect that they're going to have a hell of a harder time targetting search engines than trackers.

--Ng

Re:FYI

[Vroem]

But even if Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub will be down. We will still have mininova, torrentskickass, demonoid, and lots of others.

You could say that the trackers have become quite distributed so to speak.

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that "last time" nothing actually happened. If you're referring to suprnova and torrentspy, they "shut down" for a few months (under the claim of MPAA lawsuits that never happened) so that sloncek, the owner of suprnova, could push his new bittorrent hub software "eXeem" (which also happened to be loaded with malware.

After it became apparent he wasn't going to make anything off of it, he reopened both torrentspy and suprnova, though suprnova is now at "newnova.org", to complete the illusion.

Re:FYI

[spicyed]

These lawsuits will be very different from those in the past. Torrent spy and Isohunt both do not host any files of thier own, as they are just indexes of torrent trackers (which hold the actual data to where the file is located).

The difference here is that Lokitorrent, or suprnova even were both hosting the torrent files themselves.

I remember reading a story here on slashdot that the MPAA was forcing Bram Cohen, (the creator of bittorrent) to remove his search engine from his http://bittorrent.com/site. This was due to the fact that Bram's search engine listed copyrighted materials. What's interesting that that if you go to Bram's site now, and search for say "Metallica" you will find files from amoung other sites, "torrentbox.com". Cohen seems to be getting away with what isohunt and torrentspy are doing quite well.

Re:FYI

[72beetle]

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Last thing those fuckwits need is another fuckwit supplying them names of future targets. You think they don't read forums?

Re:FYI

[Vroem]

Last thing those fuckwits need is another fuckwit supplying them names of future targets. You think they don't read forums?

Yes, they must be reading forums. But, would they really read slashdot to find out which trackers are out there? Don't you think the RIAA did some googling? Or maybe they even read the forums of the trackers they are trying to sue?
My point was: the more hunting by the Industries, the more the torrent sites become distibuted, wether it's done by technological features, or by the simple fact that we are getting more of those sites that are interoperating and harder to get to by the Industries' agents. It's simple underground economics.

Re:FYI

[72beetle]

It's also just common sense to keep your mouth shut about specific sites when their brethren are being given the legal shotgun. You're not helping. Shut it.

Re:FYI

[Xymor]

If only the would setup up their sites in Sealand of somthing alike, they would be completely safe from Riaa, Mpaa...

(That is, if they don't hire merc or pirates to actually raid their servers)

Re:FYI

[jibjibjib]

I seriously believe that posting the name of a torrent site on Slashdot will not make it significantly easier for the *AA to find, or put it in more legal danger than it is already. You're basically being a paranoid dumbass.

Re:FYI

[72beetle]

And I believe advertising a closed-membership torrent site ANYWHERE is just inviting trouble and offering nothing benificial in return.

Not erring on the side of caution has cost us much in the past half decade or so. Your viewpoint, and by extension you yourself, are part of the problem.

searching is not illegal

[mrshowtime]

Search engines are not illegal in the USA. You can use a search engine to search for anything. You can use a search engine to find a prostitute or drugs and other forms of illegal "entertainment" so why does copyright infringement the ipso-facto crime of the century? There are a lot of illegal bitorrent files and there are a lot of legal files. I hope someone challenges the MPAA on this.

Re:searching is not illegal

[black mariah]

It's not the searching that's the problem. Providing the torrents is.

Re:searching is not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Torrentspy is a search engine. It doesn't host binaries. It certainly doesn't do what the MPAA press release seems to state it does:

> The site offers over 160,000 content items including 27,182 movies,
> 21,130 TV shows and over 45,000 music items.

Re:searching is not illegal

[Jugalator]

But the MPAA thinks that this text (BT-style SHA1 hash): da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 could describe an illegal file and is enough to be copyright infrigement if it does!! Or something like that...

Re:searching is not illegal

[khellendros1984]

I think the MPAA would have the same problem with torrent sites even if they provided lists without searches....they're still facilitating infringement of copyrighted works.

Re:searching is not illegal

[Jugalator]

Yeah, like these EVIL Google guys!

Funny that with Google, if you download copyrighted stuff (and by far most is) found by using its search engine, you're the infringing entity, but if you download copyrighted stuff (and by far most is) found by using a BitTorrent site, the site is the infringing entity.

Re:searching is not illegal

[91degrees]

The difference beeing that most of what Google indexes is prefectly legitimate, whereas most of what torrent search sites index are torrents for illegally distributed copyrighted works.

Re:searching is not illegal

[Shihar]

Search engines are indeed a-okay in the US and are shielded for the most part for the content that they help you find. However, as the Supreme Court case against Gorkster showed, there it isn't an absolute protection. If it can be shown that piracy is a significant portion of the traffic, they can be shut down. Sure, these torrent sights might have legit torrents, but what portion of them are legit? I am not saying I have an opinion one way or the other, just that the law is almost certainly not on their side.

Re:searching is not illegal

[dnaumov]

I think there is a reson to believe that more guns are used in robberies, murders and other unlawful cases compared to the gun usage for self-defense and shooting practice. Guns have legitimate uses, but most times they are used, the use is illegal. See a pattern here?

Re:searching is not illegal

[Disposable Rob]

Search engine indexes from Google, Yahoo et al are neutral as to the legitimacy of a work. Do an image search for a celebrity and try to find what percentage of images come from the copyright owner or someone lawfully allowed to distribute those particular works.

The only difference is Google and Yahoo are opt-out indexers while torrent sites are opt-in.

Re:searching is not illegal

[Shihar]

I think there is a reson to believe that more guns are used in robberies, murders and other unlawful cases compared to the gun usage for self-defense and shooting practice. Guns have legitimate uses, but most times they are used, the use is illegal. See a pattern here?

Uh, no, I don't see a pattern. No because what you said is completely and utterly untrue. The vast majority of guns used (at least in the US) are used legally. I am going to go ahead and go out on a limb here and guess that you have never lived in rural America. Hicks and red necks shoot off more ammunition for the purpose of killing innocent bottles and deer then the fucking army does. Hell, I bet the private populace of the US legally owns more guns then the army does.

Re:searching is not illegal

[Professor_UNIX]

Search engines are not illegal in the USA. You can use a search engine to search for anything.

Napster was a search engine, it was shut down. There are tons more illegal BitTorrent files than there are legal files, and the sites mentioned in the articles concentrate on helping you find the illegal files. I don't see anything wrong with getting rid of the bad seeds (no pun intended) in order to promote the legal uses of BitTorrent for downloading your ISO image of Linux, for example. Pirates much of the services out there.. Napster was awesome for finding even legal music because at that time 95% of the people looking for MP3s used it.. now you've got people scattered onto different incompatible networks and need a client that will search all of them.

Re:searching is not illegal

[damsa]

Napster was shut down because they indexed artists and song names thereby contributorily infringing or something like that.

Re:searching is not illegal

[91degrees]

The other difference is that torrent sites exist with the primary intention of assisting people in downloading illegal content, whereas generel prupose search engines exist with the primary purpose of assisting people in finding legal content.

Do you really believe that when they set them up, they thought most people would submit legal torrents?

Re:searching is not illegal

[Hosiah]

I hope someone challenges the MPAA on this.

I used to hope the same thing. I'm beyond that now. I now hope everybody who works for the MPAA dies of cancer. Of the pecker. Sans painkillers.

Re:searching is not illegal

[bmomjian]

You can use a search engine to find a prostitute or drugs and other forms of illegal "entertainment" ...

I think you are wrong on this point. It is called "conspiracy". Now, it might not be enforced, but it is illegal. Try putting out a sign advertizing a prostitute and see what happens. ;-0

Re:searching is not illegal

[Ngwenya]

The other difference is that torrent sites exist with the primary intention of assisting people in downloading illegal content, whereas generel prupose search engines exist with the primary purpose of assisting people in finding legal content.

That's the key bit here - intent. The Grokster case was clear that those were commercial entities clearly intent on facilitating unauthorised redistribution. Hosting torrents is not per se unlawful. Now, if it can be established that there was no discernable intent to facilitate unlawful distribution, there's no case. But I suspect that they're counting on many of these guys settling rather than going to court. The MPAA gets their "victory", the site owners open up elsewhere (maybe outside of the USA), and everyone is happy. What, did people think it was about preventing infringement? Course not, it's about appearing to prevent infringement.

Also, I think that establishing the intent of a tracker is much easier than establishing that of a search engine.

--Ng

Re:searching is not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really believe that when Google set up images.google.com they thought most people wouldn't use it to search for porn?

Re:searching is not illegal

[cpt kangarooski]

There are some differences. Google isn't a contributory, vicarious, or inducing infringer, while most of these sites are. Also, Google complies with the 512 safe harbor that protects it while also requiring it to honor takedowns; AFAICT none of these sites do.

Re:searching is not illegal

[Kjella]

Search engines are not illegal in the USA.

Trust me, you would not want to be an "Information Location Tool" which include "a directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link" without complying with 512 d) of US copyright law. It might not be illegal but otherwise you're liable for anything "referring or linking users to an online location containing infringing material or infringing activity". These torrent sites would have to be blind, deaf and dumb to not know they're pointing to lots of illegal copies - and even that is not enough by b) "in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent;" In short, the torrent sites stand no chance in freezing hell to get covered by the same protection as e.g. Google.

Re:searching is not illegal

[91degrees]

Also, Google complies with the 512 safe harbor that protects it while also requiring it to honor takedowns; AFAICT none of these sites do.

Looks like some of them claim to. From the article:

"Funny, they didn't email me," Gary from ISOHunt said. "I'm not too concerned because we deal with copyright requests everyday, some of them from studios MPAA represents."

"Justin" from TorrentSpy echoed Gary's skepticism. "I guess I will learn more when I see what they have filed exactly. [I'm] not sure why they are suing when we comply with DMCA requests but I guess we will learn more down the road."

Re:searching is not illegal

[volpe]

You can use a search engine to find a prostitute or drugs and other forms of illegal "entertainment"

You mean you have the ability to do those things, but are you sure it's legal to do so? After all, if you ask google for information on how to commit a crime, and google gives you lots of information on how to commit that crime, could a prosecutor argue that that constitutes conspiracy?

Anyway, the real reason why copyright infringement is the "online law violation" (note avoidance of the word "crime") which gets the attention is because there's a victim with a financial interest in stopping it. The same can not be said for prostitution or drugs.

Re:searching is not illegal

[smchris]

Search engines are not illegal in the USA. You can use a search engine to search for anything.

MS and Yahoo not so much these days. Google maybe -- but I expect Homeland Security will be watching you there too.

Re:searching is not illegal

[farmer11]

Google indexes torrent too. So I guess it's time to shut down Google

Re:searching is not illegal

[Professor_UNIX]

"Pirates much of the services out there.. "

Err, that should read "Pirates ruin many of the services out there..". I wasn't awake yet. :-)

Re:searching is not illegal

[NutscrapeSucks]

Actually, the main reason Napster was shut down is because they spelled out their intent in their business plan and numerous email messages.

Re:searching is not illegal

[moeinvt]

What "reson to believe" would that be? Movies and TV shows?

Re:searching is not illegal

[jrumney]

so why does copyright infringement the ipso-facto crime of the century?

Because a known IRA member was once (in the 1980's I think) caught selling "pirated" cassette tapes at a car boot sale. On that basis, MPAA, RIAA and the Governments that support them now go after copyright infringement as if it always supports terrorism.

Re:searching is not illegal

[ray-auch]

There are some differences. Google isn't a contributory, vicarious, or inducing infringer

You mean hasn't been found to be, yet.

Since perfect 10 has just got a preliminary injunction, at least one court thinks they have a good probability of being found guilty of infringement when it comes to trial.

Re:searching is not illegal

[polyp2000]

Exactly - Im still waiting for a modification to bittorrent that utilises googles filetype feature.

eg

narnia filetype:torrent

I'd like to see them start shutting down major search engines. It would be nice if we could harness their power in such a way that we dont even need these sites any more. It would be just fine if you could just use a search engine such as google as a definitive search rather than going through your 5 or 6 favorite torrent sites to find that elusive file. That seems like the way forward to me. Whichever way , it seems to me that bittorrent's weak point is the requirement for these sites in the first place.

Nick ...

Re:searching is not illegal

[Threni]

> You mean hasn't been found to be, yet.

Just like you've not been shown to be a murdered, yet. We're watching you and all your `innocent until proven guilty` friends...

Re:searching is not illegal

[freeweed]

Hicks and red necks shoot off more ammunition for the purpose of killing innocent bottles and deer ... ... and lawyers.

But calling Cheney a hick is kind of insulting to the hicks.

Re:searching is not illegal

[Dubliner Macmanus]

"You can use a search engine to find a prostitute or drugs and other forms of illegal "entertainment" so why does copyright infringement the ipso-facto crime of the century?" It's called $$money$$...copyrights are worth billions...where your poor little prostitute is just a $20 crack whore.

Re:searching is not illegal

[elrous0]

Let's wish a little permanent explosive diarrhea on the RIAA guys too, while we're at it.

-Eric

Re:searching is not illegal

[Braino420]

Hicks and red necks shoot off more ammunition for the purpose of killing innocent bottles and deer then the fucking army does
And if you don't watch out, you could get shot IN THE FACE!

Re:searching is not illegal

[maxpublic]

I think there is a reson to believe that more guns are used in robberies, murders and other unlawful cases compared to the gun usage for self-defense and shooting practice.

And you'd be very, very wrong. Depending on the measures you use for self-defense, guns are used between 750,000 and 2.5 million times per year in the U.S. to discourage criminals from, well, committing crimes. In less than 1/10 of 1% of those cases is the gun actually discharged (and usually as a warning that the holder of the gun is quite serious that he or she will use it).

Guns are used far more often for target practice and hunting than to commit murder. Despite wild-eyed claims to the contrary you are, for example, far more likely to die from septicemia or pneumonitis than you are to get shot. In fact, your stairs, ladder, and pool are much more likely to kill you than anyone armed with a gun. If you think otherwise, you can look up, amongst a host of other materials, the National Vital Statistics Report online.

Max

Re:searching is not illegal

[setirw]

Yes, but the *majority* of Google's services do not constitute the indexing of illegal material. Most Torrent indices do, however.

Re:searching is not illegal

[dcapel]

Results have been omitted to comply with the DMCA.

Ever seen that on google?

Re:searching is not illegal

[ray-auch]

Actually entirely unlike I've not been proven a murder yet.

That is because I haven't been proven to have killed anyone yet (murdr or otherwise), which is rather a large difference.

If you really want a murder analogy, Google's position is like that of an admitted killer who is claiming self defence. [ No one disputes they are copying (and thumbnailing) images, without explicit permission of copyright holder ].

With the prelim injunction against them, they are also in the position of the judge having ruled they must start their murder sentence because their defense is unlikely to succeed in the full trial.

That is why Google is entirely likley to appeal that ruling immediately, ie. before they've been found guilty of anything in the full trial.

Gracias

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you MPAA, I didn't know about a couple of those!

Re:Gracias

[StarkRG]

They still haven't hit the two that I get most of my stuff from (actually all of that's TV shows, so technically out of the MPAA's jurastiction, not that that's stopped them before...)

Personally I think that going after distribution sites is pretty futile, someone else will just pop up. They really just need to get the people who rip and encode everything... of course, someone else will still just pop up... I suppose the only way they're going to stop people from creating/distributing/downloading their property is to stop releasing it to the public... of course that kinda defeats the whole purpose of a movie...

Perhaps they should just make horrible movies that nobody wants to see... oh... wait, I think they've already implemented that plan, it seems to have backfired, no matter how bad the movies are people still go see them... even after jacking the price upto $10/ticket...

Is there nothing we can do?!

Re:Gracias

[Greefer]

Hahahahaha you are so right. There were 2 sites listed that I had never been too :)

Re:Gracias

[SpiritOfGrandeur]

Or how about the " *phew* my favorite is not on that list ;)"

Re:Gracias

[paco3791]

Wish I had mod points.

Parent is exactly right. Unless the internet changes in a very fundamental way, (multi-level pricing, increased restirctions from tel-coms) then whenever they cut off one head, two more will pop up to replace it. But don't underestimate the *AA's and the tel-coms. We will have to pry there business model from their cold dead fingers.

There is some more info here...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Boing Boing
2. Slyck Forums
3. Another blogger with some good quotes
4. Normality Net with more info
5. Amit's Page with even more commentary

Drive by linkings!

just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

bit torrent more like butt torrent
a place for slashdot fanboys to download anime/asian porn disguised as child porn
the flood of granny porn against 4chan's /s/ will never stop.

a worldwide pandemic is coming.
not aids.
not grids.
not even birdflu.
tacoflu is coming. guard your tacos.

Re:just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

flood? more like the trickle of piss that comes out of your pathetic dick after you've stood there for 5 minutes because your prostate has swollen to the size of a grape fruit you fuck.

Re:just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you're speaking from experience?

Re:just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

if someone is going to hijack my thread its going to be myself you bunch of assclowns
i was going to flood them again but i got high, and i'm about to go to bed.
the non-asian revolution is slowly gaining strength.
asian porn is a backdoor to child porn.

PrivatePublic

[sloths]

You mean people actually use public BT sites?


oink oink.

Re:PrivatePublic

[calculadoru]

oink oink

Dude. I believe I speak for a large number of people here and there and everywhere: don't mention that place on a public forum. Just...don't. It's too good a thing to ruin. Mum's the word, yes? Thank you.

Re:PrivatePublic

[sloths]

huh? what are you talking about? I'm a pig.

Re:PrivatePublic

[Anonymous Coward]

oink is in no way private. If a site has an invite system, it is pretty damn public. Now, a site with closed membership, that is private.

I Declare My Rebellion

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough with the "what is piracy" debate, enough with talking about fair use, enough with all the liberal bullshit.

I declare my rebellion!

I will download whatever I want off the internet. If it is copyable, it should be free - music, movies, software.

Corporations like the MPAA and the RIAA need to be abolished. They are part of the corporate framework which is turning this world into a global police state.

I stand with the movement of people that wants to share. We do not strive for a gluttony of personal wealth. We stand for the common good, for communal wealth.

Enough with the greed, enough with laws that liken pirates to terrorists, enough with wealth concentrated in the hands of the few.

Rise Up! Rebellion! Revolution!

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[kfg]

. . .enough with laws that liken pirates to terrorists

Why on earth do you think they called him the Dread Pirate Roberts?

Among our tools are terror.

KFG

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.af-north.org/social_relationship.html

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[cliffski]

for someone hating the global police state, you sound awfully like a communist. If you dont want to pay for the fruits of other peoples labours, you are either a thief or a communist.
Choose one.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an anarchist. And I would prefer communistic property relations.
The vision I have is a society where IP and copyright laws are abolished. People are free to sell their stuff, but if I can copy it, then it won't be against any rules to do so.
And of course, such a society will only exist with a mass movement to create it, meaning people are more interested in mutual aid than huge profits for themselves, because they will realize a healthy community is one that shares.
The piracy debate shouldn't be considered in isolation, it fits in with the whole system of exchange.
To put it in short, think Gift Economy.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Anonymous Coward]

You make communism sound like a bad thing. I'd take a really working communist country(note: there has never been one yet. Someone has always managed to fuck it up) over any capitalistic system.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[tgone]

thief or communist? how about a capitalist? they like free stuff, too.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[trezor]

A thief steals. Copyright infringement is not stealing. Communism is a political ideology. Calling people communists as an insult may work well in the US, but keep in mind the rest of the world sees the US as right-wing neonazis.

What you call "communism" is probably what most of the world calls "in between left and right". But I guess calling people names is the only form of "political discussion" you guys know.

Not saying that parent poster was particulary insightful or anything, but calling people "thiefs" and "communists" ain't particulary classy either.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[mrjb]

Someone has always managed to fuck it up) over any capitalistic system. And the reason for this, is exactly because the power was in the hands of a few.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[mrjb]

In a democracy, votes are cast to see what the majority wants. My guess is the majority of people would like free downloads (hm... would this make a nice slashdot poll?) What gives the RIAA the right to bypass this democratic process?

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Hosiah]

If you dont want to pay for the fruits of other peoples labours, you are either a thief or a communist.

What about those of us who *voluntarily* give our work away for free? Because, see, it pays off in intangible benefits...like good word of mouth = good for business in the long run. Programmers who release their work under the GPL get better exposure to the headhunters. Etc.

If I'm Communist for giving away pictures and programs and tutorials, then so is McDonald's for giving away free ketchup and napkins with each hamburger.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[cliffski]

im not even knocking communism, just making sure the poster accepts the realities of his immature position.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Anonymous Coward]

you think working for a society based on mutual aid instead of private profit is immature?
so what's a mature position?

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[grimwell]

If you dont want to pay for the fruits of other peoples labours, you are either a thief or a communist.

Yes, a person should be able to earn a living from their labor without being ripped off. But by the same token a society should gain something positive from that person's labor.

In the context of entertainment, it is the middle man(e.g. RIAA/MPAA) that is ripping off both the artist and society. The sooner RIAA/MPAA went away or just did promotion instead of promotion&distribution the better life will be.

An illicit download does not equal a lost sale. I believe it was Eminem that "leaked" a single off one his upcoming album prior to the ablum being released. When the ablum was released it went platinum. The "illegal" downloads generated alot of buzz. And if I remember correctly, the leaked song was the only good one on the whole album. Or look at Microsoft's action in China. By allowing their goods to be pirated, they gained marketshare. Most people in China can't afford Microsoft's product at legal/retail prices.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[advocate_one]

BBC news website did a poll yesterday... the results were something like %75 of respondents had a pirated copy of a movie Me? I voted "yes"... but I use it as a reviewing service and if I like the movie I buy the DVD, otherwise I delete the downloaded file(s)... plus, the files save me from the hassle of ripping the DVD myself

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Irish_Samurai]

Everyone thinks communism is great as long as they get to be an administrative worker.

I don't see anyone lineing up to be a factory worker. You have to FORCE someone to be a factory worker, they don't want to do for the greater good of all (supposedly). Forced labor will not be as productive as labor from someone who is doing something they want to do. This circumstance occurs across the board in a communist system, and exhibits itself as a slow economic entropy that will ultimately fail under the weight of those who chose to be unproductive because the state pays for everything anyways.

Ignoring the desire people have to be recognized and compensated for individual acheivement is a must have ingredient for flawed economic and social systems.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Irish_Samurai]

Recognizing it only takes one self interested entity in such a system to break it.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Anonymous Coward]

not really. if the majority of people are willing to co-operate, the lazy and/or self interested person can do as they please. They just might not get a share of the spoils the co-operative community creates.
These sort of communities already exists in the world today. Look at open source, do you think one self interested person will break it? ha, not even microsoft can break it.
think about it.

Re:I Declare My Rebellion

[Irish_Samurai]

yeah, but the open source community is maintained by people who fund it through their own "private" funding.

Some devs contribute software they write during their time off from their "paying gig". Some open source teams are funded by private investors who obtained the funds to donate from their employement or profit generating endevors. Others happen to have a consulting business model, and the open source material is actually a form of marketing and placement - not the end product. A single self serving entity won't break this model because funds keep flowing in from the outside. Open source, as a whole, does not generate enough self sustaining revenue. They also don't distribute funds amongst themselves equally.

Now lets take communism, which is the point I was talking to. As a social and economic system - it needs to be self sustaining in order to work. One worker in this system who acts as a drain on resources, instead of as a source of production, will cause a significant reduction in effeciency. Taking the human element into consideration - others will follow that example when they find it is the still returns the same reward for less effort. Then the system crumbles.

Back to open source. OSS doesn't attract people of that mindset, but it also rewards those based on individual effort. If a programmer contributes more often with better material - they are more likely to be picked up by a funded endevor. In a communist system, compensation is based on need - not merit. So there is no motivation to accel in your work other than personal satisfaction.

A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[ZackSchil]

Sorry if this sounds a little harsh, but would you folks just fuck off already? You make money hand over fist in the theaters and even moreso in DVD sales. It is clear that people still pay to see and own movies that they really like, even though they are available for free. Just because YOU would steal our money without providing us with a product if you thought you could get away with it doesn't mean that we'll do the same to you. Not that any of your actions really award you this sort of ethical treatment.

So in summary: please stop complaining. You make enough money already. Leave the torrent places alone, we like them for watching films we'd never pay to see or watching for a film we did pay to see second time before the DVD release.

Now I need to go finish watching ¥¥¥ Syriana DVDscr XViD DVDRip-MeeKRaB 2005.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[MaelstromX]

WTF "you make enough money already" what business ever thinks they make enough money?

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cliffski]

An interesting but flawed philosophy. You seem to imply that if the IP holders were just scraping by and making ends meet, you would be happy for the torrent sites to be taken down?
Im just about making ends meet as a software develoepr, and one of my games is available as a torrent. No doubt this isnt exactly helping sales. So I suppose that the torrent sites you support check the financial data of each submitted torrent, will spot that I'm a solo developer who needs the cash, and decline to list torrents of my stuff right?
Bullshit. This is just freeloaders getting everything they can for free because they think they wont get caught. Dont insult everyones intelligence by dressing it up as some kind of robin hood tale.
Many things the **IA do is bullshit, but closing torrent sites that encourage illegal content is fine by me. Bittorrent is a superb system that works wonders for distributing game demos and movie trailers etc. By defending its usage to steal IP, your just going to bring the whole system down.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

That release has a bad aspect ratio. Get Syriana.2005.DVDSCR.PROPER.AC3.XViD-ShinBet instead.

- G.I Jew

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ts.searching.com/torrent/486089/Starship_Ty coon

That game? I think I'll try it when I get home. If anyone plays the full version beforehand tell me how it is.

You tend to stereotype a lot of the people that use torrent sites. Sure, they may be heartless self-centered assholes, but they are downloading your game for fun. Now, did you become a software developer because you wanted money or because you enjoyed doing it?

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[ZackSchil]

Is your apostrophe key broken?

Anyway, my point is that people will make the right decisions and purchase what they appreciate and can afford. If your game was really great, it would make people feel bad for stealing it. I think those who selfishly steal, enjoy AND would have otherwise purchased the game are by far in the minority.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[EzInKy]

Bittorrent is a superb system that works wonders for distributing game demos and movie trailers etc. By defending its usage to steal IP, your just going to bring the whole system down.


Isn't bringing the IP system down the whole point behind this mass infringement movement?

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Kokuyo]

Ever thought that perhaps your game just isn't good enough?

I'm not saying everyone out there downloading from BT is a saint who just wants to try before they buy. That would be bullshit. But there are enough people out there who doubled or even trippled the amount of money they spent on DVDs and/or CDs and/or games just because they found games they've never even heard about before.

I don't remember whether it was on heise.de or /. but there was an artivle that CD sales of the top 50 went down quite a bit while the studios still made more cash because people suddenly bought way more stuff that wasn't mainstream. So good music WILL sell. So will good movies and good games. Therefore I believe that if you're not happy with how much games you sell you might want to try and make a better one next time.

I know this might be moderated Flamebait, but you know what? I don't care... if people don't like my opinion, it's their problem entirely.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[rm69990]

Ummm, you do realize sites like isoHunt don't have torrents *submitted* to them, they index .torrent files available elsewhere on the internet, much the same way Google indexes websites available elsewhere on the internet. They remove torrent links upon request, have you actually bothered emailing any of these sites to ask them to remove your torrent?

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Romancer]

This is why I applaud apple for itunes. They realize that an easy service + selection = profit. Same with Netflix. There are some smart people out there.

MPAA/RIAA on the other hand think that Threats + DRM + higher prices + mandatory multiple purchases on single items (mp3 for home PC, mp3 clip of same song for cellphone, CD of same song for car, etc) = profits

I really wanna hear their kids at school on "bring in your parent and have them explain their job" day.

"My daddy is a suit at MPAA, he... why are you all holding guns to my daddys head?"

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Richard_at_work]

I hope you are being sarcastic, but incase you arent....

The whole point of this 'mass infringement movement' is to get stuff for free. You really think that even 1% of the people that use Bittorrent for acquiring illegal content even cares about the IP system in anyway? You think the majority would understand what you are talking about if you brought the matter of civil disobediance up with them? No, its about getting something for 'free', avoiding paying the costs, keeping up with their TV shows before they are broadcast in their country.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[quokkapox]

Im just about making ends meet as a software develoepr, and one of my games is available as a torrent.

So why no link? I'll give it a try!

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Eivind Eklund]

Im just about making ends meet as a software develoepr, and one of my games is available as a torrent. No doubt this isnt exactly helping sales.

High amount of doubt. There are network marketing effects, people chosing to buy stuff because they've sampled it, etc.

I personally have never bought as much CDs as when I pirated lots, and I've never bought as much games as when there were a ton of pirate copies around me. I've stopped pirating music because nowadays it's too much hazzle (including risk), and I've mostly stopped playing games (buying maybe one a year, occasionally borrowing one off a friend) - yet the end result is that I buy significantly less, not more.

Eivind.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[EzInKy]

I hope you are being sarcastic, but incase you arent....


Nope, I'm serious.


You really think that even 1% of the people that use Bittorrent for acquiring illegal content even cares about the IP system in anyway?


I think most people just don't care about the IP system so they ignore it.


You think the majority would understand what you are talking about if you brought the matter of civil disobediance up with them?


Do you think the majority of people who visited speakeasies during the twenties understood about civil disobedience or did they simply want to share a drink with their friends?


No, its about getting something for 'free', avoiding paying the costs, keeping up with their TV shows before they are broadcast in their country.


Of course people want to get things at little or no cost, and it's only natural that they feel slighted when they can't have things that are available elsewhere. I'm surprised that your surprised about this.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Hosiah]

Many things the **IA do is bullshit, but closing torrent sites that encourage illegal content is fine by me.

The problem is, how do the rest of us who want to voluntarily license our software under the GPL and our creative content under the CC license go on distributing our work for free?

By the way, distributing your work for free is not bad for business. It's a way to give out free samples with your name attatched. After awhile, people see your work and come to you offering to pay you for custom jobs. That worked for me, and I've never had to lose a minutes' sleep over the dread that somebody's using my work without paying for it.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cliffski]

yes many times. end result is lots of abusive emails + spam.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cliffski]

So the people who get prate copies of civilisation IV are doing it because the game sucks? Surely the very best cream of the crop games wont get purated then? So I'd be unlucky trying to find a torrent of half life, or Quake, or Civ right? Its just crap games like mine?
Its way easier to find games by doing a web search of browsing the games news sites. the idea that people use bittorrent to find out what new games are out because its easier than going to gamespy just makes no sense. And in that case, surely torrent sites that hosted just new free demos would be more popular than the ones hosting full free games right?
Im sick of people saying that if a game is being illegally copied that its because it sucks. if it sucks why do people want a copy? free or otherwise. Sure, there are some *good* people who will buy a game after playing a torrented full version, but thats maybe 5%. its the other 95% that are just stealing them with no intention to buy, and its that 95% that the RIAA etc are going after. I say good luck to them.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[trezor]

keeping up with their TV shows before they are broadcast in their country.

This just sounds so illegitemate, you know. To think that people actually want to keep up with shows they enjoy and which is discussed all around the web without recieving spoilers 6 months in advance! Oh, the horror! They must be terrorists or something.

As for your main point... This "mass infringement movement" is (for some) about "getting stuff for free", while for others its all about protesting against the insanity that the current form of copyright law has changed into.

As much as I'd love to support my favorite artists, I refuse to feed the corporate beast that the recording industry represents. They want to take away all our freedoms, just so they can profit even more. I refuse to support that, and thus my favorite artists get to suffer. It may be sad, but that's the choices I've made in reposonse to RIAA's and MPAA's actions the last few years.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cursorx]

Im just about making ends meet as a software develoepr, and one of my games is available as a torrent. No doubt this isnt exactly helping sales.

You know, I could download Starship Tycoon from the torrent indexing site someone just linked to above. But...I won't. I don't even have the curiosity to try. For free. Much less pay for it. I'm probably not the only one in the same situation.

But just think...I had never heard of you or your games before. Imagine someone searching for Rollercoaster Tycoon on Torrentspy, and the search results include Starship Tycoon. That person downloads it just for the heck of it, and ends up enjoying it. Your game spreads across the Internet, by word of mouth. Torrent distribution is so darn efficient, when the product is good and popular. I'd say that's awesome publicity for a small company like yours. Even if most people end up downloading your games and not paying for the privilege of playing them, you'll still get a few tipsters once in a while. Folks who appreciate your work and will gladly pay for it, if they think you deserve it. Believe me, we're out there. I just bought the new Franz Ferdinand album, which I had in my iPod for ages, downloaded from a private tracker way before the official release date. I like it enough, I buy it.

Instead of thinking "OMG THOSE FREE RIDERS WILL STEAL MY IP", a little modesty might go a long way. Your IP, right now, doesn't even look attractive enough to "steal", judging from your website alone. I went over your games, and I honestly feel I can get better stuff for free (as in beer) in sites like pogo.com, if I'm in the mood for a quick puzzle game. Or, if I'm in the mood for some serious stretegy gaming, I'd go for a solid mainstream release. Why buy Democracy for 22.95 bucks, when I can get Civ IV for 49.95 or cheaper?

Free distribution will get you more popular and rich in the long run. Just a hunch, you don't have to take it seriously. I would, though, since your games are out there in the free download zone, legal threats are not threatening enough for the most of us, and morality is not an issue with the majority of file sharers (when I download stuff from the Net, I do it with a clean conscience and spread the joy with my friends and family afterwards!). Complaining won't get you anywhere. You might as well devise a new business model. One that suits the small game developer that you are.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cliffski]

you dont understand, the majority of slashdot kiddies think that people who actually create content are *evil* and its everyones human right to take the efforts of those people and enjoy them for free. Its called "sticking it to the man!" Until the same kiddies become musicians or developers with bills to pay. Then they start feeling like right hypocrites.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[blackest_k]

You should have at least mentioned the name of the game and maybe a link to a review of it.
Is there any online options for it, multiplayer.
If so tell us about them.

You know you could benefit from your game being on bit torrent. If you have to use a server you control to use it's multiplayer modes. Then restricting access to people with legal copies, If people want to play then they will pay simple as that.

You know you could provide a replacement key service at a price that covers the cost of a lost sale to you and your publisher to replace lost keys. Or to allow an expansion pack to be downloaded and used.

right now you have something very valuble publicity.
This is going to do one of two things drive up sales or drive them through the floor. It all depends on the quality of the game.

I mean you could build a relationship with the gamers talk to them get feed back
Any bugs in your game? can you fix them make the game better make a patch, fix the legit copies.

Right now you have got the exposure you could never get any other way. It's time to capitalise on that.

did you realise most torrent sites also have comments on individual torrents link to your website. word of mouth is good for you.

People try to avoid buying crap these days and things like bittorrent give them the opportunity. Everything gets hyped by the marketing companies good and bad people want the good and want to miss out on the bad.
Bit torrent gives choice.

here's a nice example try this site

http://www.the-hotels.org.uk/music.htm

I think they are pretty good.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

"My daddy is a suit at MPAA, he... why are you all holding guns to my daddys head?"

ROFL

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand you're frustration. But you must realize that most of the people who download things for free couldn't afford to buy it in the first place. Does that give them the right to do it? NO. But think of it as free advertizing/viral marketing.

I would say that heavy downloaders are most likely the trend setters within their circle of friends. They get the product first and rave about how good it is. Their friends will end up buying it because they aren't tech savvy enough to find it online or don't have the time. The MP/RI-AA's would have you believe that everyone and their grandma is downloading stuff, but that just isn't the case. The vast majority of people purchase things because it is just easier.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to agree with that. I can't be bothered to go download your game for free. Even if it runs on linux. I'm afraid if you want me to be your customer, you'll need to pay me for it.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

So add a donate tag/link after the splash screen. Improves the odds that illicit copy might get ya a few bucks... maybe not the full price but something is better than nothing.

Be pro-active, create a crippled version and sumbit that one to the torrent sites. Maybe include a coupon code within the game to tempt players to do the right thing and purchase a legit copy.

Pirating is always going to happen. Learn to deal with it; either use it to your advantage(e.g. free marketing) and/or make use of the Cease&Desist letter. From the article it sounds like the sites honor those.

And while you're at... why all the javascript redirects on your site? For example the Forums links is just a javascript redirect to newforum. Makes your site very difficult to navigate for those of us who default to "no javascript" ala the noscript plugin. A difficult to use website is a real turn-off for potential customers.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cliffski]

purely because it makes it easier to change forum software. i experimented with free forums once (forumer.com) BIG mistake...

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cliffski]

Thats fine, I can see that you dont like my games enough to buy them, I am fine with that. I dont deserve to get a sale from someone who isn't imrpessed with the product. Different tastes for different people, thats no problem at all. I make free demos available happily, I want people to be happy with the game. Its had at least 16 patches and updates in the 8 months since release.
I think we can both agree that the REAL problem is people with this attitude:

"I like this game its cool, I want to play it for ages. Wheres the torrent?"

here we have a problem, because the game has ticked all the required boxes, but its STILL doesnt get the sale, which has to be bad news for the developer.
People are getting the wrong end of the stick here. I am not on slashdot whining that people should buy my games. Ive madde some crap games that dont sell, and some good ones that do. I've refined my games, kept up feedback with the players over time, and responded to what people want. I'm making a small living doing this, so I must be making some good stuff. What I'm getting emotional and whining about is the people who DO like the games enough, but still pirate them.
Your comparison with Civ4 is a good example. I played the demo, but it just wasn't for me. I probably still have the demo installed. one day I might buy it, who knows. But I wouldn't get a torrent of it. If I liked it enough to play more than the demo, I'd buy it, just as you probably have done. But I think we BOTH agree, that in this case its wrong for you to get Civ4 as a free torrent yes?

The RIAA are bastards, no argument there, but they are the only ones trying to stop blatant piracy. It pains me to side with the same people who put rootkits on peoples PCs, but right now, nobody else is sticking up for the producers of IP at any level ;(

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Irish_Samurai]

I refuse to feed the corporate beast that the recording industry represents.

You forgot this part:

"just as long as I am still able to get everything that this beast is feeding up."

If you want it - pay, if not - don't. The "I don't think it's worth the money so I don't pay" stance is pathetic. The legit users of torrent sites are overshadowed by the illegitimate ones. Is it the fault of the tracker sites? No, its the ripper and the encoder. The population at large can't tell the difference.

I also the "try before buy" stance. If you can get a really awesome full featured demo of a dev suite or get a lower res version of a movie to see if its any good before you buy a legit copy - cool. That's generally considered being a smart consumer. But, if you use torrent sites to get free copies of things you can't afford because you want them - well now you're just pawning off your weak economic status onto those who labored to create the item you so covet.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[trezor]

Since you happen to think the worst about everyone, even when I make it clear that, yes there are 100% freeloaders, but point out that there are other kind of users... I'll offer a reply.

The music I'm interested in ain't sold around here. If I want it, I must download it using various P2P systems, and if I like it, then I can order it online. As I said, try before you buy. And since I already said I didn't support the RIAA and MPAA, let me just clarify in advance: This ain't european nor american music.

As for movies? Same deal. As for TV-shows. If they are even aired here, expect a 6 month delay minimum. And that's a big "if". Battlestar Galactica? Still not aired. You can always say "Buy the DVDs if you want it", but I'm not paying over 100USD for a show I haven't seen yet, nor am I willing to wait 2 years after it was aired.

You may disagree on weather I'm entitled to this content in the first place, but as my moral standings on this goes, none of the uses mentioned above is "illegitemate" or "wrong" in any way.

If you find all this unreasonable, just bear in mind that there's this thing called "free market" and "supply and demand". If there ain't no legitemate way to get something a lot of people want, there will be illegal suppliers instead. It's one of the oldest laws of mankind. Trying to avoid that is as futile as futile gets.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Irish_Samurai]

Maybe I wasn't clear in my statements. I have read your posts and you do acknowledge the freeloaders. I also don't condemn using downloads as a method of "trying before flying."

I understand the freemarket scenario, as I'm a big fan. I also think if you are using this method of getting the content you want because it is the only conduit available to you then you have no other options and are well within a morally acceptable boundry. I don't think this even touches on entitlement, because you don't display that attitude. For you this isn't a "free media for me because I'm entitled" scenario, its a "I have no other option" scenario.

I do not usually think the worst of everyone, but I do take some pretty hardline stances. I replied to your post as a matter of respect, because your statements had well thought out reasoning behind them - but did also happen to be remarkable similar to those who feel they have a right to everything without a cost. It was not clear that my post was not directly aimed at you, but was mocking the general attitude those who feel entitled to free everything.

I don't discuss these matters with the "OMG! EvErY thing should be FR33! Britany Spears suxxorz, but I want her single anywayz!" crowd. I prefer to debate those with a more solid understanding of the matter, with an alternate opinion.

While I may think that technically what you are doing in downloading the music may be illegal (depending on copyrights of the creator and country of origin, blah, blah, blah...), I am not one to think that law = morality. Denying yourself media you desire, that you would happily obtain through more legal channels if it was available, in order to stay compliant with some rules written in a book somewhere is not always reasonable in extreme circumstances.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because then they start spamming you out of SPITE!

PLONK

WAA WAA

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Lumpy]

Honestly you need to fight fire with fire. How many of your games demos have you seeded into torrents and then listed them on the torrent search sites? you should have flooded the likes of piratebay and the others with your demos and special offers for X% off to get more exposure out there.

You can not get suckered into doing things the same old way. You have to evolve daily to how the market is evolving. If your game is so popular as to being pirated first you need to grin first knowing that it made it popular and then release either a newer version with better or improved gameplay or expansion packs that will draw in those that did get it without buying it.

Also asking very politely for sites to remove a torrent from their site that points to your software also is usually done.

In other words, what you see large software companies doing? you need to do the opposite.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Eivind Eklund]

Not participating in the popular culture is associated with a significant personal cost (lack of conversation topics etc). While I personally have chosen to take that cost - I don't watch TV, I don't listen to popular music, etc - I do not see it as reasonable to require that people take that cost for laws or groups they disagree with.

It is like the "You shall not make pictures in God's image" in the bible - why should I, as an atheist, follow that? (Excepting the fact that there may be religious fanatics that come running after me.)

Eivind.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Eivind Eklund]

Oh, I missed a fallacy you came with: "But, if you use torrent sites to get free copies of things you can't afford because you want them - well now you're just pawning off your weak economic status onto those who labored to create the item you so covet."

No. It makes ABSOLUTELY ZERO DIFFERENCE to them. The ONLY case where it makes a difference is if the person would otherwise purchase a copy of some of the content copied, and does not purchase said contents because she copied it. This is the ONLY case that matters.

I'm spending my weekend to do my part to bring down the movie studios: I'm making an independent movie.

Eivind (who actually mostly makes movies for fun, yet if it can hurt MPAA, that's an added bonus.)

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[zakezuke]

Im just about making ends meet as a software develoepr, and one of my games is available as a torrent. No doubt this isnt exactly helping sales. So I suppose that the torrent sites you support check the financial data of each submitted torrent, will spot that I'm a solo developer who needs the cash, and decline to list torrents of my stuff right?

And piracy didn't exist before torrents?

And you are complaining that your software is so popular that there is a torrent?

I hate to say it (no that's not true), but piracy does a good thing... you have people more than willing to spread the name of your product through word of mouth for free. Look at the American Anime market... for ever we were stuck in an endless circle of:

Japan: We don't see a market in America
American Otaku: How would you know unless your product visits america

And through the Anime pirates, though blatent piracy... a market was created.

But as a copyright holder it's your right to put your foot down and choose how to distribute your product... and it's your right to shoot your self in the foot if that is your wish.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cursorx]

I understand your pain, but...

Thats fine, I can see that you dont like my games enough to buy them, I am fine with that.

I never said that, since I've never played any of your games. That was my point. Maybe I would download one of them if you gave it away for free, on a whim. And who knows, maybe I'd enjoy it enough to pay for it. I didn't mean to comment on the quality of your games, they might be great. I don't know. It all boils down to motivation: why should I try your games? For some people, like me, it's a plus if the developer delivers the entire product and transfers the decision to pay or not to pay to the consumer. It makes me want to download. You could say I'm not representative of most gamers, but I think there's a culture being currently fostered among file sharers that could become the norm in the future.

If there's the smallest interest in your product, it's a given that it will be available for free download in a p2p network. I think that you should consider distributing the full games instead of demos. There's no point in protecting IP if in reality your games are out there, competing with every single other semi-popular game also available for free in file sharing networks. People who enjoy your games will most likely pay you for it. If you offer the full product, I think you have more chance of getting money back than by only offering the demo. And then, protecting IP wouldn't even be an issue.

Someone's probably going to point me towards Stephen King's failed The Plant experiment, but if I recall correctly, he still got a lot of money even though most people didn't pay for the installments. And hey, that was Stephen King, not exactly the poorest of writers. That counted in people's decisions whether to pay him or not. In your case, there's this romantic notion of the lone independent struggling game developer, and that's bound to get a few people's eyes teared, and some of their money in your pocket in exchange for your games. I know I'd pay if I liked your games. But to know if I like them or not, I must be motivated to try them. Free distribution would be a big motivator.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Sheetrock]

To be honest, I have little sympathy for big content producers. They use the money from legitimate customers to influence government policy and legislation against those same customers (via the DMCA or local equivalent, constantly-extended copyright terms, and soon the broadcast flag). They show a perplexing degree of contempt towards computer owners, whether by dumping undisclosed system-level drivers on their systems, requiring them to phone the company for permission to continue to use their operating system if they change their hardware around, or poking around for virtual devices and simply refusing to allow access to content when they are found on the system. In a relatively short amount of time most people will be running computers with hardware DRM. It's anyone's guess as to the ultimate ramifications of allowing content to be tied over the Internet to hidden data within an expensive and difficult-to-replace device that can fail and destroy all that data, but what you don't have to guess is that we'll have to pay more for the device and we won't be able to get a decent motherboard without it. Again, thanks to big content.

But your situation is discouraging. Small developers, independent film and music, and the like are viable alternatives for those of us who resent the encroachment by the big content producers. I used to buy a lot of music and games and have rented and purchased a reasonable amount of movies in the day, and certainly less now, but I've discovered games like Uplink, Pontifex or Galactic Civilizations, rediscovered light reading (although some book publishers also suck), and found a local used CD/DVD place to buy those things from. It's not even that I planned to go out of my way to avoid big content -- just that I find myself putting that new game back on the shelf at the store and spending that $50 online to buy a new indie CD and a couple of indie games I can download and play that night. By the way, with as much or more entertainment value than for the big content version, because I preview much or all of the CD before I buy it on the artist's website (some even put concert recordings out for free) and the indie games in my experience have more demos, fewer bugs, and better support than the average game the big publishers have rushed out the door for the $60 collector's edition pre-order fanboys to test.

I guess what I'm getting at is this. All the wordsmithing I read about illicit P2P use not being theft, wanting to try it before you buy it, maybe the game isn't that great, I wasn't going to buy it anyway so you haven't lost a sale, etc. is really just so much bullshit. Freeloading. A handful of us do it and it isn't even noticed, some of us and it makes a noticable blip, many of us and it kills off smaller content providers who cannot afford to continue providing their services. No matter what, big content will continue to work the system to keep their business model viable (some would say artificially, but to them I'd ask how you distribute a multi-million dollar blockbuster without anybody paying for it.) If we're to continue having alternatives, we need to invest in them.

I'm guessing a lot of youth have missed the video, but sadly it is as relevant today as it ever was.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[careykohl]

>> Sure, there are some *good* people who will buy a game after playing a torrented full version, but thats maybe 5%. its the other 95% that are just stealing them with no intention to buy, and its that 95% that the RIAA etc are going after.

See, that's the problem with your line of thinking. 95% of the people aren't going to give you a dime no matter how many people the *AA sues. By suing the torrent sites out of existance you just eliminated the 5% who became extra sales for you.

The ones who get pirate copies of Civ IV today just might turn into the ones who'll plunk down $100 for the super deluxe version of Civ VI, or VII, etc. down the line.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Irish_Samurai]

No. It makes ABSOLUTELY ZERO DIFFERENCE to them. The ONLY case where it makes a difference is if the person would otherwise purchase a copy of some of the content copied, and does not purchase said contents because she copied it. This is the ONLY case that matters.

While I can understand, and agree, that this is really the only case that truly matters - there is an aspect of your statement I do not understand.

If a person wouldn't purchase a copy of something because it wasn't important enough to them - why would they then take it if it was "free"? That argument just seems circular to me. I don't want it --> I can obtain it for free --> Since I don't want it, but I can obntain it for free - I am justified in taking it.

If the issue is with the cost, and you if someone doesn't feel that the cost is justified - well that's really too bad. The manufacturer detirmines cost. True, the consumer determines worth or value, but perceived lack of value does not give someone the right to just take something. It may motivate, but not justify.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[penguinoid]

Maybe this might not be the best of options... But I recommend that you place some torrent files yourself. Place the demos of your games. If you're feeling lucky, place a full version that has a plea for donations. Maybe you'll be surprised. Certainly you'll earn some respect for it.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, as a student I pirated Civ3.

Unlike before, I have an luxury budget now. I bought Civ4.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[cliffski]

Thanks for the feedback, its rare, and enlightening to have a sensible debate about the whole issue here.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Eivind Eklund]

The below is important perspective points - please try to really understand why these are significant and important and how they affect perspective. If you think they are just quibbling of words, you are missing the point - please think harder about the topic or ask for more help, instead of trying to argue.

You're missing a very significant point in your analogy: The *real* product in question is bits, and the manufacturer is a machine. A $500 machine can manufacture bits at a rate of at least 100,000,000 per second. So your analogy of "take something" is wrong - the manufacturer gives it to you because he can manufacture it so cheaply that it's OK for him or her to do so.

What you are talking about as if it was a god-given right is restricting the manufacturers. Now, I make about half my income from such restrictions, so I'm on both sides of the fence. Morally, I see it as unclear.

The "designer sets cost of reading" doesn't work, unless borrowing a book off a library or a friend is wrong. The "reading isn't copying" doesn't fully work - what about people that have photographic memory? I used to be able to recite The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy from start to finish. Should my head be illegal? I assume we both say "No" to that (and agree that it's an extreme example.)

If a book cost too much and I borrow it from the library or a friend, it decrease the revenue for the publisher and author. Yet, this is clearly accepted by society, and defined as "moral" by everybody. Even if it was a book where the cost was *less* than the value I'd get from reading it, and that I would have bought if I couldn't borrow it.

Then we have the next problem: The value of a mass market work to the author is in people buying it, and for a successful mass market work, it is in becoming a part of culture. As each person has limited attention (a maximum of 24 hours of attention per day), this is competing for a limited resource. And society use shared experiences as a communications basis called "culture", which is even more limited. We allow much stronger protection for anything that does NOT enter this area - it's called "trade secrets". It's when somebody start PUBLISHING that the tradeoff comes in effect, and the morals become quite difficult to judge.

One thing that is sure is that society becomes OVERALL RICHER when somebody copy something that they would not be able to afford. New wealth is produced by the transaction. This is only a poblem if the wealth produced comes at the cost of resources not being transferred to the original "designers" of patterns (programmers, writers, film people, graphics artists, etc), stopping the feedback loop for new patterns.

See the complexity?

Eivind.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Irish_Samurai]

Please don't assume that because I disagree with you that I don't understand - or need help. That's pretty condecending, and typical around here.

Your Library analogy doesn't work because that example deals with a limited supply, a book, that was originally purchased at cost. I can rent a movie from Netflix too, that doesn't make downloading something for free any more acceptable.

You have to take the book back so someone else can enjoy it. The delivery vehicle carries with it limitations that will keep rampant piracy in check. The real problem occurs when the new delivery vehicle is void of such hinderances.

Now we have an issue of people trying to obsficate the concept of stealing by arguing there is nothing to steal - there is no physical entity. You have acknowledged that if the cost of resources is not reimbursed then the creation of new content stops. This is something we both agree on. Yet, you fail to recognize that not everyone is out to be a cultural philanthropist. You extend the concept of lending a book out to be equal with someone giving away 1000 free copies of it. Those are not the same.

To be purposefully blind to the glaring difference between those two examples, and then defend it by claiming that society at large becomes richer is fundamentally incorrect. Society becomes richer because they took the hard work, time, skill, and resources from the individuals who created whatever content is being distributed at no cost. The economics of the situation is that the creator bears all of the burden of increasing society's wealth.

As for my God given rights, I am the creator - so the creation is mine. Why do you think you have some God given right to free access to my creation?

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Eivind Eklund]

No, YOU are being arrogant in assuming you understand this. If everybody is being "condescending" to you, it may be a sign that you are being arrogant in many areas. And right now I'm being condescending because you've been treating this as a stupid debating class.

I assume that you are lacking information *as a compliment*. I do not subscribe to weird idea of "opinions" on factual topics. Copyright is tool in an opimization process. This is a factual process. What you write contains disortion of underlying facts; I assume that that disortion is accidental. This is an implied complient, as the alternative is you deliberately disorting the facts. Opionions are for assholes - what I am trying to give you is the underlying facts of how this works so you can make up an informed evaluation. The moral judgements are up to every person - my interest is in the realities of how this works.

OK, now GET RID OF YOUR DEFENSE and instead listen and choose to understand these concepts. This is NOT a debating class, it is a science and economics class, and you get a failing grade if you don't lower your defenses and pay heed to the topic. When you do, we may get to a rational discussion - the solutions and tradeoffs for this are far from obvious, yet first we need to face the facts and THEN we can find out how to act. If you're too uptight in your own importance to be willing to listen to the facts, then don't bother replying.

First, let's go for what I actually say: I don't argue a "God given right to access to your creation". I argue that as long as you keep it as a trade secret, it is only your creation. When you start to distribute it, it becomes partially an aspect of the culture society, giving society a vested interest in it.

Second, I have not acknowledged that if the cost of resources is not reimbursed then the creation of new content stops. I don't get paid for writing this message, and you don't get paid for writing the message above.

In other words, "creation of content" continues. What content is created and consumed will be different with different economics around it - if I had to pay per message posted to Slashdot, for instance, I probably wouldn't. When I had to pay for film and processing to create movies, I created less movies and of lower quality. And since I don't get directly paid for the the time to create movies, I spend less time on making movies than I'd do if I was paid for it. However, I still create movies, and I still write. And before we had copyright, people still told stories.

Content will always be there. New content will always be there. The question is how much, of what quality, and of what topics.

Third, you assume I assume people "are out to be cultural philantropists". No, I don't. I recognize that changing the economics of this will change which people do what. And that's OK. You, however, assume that society has a duty to do effort to protect and keep secret your ideas that you are TELLING PEOPLE PUBLICLY. I disagree. I recognize that this may result in you not getting money, and this may result in your working less to create ideas. This is an effect that may be unfortunate. The issue is a tradeoff between the unfortunateness of you not working hard at creating ideas and the unfortunateness of the limitations and resources spent on protecting those public ideas from public exploitation.

Now, let me talk a bit about words. I'd like to introduce the concept of "nominalizations". That's when we take a process and turn it into a noun. Let's take "journey" as an example. In reality, this is a process consisting of a bunch of travelling, eating, sleeping, etc, which again consists of moving around of atoms. Also, when I talk about a non-specific "journey", join up all the different journeys into one.

Now, nominalizations are useful. They allow us to talk about complex things and cut away all the complexity, by deleting a lot of stuff (which particular foot did I put in front of which other h

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Irish_Samurai]

Jesus christ man. If you understand that I am using "stealing" in place of "copyright infringement" then what the hell is your problem?

I'm not applying my emotions here. I recognize your statements and fully understand them, so you can quit with the crap. I'm sorry you feel that I am treating this as a debate class, but that is far from the truth.

Maybe I should try to make my point in laymans terms so you can choose the correct terminology for me, as it seems you deem my vocabulary choice as a hurdle.

You decide to make a movie with the intent to show it in exchange for money.

You fund this movie with your own money, take your time to make it, and use your skills in photography and editing to refine your vision.

This movie has two purposes; to tell a story and to generate revenue for you. I have already stateted that this would be the intent of this particular movie, not all that you create. You may very well create movies with other intentions.

The content of the movie (story, characters, themes) is being distributed into the public, and I understand your statements on that. There is no WAY I can prevent people from redistributing those things, nor should I. If Bob goes to see your movie and tells Sue the story from it, he did not steal from you. He actually could have created the potential for Sue to go see it because she is interested in it.

When you begin to show your movie for a profit, there is no guarantee that you WILL generate a profit. There is also nothing that says just because you made something that you SHOULD generate a profit, market factors detirmine that.

Yet, when those who do not have permission to distribute your work do so without compensating you - you are being stolen from. Loss of potential profit is still a loss. There was the potential for your movie to generate the revenue you were looking for, and that opportunity was taken from you by those who desired to view your creation without paying. If this has to be discussed as copyright infringement, sure - because that what it is. But there are aspects of copyright infringement that parallel those of theft, and that is what I am keying on.

That's it. Now, perhaps I have not been clear on exactly what I think constitutes this type of consideration. I understand that not all content is created with the intent of profit. Many people create things out of the joy of doing so, regardless of profit. I know this is my view of art, as I don't get paid for most of my work. If the creator wants it to be freely distributed, then by all means go ahead. I don't post stuff on the web and not expect it to be propegated.

That having been said, I still do not understand why creations created with the intent of generating revenue should be freely available to all? I really do not understand this. I understand your statements about trade secrets and I understand that I cannot copyright information and attempt to hold someone financially liable for using that information. Trust me, I get it.

Should I let someone photocopy one of my pieces of art and sell them at 5 bucks a pop with no compensation to me? What if my intent was to have that particular piece available for free? What about if I'm selling this particular piece for 20 dollars and someone photocopies it and then starts giving it away? I flat out do not understand how these things should be allowed. I understand they happen, and I am willing to accept them to some degree as a fact of life.

I usually want to discuss these things in terms of "how to embrace delivery vehicle's ease of delivery for creating new types of content", but I haven't been able to get that far because you keep talking to me like a kid. Perhaps I have chosen the wrong vocabulary, but I'm trying to convey my perception here, so please quit thinking I'm debating you. Quite often my method of refinement in a discussion takes a similar tone to debate - it's the way my family talks.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Irish_Samurai]

After rereading my comments and thinking about it for a while, I think my tone throughout this exchange may have been a little sharp. I aplogize, that's not the proper way to conduct a discussion.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Eivind Eklund]

If you understand that I am using "stealing" in place of "copyright infringement" then what the hell is your problem?

Please take the following in the friendliest possible way: For me, classifying "copyright infringement" as "stealing" muddled my thinking, and it was cleaned up when I started being careful around this. I see the exact same muddling coming out in what you write. On a hobby bases, I study language based therapy - language profoundly influences how we think. So, I am trying to make you aware that your language use is affecting your thinking. I am doing it on the basis of having done the same mistake myself.

I think that mistake is part of the reason for the next mistake: The example in the message I reply to now is in direct conflict with the situation I originally described. There are four types of copiers for a work:

1. Those that won't buy the work whether they get a copy or not
2. Those that will buy the work only if they don't get a copy (the copy is enough for them)
3. Those that will buy the work only if they DO get a copy (samplers, people that prefer the original for supporting the artist, etc)
4. Those that will buy the work no matter if they get a copy or not.

Let's disregard indirect effects for a moment. Without indirect effects, copying by class 1 and 4 are irrelevant for the profit potential of the creator/publisher. Copying by class 2 is negative, copying by class 3 is positive. Overall copying is positive for the creator if class 3 is larger than class 2, negative if class 2 is larger than class 3. Accounting for indirect effects, my guess is that class 3 is larger than class 2, though the data there is somewhat debatable.

Copying by class 1 and 4 create wealth for society "out of thin air". This copying leads to increased wealth for the person copying, with no associated costs.

In addition to this, there are the indirect effects. Network effects benefits those that are good and copied an "appropriate" amount (leading to increased word of mouth advertising), habit changes might benefit everybody, etc. These effects are extremely complex, and nobody know their total impact.

Apart from that, it's somewhat debatable whether society should grant the privilege of restriction citizens to allow release of creations for profit. I'll use an extreme analogy: If I started producing oxygen and sold it to people, it would be utterly unreasonable to demand that they make sure "my" oxygen atoms didn't end up in the air other people breathe. There is no reason for society to enforce that, even if I want to be able to produce oxygen and try to sell it for profit. The cost of the restrictions would be too high. The same may be true with copyright - enforcing the restrictions (and even making the behaviour illegal) may be too expensive for society. I do not know - I just know that I believe this has to be part of the evaluation.

Eivind.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Eivind Eklund]

Apology accepted, and my apologies for letting it rile me.

Eivind.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Irish_Samurai]

Interesting points.

I think one of the issues is with clearly defining fair use. The DRM answer is really not appropriate as it restricts me in the amount of times I can exercise fair use - not a very elegant solution.

But being that the delivery vehicle now has the same easy, and in some ways easier, method of dispertion as the content - there is no clear borders concerning rights. It's like a diagram with overlapping parts (Ven? Vin?).

The underlying problem is that the business model of capitalizing on the distribution is now broken. Distro is done by people to other people within the same target. I think this may actually hinder some people with great talent from getting into creative endevors because they fear they won't be able to support themselves. True, an artist does it for the art - but there is a real desire for people to be able to make a living doing things that they love. Marginalizing their ability to do so is not really the best for creating a "high quality" culture. I mean, I can only look at High School level artwork for so long.

Also, what happens to the peripheral business generated in order to fuel the controled distribution plan? Advertising, Marketing, Graphic Design, Printing, recording studios, ect...

Now a reduction in some of these services would be OK in some areas. I can really do without marketing people who do research on "Nag Marketing" aimed at children, but I do not want to see artists lose daywork as Graphic Designers. I also don't want to see recording studios close because no one can pay them enough to record.

Perhaps this will only create problems for large lumbering business entities. Hopefully it will only effect the giant corporations that have a vested interest in maintaining the distribution controls in place. Maybe small shops are agile enough, and have overhead low enough, to take the down side of losing copyrights in stride as free advertising.

On an unrelated subject, I would really like to make an image with DRM type code in it that will change the composition of itself everytime it is copied. That way you can distribute it freely AND everyone will have an original work.

Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA

[Eivind Eklund]

It's Venn-diagrams.

I agree with you that the business model is broken, and I'm totally with you on the problem of artists being able to make a living from art. It's a difficult problem. The traditional way (prior to copyright, in other words prior to 1790 in the US, or for the first in the world, prior to 1710 in the UK) has been patronage, playing for live audiences (see e.g. Shakespeare), dontations (tips, basically), selling individual pictures etc, and selling rights to publishers. Publishers used serials and "freshness" to give their material scarcity, somewhat like newspapers today, as well as gentleman's agreements to not copy each other's material. Authors were fairly badly paid.

As for the future, I'm guessing that we'll end up with private copying in all forms being allowed (criminalizing 2/3s of the population seems unlikely), and I see different media as ending up with significantly different problems and problem levels.

Movies can make income on cinema showing, easy access to high capacity media (for a while, anyway), the feel of having a physical thing (with boxes etc), and possibly give bonuses in the form of e.g. chances at meeting the stars if you buy the movie. Cinema alone should make enough income to support reasonably cheap movie production. As an example of what can be done "on the cheap", Sin City cost $4M to make.

Books are probably OK at least for the time being, as people want the physical copy, and printing single copies is (at least for a while) about as expensive as buying a copy. Local printers that can print and bind at a reasonable price seems a far way off.

Music gives fairly little royalty to the actual artists, so the artists may be better off with a tip-based system, at least if the tipping is made EASY. Marketing is likely to somewhat die off for this segment, as Last.fm, Pandora, and similar tools make finding new music easy.

Games. Without copyright and per-copy payment, games is in big trouble. They're played at home, they're hideously expensive to make, and they command fairly little loyalty from the consumers. Maybe - just maybe - the copy protection on the disks and consoles may handle these. PC based games is likely to die.

Graphic artists. Actually, none of the good ones I know (personally) get their revenue from selling pictures in a form where private digital copying is likely to matter. They get it either from games, or from selling custom artwork for advertising use, or from selling physical paintings directly, or from other work (non-graphics related). I'm not sure if these are a representative sample or not - I suspect they're at least somewhat representative, in that I cannot actually think of anybody at all that live off selling pictures on the net.

Now, of these, there's two things that seems to be hit so hard they may go out of business: Record companies and games developers. With record companies come the side business, as you mention. I think there will be some loss of graphics artist positions, that's fairly small, though. The recording studios, however, will be hit fairly hard. However, if their service is really worth it to the consumer, this should increase tip levels for those bands that use recording studios so much that the successful bands will pay for them. I guess it will also create a market for much cheaper recording studios, where software and the musicans themselves do much more of the work.

It will be interesting to see the development here - whether for good or bad, it will certainly be "for different."

Eivind.

Ahoy there

[Anne Thwacks]

We must sink all the ships and burn the sails to put an end to piracy on the high seas.

And hang everyone from the yard-arm.

And an extra ration of rum to all who agree with me.

Re:Ahoy there

[gnarlin]

Humm, this really puts a new twist on the "talk like a pirate day". From their perspective.
Yarr, I'm gonna copy that bountifull chest 'O yourrsss young lass.... with all those movin' pictures in'em on silvery discs; and darrs no'thn yo 'cann do about it sweetie! Yarr, harr, harr!

Constantly talking about piracy evokes much stronger emotions in people than talking about copying. Since murderin' pillagin' and rapin' on the high seas inspired fear, hate and lothin', they (the evil ones of MPIAARIAA (second cousing of cthulhu) decided to just use that phrase instead.

I therefore ask *everyone* reading this to constantly correct anyone and everyone you hear talking about "piracy" and remind them that they are talking about copying, *not* the murdering and the pillaging and the violating of young virgins with heaving busoms. Humm, actually now that I think about it, becoming a pirate doesn't sound so bad after all!

Re:Ahoy there

[Rocketship Underpant]

"I therefore ask *everyone* reading this to constantly correct anyone and everyone you hear talking about 'piracy' and remind them that they are talking about copying, *not* the murdering and the pillaging and the violating of young virgins with heaving busoms."

That's a terrific suggestion. I do this all the time in forum and blog discussions, actually. If the best arguments the anti-filesharing jackboots have against filesharing involve outrageous hyperbole and comparisons to murder, I think they've pretty much lost the debate. It's certainly difficult to discuss actual issues with such people.

Re:Ahoy there

[LurkerML]

Skol, matey. Let's drink till we are conserved.

Misplaced effort

[Flounder]

If they'd put half the effort into actually making quality films as they do with these worthless lawsuits, I'd gladly pay $30 for theatre admission and snacks for my girlfriend and I. Until then, I'm paying what it's worth to see these movies.

Without piracy, it's doubtful ANYBODY saw Stealth or The Island. Even for free, I couldn't sit through all of Stealth.

Re:Misplaced effort

[DeathToAllah]

If they'd put half the effort into actually making quality films as they do with these worthless lawsuits, I'd gladly pay $30 for theatre admission and snacks for my girlfriend and I. Until then, I'm paying what it's worth to see these movies. Do they admit blow up dolls to movie theatres nowadays?

Re:Misplaced effort

[ed__]

i prefer the term "Inflatable American".

Re:Misplaced effort

[casparro]

There are also different motivations for downloading digital content other than just using it. I know many people who download. not because they want the content, but because they want to see the MPAA crumble. They want to join in the effort to destroy the MPAA and rid the world of their aweful hollywood movies. What then...? How about going outside and enjoying the natural world for entertainment. But that's just my thoughts.

Re:Misplaced effort

[jxyama]

Misplaced logic. If films lack quality (as you said), then why are you bothering to download it to begin with? I don't like movies because for the price, they don't entertain me much. So I don't go to movie theaters, rent or purchase dvds. I don't download, watch, satisfy some of my "wants" and "curiosity" and THEN claim it's worthless.

If it's worthless, give it up! Don't keep on dipping in for free and then try to claim they lack quality.

new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[TractorBarry]

Ho ho ho. So can I look forward to an addition to the a href="http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php">Pirate Bays legal threats page ?.

P2P, torrents etc. are simply like having the best radio station and film channel in the world. It lets me try out stuff without spending my hard earned cash (an ever decreasing amount of which I have to spend on "non essentials" such as entertainment) so I know that I like something before I buy it.

Oh how the *AA dinosaurs futiley roared as the small furry mamalls took over their world :)

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Baricom]

Well, yes, except that you're stealing the music and films. Not to mention demonstrating why the movie and music industries need to implement DRM technologies that Slashdotters tend to loathe.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[fractalrock]

for the love of.....OK. I will calmly explain this one....more....time.
It's not stealing. Breaking in to a store and taking merchandise without paying is stealing.
This is copyright violation. Please, please...PLEASE understand the difference. thanks.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Baricom]

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/stealing

Definitions 1, 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d.

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/property

Definitions 2b and 2c.

I hope you have enough command of the English language to make it unnecessary to define a "thing."

I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay. I've played along, but no more. It's people like my parent poster who are making life hard on the people who want to do the right thing.

What they are doing is stealing.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Haeleth]

I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay.

And I'm tired of people assuming that the only possible reason anyone might want to insist on using precise terminology is in the mistaken belief that this might justify morally bankrupt actions.

Where in the post you replied to did it say "it's okay because it's not stealing"?

Where in the post you replied to did it say "copyright infringement is not wrong"?

Nowhere.

Why are you incapable of understanding that people might view copyright infringement as morally wrong, and yet still desire people to use the correct name for it, instead of calling it stealing, which it isn't? Why are you incapable of understanding that there is a reason why we have different laws on different subjects, with different penalties for different crimes?

Copyright infringement and theft are both illegal, but they are illegal under different laws, are judged on different criteria, and are punished in different ways. They affect the victim in different ways and harm the economy in different ways. They are no more the same thing than rape and murder are the same thing.

That is why you should use different names for them. Not because one is any less illegal than the other. Not because one is any more moral than the other. Merely because while both are wrong and both are illegal, they are nevertheless not the same thing.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[trezor]

Yes. "Try before you buy" is such a horrible concept. I hope they get those pesky CD players out of the music stores soon. Personally I blame the music stores for bringing this absolutely irrefutable need for DRM.

Here's a hint: DRM only hastles legitemate customers, while the pirates get the full freedom. Leak once, pirate infinitely. And that's why DRM will never work.

Plus its called copyright infringement, not stealing. Tool.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Angostura]

They affect the victim in different ways

That's right; one deprives the victim of money or goods, the other deprives the victim of income.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Hsien]

Steal Audio pronunciation of "stealing" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (stl)
v. stole, (stl) stolen, (stln) stealing, steals
v. tr.

      1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission.

In order to steal one must deprive another of somthing. Copying/duplicating does not deprive anyone of anything and is there for not stealing. Sadly, in you're media saturated, brain-numbing, 'do what the TV says' world its easy to forget to think for you're self.

You have been assimulated.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Wavicle]

My aren't we the language Nazi here... First notice how you said "What they are doing is stealing." Well, you're using "steal" intransitively, thus it should have been clear to you that definitions 1a-1d do not apply. This should have been doubly apparent since the sample usages are way off from your intended meaning (steal a kiss, steal the show)

So we're left with definition 1 of steal, which of course requires us to agree on what property is. The two definitions you point out are:

2b: the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of a thing
2c: something to which a person or business has a legal title

Well 2b doesn't work. It should be obvious that when a studio sells a movie, they cannot dispose of it later. Their right is not exclusive. The "thing" they possess is the copyright.
2c almost works, except the thing which the studio has legal title to is a copyright.

When you download a movie, you do not take their copyright away. I don't condone copyright infringement, but it is in a class separate from stealing.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[TrekkieGod]

That's right; one deprives the victim of money or goods, the other deprives the victim of income.

That's just it, that's not necessarily the case. Regardless of the MPAA "estimates" of how much income piracy is depriving them, it really is a non-trivial task to figure out how much money the victim is losing, if any. Not every pirate would have bought the work if he couldn't pirate it, nor does the act of pirating preclude the buying.

Do you ever wonder why most indie artists are happy to have their work downloaded, while it is the rich artists who have a problem with it? Since I'm sure we'll agree the rich artists are having more of their stuff downloaded than the indie artist, do you ever wonder why they're not getting poorer? The answer is that piracy serves as great advertising. It spreads the word about the value of the work, and causes more people to actually buy them. Those who understand that they're getting their name out there are happy, those that already have their name out there are afraid that *maybe* they could have bought that third yacht if their stuff wasn't being pirated, but don't understand that maybe they didn't lose a single sale to piracy that they didn't gain as a result of it.

This train of thought doesn't apply only to artistic works. Would Microsoft have gotten to their level of dominance today without all the pirating that was going on in its early days? Maybe, maybe not. The point is, whether you believe copyright infringement is wrong or not, it's very different from stealing, where you *know* the victim is being denied something.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right; one deprives the victim of money or goods, the other deprives the victim of income.

And that's why you shouldn't call copyright infringment stealing any more than you should call skipping commercials with your Tivo stealing, or a decision to buy only used cars stealing. Both deprive someone of income. (These examples just happen to be legal.)

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Hatta]

That's right; one deprives the victim of money or goods, the other deprives the victim of income.

The Right To Make A Profit is not enshrined in the constitution or any other body of law that I know of.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[fractalrock]

Come on now....just because you are an idiot doesn't mean you have to act like one. :)
*Check it out*
Get back to me with a full report. Thanks again!

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron. There is a moral issue if you try and claim that you have created a new work when merely its a copy (lying), but to use a tool to recreate something has no morality attached. Quit giving the power to the idiots who market things to you. Force them to innovate new ways for them to earn your money, rather then letting them resell the same crap to you over and over again artificial construct they call 'copyright'.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Gnavpot]

I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay. I've played along, but no more. It's people like my parent poster who are making life hard on the people who want to do the right thing.

What they are doing is stealing.

"Killing somebody is stealing."

"No, that is murder, not stealing. Stealing is when you take a thing from somebody."

"Yes, you take somebody's life. That is stealing."

"A life is not a thing."

"Don't try to justify morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay. IT IS WRONG SO IT MUST BE STEALING."

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[ceoyoyo]

You're all arguing the wrong thing. Copyright owners do not own the copyrighted content. They have been granted the right to control it's duplication. That's it. You cannot steal a movie from a movie studio because they do not own it.

What you ARE doing is infringing on a right they have been granted by society by duplicating that movie against the wishes of the studio.

This is a morally neutral post. I'm not saying whether infringing another's right is better or worse than stealing, but it is different.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, if you won't allow the other fellow to dishonestly manipulate language to falsely frame the debate, then I'm just going to have to ask you to leave. We simply cannot tolerate that sort of behavior here. Where would /. end up if we started to allow that sort of thing? I shudder at the thought.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[nytmare]

Instead of rape, compare abortion, manslaughter, and eating tasty animals with murder.

Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?

[gnovos]

I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay.

And I'm tired of people assuming that the only possible reason anyone might want to insist on using precise terminology is in the mistaken belief that this might justify morally bankrupt actions.

The best way to fight this it to start refering to copyright infringment as child rape and murder. Hey, don't child rape and murder that song! When you download music, you are raping and murdrering a child!

See how easily that defuses the issue?

Major sites

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually RTFA, the news server itself lists top 5 bittorent sites (mininova, piratebay ..) all of which are noticably missing from the sue list. I guess this is another 'we are suing 1 thief per year thus effectively stopping all criminality' article.

They're going after NZB sites too

[grubbymitts]

NZB-Zone has been targetted along with binnews and a couple of others. It is interesting to note that they have only gone for nzb sites and not the actual usenet providers - they appear to have the same rights as ISPs when it comes to common carrier status, but I'm no lawyer.

Re:They're going after NZB sites too

[cpt kangarooski]

The common carrier idea has never really flown that well in the ISP world. The real safe harbor here is the 512 exception, and it more or less treats search engines and providers of material placed there by users the same. Of course, it also requires that the ISPs in question take affirmative steps to be protected, and that they honor takedown requests by copyright holders.

The actual reason for suing them is probably because there are fewer NZB sites than there are news providers, and it's strategically best to go for the head of the snake. If you go after a search site, you impair all their users on many different news providers (and may be able to identify a lot of them too). If you go after a news provider, you impair their users (etc.), but not any from other providers. If you go after uploaders, you impair all their downloaders. If you go after downloaders, you only get them. So start at the head of the snake, and you'll get the most bang for your buck.

Re:They're going after NZB sites too

[Ngwenya]

The common carrier idea has never really flown that well in the ISP world. The real safe harbor here is the 512 exception, and it more or less treats search engines and providers of material placed there by users the same. Of course, it also requires that the ISPs in question take affirmative steps to be protected, and that they honor takedown requests by copyright holders.

Since I know YAAL, I defer to your statements in such matters.

Therefore, from a theoretical perspective, if the NZB site in question offered a feedback/takedown mechanism, which the *AA chose not to use - rather jumping instantly to a C&D/lawsuit mode, would a court be more likely to say that the site was acting within the 512 exception provisions? [I notice that NZB-Zone does indeed have a feedback option, but it's non-specific re: takedowns].

I suppose what I'm really asking is does the court look unfavourably upon plaintiffs who make no good faith attempt to use non-litigation based avenues before filing suit? If this is the case, I think that the NZB guys have probably got a strong defence. With sufficient donation, they may even have a chance to field it...

--Ng

Re:They're going after NZB sites too

[cpt kangarooski]

It doesn't work like that. If 512 is applicable, it basically short-circuits the case and keeps the ISP that is relying on it out of danger. But it must be complied with fully in order to be applicable. A feedback form is not good enough, however. ISPs either comply or they don't; good faith attempts are not good enough.

Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD?
2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store?
3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD?

1. I think I am at somewhere in the 3-4 years since I last bought a music CD

2. 3-4 year again - driving by a music store is like seeing a rotary phone - quaint and strange

3. I don't buy movies

The RIAA and their actions has moved me from a casual pirate who was happy to buy stuff I really liked to a hardcore pirate who is perfectly willing to screw my favorite artists out of my cash as long as it hurts the RIAA in even the smallest way.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[mybadluck22]

1. 3-4 Years for me too.
2. A few weeks. I have been in music stores with friends while we were hanging out.
3. Hm, don't recall, but I've been recently (In the last two months) been given movies as gifts, so if that counts then two months.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Buy them all the time, from mailorder or local shops. All independant stuff though. The last RIAA-affiliated CD I got was Radiohead's Hail to the Thief when it came out, and that was the first in about a year or so.

2) Again local shops that stock hard-to-find music, at good prices too. And with a good used section.

3) I used to buy used movies from blockbuster for under $10. Haven't in awhile tho.

So yeah I support artists and I buy physical stuff. But the RIAA gets squat. I'm not even American and I hate them!

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I haven't bought a CD for myself in over 10 years. I've bought a few as presents. I also don't download music. I almost never listen to music (except the incidental stuff I catch on the radio).

2. No idea - probably a couple of years since I was in a music store - when I last bought a CD for someone else.

3. I have approx 500 anime DVDs, and a much lower number of non-anime DVDs (but still a lot).

I download TV shows that either won't be shown here in Australia, or won't be shown for a *long* time, or where the TV channels have changed the time slots, etc umpteen times since the show started.

And although I haven't yet, I might download the first episode of an anime series that I think I want, and just want to see if it's as good as the reviews.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[rvalles]

Here, I haven't bought a DVD ever. I do not support anti-user measures like CSS or zones, therefore I don't buy DVDs.

About CDs, it's been about 6 years, exactly the same amount of time since I have internet at home (before, it was just impossible to connect in Spain with a reasonable cost); like for most, p2p changed my musical preferences a lot; before, I listened to what I now think of as crap. Many authors of good music saw me on their concerts or buying their merchandise, which of course should have given them more money than buying zillions of those stupid CDs. Nowadays, I've heard, CDs even come with evil antiuser technology of them, what a shame.

Of course, I came to learn, with the years, that copyright and patents are bad.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[_Pablo]

Depends on how good the music, film or game is. If I am listening to the music or playing the game after a few days then I buy it - for movies it's more a case of if I think I want to watch it again then i'll buy it.

1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD?
2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store?
3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD?

1. Two weeks ago I ordered the Arctic Monkeys CD online after it staying on the iPod for a few days.
2. Long time because I don't see the point, I know what I want to buy and it's cheaper online.
3. Couple of months ago I bought Sin City after knowing I would watch it again.

I would much rather it, if I could donate directly to the artists as opposed to paying for a copy of the physical media. It seems torrents, P2P, Usenet, IRC and every other digital distribution medium do a hell of a good job of making artists works available to consumers, so if the artists would just the final step and expect their payment directly from the "consumer", then we would be rid of the legacy of the physical domain.

It's this legacy which is currently refusing to accept that it's business model is dead, which is causing all the problems (from DRM to making file sharing teens into criminals) instead of trying to claim that their business has some special protection and should be able to continue to sell digital content as if it's the 1980's.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[geminidomino]

1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD?
2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store?
3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD?

1. Whenever "Warriors of the World" (Manowar) came out.*
2. Never. I don't have the patience for them.
3. 8 days.

* Just a point of interest, I've also not used iTunes/mp3.com/gnutella/bittorrent/etc... to get any new music in that time either.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[scharkalvin]

1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD?
Probaby the last time we were in Costco. My wife and I only buy
those "best of" collections. We can't stand the 'rap crap' that
is passed off as music these days. I'll buy some classical CD's
once in a while too.

2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store?
A LONG time ago. True music stores are ripoffs. When I buy CD's
I look for the bargins to be found at Costco, Overstock.com,
in bookstores such as Barns & Nobel (where I have a discount card),
and of course, EBAY.

3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD?
My wife and I stopped buying most DVD's a while ago when we
realizied that we had too many on the shelf that were bought on
impulse and we never had time to watch. BUT, most were bought
at Wal-Mart (from their $5 discount bin), EBAY, or Overstock.com.
So we didn't pay too much. Just a few weeks ago I HAD to buy
a copy of "the High and the Might" to replace a crummy vhs copy
made off Cineimax about 20 years ago.
(Ha! I bought a LEGAL copy to replace a shitty PIRATE one!).

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[Kaneda2112]

There are lots of used media places out there - at least there are alot of them here in Toronto. My collection of music and movies is probably 40 percent made up of used CDs and DVDs. If you're unhappy giving the big media companies your money, look at the "used" alternative before going to a big retail store -

1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD? I tend not to buy brand new discs as they are overpriced. I typically pick up used discs from a few stores that I regularly visit (same with DVDs). The last disc I bought was Triumph's Allied Forces - this week.

2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store? This week.

3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD? Two weeks ago - the latest Wallace and Gromit flick.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[smchris]

3) I used to buy used movies from blockbuster for under $10. Haven't in awhile tho.

Unfortunately, I doubt that supports the artist either.

But we do much the same. We have a Half-Price Books (regional chain. Ours is about 1/3 the size of a Barnes and Noble.) within walking distance that we drop a hundred or so on about five times a year. And walk out with a grocery bag filled to the top with various media.

I suppose the RIAA will want to go after them next.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, if you actually were paying for cinemax then thats called time shifting. Better luck next time

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[dsgitl]

1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD?
2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store?
3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD?

1. Tuesday of this week -- the new Slackers record

2. Tuesday of this week -- a local independent music store to buy the new Slackers record

3. Early January, which was also the first time in a very long time. And they were used.

More questions:
4. When was the last time I made a legal mp3 purchase?
Last night on iTunes.

5. When was the last time you downloaded music from a torrent site?
Again, last night.

I would think, eventually, big media companies would recognize people are more than willing to spend money for worthwhile product.

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[atomic_toaster]

1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD?
Two months.

2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store?
Not counting online music stores like iTunes? About a week.

3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD?
Once again, about a week.

Hmmm, this would make a gread Slashdot poll, or series of polls.

As a related aside, despite the fact that the MPAA/RIAA are claiming that they're losing $X-milion dollars to piracy, has anyone actually noticed physical CD/DVD stores closing down over the last few years? Personally, I can't think of a single one in my area, except perhaps for one small, independant one that was "muscled out" by another (larger) nearby store. On the contrary, I have noticed that more and more media stores have been popping up lately (video, audio, games & software), and that department stores that didn't have media departments or had small ones are actually increasing their size and variety. Doesn't that argue that the movie and music industries are actually doing quite well?

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD?

I bought one yesterday. Actually the CD in question hasn't been released, it was an advance copy from the band (friends of mine). I'll get the one with a cover in a week or so.

2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store?

My daughter works at Sam Goodie. I seldom buy anything there though, too expensive (in the mall). I get most of my CDs at Recycled Records or from the bands themselves.

3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD?

Maybe a month. I don't watch much TV any more, and I have shelves and shelves of tapes and DVDs.

It's been a while since I downloaded anything "illegal" from P2P, though. The quality is just too shitty. OTOH, I DLed Star Wreck, the movie that REALLY has the MPAA and its studios scared shitless and why they're REALLY trying to shut its distribution system down.

Yes, they have a legitimate fear of going out of business. If I was making "B" movies and saw Star Wreck, I'd be scared of going out of business, too.

-mcgrew
(MRC="prepare")

Re:Survey: How Long Since You Bought A CD/DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I have never purchased a music CD in my entire life. While it's a poor excuse, I don't feel as bad about downloading the occasional song because I wouldn't buy it anyway. If all file sharing stopped, I'd just stop listening, period.
2. I stopped in a Tower Records last week cause I was bored and browsed the books.
3. I bought half a dozen movies and TV series off Amazon back in December. Unlike music, I did buy movies and the like prior to file sharing; I use BitTorrent as a "try-before-you-buy" deal for movies and TV and either delete it if I don't like it or buy it if I do like it. With the exception of Farscape, because $150 for a season set is more criminal than anything I do. :-)

Freedom for the Culture!

[rvalles]

Millions of people, they say. Maybe it's time to start listening to the will of those millions instead of listening to just a few industry-paid lobbysts.

Freedom for the Culture!!!

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[jb.hl.com]

TorrentSpy etc and the people who use them don't give two shits about "free culture" or "info anarchism" or other terms which sound much nicer than "leeching albums from the Internet". TorrentSpy links to torrents, which 99.9% of the time are for copyrighted works. That's it. Nothing to do with lofty ideals or going against The Man (unless going against The Man gets you free shit).

Same goes for those "millions" who you talk of the will of. They probably couldn't give a flying fuck, so long as they can get the latest Hollywood shitfest for free.

Oh, btw, it's cute that you linked to the FSF homepage right after a link to a page on "anti-copyright". Especially when the GPL would fall over without copyright laws in place.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[Anonymous Coward]

God you people are pathetic. You follow everything that spills out of Stallman's bearded maw as if he were some sort of prophet.

It's my not-so-humble-belief that most of the people who claim to be "anarchists" are just bitterly self-superior adults who never quite grew up after leaving home.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[k12linux]

I think stallman goes a bit too far sometimes but you should be aware that the GPL gets its only power from copyright law and the ability to control what you create. I don't ever remember reading anything from RMS saying that everything should be free (as in no $) but that software should be free (as in freedom to do what you wish with it.) AFAIK, his view on proprietary software vs "free" software stemmed from not being allowed to fix a simple bug with a printer driver because he didn't have access to the source code, not that the OS he was using cost money in the first place.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[Surt]

The GPL would also be unnecessary without copyright laws in place.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[JesseMcDonald]

I agree that most of the people using these sites couldn't care less about the principles underlying the "free culture" and/or "info anarchism" movements. Nearly all of them probably want nothing more than to get a better deal (i.e. free) on popular music and movies. For all I know, the people running the site may share those priorities.

It doesn't matter.

The very fact that they see nothing fundamentally wrong with using these sites to download music and movies demonstrates that they are in agreement with those movements, and do not believe that access to information ought to be regulated by copyright. Their personal motivations, whether principled or pragmatic, are entirely irrelevant. The popularity of "file-sharing", however motivated, proves that most people do not believe that the copyright system is in their best interest. That the RI/MPAA have succeeded in overruling the general population on this matter demonstrates their own tenacity and political influence, as well as the general corruptability of our government.

As for the GPL, is has been pointed out numerous times, here and elsewhere, that the GPL exists purely in response to copyright. The GPL exists because purely public domain software could be integrated into a copyrighted derivative work; if the resulting software could not itself be copyrighted, then there would be no need for the GPL. There are a number of anti-copyright articles listed on the FSF's own site, on their Philosophy page, so I don't think that they would mind the GP's link.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[MS-06FZ]

It might be nice: but the notion that the will of the majority is always the right thing is flawed. For instance, if minority rights are determined by majority rule, the minorities in question get hosed.

Without something standing in the way of people using P2P downloads to get all their favorite copyrighted works, without something saying "this is illegitimate" or making some vague (or not) threat toward those who do it, the system of charging money for that stuff will collapse. That doesn't mean that entertainment will cease to be, but big-budget entertainment will cease to be viable.

Sometimes I like to think that it'd be nice if movies were cheaper - cheaper to go and see, lower budgets - if movies weren't so expensive people would see more of them. If there weren't millions of dollars riding on every release, the people who make them would have more creative freedom. But then the result would basically be what we have on TV, perhaps. With TV on hand, it's hard to justify the existence of movie theaters unless they're big-budget shows.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[paeanblack]

The very fact that they see nothing fundamentally wrong with using these sites to download music and movies demonstrates that they are in agreement with those movements, and do not believe that access to information ought to be regulated by copyright.

You are making an unfounded leap there. Just because millions of people do something doesn't mean they don't realize it's wrong. Millions of people drive drunk. Millions of people don't pay income taxes. They know such behavior is harmful to society, but usually they get away with it, so they do it anyway.

It's not about being "in agreement with some movement", it's all about getting shit for free and not getting caught. The downloaders know perfectly well that they would not have one-tenth of the current selection if everybody infringed...they just want to rip some free stuff and let someone else pick up the tab.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[Maxo-Texas]

When enough people who actually vote get mad that the politicians lose the ability to slice them into districts where their vote doesn't matter, then things will change.

My vote doesn't matter. My district is split 70/30. It doesn't matter WHICH side I vote for. Sure, I vote anyway- my vote has mattered exactly once in the last 12 years (even then I was was one of 31 voters and the incumbent refused to accept such a close vote for about six months of litigation).

The best thing that could happen for this country is for abortion to be overturned. Because as long as 30% of the voters vote that one issue, many other issues like this, dmca, surveillence cameras, politicians raising our taxes 10% per YEAR for the last 5 years with complete impunity because they are anti-abortion, are going to continue.

In the end, money matters. And voters no longer have enough to spare to contribute enough to get politicians attention.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[jb.hl.com]

You just joined my friends list :)

A lot of people also seem to think they're entitled to free whatever, but also want that free whatever to be DRM-free, in the format they like etc etc etc...essentially they want to have their cake and eat it. Gets on my nerves after a while.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[JesseMcDonald]

I think we have different underlying assumptions here. From your response, I deduce that you believe that a lack of copyright enforcement would inevitably result in significant harm to society. I also deduce that you believe that most people agree with this belief "deep down inside", whether or not their actions demonstrate such a belief. Furthermore, I deduce that you believe that most people "know" (believe) that "they would not have one-tenth of the current selection if everybody infringed"; in other words, that they are in agreement with your first assumption. I submit that these three axioms are insufficiently supported by the available evidence.

The question of whether copyright enforcement, or the lack thereof, causes significant harm to society is still unclear. Certainly many respectable individuals have expressed their support for both points of view, often with very principled, objective arguments. However, it is not my intention to provide a final solution this particular question. I merely submit that it is far from clear that copyright infringement has caused, is causing, or will cause any significant harm to society.

As for the individuals in question, I submit that it is impossible to know exactly what anyone believes "deep down inside". The actions of the "file-sharers" imply that they do not believe (possibly in ignorance) that their copyright infringement will hurt them (individually) as much as they benefit from it. If they do believe that "they would not have one-tenth of the current selection if everybody infringed", then they do not worry overmuch about it. (IMHO we have more than enough "selection" right now; I would not mind trading some of that excess "selection" for some additional freedom myself.[1]) If this lack of believe or worry is the result of ignorance, then it is the supporters of copyright who must convince them otherwise. If copyright's supporters cannot convince the majority of the population that copyright is worth the cost (through non-coercive means), then (IMHO) they deserve to lose their protected status. For a minority group (like the RIAA/MPAA) to use the law to force a larger group to comply with their demands, when the larger group chooses not to comply willingly, is (again IMHO) a major cop-out on the part of the minority group, and a serious abuse of the powers of government.

----

[1] It is interesting to note here that the average person could probably spend his or her entire life consuming nothing but the music and movies already produced, even if no new music or movies were produced from this point on. I'm not saying that this would be a good thing (every society ought to develop and improve on its past work), but there is also no reason that society must continuously encourage the production of new works of art and literature. If we did away with copyright entirely for a while, and discovered that the naysayers' fears were justified, then we could always reinstate it once we'd learned from our error. On the other hand, we might just find out that those fears weren't justified.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[geekee]

"Millions of people, they say. Maybe it's time to start listening to the will of those millions instead of listening to just a few industry-paid lobbysts."

Millions of people would prefer not to pay money for groceries either. That doesn't make it right to shoplift, or fight to make shoplifting legal.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? And where's the information proving your opinion? Oh, you're just guessing based on your prissy sense of judgment? I see. I guess that makes you a bit of a shit doesn't it? At least, that's how I've judged you based on little to no information. That's fair, right?

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[dcapel]

Last time I check the GPL, `copyleft`, was made to implement Free ideals in the current copyright system. It would prefer to not have it, but it has the GPL to work with it.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[nasch]

But if a grocery cartel was making it absurdly difficult to buy milk and found that milk was being shoplifted at an astronomical rate, they would be well advised to rethink how they sell milk, regardless of whether their customers' actions are illegal or immoral.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[jesdynf]

My enemies -- and enemies they are -- are hitting me with a hammer. It happens I can use this hammer to enforce my will.

It is neither inconsistent nor foolish to simultaneously use this tool to the best of my ability, if that's the best answer I can come up with, while calling for the abolition of the tool.

We'd be better off with seven-year copyrights. It happens I can use the GPL and do something pretty neat. That's nice -- but forced to choose between the GPL protecting code until the heat death of the universe plus 75 years or repealing laws that fuck the Constitution up against a tree...

GPL? Pretty nifty. What little I write uses it. Would I rather live without it and all other copyrights? Or just have copyrights that last "for limited times"?

Yes, I would.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it wouldn't. Without copyright laws someone could take GPLed source and include it in their closed source program, which is exactly what the GPL prevents.

Re:Freedom for the Culture!

[Anonymous Coward]

some sort of prophet.

What? You mean he's not?

never quite grew up after leaving home.

You must be new here. We all live in our parents' basements.

Same tired old argument

[Ogemaniac]

I could use the banana I am going to eat for dinner to choke you. On the other hand, I could use a suit-case nuclear bomb as a doorstop.

Now given that both of these items have both legitimate and illegitimate uses, should they be treated the same under the law? Of course not, and the reason why should be obvious - the banana has few illegitimate or dangerous uses, and is overwhelmingly used legitimately. The nuclear bomb has few legitimate uses, while its illegitimate uses are many and extreme. Also, even when used legitimately it can generally be replaced by safe alternatives.

As illustrated in the above example, having some legitimate uses is not enough to avoid a ban, nor is having some illegitimate uses enough to justify one. Instead, we must weigh the legitimate and illegitimate uses against one another. The three primary factors in deciding whether legal restrictions would be useful are:

1: What is the ratio of legitimate to illegitimate uses?

2: What alternatives exist to the legitimate uses?

3: How effectively could a ban be enforced?

BitTorrent and the like score quite badly on the first two points - most BT traffic is illegitimate, and there are plenty of legal ways to distribute files. The only question is how effective would any sort of regulation of BT really be.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent is talking about search engines. these sites are search engines. are you implying there are no legitimate search engine sites ?

Re:Same tired old argument

[Mr2001]

As illustrated in the above example, having some legitimate uses is not enough to avoid a ban, nor is having some illegitimate uses enough to justify one. Instead, we must weigh the legitimate and illegitimate uses against one another.

Of course, we must also consider what "illegitimate" means in context. A nuclear bomb has the potential to cause thousands, if not millions, of deaths, as well as render the land uninhabitable for decades to come. A BitTorrent site, on the other hand, merely has the potential to give thousands or millions of people access to free movies, music, TV shows, software, and porn, and the only threat it poses is to the business models that are founded on restricting free speech. Which one is the real threat?

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

of course there isnt any

Re:Same tired old argument

[arachnoprobe]

You are just wrong: The possession of a nuclear bomb is illegal under the law, not that of a banana. Comparison to search engines: They are not illegal.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Richard_at_work]

A BitTorrent site, on the other hand, merely has the potential to give thousands or millions of people access to free movies, music, TV shows, software, and porn, and the only threat it poses is to the business models that are founded on restricting free speech. Which one is the real threat?

If those business models that are 'founded on restricting free speech' stop paying for production of the content that goes to make up the main core of all these torrent sites, what will the sites offer? The content isnt free, you just arent paying the asking price for it. The real threat is that the content may stopped being produced because the people paying for the production arent seeing a return on investment.

You have no inherent entitlement to the content.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no inherent entitlement to the content.

So? Let's just take it anyway. It's not like it's real property. Movies are mostly fluff junk anyways -- a lot of people producing stuff that in the long run has little inherent value.

Re:Same tired old argument

[ThePhilips]

...stop paying for production of the content that goes to make up the main core of all these torrent sites, what will the sites offer?

After that happen, you'd be surprised how much of artists you liked are in fact are indies and has no relation to the RI/MA Ass. of America. What's more they'd be happy to know that you have downloaded their song/movie - and thus learned about their existence. And if you liked them payed visit to concert or show.

MP/RI Ass. of America is in fact a show business cortel. They control (or own) production, promotion and resales channels of content. Indies exists in your U.S. only thanks to few remnants of common sense and new lobby for indies on capitol hill. Your beloved Ass'es of America tried not once to "stamp" on "rampant" "threat" to their "business model" coming from the hippies who do nothing useful but distract people with their money from "show business" of USA. Business as usual, one would say.

I always tried to explain (unsuccessfully) you Americans what really at stake and what is the true problem of the RI/MP Ass of America. But they have already won your minds over - and you hardly hear the words. Forst word you have to memorize is "CULTURE". Second is "SOCIETY". Think of them. Write them on a wall and look at them hour a day. Probably then you would understand that commercializing what actually makes the bone of society leads you nowhere. (*)

P.S. That's the explanation why USA has such high crime rate. That's explains why you Americans at large has no understanding what's going outside: since you have no culture (but show business) one can hardly expect you to understand way others are living. The way people are living is formed by the culture and society exists at large as a way to preserve the culture. From the global prospective, RI/MP Ass. of America has found a way to sell you what you owned to begin with. They are "free riders". They've made you beleive that "culture" can be property. And it seems you already lost it...

Re:Same tired old argument

[Haeleth]

BitTorrent and the like score quite badly on the first two points - most BT traffic is illegitimate, and there are plenty of legal ways to distribute files.

Are you serious?! BitTorrent is frequently used for distributing large, legitimate files - in fact, I use it on a weekly basis, and I do not infringe copyright with it. BitTorrent is now the standard way of distributing many files that it is legal to distribute, from Linux distributions through to demos of commercial games, and banning it would therefore affect a huge range of legitimate activities.

Sorry, but while there ARE systems it would make sense to ban, based on your argument - such as other P2P systems like Kazaa and ED2K - I'm afraid BitTorrent is actually the one example of a P2P system that has been embraced by legitimate users and is widely used for legal purposes. It is the one P2P system that it would be MOST stupid to ban.

Incidentally, you win today's prize for the most careless use of language. "There are plenty of legal ways to distribute files", you said. There sure are - and BitTorrent is one of them.

By the way, if you think bananas are normally used for peaceful purposes, you can't have watched many cartoons. A banana skin is a very common weapon. :P

Re:Same tired old argument

[Mr2001]

If those business models that are 'founded on restricting free speech' stop paying for production of the content that goes to make up the main core of all these torrent sites, what will the sites offer?

If that happens, I imagine the sites will offer content created under other business models, content that was produced in the past, and content from the public domain. Or maybe they'll dry up. Who knows, but more importantly, who cares?

The question you posed contains a huge "if", and as such it only pertains to a fantasy world where everyone stops making music, movies, and other works that people enjoy. But in the real world, people have been making music, writing, and painting for thousands of years, copyright or not. They aren't going to stop just because it becomes hard to make money by selling copies of information; they'll just switch to a model where they get paid more directly for the work they do.

The content isnt free, you just arent paying the asking price for it. [...] You have no inherent entitlement to the content.

That's one way to look at it, but not a very accurate way. The string of bits that makes up a movie or song file is free once it's been created in the first place, and while I don't think I'd use the word "entitlement", I would definitely say that we have the moral right to share those strings of bits with one another, just as we have the right to share sports scores or our thoughts on the weather.

It's a plain and simple fact that the string of bits I've attached to this message(*) will make "Hit Me Baby One More Time" come out of your MP3 player, just like it's a fact that it was 23 degrees outside today. Some people think it should be illegal to share one of those facts, not because it would lead to fraud, loss of life, or a breach of national security (some legitimate reasons for restricting information flow), but simply because it would mean a few large businesses had to be restructured. I, on the other hand, think the freedom to speak and write freely, as well as to share one's cherished experiences with friends and strangers, is important enough that we should demand a damn good reason for limiting it - and putting a buck in Sony's pocket doesn't exactly qualify.

Now, the effort that went into producing that string of bits for the first time is what isn't free, and that effort is what no one has an entitlement to. An artist is free to charge whatever he wants for recording a song, writing a book, etc., and to refuse to do any of it until his conditions have been met. But once he has agreed to do it, the fruits of his labor are free for all of humanity to use, just like any other numbers.

(* not really attached)

Re:Same tired old argument

[paeanblack]

P.S. That's the explanation why USA has such high crime rate. That's explains why you Americans at large has no understanding what's going outside: since you have no culture (but show business) one can hardly expect you to understand way others are living.

There's one thing missing from your little rant:

Why does the rest of the world spend so much of their euros/yen/RMB/won/pesos/etc on American culture if it doesn't exist?

You need to stop reading back issues of PRAVDA for your news.

Re:Same tired old argument

[DesireCampbell]

Oh for fuck sakes...

You cannot buy culture. You learn about it, you appriciate it, you emulate it.

You have just proven his point - you have no culture, and apparently no idea how to debate.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Richard_at_work]

Well, a couple of points...

Firstly, Im not American, and havent ever lived in America. Im a person capable of independant thought and independant choice, and I choose not to blindly follow the 'I want it, give it to me' crowd.

Just because someone produces something that you might label as 'culture' doesnt give you the inherent right to that production for anything less than the asking price. Its as simple as that, and that is something you dont seem to get. The labelling of things as 'culture' seems to be a way of justifying the act of taking it without recompense.

Who would have produced that 'culture' if they hadnt payed for it? Would it have simply appeared? You overestimate the number of artists that produce content solely because they like doing it.

I also think you are overestimating the number of independants in the market, yes there are some but they dont come anywhere close to the majority - also I fail to see how the independants are prevented from marketing their own product, they have the same access to radio stations, tv, the internet, print media....

Aside from that, the fact that independants react differently does not require the RIAA/MPAA companies to react in the same manner. They want to be payed, its their right to want it because they produced it.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the explanation why USA has such high crime rate.

Maybe you'd better do a little research on that one: Drug War Facts

The crime rate has been primarily influenced by government, and prohibition in particular. When we look at history in general -- the history of any government -- the more power at the center, the higher the crime rate. Of course, if you're the guy "offering" security services, that's exactly what you'd want, no?

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

"
I also think you are overestimating the number of independants in the market, yes there are some but they dont come anywhere close to the majority - also I fail to see how the independants are prevented from marketing their own product, they have the same access to radio stations, tv, the internet, print media....
"
Dont make me laugh, of course the independents are in low numbers its because the **AA have it all sewn up, the RICO act needs to be used on those guys, then there would be a vibrant independent scene and we wouldnt have 5,000 britney clones puking crap onto the airways.

Re:Same tired old argument

[FireFury03]

Instead, we must weigh the legitimate and illegitimate uses against one another.

Which is clearly why guns (which are primarilly designed to put lumps of lead in people) are legal in the US...

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the fact that I largely agree with what you are saying, you don't have to be such a condescending asshole about it. Who are you and what makes you so chock full of culture?

Re:Same tired old argument

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Who would have produced that 'culture' if they hadnt payed for it? Would it have simply appeared?

Once upon a time, before the copyright cartels came to dominate, such work was created on a comission basis. There is no intrinsic reason that we can't go back to that business model, and leverage the reach of the internet to allow anyone, anywhere to comission work from anyone and anywhere in the world. Even large productions can be comissioned with a variant of the "group buy" idea that is already very popular in niche communities on the net.

Re:Same tired old argument

[jb.hl.com]

Fantastic argument! It's shit and it's not real, so let's not pay for it, even though it cost real money to make and was made by real people who expect real money in return for viewing it!

Re:Same tired old argument

[Corbets]

Sounds to me like you need to memorize a few words, like "spelling" and "dictionary."

Sorry, but by attacking my society as a whole you open yourself up to retaliation. Try to post intelligently without being insulting and you'll find that people will (mostly) respond in kind.

Re:Same tired old argument

[voice_of_all_reason]

I could use the banana I am going to eat for dinner to choke you

Ah, the cornerstone of any nutritious dinner!

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot buy culture. You learn about it, you appriciate it, you emulate it.

You are obviously a bit on the slow side. He's referring to cultural items - books, movies, music, and artifacts.

You have just proven his point - you have no culture, and apparently no idea how to debate.

Claiming someone has no culture indicates that you do not understand what culture is.

Re:Same tired old argument

[penix1]

"If those business models that are 'founded on restricting free speech' stop paying for production of the content that goes to make up the main core of all these torrent sites, what will the sites offer? The content isnt free, you just arent paying the asking price for it. The real threat is that the content may stopped being produced because the people paying for the production arent seeing a return on investment."

I claim bullshit on this every time it is put forward by industry ludites. You show me one movie, book, song, software that WASN'T made for fear of piracy then we can talk about it. You can't and neither can they. You are talking about multi-billion dollar industries here and they can't show one instance where fear of piracy has stopped them from producing one single thing. So shhh about all this "we will starve and the content will disappear" bs.

"You have no inherent entitlement to the content."

And they aren't entitled to perpetual profits either. Copyright is supposed to expire. Think about that one.

B.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Casualposter]

Does it occur to anyone that by restricting the torrent sites and trying to destroy file sharing and music sharing that the real target of this is not piracy, but an attempt to destroy the growing ability of independent artists to make a name for themselves without the big labels? It looks to me like piracy is not the issue, but rather market dominance. Once the MPAA, RIAA have destroyed this upstart internet thing, they will then embrace the technology to distribute the content that they want on the terms that they want. Think about pay per view for EVERYTHING.

Re:Same tired old argument

[catman]

Actually, grandparent's spelling and grammar seems quite excellent considering that English probably is his third or fourth language. I've certainly seen worse here from native speakers - and no, I'm not a native speaker of English, either. Sometimes it shows :-)

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

It's clear you've never talked to actual artists, musicians, or authors.

They don't talk about their work as "content" and they don't "produce" it.

Anybody in it for the money is not creating art, music, or literature.

Go back to business school, rule the world, whatever---real society doesn't really care for your opinions anyway.

Re:Same tired old argument

[alexgieg]

In a word: yes.

Re:Same tired old argument

[theLOUDroom]

The real threat is that the content may stopped being produced because the people paying for the production arent seeing a return on investment.

That is stupid.
Based on that logic there should have been zero books written before the creation of copyright and zero scientific discoveries made before the existence of patents.

It is possible that if copyright law was throw out production would reduce, but to claim that it would completely cease is dishonest and retarded.
It's quite possible that production would actually increase. Although the reward might go down, being able to use other content as part of your would reduce the effort necessary to create content in the first place.

You have no inherent entitlement to the content.

Sure we do. It's right there in the constitution. They get a limited-time monopoly. No matter what happens, it eventually reverts back to the people.

Re:Same tired old argument

[PhoenixFlare]

First of all, if you're going to rant about how Americans are basically uncultured idiots, you may want to work on your spelling.
That said -

After that happen, you'd be surprised how much of artists you liked are in fact are indies and has no relation to the RI/MA Ass. of America.

Looking at my playlist(s), i'd have to say I see almost zero indie artists. I do, however, see plenty of music from outside the US. Not really sure what point you're trying to make here.

MP/RI Ass. of America is in fact a show business cortel. They control (or own) production, promotion and resales channels of content.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

I always tried to explain (unsuccessfully) you Americans what really at stake and what is the true problem of the RI/MP Ass of America. But they have already won your minds over - and you hardly hear the words.

P.S. That's the explanation why USA has such high crime rate. That's explains why you Americans at large has no understanding what's going outside: since you have no culture (but show business) one can hardly expect you to understand way others are living.

A little bit of information for you, from someone who actually lives in the United States - whatever you see of our country from popular television, music, news reports, or random Slashdot posters does not mean the entire population (or even most of it) feels the same.

Frankly, if I was to do the same thing, and base my opinion of the European countries on you and other people i've met online, i'd think the vast majority of you were arrogant, elitist, condescending jackasses.....But I know better than that, not to mention that I have made a few good friends in your part of the world over the years.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Mahou]

Which is clearly why cars (which are primarilly designed to run over small children) are legal in the US...

Re:Same tired old argument

[Errtu76]

You cannot buy culture. You learn about it, you appriciate it, you emulate it.

You move your Great Artist into a city and have him create a Great Work. You increase the culture tax a bit. You can buy culture! And i'll throw a nuke on everyone who says i can't!

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

The real threat is that the content may stopped being produced because the people paying for the production arent seeing a return on investment.

We should be so lucky.

Unfortunately, the Mafia has never worked that way, and they won't this time, either.
They'll just find another way to extort money for their worthless crap.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of crap. You believe the United States has no culture because it does not try to emulate your culture. The french believe the US has not culture because we don't bend over and kiss their asses. The US has a stronger culture than any society in the world today. Just because our culture is only roughly 400 year old and derived from many, MANY, other cultures, does not make it a valid culture.

We have arrived at a culture that is completely our own, but is a conglomeration of the hundreds of different cultures of the people that have immegrated here. You believe our culture has nothing to do with anything but Hollywood because that is all YOU care about and that is all YOU wish to see. We have more regional cultures in this country than probably anyplace on this planet, short of large 3rd world continents. The fact that our citizenary have embraced these regional cultures in the face of the most progressive country on this planet speaks volumes for our country.

The Great Nortwest (Washington, Oregon, etc) is a completely different culture than Southern California. The Southwest (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico) is like a different planet when compared to the Northeast corridor. The old south still embraces that which it believes to make it great. If you flew from New York City and got off the plane in New Orleans (prior to the flood) you would have believed you flew to a different country. The midwest has a culture that someone who grew up in New Jersey could not understand if they lived that for the rest of their lives. We do not have a single culture due to the fact that the mere surface area of our country as well as the population makes it impossible. That plus the fact that there are those of us who look at the people in the media and in Hollywood and don't try to emulate them because we know that they are self-involved children of limited intelligence and limitless egos. That plus the fact that they are totally full of crap. It that is the culture that you wish us to embrace, its all yours. Have at it

Re:Same tired old argument

[chefren]

...but "guns don't kill people, people kill people"...

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans are stupid uncultured capitalist conformists. Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention in a gross generalization. Clearly, a person with your staggering amount of culture would never (and has never) watch a major American studio-produced movie or listen to a major American studio-produced record. In fact, why bother even informing us (we, the stupid Americans), when it doesn't bother you in the slightest what we do? Obsequious are we in the ways of culture, compared to the elite (insert country here) culture.

Oh, could you please explain what your society has done to preach to us and lead us in the ways of high culture?

Thank you,
Uncultured American

Re:Same tired old argument

[sleeper0]

Nope. Go have another bong hit. Killing peer to peer kills indie distribution? Shit all the indie stuff is on paid for servers, the only things you have to slum for on peer to peer networks are major label.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Mayhem178]

You cannot buy culture

Last I checked, nothing in this world was free. You go to another country, and you have to pay their taxes, not to mention their airline fees (depending on which airline you choose, if you need to fly at all), and must meet any prerequisites for entering their country. Once you're there, do you just stand around gawking? Well, some people do, but everyone I know goes travelling to see the sights. That costs money. You can buy culture, or rather, you can buy the chance to experience a certain culture.

As for debate, I'd put more credibility in the parent poster's debating ability than yours, as you've just proven that you have no concept of the first rule of debating: attack the issue, not your opponent.

Now, whether or not music can be considered "culture" from a consumer standpoint, I'm not so sure. See, as I understand it, in many cases the artists themselves see little to no profit from CD sales and the like. Much of their revenue comes from touring and concerts, which I don't think are generally free anywhere in the world. And it's not like you can download an illegal copy of the concert and get the full experience of having been there.

The artists have their rights same as the rest of us to protect their works, but the fact of the matter is that many artists prefer to share their music for free, as it gets them publicity and good PR, which leads to a large fanbase and high concert attendance. The real aggressors here are the folks at the MPAA, who have, in the past, filed lawsuits against filesharers without even informing the bands they represent.

The MPAA has become a powerful middle-man entity, that, personally, I believe serves absolutely no purpose.

Re:Same tired old argument

[larkost]

It is impossible for a society to "have no culture". What you are saying is that a group does not have the culture that you value, and you are using a mistaken definition of "culture". Really you both are not talking about culture, but about popular media, which can be a method of cultural transfer, or a part of the expression of culture.

And there is a real point that much of the world has decided to make US-produced media that reflects our central culture such a large part of their entertainment diet (one part of culture). This is a valid point.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Guns don't kill people, rappers do.
I seen it in a documentary on BBC 2.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Brushfireb]

What a delicious troll you are.

Regardless, I am inclined to bite, but only responding to a minor point. And I will cite sources, instead of conjecture.

P.S. That's the explanation why USA has such high crime rate.

Im fairly certain you are not from G.B., but I will use crime statistics from there just as a point of fact.

Please consult this article, from a few years back (outdated, I suppose, could be your argument, but I think it is still valid.)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/798708/post s
Quote: "The survey, which is likely to prove embarrassing to David Blunkett, the Home Secretary. shows that people are more likely to be mugged, burgled, robbed or assaulted here than in America, Germany, Russia, South Africa or any other of the world's 20 largest nations. Only the Dominican Republic, New Zealand and Finland have higher crime rates than England and Wales."

Lets continue, shall we?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_bur_percap You should check this site out. Certainly, the US is pretty high in Murders, but is that the only metric of crime? Try Burglaries/Robberies, and other statistics.

I'm not saying that the US has a low crime rate, but I am saying that your claim that we have the "worst" crime rate is a little simplistic and a lot incorrect. Good day.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Admiral Ag]

It's actually a reasonable position.

It's not like God (even if he/she/it exists at all) has made it a rule that people who create replicable content must be compensated. You have no inherent moral right to charge people for listening to music you make, or jokes you tell. As everyone knows, the state grants you a legal right to do so in order to foster more content creation, so there's your real power. If people are downloading it without paying, just stop making it and find another job. Lawsuits won't stop them -- it's like if the makers of traction engines tried to make gasoline powered tractors illegal. The technology is simply too powerful and useful to be stopped.

What many people haven't considered is that some of us might quite like it if the dominant role content creation was taken away from Informational Empires like Sony and returned to ordinary Joes. I personally wouldn't miss it at all. We suffer from information pollution as it is -- I cannot walk anywhere without continuously being assaulted by propaganda for the consumer society. I hate it -- I'd love nothing better than to see it destroyed.

So if someone said to me "Hey, if you pirate movies through Bittorrent, Sony and Universal and all the other big media companies will go bust and stop making content", I'd reply "Awesome! Where do I sign up?"

Re:Same tired old argument

[OneSeventeen]

1. What is the ratio of legitimate to illegitimate uses?
2. What alternatives exist to the legitimate uses?
3. How effectively could a ban be enforced?

BitTorrent and the like score quite badly on the first two points - most BT traffic is illegitimate, and there are plenty of legal ways to distribute files. The only question is how effective would any sort of regulation of BT really be.

1. I guess I'm an anomoly, but I've never downloaded an illegal torrent. I use it for Linux ISO's, and used to run a business that depended on getting those ISOs quick and reliably. The previous methods included other P2P filesharing networks that have since been removed by the MPAA and other organizations.
2. Not a single equivalent alternative exists. Period. Unless you consider FTP, but that can be used illegally as well, but once again it is not an equivalent alternative, just an alternative.
3. A ban could be enforced by simply forcing web sites to filter search results. Potentially leading to government controlled search engines results and the like. (see also: China)

Surprisingly, the only thing that makes me more angry about losing my rights online, is knowing its all the morons who download movies causing it. I would love to spit in the face of the MPAA and the RIAA, but only after spitting in the face of the individuals who encourage their actions by abusing their rights , usually in the form of downloading games, music, and movies.

It seems like the RIAA, the MPAA, and the illegal downloaders are all acting immature, and abusing the rights of others. The only person not abusing rights, is the exact person having their rights trampled on. As someone who doesn't steal software, music, or movies, I also won't break the law, so if I can't copy my CD to my computer because of some obscure law thought up by the RIAA, encouraged by the people who distribute music illegaly, that means I won't buy CDs, the RIAA won't make their money, and the people who have already proven to be okay with doing things illegal, will continue to copy their CDs.

Why not go ahead and make iTunes the only legal source of music purchasing, and iPods the only legal source of playing music?

It sounds harsh, but isn't that what you are suggesting? Eliminate the opposing forces, instead of increasing severity of the consequences of abusing rights?

Basically, the MPAA is targeting the wrong audience. Threaten the people doing the illegal downloading, and increase severity there. Don't threaten the rights of an entire country (or everyone in general). Find a way to restrict the rights of the abusers. Making it more difficult to do what I used to have rights to do in the past, only makes it harder to comply and easier to break the law. At the rate we are going, all recording devices will be banned, and we will only have read-only access to MPAA/RIAA provided content, with individual decoders created for each device we own.

Don't encourage the MPAA/RIAA to do this. The best way to discourage it, is to reform laws to revoke the rights of abusers, and leave my rights alone. Another way is to stop downloading content you don't have rights to.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Eivind Eklund]

The real threat is that the content may stopped being produced because the people paying for the production arent seeing a return on investment.

No. The real threat is that the people that do production of "content" for love may be unable to do so because the people that try to grab a profit are afraid of people jumping their boat, raping their women, and throwing their employees to the sharks - oops, I meant copying "their" content without reimbursing them.

I for one would think it WONDERFUL if Hollywood and RIAA went out of business, especially if they took the soaps with them. The non-commercial stuff makes for more challenging culture - and also more interesting culture. There is nothing that indicates to me that "society will be a significantly worse off without the mainstream canned commercial entertainment" - and there is lots that point to it maybe being a significantly better off. There's also lots that point to society being worse off with DRM in place.

Eivind.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Xaositecte]

Stop trying to justfiy an inherantly unethical practice (stealing) with a dubiously ethical motive (Bringing down the "Evil Empire").

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of the world is far to broad, while many people in Africa might know who our Celebs are I would hardly believe that they would purchase American entertainment, when they have a hard enough time feeding their families.

I believe the gentlemen is right to a certain degree. The idea that what the Media Industry spews out as entertainment also allows them to harness a vast resource. Namely our 15-25 year olds who spend the majority of the money in our consumer driven culture. They just have to keep playing the piracy = hurting the little guy, and the Americans that count (see above) will believe anything they are told.

The MPAA and RIAA have and will push to gain more and more control over the very media we purchase and they claim to hold a copyright too. Backing up DVD's purchased legally should not be against the law, simply because they place a copy protection scheme on them, and yet here we are.

The music industry has been crying foul since real to real tape was marketed to the general public. Only now that content is digital they think and are getting people to believe that we own nothing and have no rights.

Most Americans assume rights they don't have and are unaware of rights we do. The later is why Freedom requires eternal vigilance.

Re:Same tired old argument

[twifosp]

ThePhilips -- I agree with your post with one small exception. I've taken the liberty and modified one of your statements:

I always tried to explain (unsuccessfully) you Americans what really at stake and what is the true problem of the RI/MP Ass of America. But they have already won your minds over - and you hardly hear the words.

But they have already won your politician's & court's minds over - and you hardly pay attention to the officials you elect.

Re:Same tired old argument

[symbolic]

Not exactly....

Culture is manufactured every day by companies trying to create stuff that's cool and that people will buy. It's not just about music or movies...it's about the clothing people wear, the language they use, the type of identity the seek (and the motivations behind it), and their overall behavior. The US probably has one of the most fabricated "cultures" in existence, since it's all driven by consumption.

Re:Same tired old argument

[SloppyElvis]

By that same argument you cannot own culture either. Claiming "you have no culture" is inherently true, so you must be a master of debate.

Nevertheless, the post you're discrediting seems like a "fish swallowing the bait" to me and makes an ineffective rebuttal as you've indicated.

What surprises me is this idea that culture is somehow limited to political or national borders. As an obvious example, there is a "Slashdot culture" in this very forum that extends well beyond lines on a map. Few people here support prosecution of consumers as a right of the production houses, yet the allegations are clearly targeted at the United States for bringing this into existence. Culture as a collection of common memes could be grouped as being "American", but the original posters indictment of Americans as being fooled by "Ass's" is baseless. The topic is under heated debate and cannot seriously be considered uniquely American.

Likewise, the idea that commercializing art is an American invention is also naive. Theatres, concert halls, and colleseums sought money from spectators well before the USA existed at all. Collectors have attempted to thwart forgery throughout the ages, and passing forged works has long been a criminal offense throughout the world.

Now, of course, anybody can be a master forger of media with a few clicks on a PC. The consumer is no longer a concerned stakeholder so much as the original producer, and so you have producers targeting consumers since they are helpless against the offender. Ridiculous? Yes, of course.

Through all this it remains true that artisans will strive to represent the cultures of the world as it is their muse. The "my nation's culture is better than yours" pissing contest is fruitless, though perhaps worthy of being immortalized in a tragic work of art.

Re:Same tired old argument

[jb.hl.com]

You have no inherent moral right to charge people for listening to music you make

Yes, you do. It's called copyright. Note that it is a right; that is, you don't HAVE to charge people, but you can do if you wish, and using copyright law enforce it.

If people are downloading it without paying, just stop making it and find another job.

Or use your legal rights under copyright law to sue them and stop them. This is the option the RIAA and the MPAA are taking and, although I wish they'd concentrate more on the people uploading the stuff, it is a legitimate course of action.

Lawsuits won't stop them -- it's like if the makers of traction engines tried to make gasoline powered tractors illegal.

No, it's not; it's like if the owners of the patent for traction engines (if such a thing existed) sued someone who cloned their design without paying the requisite license fees.

Re:Same tired old argument

[ducman]

Who's going to do the weighing? What criteria are they going to use? What if I don't agree with those criteria. How do I get something on the list to be weighed? (I find it annoying that my neighbor's dog barks a lot. I think we should ban dogs.)

Re:Same tired old argument

[Spoke]

In fact I run BitTorrent (Azureus) 24x7 to distribute large legitimate files. Out of the active torrents I'm seeding now, I've uploaded well over 200GB of data, and that's limiting my upstream to 15kB/s when I'm not downloading data via BitTorrent.

Re:Same tired old argument

[vux984]

Sorry, but by attacking my society as a whole you open yourself up to retaliation.

This right here justifies why the American Terror Alert level is "Elevated". I mean, this guy attacked your society as a whole! Just now! You all saw it. He's probably planning to blow something up too.

Sounds to me like you need to memorize a few words, like "spelling" and "dictionary."

Ouch. One would have thought the "retaliation" would at least be on target...like for example: rebutting "Why the MPAA/RIAA is bad for America" but no, that's probably hard... so you mocked his spelling.

Try to post intelligently without being insulting...

Oh the delicious irony.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Mr2001]

Just because someone produces something that you might label as 'culture' doesnt give you the inherent right to that production for anything less than the asking price. Its as simple as that, and that is something you dont seem to get.

And just because someone would like you to pay him for a copy of a file doesn't give him the right to stop you from making your own copy for free. No one can own a number. It's as simple as that, and that is something you don't seem to get.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's not so nice, but this guy's blog does a better job of discrediting what he says than any of the replies I've read. Seriously. Check it out.

Re:Same tired old argument

[MrBrklyn]

Your incorrect. Copyright is NOT a right, not in the sense you use it here. Copyright is a privledge or a grant.

Get your facts straight.

Ruben
NYLXS

Re:Same tired old argument

[nasch]

"I fail to see how the independants are prevented from marketing their own product, they have the same access to radio stations, tv, ... print media"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Good one!

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

If "real money" equals the baseless U.S. dollar, I honestly do not see your point. Yeah, so people wasted their "creative" efforts and spreading of baseless U.S. currency creating a bunch of junk. And I am supposed to give a shit about them? Sorry, no I don't.

I'm sick and fucking tired of top-down culture and the enslavement of the consumer culture of "buy this crap, buy that crap, or you're a communist" bullshit. I want culture to get back in the hands of the comman human being, where it belongs.

Re:Same tired old argument

[maxpublic]

The US probably has one of the most fabricated "cultures" in existence, since it's all driven by consumption.

A popular but entirely untrue stereotype. American culture is no more fabricated than the culture of any country in western Europe, which plays by the exact same rules as we do when it comes to big media. In some places it's even worse, e.g., attempting to force the consumption of 'local' culture through government-mandated minimums of specific programming.

Max

Re:Same tired old argument

[maxpublic]

Or maybe they'll dry up. Who knows, but more importantly, who cares?

From what I can see, most of the people who create it and most of the people who consume it. You'll notice that the number of people crying out about the unfairness of the system is tiny, and usually limited to geek-sets and college kids who want what they want for free, and use whatever straws they can grasp at to justify their acts of copyright infringement.

The question you posed contains a huge "if", and as such it only pertains to a fantasy world where everyone stops making music, movies, and other works that people enjoy.

Wrong-o. It talks about the world that existed prior to the idea of limited copyrights, wherein books, musics and plays were still produced - but at a tiny fraction of the rate they're produced at today. Copyright was invented to encourage *anyone who wanted to give it a shot* to produce these works in order to allow people who otherwise wouldn't have the time or incentive to try their hand at it.

And guess what? It worked. Take the "live performance" and "rich patron" out of the equation and the amount of content producers exploded. By any previous standard you want to compare it to, we're obscenely wealthy in this regard - and we have access to books, music, and movies we'd otherwise *never* have seen, because the writers, musicians, and crews who make this content would otherwise be working a real job, to make real money, to put real food on the table.

Your world of the past sucked big green donkey dicks. No matter how obnoxious the RIAA/MPAA get, this world - the one we have now - is vastly better than what has gone before. And everyone but a tiny subset of whiners is agreed upon this.

But once he has agreed to do it, the fruits of his labor are free for all of humanity to use

Go ahead and try to convince people that your opinion is the one that should be used to shape law. America's a republic, after all. But until you manage this feat (and I sure as shit think you'll never, ever accomplish this task) your opinion remains just that - opinion, and nothing more. Which means at the moment the "fruits of his labor" belong to no one but him and those he chooses to license it to.

Max

Re:Same tired old argument

[maxpublic]

I for one would think it WONDERFUL if Hollywood and RIAA went out of business

So do I, but not for the same reasons. The middle-man distributor is a dead business model, propped up by bad law. But this has *nothing* to do with copyrights.

The non-commercial stuff makes for more challenging culture - and also more interesting culture.

That's nothing more than your opinion, and like assholes, everyone has one. So you like the idea - so what? Unless someone elected you to godhood while I wasn't paying attention, you don't get to decide what others want, or what they can see or hear or read.

There is nothing that indicates to me that "society will be a significantly worse off without the mainstream canned commercial entertainment"

It will be because the vast majority of folks LIKE the stuff that's currently playing on the radio, TV and in the theaters - and now they won't be able to get that stuff. If you think the public is going to allow you to dictate your terms to them without putting up a fight you're in for a rude awakening.

Having you in charge would be worse than the current RIAA/MPAA goons. They at least try to provide (some of the time) the stuff that people want. You, it seems, would only provide the stuff that YOU personally approve of.

Max

Re:Same tired old argument

[Kazoo the Clown]

Their loss of market dominance *is* what is causing their problems, but they either don't realize it or do realize it and also that they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of avoiding it-- the best they can do is slow it down a bit with FUD campaigns, similar to what SCO tried with Linux, merely postponing the inevitable...

Re:Same tired old argument

[nasch]

You've almost got it. Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people.

Re:Same tired old argument

[DesireCampbell]

Exactly. American culture isn't "manufactured" - even though many American corporations dilute the value of their culture all the time. President's day is used to sell cars. Nothing is more of a farce than that.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Catbeller]

The problem with the grant of copyright was that it was to be for a limited time. The term is now for all intents eternal.

So the deal, copyrights granted for a limited time, with material becoming part of the commons afterwards, was unilaterally renounced by one side.

The deal is off. We didn't cancel the contract, they did.

Until they reestablish a reasonable term of copyright, we can only assume that they do not intend to ever let copyright expire.

Arts and sciences cannot survive under such conditions. Works MUST be released to the commons, otherwise we will have all the works of mankind after 1927 or so owned by a few powerhouse IP corporations, eventually -- after they merge and buy each other out.

Deal is over. Copy away.

Re:Same tired old argument

[jp10558]

And I also want to say, for instance http://www.fanfiction.net/ - how much bigger would this be if it wasn't mostly grey/illegial? Why do people put so much effort into it (spend some time there, there are some works that are both novel length, and good) for no possibility of reward?

And for many projects, I don't see why the model that's been working for freenet for instance wouldn't work - that is show a monthly amount needed to continue working on a project and ask for donations.

Plus, there will always be a market for physical incarnations of content. See various books by shakespeare or such. People still buy them. Of course, just providing a disc won't be enough unless you want to bill like the linux burning sites do ($2 a disk, including S&H). But cover art and official lyrics, and other cool stuff - boxed sets might do it.

And to people who say that that all is fine for books, but won't work for movies - see various fan star trek productions like the parody Star Wrek, or even the New Voyages covered on /. before. I mean, Star Wrek offers a DVD, but also offers a high quality torrent of it. They are making money, but can't be totally motivated by money, or wouldn't provide the torrent.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Mr2001]

By any previous standard you want to compare it to, we're obscenely wealthy in this regard - and we have access to books, music, and movies we'd otherwise *never* have seen, because the writers, musicians, and crews who make this content would otherwise be working a real job, to make real money, to put real food on the table.

How valuable is such "access" when it comes at the whim of whoever owns the copyright? Sure, you can listen to this song, if you agree to pay $X for it. You can watch this movie, if you agree to get it in a DRM-encumbered format and sit through unskippable commercials. You can read this e-book, if you use a DRM-encumbered player, pay more than the paperback costs, and feel like buying a second copy of the same bits if your original gets lost.

The purpose of any government assistance to artists, IMO, shouldn't just be get more works on the market, but to get more works into the public domain where they can be remixed, built upon, incorporated into other works, and enjoyed without having to get permission from the heirs of someone who died 25 years ago. You know, improving our shared culture, not just coming up with more products to sell.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Mr2001]

And guess what? It worked. Take the "live performance" and "rich patron" out of the equation and the amount of content producers exploded.

Luckily, it's the 21st century and we now have another option: "thousands, if not millions, of not-so-rich patrons". It works for political campaigns; it can work for artists too.

Which means at the moment the "fruits of his labor" belong to no one but him and those he chooses to license it to.

Yeah, I guess you could say that. Of course, if you were living in America 150 years ago, you could also say that a slave belongs to his master or whoever his master chooses to sell him to. You'd be right, legally speaking, but that type of "ownership" has no moral justification whatsoever.

Re:Same tired old argument

[syberanarchy]

You'll excuse me if I take this opinion about the lack of American culture with a grain of salt, given the fact you have a permanent link to a fucking DBZ site in your header and sig!

Re:Same tired old argument

[hicksw]

you have no culture

If you seek culture, look between the toes.

Re:Same tired old argument

[DesireCampbell]

And you'll excuse me for calling you a fucking moron for not reading anything else on the page.

Fuckin' moron.

But I suppose someone as smart as you cannot be bothered reading and such. So I'll sum it up for you.

ARRRGHHH.

The first poster said "USA = no culture", somebody responded with "People buy DVDs and hula-hoops so USA = culture", I then said "culture cannot be bought, saying such a ridiculous thing proves the OP's point :P" and then everyone jumps down my fucking throat about saying America having no culture.

You know what? I'm tired of having to guess what I said to make you think I think America has no culture. I'm tired.

Can you just tell me? Just quote the line. If you can quote the line where I say "I think America has no culture" or "American culture is terrible" then I will sincerely apologize.

But, if you can't find anything I've said to say that, you owe me an apology for your farce of a debate.

And, for the record, Jazz, Hollywood films, American Realism/Abstraction ism are all part of the American culture... but selling pieces of them isn't culture (Capitalism could be seen as a major part of the American culture, but not the actual action of selling things)."

And was that a cheapshot for the DragonBall link? I'll take your opinion of American culture with a grain of "fuck the Hell off", you nine-year-old sodomite bastard.



Idiot.

Re:Same tired old argument

[NumerusSpy]

They mandate levels of local programming to stop the US media companies from diluting/damaging their own culture and/or their own local interests(eg employment for actors). Take Baywatch for example. They charge a fortune for it where they can (in a mature marketplace - say Australia) and practically give it away in a less mature marketplace. If it cost's $10,000 to create a one hour show in Tanzania, for Tanzanians using Tanzanian actors but the local network can get Baywatch for $1000 which product are they going to go with? And, that doesn't even take into account the ultimate ownership of the local media company which could even be the original manufacturers of Baywatch. I guess this isn't the time or place to mention that the foreign ownership of the media company in Tanzania was forced upon that country under some form of Austerity/whatever measure imposed by a supposedly beneficial 'global' trade organisation.

Re:Same tired old argument

[NumerusSpy]

just like all linux content is on paid servers right? The only word you got right was 'shit'.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Eivind Eklund]

Please contemplate the difference between approving of a certain direction of change and dictating it.

It will be because the vast majority of folks LIKE the stuff that's currently playing on the radio, TV and in the theaters - and now they won't be able to get that stuff.

... and if that stuff isn't available, they will like something else. Humans are quite adaptable animals of habit.

I have - of course - contemplated the perspective of people losing the stuff they like. That's a freakin' trivial and obvious perspective. People also like smoking cigarettes and drinking to excess often. I would also think it wonderful if people stopped smoking cigarettes and stopped drinking to excess. It doesn't mean I want to prohibit either - yet I think that people will be better off if they don't indulge in that behaviour, and if developments in the world makes it less likely they do these, I'll applaud.

If popular behaviour in a free market (without artificial restrictions like copyright) end up making dumb culture unprofitable and thus move people to culture they get more out of, I'll think it a good development and applaud. I know how hard it is to kick the popular culture habit - I've worked hard to get rid of the bad parts of it myself. If other people get support in doing this more easily - I'm happy for them. I would think it wonderful that they get more out of life - because I think they will.

And that's my opinion *after having tried out the different alternatives*. Have YOU tried out the different alternatives, or are you just talking out of your ass?

Eivind.

Re:Same tired old argument

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we should let the MPAA delete random files from your hard drive. After all, they're not "real property" either, so why would you care?

Just nuke whole ISPs and be done with it

[Anonymous Coward]

By the standards the MPAA is claiming for these suits, ANY ISP anywhere should be shut down because their internet connections are allowing the theft.

Shut them down, shut down the whole internet.

Hell, then go after Dell, Apple, HP, etc etc because the computers they make are used to steal movies and worse, as servers to distribute stolen movies.

Then go after CRT and LCD display makers, keyboard and mouse companies, speaker manufacturers, network card makers, router makers, and just wait until they start going after the electric utilities for providing the power used to steal movies.

And the thieves need places to live, food to eat, and possibly jobs to supply the money to buy the food, so go after their homes, their cupboards and their jobs too.

And eyeglass and contact lens companies for making it possible to see these movies. Heck, just fire off some nukes and blind everyone. That'll keep the movies safe.

Best anti-theft ever: just don't make the movies in the first place, then sue for lost profits and loss of business! Brilliant! I should trademark this one!

Re:Just nuke whole ISPs and be done with it

[spikestabber]

Thats taken from the RIAA's favourite book. They been pumping out less releases, and pretty bad ones at that, then the previous years, now they are crying of lost sales. CD sales were at an all-time high when Napster was live and well.

Stemming the tide?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Disabling these powerful networks of illegal file distribution is a significant step in stemming the tide of piracy on the Internet."

Interesting choice of metaphor. It brings to mind an image of a 5-year old kid at the beach building a wall out of sand to "hold back the tide."

Re:Stemming the tide?

[Entropy]

Actually, I was ten years old.

And it was on North Truro beach in Cape Cod.

This was actually the first thing I thought of, when I read that phrase.

I was trying to build a safe haven for my castle. The ocean was relentless. The sand was weak. I had to dig and pile as fast as I could to "keep the ocean out" so my castle would be "safe".

I figure they'll be as effective as I was.

But I had way more fun than they ever will :)

Absurd

[kumachan1983]

I had to make an account just to respond to this. Im a long time reader so it was about time anyway. Listen this is just history repeating itself. We saw it First with Napster and music. Then Kazaa came up and all of its clones. Then they attacked the few major torrent sites in existance with lawsuits. What happened everytime? Pirating evolved, its like the MPAA and other such organizations serve as nature in the darwinism that is file sharing. Every time they strike down one site or technology it just evolves and gets better. I remember the days before bittorrent and how much of a pain it could be to find a specific file, now because they have forced us to we have a much more efficiant and anonomous system to distribute illegal software. I say bring them on because I'm excited to see what new and improved ways will come forward to share files. Not to mention the fact that if they quit trying to stop it (amplifying the problem) and started trying to profit off of it they would be doing much better. Look at the advertising oppertunities....

Re:Absurd

[Spad]

Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

Re:Absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened everytime? Pirating evolved

Actually, pirating is intelligently designed (and re-designed). Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? Who the fuck mods thieves as insightful?
Since we're leaving our brains in the toilet lets rally around muggers and bank robbers as well. If they just take money then the gov' can just print more money, where's the problem right? (To be explicit for the morons, who take what they haven't paid for, i'm being ironic)

Re:Absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

New account huh? Why didn't you post AC?

Two words....

KARMA WHORE

Re:Absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Go cry home to momma, you little fag.

Re:Absurd

[kumachan1983]

No, Ive just been reading this site forever and never posted in the forums....actually I'm not sure what Karma is...

Re:Absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

You twit. The paper costs something for starters. Second, having more money in the system will cause inflation. This would cause a problem for the whole of people in the world using that currency. If I "steal" M$ Windows XP Pro via a download, which I wouldn't have bought anyway, who is harmed exactly? What if I "steal" a live recording of Frank Zappa, which will never be released, who is harmed?

I'll get modded troll

[RedHatLinux]

, but I can't wait until they sue a "button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho" whos snaps and travels to the RIAA's headquarters and stalks "from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into" these motherfuckers.

Because, if it happens often enough, a deterrent effect will be created.

Now before you lecture me on my "fight Club fantasies", how effective has peaceful methods like lawsuits, writing letters to politicians, who elections the RIAA helps finance, and boycotting been?

Yeah, exactly.

Apologies for the bad paraphrase, but it's late.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[tekrat]

I hate to agree with you, but I agree with you. Only the threat of real violence is ever going to stop anybody. Peaceful protest doesn't work.

Look at the success of the Muslims protesting the Cartoons of the profet Mohammad. USA Newspapers and TV are scared shitless to air the offending cartoons, in fact, you have to hunt real hard to find out what the hoopla is all about.

Imagine if every lawyer working for the RIAA suddenly had to fear for his life every time he issued a supeona against a website. Imagine if every spammer thought that his family could be in danger when he sends out the 6 billion emails for Penis Enlargement.

They'd think twice about doing such things if it meant their car would have flats, their house could be burnt and their family kidnapped and beheaded.

There's an old saying that freedom must be taken. If we want to be free of these gangsters, then we need to take action, and it's very likely going to have be violent action because these days nobody understands anything else.

The terrorists have won. They have taught us that terrorism can get people to change their ways. Look how much they have changed the USA. We need to take that lesson and apply it to other areas that need change.

So, yes, while I don't want to agree with you, I admit that that only way I see real change happening is after some people die. It's not a nice thing to say; but it's an awful reality that we may have to come to accept.

And please don't send the FBI to my house, I'm not a lunatic about to commit these crimes, I'm simply pointing out that this is likely to happen sooner or later.

Thanks!

Re:I'll get modded troll

[Anonymous Coward]

And you think terrorism has done a great deal better?

Stupid %&*^#

Re:I'll get modded troll

[bxbaser]

"with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon"

probably would happen if you could download an AR-10

Re:I'll get modded troll

[Jedi Alec]

The terrorists have won. They have taught us that terrorism can get people to change their ways. Look how much they have changed the USA. We need to take that lesson and apply it to other areas that need change.

I call BS.

a) contrary to what many of its citizens seem to think, the US of A is not the center of the world, and its significance as a beacon of light and hope declines by the day.
b) just as some leaders of the muslim world have utilized the by now famous cartoons as a means to an end, the US government has done the same using terrorists. all you need as a government is a nice target to point at and designate as the "bad guys" and all the sheep will happily bleat in the name of security and safety...

The US would have changed anyway. Decadence has eroded the ideals the country was founded on. Attributing these changes to terrorists is giving them far more credit than they deserve. The most powerful country with the biggest, best equipped army, and yet running around scared...too much arrogance, not enough pride, i suppose.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[W2k]

you have to hunt real hard to find out what the hoopla is all about.

No, you have to type "Mohammed" into Google, and it's on the first page. Better yet, type "Mohammed caricatures" and you get several pages of links. That's not "hunting real hard", that's something even a school kid could do.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people can't fathom existence without the illusion of being downtrodden. The US was born of immigrants, but for some, giving up and bending over has been in their blood for generations.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[Corbets]

That's ridiculous - if people start to die, then more people who are in the grey area between choices will "realize" that all pirates are evil and support the "good" RIAA. Violence is only a necessary and viable option against those who use violence - in all other Western-world cases, it turns public opinion against you.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[moultano]

Am I searching on a different google? I certainly don't see them.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[Jeff Carr]

Are you in China?

Seriously, look at the first link on the first search page for Mohammed where Google says "See results for: Mohammed cartoon

The first result is a wikipedia article. If you can't find that, you need to turn in your internet license.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[robertjw]

Typing a big word, like "Mohammed", into Google is the current society's definition of 'hunt real hard'.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[Maxo-Texas]

Ghandi was wise enough to choose the right people to protest against.

If ghandi peacefully protested against the chinese communist party, the islamic nationalists in Iran, Sadham Hussien when he was in power, etc. He would have just ended up dead.

The key to dealing with peaceful protesters appears to be to kill them as quickly as possible before they gather a movement.

---
As far as the U.S. media, I'm about ready to puke for how cowardly they have been with regard to the cartoons. They pretend to be so brave when dealing with civilized people but they lack the courage reporters had only 40 to 50 years ago back when reporting on civil rights issues got you killed.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[The Outbreak Monkey]

I actually laughed out loud when I read your comment. Spot on.

Re:I'll get modded troll

[Bogue]

Only the threat of real violence is ever going to stop anybody. Peaceful protest doesn't work.

I would like to think that Martin Luther King Jr. is a prime example of just how absurd this statement is. Do you really think that instead of delivering an inspiring "I have a dream" speach, he shot every white person in the area, would have been a step forward for black civil rights?? Do you think that instead of, peacefully refraining from moving to the back of the bus, Rosa Parks shot up every white person on the bus, that things would have actually changed for black civil rights?? Peaceful protests do work and have worked in the past. It is very ignorant to think that killing people is the only answer.

There's an old saying that freedom must be taken. If we want to be free of these gangsters, then we need to take action, and it's very likely going to have be violent action because these days nobody understands anything else.

The terrorists have won.

Don't you see that by saying, violent action is the only action, you become the very person you despise. Those exact words were probably uttered at a terrorist training camp.

The last time I checked I have the freedom to join which ever religion i wish, I have the freedom to choose which ever career I want to pursue and I have the freedom to speak freely about this very subject without being prosecuted. So no I don't think the terrists have won at all.

I'm just glad not everyone shares your opinion.

How about libertarian?

[Cybert14]

That is an apt label.

Thought process...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even for free, I couldn't sit through all of Stealth.

First Thought: That's odd, I did.

Second Thought: Oh yeah, now I remember why! Jessica Biel was in it. Duh!

Third Thought: Wait... then whats wrong with this guy? Hullo! Jessica Biel! Fap fap fap?

...for my girlfriend and I.

Fourth Thought: Ooohh, I get it. You poor whipped SOB. :(

Fifth Thought: Hey! I have some pictures of Jessica Biel somewhere on my storage drive!

do you think the private sites are any better?

[fredistheking]

Did you forget about elitetorrents.org? The thing that makes private sites worse it that when they do get busted the probably have some sort of log that points back to you and exactly what you have uploaded. They have to enforce the ratios some way.

Re:do you think the private sites are any better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Were any of the users actually sued, after they shut elitetorrents down? (any of the normal users, not the guys who uploaded the torrents in the first place).

Re:do you think the private sites are any better?

[packslash]

no we didn't forget it we are still enjoying it with it's new name.

Oh noze, teh cops!

[Groo Wanderer]

Hmmm, lets see. The math says that there are several dozen solid BT sites out there, and 7 have been threatened. If they all go away today, there are only a few dozen left to choose from, and there are 20 or so added a week.

Yup, this will show those little shits, they'll have to run to #8 on thier bookmark list now. Ha, take that.

YAWN. Stupid MPAA, no cookie. You are making the same mistake the US military is, fighting the wrong war, and losing both because of it.

            -Charlie

Re:Oh noze, teh cops!

[Capt James McCarthy]

You are making the same mistake the US military is, fighting the wrong war, and losing both because of it.

Understanding how the "US military" functions helps when you dish out criticism against them. The "US military" doesn't choose who or what they battle in or for. That choice would be left up to the civilian elected leadership.
As for the MPAA 'fighting the wrong war,' they are doing what they can to discredit and place fear amoungst the masses about how wrong it is to use such technologies.

Re:Oh noze, teh cops!

[Hsien]

Indeed, just a sad attempt at social conditioning and hijacking the minds of the worker-drones,... i mean citizens.

Thanks, didn't know half of these

[Werrismys]

slashdot is educational.

Up-side-down People!

[suv4x4]

Most companies try the best to look great to their customers, to appeal to young people. Microsoft is spending billions to make itself look smaller and more open.

MPAA and RIAA are spending billions to make headlines such as "MPAA sues grandpa without computer", "RIAA sues 13-year old girl for sharing mp3", "DRM technology in audio CD-s installs without a warning and opens your PC-s to hackers", "don't use the uninstaller, it leaves your PC even MORE open to hackers", "MPAA and RIAA join together to sue Earth and be done with it".

If I could separate myself from this twisted reality we live in, where this is supposed strategy to drive up sales, I'd say they are doing everything possible to make people hate them.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the CD and movie buying public aren't RIAA/MPAA's customers. The lables and studios are their customers, and the lables and studios want to see them leading the fight against piracy. If the MPAA gives up on fighting piracy the studios might give up on the MPAA.

If on the other hand the studios decide that fighting piracy is bad for business then the MPAA will stop immidiatly.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Erm, you forget something. The MPAA/RIAA have a market which they fully control, they have no one who can really compete with them. In this way they don't need to sell themselvs, more sell their security.

"Look how hard-ass we are at protecting YOU, our wonderful client. Don't you want to sign up with us so we can protect you this religiously!?"

People will buy this crap no matter what, they don't have to sell themselvs to the mass public (who won't even hear about this).

Re:Up-side-down People!

[oliverthered]

They can afford to, the MPAA/RIAA know that all it takes is a few scantly clad women and they'll have everyone running back to them.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[suv4x4]

"Erm, you forget something. The MPAA/RIAA have a market which they fully control"

Not for long, the independent productions are picking momentum.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[LiquidCoooled]

You seem to forget, the RIAA/MPAA customers are the movie execs and actors and musicians and bands.
They do appeal to their customers because they keep their wallets protected from the pirates.
They don't give a shit about the little people down the line.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[LordLucless]

It's one advantage to being a cartel^H^H^H^H^H^H assosciation. It's always "the RIAA" or "the MPAA" doing the suing. The individual companies aren't being assosciated with the bad publicity. If you started seeing "Sony sues grandpa without computer" or "Vivendi sues 13 year old girl", then you might start getting some reaction to the bad press. As it is, the MPAA is sort of like a meta-corporation. Corporations exist to limit the risk to individuals involved in the corporation. The MPAA exists to limit the risk to the companies involved in it.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[mgblst]

You are right, everybody is going to stop buying stuff from RIAA and MPAA. Except that they don't sell anything, they are instead representatives for a number of other companies. These other companies remain virtually anonymous, while the RIAA and MPAA get the bad press. Work out very well for them.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[suv4x4]

"It's one advantage to being a cartel assosciation. It's always "the RIAA" or "the MPAA" doing the suing. The individual companies aren't being assosciated with the bad publicity."

The effect is the opposite. People see all of those member companies being transformed into this bad MPAA/RIAA entity and instead even companies in MPAA which are against those drastic measures get their image hurt.

Just see the amount of "ban MPAA" and "don't buy MPAA / RIAA production" posts around the blog community and you'll see I'm right.

People now hate everyone who ever participated in the MPAA/RIAA.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[suv4x4]

"These other companies remain virtually anonymous, while the RIAA and MPAA get the bad press. Work out very well for them."

People are very good at generalisations, and don't take away that ability from them. It's very simple really:

Hollywood Production = MPAA "production" (technicalities left aside)
Big Labels Production = RIAA "production" (same)

So don't get fooled anyone is remaining anonymous, quite the opposite: companies get dragged in that have nothing to do with it.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[freakmn]

I agree that people like you and me that are on slashdot think that, but there are many others that think that it doesn't affect them, or don't see that buying a CD supports this action. Many people on the internet that are more technologically aware are boycotting RIAA/MPAA members. I socialize with a lot of people who aren't very technologically aware, and they don't understand that these organizations are causing harm to them. They are slowly becoming more aware, as I see them coming to me to ask why their CD works fine in their CD player, but not in their computer. But really, outside of the people who are familiar with the internet culture, there are people who just don't get it.

This isn't saying that these actions aren't harming them. The people who are more technical are also more likely to get CDs. I know that I used to go to the store and just pick up a CD or tape, because I liked the music of whatever band made it, without thinking twice about it. Now if I like a CD, I research it to find out if the record company is part of the RIAA, then determine whether it's really worth getting. For me, a CD purchase has gone from a casual purchase to a purchase that requires research. Because of this, the rate at which I get CDs has gone significantly down, and most of my collection is from the 80's and 90's. It might be that I'm getting beyond the target market, but I also think that a lot of the newer music is crap. With these factors, I can see that there's good reason for their profits to be down.

Essentially, the point that I'm trying to make is that not everyone hates the RIAA/MPAA. Not that they shouldn't, but that they don't see their actions as really relevant to their "experience."

Re:Up-side-down People!

[robertjw]

Or maybe "Sony installs rootkit with audio CDs"? Would that be bad?

Re:Up-side-down People!

[LordLucless]

It would be. Which is why Sony went into defence mode, called in their spin doctors, offered uninstall software, issued press releases, etc. That hurt their corporate image because Sony is the brand name they market with, and their marketable brand name was associated with the debacle.

Re:Up-side-down People!

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Actually, most people now think the RIAA/MPAA are GOVERNMENT AGENCIES!

And the **AA's encourage that.

People say things like "I hope the RIAA doesn't arrest me!" or "I don't want the MPAA to bust in and take my computer!"

I bet the AA's love this crap.

The Pirate Bay loves these guys

[feyhunde]

Go read http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php

Most of these sites aren't hosted in the US, or in countries that recognize torrents as being pirated material.

Re:The Pirate Bay loves these guys

[merikari]

Most of these sites aren't hosted in the US, or in countries that recognize torrents as being pirated material.

I don't understand how anyone can maintain that torrents are pirated material.

Re:The Pirate Bay loves these guys

[crashelite]

i dont know i think i own that copyright for the word "torrent" haha.... but i cant wait for some of these lawsuits to go threw... especially the ones that are still being battled from kazaa when they used kazaa lite and reverse engeneered versions of kazaa to find people breaking the very same law (DCMA) they hide behind. well only by the time they pull their heads out of their ass will they start to realize that their artists are starting to get pissed @ them... concidering they are attacking people on welfair and dont have any money to begin with doesnt really have any rational though to it. but who ever said the RIAA and MPAA ever used the small things in their heads called brains. i guess brain doners do exist in the real world

i just wish some one with money and time would go out and take down the fuckin RIAA for violationg the DCMA when they were using kazaa lite back in the day... that would be totally awesome... that or they go after some serial killer and then he flips and kills the whole board... not that i am wishing any bad uppon them or anything i bet they are family people with kids who download music all day right? i wonder what happens when some one finds out that thier kids are download music and then it ends up on the front page of the news and then says "RIAA board memebers children immune to lawsuits"

So what did they think of this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of an article in a belgian newspaper recently, where our copyright organisation spoke the following words : "we know they're probably braking some law, but we don't know which yet"

If they're breaking the law, why is it taking so long to sue them? shouldn't it be obvious if someone is breaking the law? Also seeing the huge amount of money they'll probably be suing for shouldn't it be clearly said in a law what they're doing wrong, not some on the edge interpretation of some obscure law?

and probably somewhere in the future we'll probably end up with even stricter laws, making torrentsites etc... actually against the law thanks to the lobbying...

This is as much about law as a witchhunt... They either keep on looking until they find some weird interpretation of a law they can sue under, or they make sure new laws are made for what doesn't please them... How about just letting them build prisons and do the judging themselves? they'll end up being able to do whatever they want anyway, it'll just speed up the process...

And the same old tired misnomers.

[Rocketship Underpant]

"most BT traffic is illegitimate"

Not all people consider sharing of information and media to be "illegitimate". The idea that culture can be controlled and bottled up by powerful media companies is a quaint 20th century notion.

You are quite correct in questioning the effect of any ban. Bit-torrent networks and other types of filesharing are rooted in basic human behaviour and desires. That's not going to change any time soon.

Re:And the same old tired misnomers.

[NutscrapeSucks]

When you are sued by the MPAA, I'm sure the judge will be fascinatingly entertained by your novel and intriguing views regarding the cultural legitimacy of information sharing. Or not.

Re:And the same old tired misnomers.

[Grishnakh]

I'm sure judges during the Inquisition were also fascinatingly entertained by novel and intriguing views regarding the idea of "religious freedom", just before they sentenced people to be burned at the stake for not believing in the correct religion.

Just because it's the law doesn't mean it's right.

Two Words.

[Captain Lou]

Compulsory Licensing.

Bizarre

[BJH]

The Island: Got it off PirateBay, crap.
Stealth: Got it off PirateBay, awful crap.
Transporter 2: Got it off PirateBay, utter crap.
Star Wars III: Available off PirateBay, but bought it because I wanted to.
Diablo II: Got it off PirateBay, enjoyed it so much I went out and bought a 5-year-old game.

Moral? Provide good content, more people will fork over their cash for it.

Please do!

[Per Wigren]

Please help boosting the development of the anonymous networks... Because that's what's going to happen if you keep on doing this.

Re:Please do!

[evilviper]

I had a very good idea for an anonymous P2P network (anonymous for the uploader, not the downloader), that would be just a tiny bit slower than regular P2P (unlike every other anonymous P2P method). The idea was for the network to use UDP, have the upload software randomize source IP addresses, and have all the ACKs (as few as practical) broadcast back through the P2P network (likely, encrypted), thereby eliminating the only need for the downloader to know the real IP address of the uploader.

I later discovered that somebody else independently came up with the same idea, too, and actually started coding it. The project in question is http://udpp2p.sf.net/

Checking it out, and contribute to the project if you're able, to help get it to a usable state sooner, rather than later.

Re:Please do!

[Anonymous Coward]

amen, 5 public sites down. oh no, where will i find torrents. i'll just have to pick from the other 50 private sites i have bookmarked...joking aside, from my perspective this is no different than having a VHS of terminator in the 80's and taking it over to a friends place to watch and oh no! i'm guilty of that too, shame be the pyrates!

Re:Please do!

[Anonymous Coward]

check rodi project at rodi.sf.net

Re:Please do!

[evilviper]

Those "bouncers" area terrible idea, which completely compromises the possible anonymity. What's more, they're entirely unnecessary.

You have stolen enough

[tcornelissen]

More with your mouse over the bottom of each page in the press release: http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_02_21_raze r.pdf
You will vind a hidden registration link.
You guys have now stolen so much, the MPAA cannot afford anymore to pay a $30 registration fee to Iteksoft. http://www.iteksoft.com/modules.php?op=modload&nam e=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=4

Re:You have stolen enough

[Zlib pt]

It would be funny if ikesoft sued mpaa for this :)

Re:You have stolen enough

[sweetnjguy29]

I can't imagine that the license that allows free use of their product contemplates commercial use of their software on this scale. Sue their asses off Ikesoft!

Re:You have stolen enough

[k12linux]

As far as I can tell they only allow use for testing. So the MPAA are blatent copyright infringers? Based on many of the post that makes them theves stealing from a small company who can afford it less than the MPAA can.

Wonder how a public copyright infringment lawsuit against the MPAA would play in the media.

In any case it looks like they've replaced the PDF with a new version without the registration link.

Re:You have stolen enough

[Buran]

Or, they COULD just use a Mac or a Linux system or one of the freeware PDF printer drivers for Windows.

Anyone else thinking "Hmmm, we should turn them in for that"? Give them a taste of their own medicine.

Re:You have stolen enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the offending PDF because they actually read slashdot. No wonder they're so up on the latest technology!

[/tinfoil_hat]

Re:You have stolen enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to MPAA lobbying, the Copyright Act of 1976 made copyright infringement a criminal offense. So in reality it's the responsibility of the FBI to investigate and the DoJ to prosecute the MPAA here. We should expect an FBI raid followed by a press conference where the attorney general publicly condemns the MPAA for theft and piracy.

But wait, that's not going to happen. If copyright is really so sacrosanct, shouldn't it? Or is it really about a corrupt government protecting corporate profits by any means necessary?

Dear MMPAA.

[ekran]

Dear MMPAA. It is time for you to sit down and chill a bit (grab a beer or something.) - you should know by now that stopping people from copying digital information is a futile effort. I know this is your job, and I know that you are working very hard on this, but it is not an effort that's going to lead to any regime where pirated movies does not exist. Just ask the guys working against music and software piracy.

So, while you sit there contemplating on the situation and what you do, you should ask yourself. Why is it that people are pirating movies? Let me give you two answers; well, the most obvious one, to save money. What can you do about this? Lower the price of theater tickts and DVDs? - Well, I don't know for anyone else, but I don't think my reason would be money.

Next one, the big one, availability, this is a major issue. You've become a lot better at distributing movies fast, atleast the movies that brings in a lot of money. But there are still people who prefer to watch their movies at home, and there are places that doesn't get the move at their theater until months after it has been shown and talked about elsewhere in the world.

Personally I think that if you provided an online service without your silly DRM, one which people could download your movies themselves and pay for it, people would. I know atleast I would. You have implemented means to stop people from doing this, like DVD zones, movies being released at different times in different parts of the world and you're releaseing the dvds a lot later than the theaters has shown the flick.

So, what I am suggesting is that you stop chasing kids downloading your materials off the net. You should still go after the profit makers, nobody likes them anyway, but above all, if you want to stop piracy, you gotta beat the pirates in terms of availability and quality of service.

You can transfer my consultant fee to my paypal account now.

Re:Dear MMPAA.

[Hsien]

Im not sure whats more sad; watching the MPAA act like spoilt children crying for candy, or that you gave some good honest feedback that will be ignored because "they know better"

Re:Dear MMPAA.

[cyclomedia]

plus dont forget the fact that, in my city for example, there are 4 cinemas, totalling a good couple of dozen screens and yet they're all showing the exact same 4 films at the same time, 99% of the time. someone really really needs to do something about cinema distribution, and asking very very nicelly if they wouldnt mind dedicating one screen of their megaplex to independant/artyforeign/old films full time.

I WOULD PAY MONEY to see the likes of bladerunner, the godfather trilogy, apocalypse now, akira, enter the dragon and such at the CINEMA

MPAA supports terrism

[quokkapox]

By motivating nefarious evildoing individuals to devise new, more secretive ways of furtively sharing information more anonymously, the MPAA is supporting terrorism. So I say, GO GET 'EM, DUBYA!

Because they have a hide like a rhino...

[leonbrooks]

...and having a total ironyectomy seems to be a prerequisite for Board memership.

good

[wwmedia]

let them sue them bittorent sites.
im sick of all them smiley face adverts!

while they busy with bittorent and edonkey, usenet keeps getting bigger and bigger ;)

so i hope the MPAA keeps distracted with bittorent

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

It always used to tick me off a little when people would point and laugh and say, "Ha! You forgot newsgroups," but now it amuses me because the strangest thing happened to today. I was reading TFA (amazing, I know, I must be new here), and I came across this suspicious line:

"Most remarkable of these lawsuits was the MPAA's strategy to target Newsgroup NZB indexing sites."

Maybe a few suspicious lines:

"Because of the Newsgroups' long standing reputation of being a legitimate online source of information and community interaction, such associated indexing sites were considered immune from prosecution. Today's action dismisses this notion."

Re:good

[wwmedia]

newzbin.com is quite fine

anyways without indexing sites u can still get the files

By that logic...

[Opportunist]

...weapons would have to be illegal. They have very few legitimate and a lot of illegal uses. And why is there no discussion about the legality of guns? Because of the NRA?

Should we prolly band together and yell loudly every time some studio tries to cut our first amendment right of free speech?

Quite seriously, there are so many contradictions. No matter how you twist and turn it, either make guns illegal or I have a very good arguement against pretty much any argument the copyright holders can field.

Copying helps terrorism? The right to bear arms does more so.
Copying makes money for terrorism? The black market for weapons does twice so (and, unlike copying, it's proven that it is).
Few legal uses of P2P? Don't make me start on guns.

And so on.

Re:By that logic...

[Shihar]

That is a poor analogy. There are lots of legitimate uses for weapons. Granted, "shooting bottles and small animals" might not rank up their as a terribly productive use, but they are legitimate. The vast majority of firearms in the US are owned legally and used legally. Criminal uses of firearms make up only a very small percentage of the total firearms. If you want to talk analogy, firearms are more like Google. It has some illegal uses, but the vast majority of people use it for perfectly legal uses.

Re:By that logic...

[Anonymous Coward]

like using them in legitimate wars..

Re:By that logic...

[Anonymous Coward]

like using them in legitimate wars..

Yes, like the war that freed your country so you could make asinine statements on /.

Haven't we debated bittorrent/piracy to death?

[Jivha]

I don't see a single new insight coming up from posts related to MPAA/RIAA suing bittorrent sites. All, and I mean *all* comments can either be classified as:

1. Screw MPAA/RIAA, they're bloodsuckers, they deserve it, hurrah to free music/video
2. Logical arguments about how its wrong to steal and that IP creators deserve their dues
3. Inane humour and jokes about post or other comments

So yeah, yeah...we know all of that already. Can we either just stop posting every bittorrent/MPAA development or try to come up with some new insightful comments?

Re:Haven't we debated bittorrent/piracy to death?

[Hosiah]

hurrah to free music/video

I think you're missing something. I, for one, could care less about the music and video. I find very little in either category even worth my *time*, let alone money. The deal is, BT is also becoming a major distribution mode for Free/Open Source Software, not to mention legal works licensed under Creative Commons. Which, I suspect, is what *really* pisses off the Suits, anyway. Haven't seen the anti-piracy measure yet that didn't also jeopardize voluntary free distribution.

Re:Haven't we debated bittorrent/piracy to death?

[spot35]

4) Complaints about all the other posts...

Btw, stopping these posts would mean we'd never get to see any more insightful comments and the issue may lose what little exposure it has with us, thus allowing MPAA to convertly sue file sharing into oblivion.

If you don't buy a lottery ticket, you'll never win.

Re:Haven't we debated bittorrent/piracy to death?

[DesireCampbell]

You forgot...

4. Reminding people that downloading copyrighted works isn't illegal everywhere.

I (heart) Canada.

Re:Haven't we debated bittorrent/piracy to death?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let's stop posting about threats to the largest bittorrent sites in the future. That way the MPAA can quietly get on with its nefarious business in the background...

Every single time the RIAA/MPAA try something like this is needs to be spread as far and wide as possible. YOU might be sick of hearing the same comments, but if even only a handful of people see these comments for the first time and are enlightened to what these huge corporations are trying to do to their rights then they are worthwhile.

I'll happily sit through many, many more of these debates if it helps spread the word. If you don't like them, don't read them - simple, eh?

Re:Haven't we debated bittorrent/piracy to death?

[Loquis]

You must be new here

Re:Haven't we debated bittorrent/piracy to death?

[jibjibjib]

So basically you're classifying all comments as:

1: Comments supporting filesharing
2: Comments supporting the *AA
3: Pointless comments supporting neither

I really don't see anything wrong with that.

Going anonymous?

[Aggrajag]

Which one of the current anonymous methods of p2p is the best at the moment? I know that i2p does not claim complete anonymity at the moment but at least to me it seems like the best alternative.

Ho - Bloody - Hum!!

[craznar]

As an Australian viewer of TV, I can tell this organisation right now that a really cool way of making money on these things would be ... well ... to allow us to view them legit.

Rocket science aint it ?

Until then - Channel BT has my viewing eye.

Re:Ho - Bloody - Hum!!

[skurrier]

Totally agree.

If they'd actually produce better movies I'd watch them. I'd pay the admission price, buy snacks, take my girlfriend, etc. There hasn't been a single movie I've heard of recently that I've actually wanted to go and see.

MPAA, seriously, funnel your money into making good movies. Lawsuits are not a valid business model unless you're SCO. If you make it, they'll come, *and* they'll bring their money.

Offtopic rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, you know what? Next time please PLEASE use a joke only ONCE. Reading "RI/MP Ass of America" fifty times in a post gets quite fucking tiresome in the end. I dont laugh each time I read it, and I got your point first time you wrote it.
Other than that, I liked what you wrote.
USA's culture has been stolen and commercialized.

Niteshadow and bthub?

[rikkards]

Have to put those on my favourites list as well then...

For a moment I thought I've read...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Slyck news reports on a new wave of lawsuits the MPAA has filed against major Bill Torrent search sites ...",

and it made me wonder who this major guy would be and is he a renegade Army officer or something when there are search sites dedicated to finding his whereabouts?

  later, after infamous renegade major Bill Torrent was arrested and aprehanded to the court of law...

"May the defendant, Major William Torrent, rise. How do you plead?"
- Not guilty, Your Honour!

Oh, I am sooo out of date!

We're not scared

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the success of the Muslims protesting the Cartoons of the profet Mohammad. USA Newspapers and TV are scared shitless to air the offending cartoons, in fact, you have to hunt real hard to find out what the hoopla is all about.

Look in Europe. The drawings has been reprinted in different newspapers several times in several countries, and they are shown on many websites, including newspapers websites.

Europe is not very scared. We're just sad that we can't understand each other, and we're trying to find a solution without sacrificing our freedom. We are not giving up our freedom to draw stuff.

USA may be scared. We'd rather take the risk and keep our way of life.

Stealing again?

[MarkByers]

2. Logical arguments about how its wrong to steal

Yet another poster that cannot understand the difference between stealing and copyright infringement. Or are you doing it deliberately in order to provoke a response? If so, well done, you succeeded.

Let's get it right people, please! Is it so hard to stick to the facts? Please use the correct words, and not the loaded terms that MPAA / RIAA use in their propaganda. Then we can have a rational discussion about it.

Extra Taxes/Levy

[Greefer]

Lets just say in a perfect world, everyone stopped downloading. Do you think all the taxes and extra fees on blank media / or iPods (Canada) etc got added due to piracy would get lifted? I highly doubt it. They are getting some love / reimbursment .. I dont feel guilty at all for the stuff I download.

Re:Extra Taxes/Levy

[Mordaximus]

As well you shouldn't, you have the right to make personal copies. They take issue with those who provide the content, the uploaders. And as much fun as p2p apps are for distribution, they make everyone who downloads music an uploader too...

Re:Extra Taxes/Levy

[Winterblink]

Just to correct, they're no longer charging that tariff on iPods in Canada. In fact, Apple was offering refunds at one point for iPod buyers who shelled out during the time the tariff was in place.

See here for more information.

List of the sites being sued

[Ensign Regis]

From the article:

BitTorrent: ISOHunt, TorrentSpy, NiteShadow.com, BTHub.com and TorrentBox.com;
eDonkey2000: Ed2k-It.com;
Newsgroups: NZB-Zone.com, BinNews.com and DVDRs.net.

Laws and Dollars and Intent

[nurb432]

The legaltiy would depend on the opinion of a judge, who will be influnced by the big bucks of the industry. Are you willing to take the chance and lose your entire income trying to fight what is 'right', even if you win?

I bet no.

And i dont agree you can have a legal search engine for prostitution ( where prostitution is not allowed that is ). We just had one guy closed up for doing just that in this area. They took his site away too. Something about 'intent'.. You know, 'intent to commit a crime?' . Just beacuse its on the net doesnt mean that factor is tossed to the wind.

Re:Laws and Dollars and Intent

[Malchor]

The legality or illegality of Bittorent is based in law. The judge should be interpretting the law as it applies, not how those with big money would like it to be interpretted/created. If it is shown that the judge is taking bribes, then he is likely to be removed from the bench and placed in jail.

As mentioned previously on /., it also greatly depends on where you live. Here north of the border, downloading is legal. The Uploading is of questionable legality at the moment though.

Same goes for prostitution. Not sure of the laws in the states, but here in Canada (and likely other places as well) the ACT of prostitution is not illegal. Communication for the purposes is though.

Re:Laws and Dollars and Intent

[nasch]

The judge doesn't have to take a bribe to be influenced, even unconciously, by the fact that the plaintiff is a huge wealthy organization and the defendant is not. Theoretically of course that influence could go either way.

Rebellion

[nurb432]

not real practical in this day and age where money controls the government.

Unless you have most of the country behind you, with people willing to die for their beliefs, and are organized and trained you dont have a chance in hell. More jails can be built to house you and your 'people'.

I sort of doubt anyone is willing to die over not being able to download a movie....

Here's the real trick

[StringBlade]

How does one tell a "legitimate" BitTorrent tracker from an "illegitimate" tracker? Does someone go through the tracker and calculate the ratio of copyrighted material to free/copylefted material?

Since a BT tracker is simply a search engine, are you suggesting that the engine should inspect all of its indexed torrents and filter out the ones that are copyrighted? What about material that's copyrighted but has been posted to the tracker by the copyright owner?

If I were so inclined I could use Google to find illegal materials and services - as mentioned by other posters, but the **AA is not suing Google (yet) probably because they're too big and expensive to sue. (After all, Google is refusing to turn over search records to the government even when handed a subpoena.)

I would argue that a BitTorrent tracker is not an inherently illegal device and that there's no easy way to measure the amount of "illegal" traffic on it. All one can do (if one is the copyright holder) is to request the tracker remove links to infringing material when it's discovered, and that these trackers have been complying with those requests.

Shutting these trackers down will do two things:
1. Annoy a lot of people and generate more animousity towards the **AA
2. Shift the traffic to a number of lesser-known trackers who then become the next TorrentBox and such

Let's face it, the RIAA and MPAA are just playing Whack-a-Mole here and are starting to get frustrated each time the mole pops back up.

Re:Here's the real trick

[nutrock69]

- If I were so inclined I could use Google to find illegal materials and services - as mentioned by other posters, but the **AA is not suing Google (yet) probably because they're too big and expensive to sue. (After all, Google is refusing to turn over search records to the government even when handed a subpoena.)

This brings up an interesting idea. The comparison between the BT search engines and google is a valid one from a 'possible to search for illegal items' standpoint. Assuming the RIAA wins against the BT search engines with this argument, what's to stop some (as yet) unnamed government agency from suing google in the future using the RIAA logic as a legal precedent?

Maybe someone should try to get google to help them fight the RIAA on this, just to keep it from becoming a future problem for google...

Wrong millions

[Anonymous Coward]

The MPAA only listen to the will of their own millions (their millions of dollars, that is).

This actually proves that they're losing the fight

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, not that long ago, when the RIAA/MPAA were suing the distribution networks instead of the individual users? Seeing that for every network they struck down, ten new/better ones appeared, they decided to change their strategy and sue the people who downloaded the copyrighted material. While trying to get everyone out there was probably a futile task, RIAA/MPAA's strategy was to publisize the (often ridiculous) lawsuits with the goal of scaring everyone else and thus reducing P2P usage.

Seems like this new strategy didn't work and now they're back at square one, suing the networks again.

I believe the end is near (and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside :-)

Wrong country

[Anonymous Coward]

The Pirate Bay is not hosted in the good ol' U.S. of A... Sweden hasn't yet become a bendover to corporations society just yet... wait ten years or so, and they might have caught up.

And it goes on.....

[tvadakia]

They just don't get it.

Ok MPAA and Slashdot I'm gonna sue your sorry butt

[patrixx]

I'm an upcoming movie producer and you are mentioning sites in your lawsuit and news texts that contain references to ways to download copyrighted material!

This will clearly reduce my future income by several million dollars! That's right, millions!

(My first movie will be a mega hollywood blockbuster whith an extremly small budget so the profits would have been HUGE)

You just wait 'til I get hold of a lawyer. I've got a open and shut case here...

Debatable

[Anonymous Coward]

Is copying really stealing? They both have different meanings in the dictionary.

Where is the fairness in IP, copyrights, patents, trademarks etc?

Its all about money, and the rich getting richer, it always has been.

We all use technology which has been copied from others somewhere along the line (think about our language for an example, its only in todays age that you can own the rights to a word).

Monkey see, monkey do.

May the best man win.

So, let's just start CREATING content for a change

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, instead of bemoning the "big, bad RIAA" (or the like),
  why don't we - in any & all media - just start creating our
  own IP & fill the bt mesh with LEGITIMATELY sharable content?

  Go write books, record music - both in listenable/viewable
  form and onto virtual sheetmusic - make movies, etc.

  Then, the stuff RIAA & Co. can find on the mesh is minimal
  & we could show how useful a tool bt is for sharing stuff
  we have created.

  Oh, and if - by some chance - some or most of us CAN'T
  create new stuff, then maybe it's a sign that "consuming"
  other's creations may not be enough... And we'll learn
  from that revelation... and try something else...

  my 2 cents

Arrrrr!

[John Muir]

Avast ye!

The good pirate knows the legal status of his port, arr.
Best be keeping ye out of the United Nasties for now then.

stemming the tide my ass

[carpe_noctem]

"Disabling these powerful networks of illegal file distribution is a significant step in stemming the tide of piracy on the Internet."' ...for at least two more weeks, that is.

Your guide to language used in this thread

[jb.hl.com]

"Saying fuck you to the RIAA" (to help artists): Leeching music from BitTorrent, under the pretense that giving the artists would much prefer the $0.00 it gives them rather than the sum their record company pays them.
"The RIAA cartel": "I do not know what the word 'cartel' means".
"Suing music fans": Suing people who redistribute copyrighted works illegally.
"Sharing music" (or sometimes "sharing music with friends") : "Encoding music into a format ideal for cross-Internet distribution, zipping it up with covers and putting it on BitTorrent for hundreds of people I've never met and don't intend to"
"Set the culture free": "I don't like the idea of having to pay for music, because. Just because."
"The price of music is exorbitant, so I prefer to use BitTorrent": Music in shops isn't free. I think it should be.
"Sony put a rootkit on a CD, so I'm using BitTorrent instead": "I am a complete fucking dumbass who doesn't realise that pirating a CD instead of simply not buying it proves the labels' point and will make them more willing to use copy protection in the future. Also, I do not know about the shift key or its associated functions."
"Why should I buy 128kbps DRMed music from iTunes? I get higher quality from BT" "I don't know about Hymn, have never heard an AAC file in my life and more to the point BitTorrent is free."
"I download music because today's music is shit": "Buying an old CD from a record store isn't free, and I don't understand the economics of the music industry whatsoever."
"The record companies are greedy and take too much for themselves": "I don't know what functions a record industry serves or how much money they cost, so I'm going to assume they take lots of money to snort cocaine off of a hooker's tits."

Re:Your guide to language used in this thread

[killercoder]

Here is one for you - I'm a sanctimonious twit - and I didn't read the article.

I think the fundamental problem here (and one which you kind of gloss over) is one of economics. I can legally purchase CD's, or DVD's, or buy them from a website via an approved device/website combination.

This costs me money (~10$ for 10 songs - or 1$ per song). The economics of this is justified using the following arguments from the RIAA:
- We promote the material (advertising, radio kickbacks, etc).
- We distribute the media (we arranged for the CD/DVD to be pressed - or provided a high quality electronic copy)
- We collect the revenue from the sale and distribute it to the artist.
- We sue to protect the rights of the artist.

Now consider - the paradigm shift - bittorrent and file sharing promotes the material, bittorrent and file sharing distributes the media, the gap is in the revenue collection. Couldn't revenue be collected in other ways? I pay a tax on blank media (including harddrives) in Canada that goes to the artist. I also pay to go to concerts (for artists I enjoy), and I pay for their branded merchandise (40$ for a baseball cap with a bands slogan on it?). I'm certain the business practice could shift to accomedate the new technology - the RIAA needs to realize this is an opportunity - not a hinderance.

We saw something similiar with newspapers and the internet. Suddenly Advertising dollars for news print were going to online sites. Newspapers succeeded by offering online versions of their paper at a reduced cost - with value added features.

What would happen to the music industry if the RIAA did the following:

1) Offered a bittorrent site with high quality audio with a reasonable subscription price (say 10$-20$ per month)
2) Included advertisements on the proposed bittorrent site.
3) Offered tickets (perhaps at a reduced price) for bands you had downloaded?
4) Offered to sell merchandise (hats/CD's/DVD's,etc)
5) Offered blogs with comments from the artists and their fans
6) Cross sold/up sold fans on similiar bands.

Sooner or later they are in for trouble if they continue down this path. The reality is they don't control every market in the world - and a bittorrent site in Eastern Russia is just as relevant as a bittorrent site in North America.

Re:Your guide to language used in this thread

[jb.hl.com]

Record companies do more than what you listed, they also hire staff, have contacts with studios (and sometimes own them), promote CDs on TV and radio, get them in record stores etc.

As for you paying for concerts and merchandise, well, the artist would only really sign for a record label and issue CDs if they were looking to make money from those CDs, as well as from concerts etc. Go to concerts, buy merchandise, yeah, but unless you have the express permission of the band to download their album it's not really cricket to think you're entitled to it in some way.

1) Offered a bittorrent site with high quality audio with a reasonable subscription price (say 10$-20$ per month)
2) Included advertisements on the proposed bittorrent site.

They sound like good ideas, and 3-6 are almost there already. To be clear, it's not BitTorrent or Internet distribution I'm against, and I'm nowhere near an RIAA lover (copy protected CDs in particular piss me off) but I just think artists deserve to be rewarded for their work, and the people that claim their downloading is motivated by some kind of political cause rather than getting shit for free are being more than a little bit disingenuous.

Ever tried to stop the tide when storm is rising?

[w4rl5ck]

really. Well nothing more to say, but this suddenly came to my mind when reading his quote.

"Piracy" does mean this

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes piracy can mean wooden legs, parrots etc. but it also has a meaning to do with the appropriation of others' work:

http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define= piracy

Let's look at the numbers....

[perigee369]

Lets see... There are (according to most estimates) roughly 10 million people on p2p networks at any given time, and then there is the MPAA & RIAA & the bought and paid for government officials. hmmm, do you think the latter has ever heard of Gen. Custer? Do they *really* think they can stop p2p?

RIAA...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that a cut-paste job? This article isn't about the RIAA, or music piracy. So, about half of those don't apply at all.

You should really reword that, so it reads ??AA and makes even broader sweeping generalisations about what people "actually mean". Sure to be popular.

Re:RIAA...?

[jb.hl.com]

Uh no. I did put it on my website as well though.

I know the article's not about the music industry, but the same stupid arguments get used on every story about the legitimacy of P2P or another lawsuit or something.

Cold War

[tddoog]

The situation seems to be just like a cold war between file sharers and RI/MPAA. Luckily the file sharers seem to be winning by evolution of technology. Maybe I should go make a donation to the Bittorrent site.

They can fuck themselves in the ass with a ret. .

[Anonymous Coward]

with a retractable baton!
            Gotta love the Prirate Bay. I think that should become the industry standard response.

Gandhi?

[Langfat]

Peaceful protest doesn't work.

Oh that's right, the British left after the Indians deployed their elite tank and fighter jet forces...

The problem with violence is that it's not democratic. Even if it's coming from the underdog, it's still one party imposing its way on another.
What the US needs isn't more violence (you've got enough) but some serious political reform.

Re:Gandhi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, mostly the reason for India's independence (as with much of the British Empire) was because the UK was absolutely *knackered* after fioghting yet another world war. Although Britain were on the winning side, they were far worse off even than Germany in the aftermath.

The UK could no longer afford the empire.

Ghandi helped more in stopping the loss of India becoming an honour item - if there had been a lot of terrorism to remove the British, it might have been portrayed as cowardly to "let them get their way". Ghandi's peaceful resistance garnered support for letting them free.

Education

[rlp]

Fortunately, the Cartoon Network is educating the next generation about the evils of piracy - One Piece.

Manny Perry, Stuntman

[laketrout]

Won't somebody think of Manny Perry! http://www.nytimes.com/videosrc/movies/20031116_MP AA2_LO.ram

Anyone know if they have backing from Microsoft?

[Gordon Bennett]

Because it seems curious that the MPAA et al are persuing search engines - if, hypothetically speaking, they are successful, that means Google and related sites will get major headaches due to copyright, then M$ and their ilk can move in.

Re:Same tired old argument/EU bias

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Wow, what a blind, snobbish vision you have! It's really refreshing to see that people not in the US feel they are just as superior to us as we feel we are of them. There is a lot of talk out of Europe, especially, about the lack of a US "culture". The problem is, many of those people mistakehistory, rituals, and traditions with Culture. The fact is, the United States has just as much "culture" as any other country in the world, it's just a different culture. It's all a matter of perspective. The US is unique in that 1. It's the world's largest superpower (although China is making inroads), 2. It's huge geographically, and 3. It's a very young country. We have resources, high standards of living, and askew a lot of the traditions and rituals of Europe. Because of that, I think a lot of Europeans resent us. And maybe are even... dare I say it... jealous? That resentment is clear in this poster's rant. Personally, I'll take the US's "lack of culture" over any other country's "culture" any day. I live a great life in the US, as do many more!

Who modded that up?

[lheal]

"You have just proven his point - you have no culture, and apparently no idea how to debate."

(The "you" in "you have no culture" may have been either singular or plural, but I'll assume the former. My points would apply in either case.)

There are two related meanings of "culture" at play here: [1] A group's language, religion, art, and customs and [2] familiarity with and sensitivity to the fine points of the culture[1] of your own and other societies.

Saying someone "has no culture" is either a vacuous slap at the entire society in which the person lives ("you have no culture[1]"), or it's a statement that the person lacks culture[2]. The GP was asking about culture[1], not culture[2].

So that means that you, writer of parent, have taken the word "culture" out of its culture[1] context and hurled it as an insult, "no culture[2]". Nothing in GP suggests a lack of civility or learning -- just the opposite, in fact, as he displayed some knowledge of another group's activities. You used that accusation as a springboard to claim he lacked debating technique.

He, at least, dealt with the content of the message to which he was responding. You merely insulted him, while ironically posturing as a debater.

Re:Who modded that up?

[DesireCampbell]

*sigh* If you want to bring semantics into this...

There are two related meanings of "culture" at play here: [1] A group's language, religion, art, and customs and [2] familiarity with and sensitivity to the fine points of the culture[1] of your own and other societies.

So, to recap, "culture" is either [1]"the unsubstantial stuff in my society" or [2]"knowing about the unsubstantial stuff in my society". Now what you may not have realized is that the message I replied to said...

Why does the rest of the world spend so much of their euros/yen/RMB/won/pesos/etc on American culture if it doesn't exist?

He's trying to say that he has culture because people pay money for it. But that contradicts [1] - you cannot buy or sell unsubstantial items. And because he fails to have knowledge about what his culture is he fails to meet the prerequisites for [2].

So he personally has no culture and, because he tried to speak for his whole society, he labels his whole society thus.

In other words - he and you together proved America has no culture. I wasn't needed at all. :)

Have a nice day.

Re:Who modded that up?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's trying to say that he has culture because people pay money for it.

Geeze, are you stupid or what? He's trying to say that others outside of the US value American culture enough that they are willing to pay quite a bit for various representations of our culture - music, movies, artifacts, etc.

In other words - he and you together proved America has no culture. I wasn't needed at all. :)

The only thing that was proven was your lack of an ability to reason.

Re:Who modded that up?

[Anonymous Coward]

shut the fuck up you crybaby nigger

Re:Who modded that up?

[mwood]

There's a Simon and Garfunkel song with an interesting comment on culture or lack thereof but I'd likely wind up in jail if I quote it so you'll have to find a copy and listen to it yourself. ("A Simple Desultory Phillippic, or How I was Robert McNamara'd into Submission", IIRC)

Re:Who modded that up?

[Anonymous Coward]

shut the fuck up you crybaby nigger

Now that speaks well for your culture.

Re:Who modded that up?

[AeroIllini]

Saying someone "has no culture" is either a vacuous slap at the entire society in which the person lives ("you have no culture[1]"), or it's a statement that the person lacks culture[2]. The GP was asking about culture[1], not culture[2].

Silly Slashdotter. Everyone knows the culture array starts numbering at zero.

Clarifications from isoHunt.com / TorrentBox.com

[AmVidia HQ]

This is IH from isoHunt.com. We also run TorrentBox.com. Some clarifications for comments here:

  * Yes, this is MPAA's FUD. The lawsuit included.
  * No, BitTorrent and P2P are not illegal (yet). They are not solely tools of thieves as the MPAA like to portray them as. There are many legal torrents in isoHunt's search index.
  * No, I haven't got anything from MPAA about this lawsuit of theirs, but the press release is real and we are working with other sites, sued or yet to be sued, and the EFF on this.
  * This is significant as they are suing search engines. isoHunt.com is a search engine. It does not discriminate, it index by algorithm. If we can, we'll be pulling in Google and Yahoo to say a few words that search engines are not illegal (yet).
  * No, I'm not a crook. I see P2P as the new VCR, and I intend on proving that P2P can be used to the benefit of content creators, as a cheap and global vehicle for distribution and promotion.

Read more and comment on my forum announcement if you like:
http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38933

Re:Ok MPAA and Slashdot I'm gonna sue your sorry b

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that these ways are no longer existing, because the servers were seized and sit mothballed in an FBI evidence warehouse. And the operators are now being anally abused in a Gitmo torture chamber. The US Army does remember how many great miliatristic and patriotistic movies Hollywood made for them.

I can do that too

[KazenoKoe]

"Website operators who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of copyrighted works by millions of people are not anonymous - they can and will be stopped," said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA how about: "Corporate Executives who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of millions of peoples' rights and freedoms are not anonymous - they can and will be stopped"

Re:I can do that too

[pmandryk]

All of this from a bunch of "suits" who probably can't even use a word processor...

Common sense

[Danathar]

I think many people are going to be shocked when the MPAA WINS these cases. Primarily they will argue that 1)Yes..it's a search service but 2) It's obvious to anybody looking at these sites and the site operaters that the majority of torrent file names are to copyrighted material

On the other side I'd argue all sorts of things like how would you know what files exactly are being traded since torrent names don't have to match the file names, and how do you know what that torrent file is without downloading it first.

In the end it really depends on which judge they get. If they can convince the judge that it's reasonable to assume that a torrent name with references to copyrighted material is in fact probably copyrighted material, well then they are screwed.

Re:Common sense

[Halvy]

I think many people are going to be shocked when the MPAA WINS these cases.

So let them win!!

The more 'they win', the more they will loose!!

Going to court proves they've lost anyway.

It's like going to court and asking the judge to 'stop' murder, stealing or harassment.

It just WON'T work.. but it will increase the ambitions of the Pirates and OSS communities-- to show: 'who the real boss is' (ie. us), and who 'really makes the rules around here' (us, again). lol

-- SlashDots Moderation System is not broke, it is fixed.

Yes!!! But be careful...

[TerranFury]

>That's the explanation why USA has such high crime rate. That's explains why you Americans at large has no understanding what's going outside: since you have no culture (but show business) one can hardly expect you to understand way others are living.

When I read your post about the significance of 'SOCIETY' and 'CULTURE,' I was cheering. Yes!! My thoughts exactly!

I am an American.

You're right that many Americans have very little idea what's going on outside the 'States. Many, of course, simply don't care -- but ignorance, innocent or otherwise, is hardly unique to this side of the Atlantic (or Pacific). I used to think much like you seem to: That Americans are fat, stupid, and aggressive, and that I needed to get somewhere else where the grass is greener. But experience has changed the way I think. People from elsewhere are no better. Different, yes -- and perhaps the flaws take different forms -- but certainly no more elevated or enlightened. Please be careful when you perpetuate stereotypes.

That said, I still agree with your point, and I share your fears: As thought and art turn into 'intellectual property,' we lose culture and edge with greedy baby-steps towards anarcho-capitalist dystopia. It's what cyberpunk warns us about; it's the businessman's and the libertarian's fantasy. And at this rate, it's going to happen. I can already feel Adam Smith's invisible hand winding up to smack us.

I'm surprised that the MPAA has any feet left...

[atomic_toaster]

...to shoot off, at this point.

Sure, there are lots of people out there who download video and music and never intend to pay for them in any way, shape or form. The thing is, even if P2P/filesharing/etc. didn't exist, these people wouldn't be paying for this media. However, there are a lot of people like myself who use filesharing as a way to preview media to see if they like it before they buy it. Case in point:

I live in Canada, and we don't get a lot of the shows from other countries here, even if you pay for digital cable or satellite. At one point, I read a review online about a show called Dead Like Me that I thought had an interesting premise. Unfortunately, it wasn't playing at all in Canada, so I dowloaded the first season and watched it. I loved the show! When it finally was released in Canada two years later, I bought Season 1 and Season 2 on DVD -- Season 2 sight unseen. However, there is no way in hell that I was going to spend $50 per box set on a series that I wasn't even sure if I was going to like. This goes double for movies/TV shows that I'd have to order special and pay an arm or a leg for (especially European imports, as they have to be converted). I'd like to know what I'm buying first, especially when, as with opened DVDs, you can't take them back!

So yes, MPAA, shove tonnes of money at lawsuits against P2P/BitTorrent/etc. Maybe you'll even close some of the services down. However, you'll lose money on the legal fees, you'll lose money when people can't preview the video that they want to see, and you'll definitely lose consumer backing. Way to go.

cant stop it !

[GreekPimpSlap]

So who wants to start something new up ?

One of my big problems with the MPAA bunch

[wubboy]

One of my problems with the MPAA and the other groups that make these up, is that my Daughter, loves "Dora the Explorer". It is and will be for the forseeable future illegal for her to write a "Dora the Explorer" book, short story, movie, cartoon, website EVER IN HER LIFETIME.

Not defending drug companies, but even drug companies lose the "exclusive" on a drug they spent Billions developing for after what 7 years? WTF is Dora, Micky Mouse, and all the rest virtually guaranteed forever?

What would the world look like if everything had a perpetual license? We would be paying Newton's great great great.... Grand children $2 a day to sit down, or $4 a day if you wanted to become horizontal for any reason. Imagine the payments on "your final resting place".

Re:One of my big problems with the MPAA bunch

[texaport]

my problems with the MPAA and the other groups that make these up

Not enough effort is spent identifying these "other groups" even though you just have to follow the money trail.

Traditional AM and FM radio is all about advertising dollars, and Clear-Channel-types have lots of money to
be thrown at stemming the ratings drops of 50 year old formats that are no longer reaching the publics' ears.

This is crazy

[cpuenvy]

What's next? Suing Google because you can find kiddie pron with it? Lets sue the Government, because they certainly started this whole crazy Internet thing.

I think these lawsuits are ridiculous and need to be stopped. Our society is hurt by them. If they can't stop people like http://thepiratebay.org/, then this is pointless. The Internet is not just in the United States jurisdiction, it is all over the world.

If a large part of society changes, you will see rift from the other parts of society. When cars were first driving our roads, you had to pull to the side and shut your car off if you came up to a horse. That was the law here in New Hampshire. Society is and has greatly changed because of computers and the Internet. It seems to me that these technologies are not going anywhere, and although change is difficult, we need to embrace it because fighting it will only produce short term gratification. Long term damage? Hopefully, if it involves the RIAA.

This makes as much sense as the US passing laws against spam, when spam comes from everywhere.

Ha!

[lheal]

He's trying to say that he has culture because people pay money for it.

No, he didn't try to say that he has culture. He was trying to say that his country's culture is valuable, and as evidence of that said that other people wanted a taste of it.

You made the same mistake again.

Well...

[0x64617272796c]

...so happy to see that my favourite invite-only torrent site(s) are NOT on that list.

Excuse me, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that Rabbit game yours? Didn't you work on Unreal and Unreal Tourney? If so, I'd hardly say you're "scraping by."

And if so, I had this same discussion with your boss five years ago on Planet Crap. Warren is afraid of piracy, he said, because he stole all his software when he was in college.

Strange how dishonest people think everyone is dishonest like them. But you and Warren are both wrong - most people are honest. Most people will buy a good game, movie, or song they've "pirated," and I think you all know it.

What you're afraid of is someone will see a crap movie on BitTorrent and not bother to see it in the theater. If you write crap, I can understand why you hate BitTorrent.

In fact, I'd say any so-called "artist" who is afraid that nobody would buy their work if they could get it for free is most likely aware that he or she is producing crap.

That said, I'll tell you why the MP/RIAA is afraid of BitTorrent: Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. When amateurs are doing a better job than the pros, the pros SHOULD start sweating.

-mcgrew
(Partial MRC="sentry")

Re:Excuse me, but...

[cliffski]

yawn. Im not cliffyB.

WoW

[chigun]

5 million WoW users worldwide use BT to get their patches. That right there is a decent enough "legit" reason why one can't blame BT itself for copyright infringement.

I realize that the MPAA has to go after these BT sites just to make a showing, but it really is just a waste. They'll shut down these 5 (or whatever) and 10 more will pop up to take their place.

It's really not going to affect me one way or another, since I don't want to get sued myself and therefore do not download files that would put me at risk.

Unless "The IT Crowd" is protected. That show is GOLD JERRY GOLD and is freely available on many of the BT networks.

MOD PARENT UP

[Tusaki]

"So add a donate tag/link after the splash screen. Improves the odds that illicit copy might get ya a few bucks... maybe not the full price but something is better than nothing.

Be pro-active, create a crippled version and sumbit that one to the torrent sites. Maybe include a coupon code within the game to tempt players to do the right thing and purchase a legit copy."

There are some excellent recommendations here: I think this is a great idea. Make it easy for me to donate some money towards the developers if I think the game was good enough for a few hours, but not good enough to warrant a full purchase.

Pedant

[freeweed]

You show me one movie, book, song, software that WASN'T made for fear of piracy then we can talk about it.

To be fair, that's much like trying to prove a negative. Possible, but tricky. And in this case, trivially easy:

I was going to release an album full of my own music, but decided not to because of piracy.

Go ahead, prove me wrong :)

I think what we need to see is a CREATOR who's stood up and said "ok, fuck this, I'm stopping writing books/music/films because of piracy". Which, of course, we haven't, because piracy rarely hurts creators; instead, it hurts distributors.

Re:Pedant

[jp10558]

And I still think that piracy helps (as advertising) far more than any of the **AA's want to admit. I keep coming back to the bands (some major) who wanted to release some/all tracks of an album online before release (Offspring IIRC, did Arctic Monkeys do this also?).

I also keep remembering this post: http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm

Now, all of this is anectadotal of course, but I wish more artists/authors (not industry reps, as we really can't believe them) would release some information - especially the non label artists/authors.

Re:Pedant

[penix1]

It makes about as valid an argument as their, "we lost a gazillion dollars to piracy" one...

In either event, I simply make this argument because even with their claims of "they are stealing from us" they still manage to make billions per year. Does that make it ok to do it? No. But to try this one of starving from the **AA is laughable.

B.

Google to be sued?

[Anonymous Coward]

Add Google to the list.

200GB of DVDs?

[Comboman]

I've bought about 200GBP of DVDs this year...

Lets see, at 8.5GB per double-layer DVD that means you bought 23.529 DVDs this year (unless some of them were single-layer). ;-)

Re:200GB of DVDs?

[Kadin2048]

I don't know if you were joking, but I think the "GBP" he was referring to in this context was 'Great Britain Pounds,' which work out to be worth about $1.70 USD each.

So that's about $350 worth of DVDs, which at least here in the States would get you roughly 1,093 blank single-layer DVD-Rs (at $0.32 each in bulk, generic). Which together would store about 4787.34 GB.

Now, that's a lot of porn...

Re:200GB of DVDs?

[lastchance_000]

Unless, of course, the OP meant he bought retail movies on DVD because he previewed them via BT and wanted the full product, in which case he bought about 15, estimating from the prices on amazon.co.uk.

Please let me pay for content!

[hotani]

MPAA: I'll give you $50 or so a month for unlimited access to streamed movies and TV shows. HD would be a plus. I don't even want to keep it. Why not put just a tiny bit of effort into profiting from the idea of downloaded content rather than fighting it every step of the way? Worked for Apple.

I don't want to own movies or tv shows; there isn't a need if they are *available* all the time (yes i'll pay - stop asking!). I have around 100 DVDs, of those I maybe brush the dust off 1 a month and watch it (Netflix for everything else). With a fee-based always-on model ('streaming Netflix' or some such thing), there would be no need to buy DVDs, or illegally download anything - plus the **AA would get their $$ which I think is what all the crying is about anyway.

Re:Please let me pay for content!

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like what you're asking for already exists. Try that vongo.com thing. It's like netflix but for downloading/streaming movies for a fee of ~$10/month, I think. (As far as I know, no TV shows yet, though.)

Re:Please let me pay for content!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll give you $50 or so a month for unlimited access to streamed movies and TV shows. HD would be a plus. I don't even want to keep it.

See: Cable television.

Re:Same tired old mistake

[dwandy]

The real threat is that the content may stopped being produced because the people paying for the production arent seeing a return on investment.

...actually the only real threat is that the middle-men don't get paid to market their wares to you.
Artists (real artists) make art for art, not for money.
Marketers, on the other hand, convince you that you should spend money on their particular product: In this case, their specific music.

Many people make the mistake of confusing stuff they've heard of with stuff that was made.

Art will be made whether or not it gets sold. Art will be made whether or not someone figures out how to monetize it. Art will be made because creativity is a human trait.

"Ha", yourself.

[DesireCampbell]

This is disheartening... very slowly, read this. This is a quote from the post I originally replied to.

Why does the rest of the world spend so much of their euros/yen/RMB/won/pesos/etc on American culture if it doesn't exist?

Now, just to make sure you caught that... I'll print it again: if it doesn't exist.

Not "if it's worthless". He said "if it doesn't exist".

No one said American culture was worthless - someone said it didn't exist.

And due to the specific words he used, he implied that culture could be measured monetarily. It's "culture" not "blockbuster films".

Furthermore, your (correct) definition of "culture" helped to prove my point and proved he had no culture. I didn't define what culture was - you did. If you're going to be mad at someone for saying he has no culture, you'll have to be mad at yourself. I worked withing the framework you provided.

"You made the same mistake again" - of not being able to read (his post, my posts, your own posts).

Re:"Ha", yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is disheartening... very slowly, read this. This is a quote from the post I originally replied to.

Of course, you missed the point again. He was responding to someone who claimed the US has no culture.

And due to the specific words he used, he implied that culture could be measured monetarily. It's "culture" not "blockbuster films".

Again you missed the point. The value others place on someones culture can be measured monetarily - by what and how much they buy.

BTW, "blockbuster films" are a piece of american culture. So is the music of BB King and the paintings of Norman Rockwell.

Re:"Ha", yourself.

[DesireCampbell]

ARRRGHHH.

The first poster said "USA = no culture", somebody responded with "People but DVDs and hula-hoops so USA = culture", I then said "culture cannot be bought, saying such a ridiculous thing proves the OP's point :P" and then everyone jumps down my fucking throat about saying America having no culture.

You know what? I'm tired of having to guess what I said to make you think I think America has no culture. I'm tired.

Can you just tell me? Just quote the line. If you can quote the line where I say "I think America has no culture" or "American culture is terrible" then I will sincerely apologize.

But, if you can't find anything I've said to say that, you owe me an apology for your farce of a debate.

And, for the record, Jazz, Hollywood films, American Realism/Abstraction ism are all part of the American culture... but selling pieces of them isn't culture (Capitalism could be seen as a major part of the American culture, but not the actual action of selling things).

Is this Charlie Brown Syndrome?

[DesireCampbell]

AAARRGGGHHH!!

Apparently, no one understands that I was making fun of him. What he posted was stupid, so I ridiculed him for it.

He said "Why does the rest of the world spend so much of their [money] on American culture if it doesn't exist?". He doesn't understand what culture is (see the other replies for somebody trying to argue with me and proving me right).

He tried to link economy to culture - which is stupid.

He's talking about popular media - but that's not "culture", which is what the post he replied to was about.

Re:Is this Charlie Brown Syndrome?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's talking about popular media - but that's not "culture", which is what the post he replied to was about.

Popular media *is* a part of culture.

Re:Is this Charlie Brown Syndrome?

[paeanblack]

Apparently, no one understands that I was making fun of him. What he posted was stupid, so I ridiculed him for it.

If nobody understood your attempt at humor, perhaps you didn't succeed.

You still haven't answered my question. Why does the rest of the world spend such massive amounts of money importing the byproducts of American culture if, as you claim, America has no culture?

Re:Is this Charlie Brown Syndrome?

[DesireCampbell]

I never said America has no culture. If anyone could read what I've posted... but noooooo, jump the little guy.
ThePhillip made a comment about the US having no culture - Paeanblack said America did have culture because people spend money on it - he meant the by-products of culture, the economy, but that's not culture, and that's what I said: "you cannot buy culture". I then comment on how, because of his lack of knowledge of the subject (or perhaps just the language), he has helped prove ThePhillip's point about the US not having culture.
Now, I never said the US doesn't have culture. Okay?!

And for the record - good economy does not equal "good culture". Just because someone pays for your shit, doesn't stop it from being shit.
But, it is still impossible by it's very definition, for a society to not have a culture. Okay?! Jeez.

Re:Is this Charlie Brown Syndrome?

[paeanblack]

And for the record - good economy does not equal "good culture". Just because someone pays for your shit, doesn't stop it from being shit.

Perhaps America will stop producing shit when the rest of the world stops gobbling it up and asking for more. For now, that seems to be your preference. If you don't approve of a major export product of the world's largest economy, maybe you should have words with your countrymen first.

Re:Is this Charlie Brown Syndrome?

[DesireCampbell]

You know what? I'm tired of having to guess what I said to make you think I think America has no culture. I'm tired.

Can you just tell me? Just quote the line. If you can quote the line where I say "I think America has no culture" or "American culture is terrible" then I will sincerely apologize.

But, if you can't find anything I've said to say that, you owe me an apology for your farce of a debate.

Let's play their game

[besenslon]

All the power of **AAs is because of the bribes they provide to different legislators.
And the nice sounding "we protect authors profits".

Ok, what will happen if we "bribe" the authors, thus protecting their profits? Are they going to sign again with the studious?

My proposal is: on every torrent site, for every torrent there to be a PayPal (or any other) link for direct donation to the authors. If most of the downloaders donate even 1$, and it is obvious that it is because of the torrent site, I guess a lot of authors will change their minds about P2P, and the way they distribute their works.

Re:Let's play their game

[Halvy]

That is a wonderful idea!!

But be assured the 'Jewish Mafia' will create a law that will consider it terrorism or some other nonsensical thing.

-- Firmely entrenched at the bottom of 'Bad Karma', now I can finally speak my mind.

There are many legal uses torrents(like with guns)

[GodsFlaw]

Weekly I download an anime series bleach. Lunar a fan-sub uses torrents as a distribution method. They only distribute legitimate files. Many orginizations use it as a distribution methond. I guess it comes down to if you hold objects or people accountable. The close parallel is gun rights. I don't own a gun but feel people should be able to have them. If a person kills another with a gun I blame the person not the gun. For me it is the same with torrents.

Borrowing DVDs

[dwandy]

That's right; one deprives the victim of money or goods, the other deprives the victim of income.

This is still wrong. Or do you believe that when I borrow a DVD from a friend that the 'victim'* is deprived of income?
So we can (hopefully) agree that there is no loss to the studio when I borrow a DVD from a friend. Now have you ever either borrowed something from someone who had borrowed it from someone else? (or been anyone in that equation) ? And I think that we can again agree that the original 'producer' of the borrowed-item still suffered no loss?
So obviously the degree of borrowing/lending doesn't cause loss to the 'victim'*? In other words, if the 2nd borrower again lends it to a fourth party, is the original producer harmed? The n-th lender/borrower combination in no way affects your 'victim'.

So now explain how the studio is hurt when I borrow a movie from someone I've never met? This is merely a direct n-th level lender/borrower combination...

*no, the studio is the 'victim', not my friend.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[Angostura]

Or do you believe that when I borrow a DVD from a friend that the 'victim'* is deprived of income?

Potentially, and in some cases actually. I've borrowed movies from a friend and had them on extended loan, instead of buying them. I certainly would have bought them otherwise.

Hope that clear's that up.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

You are either really stupid, or a very smart troll.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[Angostura]

You suggest borrowing wouldn't effect a publisher's income, I demonstrate that in some real-world cases it would, you call me stupid or a troll.

Nicely argued there.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

You're either a very stupid person, or a very smart troll.

Does renting effect a publisher's income?

"OMG BAN RENT ROFL!"

Does PPV?

"OMG BAN PPV ROFL!"

Actually, if you weren't such a bleeding moron, you'd see that renting and PPV actually help out.

I never expected to like Harry Potter, seeing as how I dislike children. Well, after watching it on PPV with my cousin, I've seen and plan on seeing all of them when they come out and buying the collectors edition.

Same with LOTR.

Noob.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[Angostura]

You also appear to have difficulty with the basic economics of rental and PPV. The film companies make a lot of money from pay-per-view, they get a direct cut of the revenue from the TV company. I don't know if you had noticed, but rental companies get their copies of a DVD/Video well before the retail release, the price of these rental items are well above the subsequent price of the retail boxes. In other words the rental places pay a premium for the early availability of the DVDs and this premium is used to offset the subsequent loss of sales that the studios believe is incurred.

I hope this helps, and do try to avoid calling someone a moron when commenting outside your area of competence.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Rental "companies"? My cousin owns the local movie rental place and they're no Blockbuster.

So, if you actually knew what you were talking about that would be one thing.. but you're a fucking moron.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[Angostura]

You seem to have failed to have included any facts that might bolster your argument.. Your cousin owns the local movie rental place. Great. And? He doesn't pay a premium for early-release rental copies, is that what you are struggling to tell me?

Take deep breaths, I'm sure you will manage to make your point cogently any message now; no, really.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

You prove you are a troll.

Thank you for your time.

Re:Borrowing DVDs

[Angostura]

And that ladies and gentlemen demonstrates how someone who is unable to partake in a real debate on Slashdot will often initially indulge in a bit of ad hominem name-calling before slinking away.

It's been educational.

Typical kneejerk reaction...

[mark-t]

... to this story.

Many rants about how "Search engines aren't illegal", etc. Blah blah blah blah blah.

The point that I think is being made here is that search engines that end up being used virtually exclusively for the finding of materials that are illegal _OUGHT_ to be illegal, and that's why the MPAA is working at shutting them down.

You do not, for example, need to use one of the mentioned torrent search sites to find the latest Linux ISO images. I feel fairly confident in saying that the actual number of legal torrent files out there that could be not be found without using a search engine that predominantly indexes to illegal content (that is, copyrighted content which is being shared without the copyright holder's permission) is staggeringly tiny (although I similarly somehow would not doubt that some slashdot readers will take it upon themselves to cite a few examples in response to my remarks that will somehow "prove" this assertion to be incorrect).

So by the reasoning being proposed by the MPAA here, taken to its natural conclusion, if or when Google indexes substantially more infringing content than it does legitimate, and if and when that is predominantly what the engine is used for, then even Google would be shut down.

Why not sue google?

[Zed2K]

You can go to google and type in a name of any game and the word torrent to get a link to the torrent file. So why isn't the MPAA going after google? Oh wait, google probably has more money than they do and would fight back and win instead of rolling over and playing dead.

Who's Next? Wag that Dog!

[Nom du Keyboard]

First they closed down the sites hosting content.
Then they closed down the P2P centralized servers.
Next they went after the distributed P2P systems and scared them off.
They started suing random P2P users with large share directories, often missing the mark.
Then they went after sites that stored only torrent files, and no actual content.
Now they're after the sites that index the torrents, and have neither actual content, nor torrent files.

Your own personal computer is next on their hit list of infringing devices.

Is anyone aware of just how small these content industries really are compared to the overall economy? They are the tail wagging the dog!

Viscous Cycle

[jav1231]

MPAA/RIAA sues little guys...more people stop buying CD's....sales go down...MPAA/RIAA think, "Wow! Our sales are down! There must be more pirating than we thought! Crank up the lawsuit machine!"...more people get sued...less people buy CD's...sales go down...more lawsuits come....more people are sued....less people buy CD's...sales go down...more lawsuits come....I'm getting dizzy....

What about legitimate searches?

[rainman_bc]

What about these searches:

Fedora
America's Army
OpenSuSE
Knoppix

Nay, they can proove that this has legitimate uses too. The RIAA is at it again - using Barretry to their advantage.

Some ACLU group needs to sue the RIAA for barretry.

When CD's are gone everyone will go to concerts...

[maillemaker]

"After that happen, you'd be surprised how much of artists you liked are in fact are indies and has no relation to the RI/MA Ass. of America. What's more they'd be happy to know that you have downloaded their song/movie - and thus learned about their existence. And if you liked them payed visit to concert or show."

This seems to be the ongoing line of thought around here - that after CDs are produced no more because no one can sell them, artists will make their livings through live performances.

I wonder, of all the millions of iPod owners out there, how many have never gone to a live show or concert? I haven't been to one in over 15 years.

Lots of people don't want to go out to hear music. They want music they can take with them and listen to when they want to. If they have that, a lot of them are going to be satisfied with that.

Steve

Dead business model in a deathgrip

[oDDmON oUT]

The sad thing is that all the MPAA has to do is look over at the Universal Vivendi property, Blizzard Entertainment.

Having passed 3.5 million subscribers over six months ago, conservative estimates of their monthly revenue on the World of Warcraft franchise exceed $41,965,000.00. That translates to over half a billion annually, with long term foreseeable growth.

Why?

Blizzard delivers the game via a streaming model, has absolute control of the content, owns the servers delivering the goods, and can continue adding content to keep it's subscribers coming back as long as it's profitable to do so.

Movie studios could do the same by offering a tiered system of streaming content at increasing resolutions on a subscription basis, i.e. 5 movies monthly/annually @ 640x480 = $X / 5 movies monthly/annually @ 800x600 = $XX / 5 movies monthly/annually @ 1024x768 = $XXX. Increase the frequency, pay more. While a simple concept, the watermarking/security technology to ensure there's no redistribution would hardly be trivial.

This then cuts "piracy" off at the knees, and gives studios control of their content again, without the overhead of egregious legal fees or bad PR. Everybody wins.

But, for this model to be profitable it would mean that studios would have to concentrate on putting out quality instead of quantity, and give up using Fx to coverup nonexistent storylines, and that's a topic for another thread entirely.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....

Re:There are many legal uses torrents(like with gu

[Yosho]

Ironically, downloading fansubbed anime is illegal. Fansub groups are modifying and redistributing copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright owners; that's a pretty clear violation of international copyright law. Luckily, most Japanese anime studios don't care if their shows get distributed outside of Japan, so fansubbing groups that don't touch licensed series are typically ignored. Of course, there are some Japanese studios (such as Media Factory) that do take an active stance against their series being distributed, so you'll never see their shows listed on some place like animesuki, even if they're not licensed yet...

Well that's the crux, isn't it?

[maillemaker]

"Now, the effort that went into producing that string of bits for the first time is what isn't free, and that effort is what no one has an entitlement to. An artist is free to charge whatever he wants for recording a song, writing a book, etc., and to refuse to do any of it until his conditions have been met. But once he has agreed to do it, the fruits of his labor are free for all of humanity to use, just like any other numbers."

(Emphasis mine)

Well that's the crux, isn't it? "his conditions have been met". Today, the conditions are that he make some millions of dollars for his song.

Today, he can meet his condition by spreading those millions over a few million copies of his song.

Will he be able to do it tomorrow when that is no longer possible?

If he keeps the same conditions, who will be able to afford to meet them? Answer: rich patrons.

If a rich patron does come along and commission a new song for some millions, do you think the patron is going to share what he bought with all of humanity to use? Or will he keep his expensive commission for his own personal use?

Steve

Re:Well that's the crux, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's the crux, isn't it? "his conditions have been met". Today, the conditions are that he make some millions of dollars for his song.

Whose conditions? There are only a very few bands who have made a net profit of millions of dollars. Many of those profits are from concerts. How long do you think it takes to make a million dollars after getting $.50 a CD, AND paying off your RIAA loans? In fact, if you look at most rich artists, they either own their own label or have very, very sweet deals with the RIAA. In general, bands produce their best music for mere pennies while trying to pay off massive loans for overly expensive studio work and advertizing. Who *needs* advertizing with iTunes and the web anymore? Studio work can be done on PCs with $100 sound cards and a CD burner.

What society is witnessing is the proverbial invention of the media printing press, technology that makes producing and distributing massive copies of media works easy and cheap. The monks and scribes who run the RIAA will whine and complain about their reduced status in society, but in the end no one will care and they'll be forgotten. The sooner the better.

Re:Well that's the crux, isn't it?

[Mr2001]

Well that's the crux, isn't it? "his conditions have been met". Today, the conditions are that he make some millions of dollars for his song.

Today, he can meet his condition by spreading those millions over a few million copies of his song.

Well, he can *try* to meet his conditions. There's no guarantee, and that's a problem. On the other hand, if he just says up front "I'm not writing a single note until I see a million dollars in an escrow account", then either he's guaranteed to get paid for his work, or he won't have to do the work at all.

Will he be able to do it tomorrow when that is no longer possible?

Who says it'll be impossible? Just because you can't make money selling copies doesn't mean you can't make money. And just because you can't make a million dollars by selling one copy each to a million fans doesn't mean you can't still make a million dollars - it just means you have to tell your million fans up front, "Give me a dollar if you want me to write another song".

The "rich patron" model is one possibility, but not the only one. We've seen political candidates raise millions of dollars from small individual contributions through their web sites. Now consider that more people vote for American Idol than vote for President! If a political candidate can fund his campaign by getting a lot of people to send in a little money, even when they know that the money will be wasted if their guy loses, just think how much easier it'd be for a popular musician to fund his next album the same way.

If a rich patron does come along and commission a new song for some millions, do you think the patron is going to share what he bought with all of humanity to use? Or will he keep his expensive commission for his own personal use?

If he keeps it to himself, that's fine with me, because no one but him and the artist will know about it in the first place. He has the right to try to keep it secret, although the rest of us have the right to make copies if we ever have the chance.

Re: Parent pretty funny/insightful-not a troll

[Maxo-Texas]

kind of funny and insightful about the differences between real property (an AK-10) and "intellectual" property.

And they wonder why...

[e40]

Went to the movies last weekend with the family. Curious George. (My 5 year old loved it.) ~$50 for 4 of us (tickets + popcorn). Now I remember why we never go to the movies. And they wonder why theatre attendance is down and piracy is up.

Thanks MPAA!

[saltydogdesign]

I would like to thank the MPAA for alerting me (and uncounted others) to some good torrent sites.

Re:Thanks MPAA!

[Hurricane Floyd]

Yeah, I didn't know about a few of those, but the others I know are very good sites. LMAO, it probably will actually drive a few more hundred-thousand people to those sites

public trackers?

[tacolicker]

seriously, who the fuck still uses those? you'd have to be a fucktard to, and by these replies, most of Slashdot is. hell, you're probably on mininova now.

The artists conditions...

[maillemaker]

There are only a very few bands who have made a net profit of millions of dollars. Many of those profits are from concerts. How long do you think it takes to make a million dollars after getting $.50 a CD, AND paying off your RIAA loans? In fact, if you look at most rich artists, they either own their own label or have very, very sweet deals with the RIAA. In general, bands produce their best music for mere pennies while trying to pay off massive loans for overly expensive studio work and advertizing.

Why do you think so many artists stick it out so long "paying their dues" by working for peanuts playing local bars and gigs? I'm sure a lot of them do it for love. I'm sure in the heart of every artist, though, there is some hope that they will "make the big time".

You're right - a whole lot of artists never make the big time. And that won't change. There will still be a lot of "starving artists".

What will change is now there won't BE a big time. Or at least, the big time won't be nearly as big as it was in the era when you could sell copies of your music. There will proably be even fewer rich artists.

What society is witnessing is the proverbial invention of the media printing press, technology that makes producing and distributing massive copies of media works easy and cheap. The monks and scribes who run the RIAA will whine and complain about their reduced status in society, but in the end no one will care and they'll be forgotten. The sooner the better.

I think that's a great analogy. And, like others have said, I think the entertainment industry may come closer to that medieval analogy in that artists will come to rely on rich patrons who can afford to pay for new works. I think those rich patrons will either horde their commissions for themselves, or use the digital artwork as free "bait" to get you to come to a web site or other distribution center where you can be plied with advertisements for physiscal products. In the former case, no one but the patron will get to enjoy the artwork. In the later case, the only artwork comissioned will be that which is deemed commercially suitable to be associated with a product that is trying to be sold. If artists think they have little creative control now wait until that scenario comes into play.

Who *needs* advertizing with iTunes and the web anymore? I don't know about everyone else, but most of the songs I buy off of iTunes, except for classical music, are songs that I have heard on the radio, so in effect, radio is an advertisement for me. I don't pour through the iTunes library looking for new music. I totally ignore the iTunes "front page" with all the splashes for artists I've never heard of. I think things like iTunes and the Web make advertising even more critical if you want to get noticed. iTunes and the Web are huge equalizers. There are so many to choose from that unless something (like advertising) makes you aware of them so that you specifically seek them out it's easy to miss them.

Steve

Re:Clarifications from isoHunt.com / TorrentBox.co

[Halvy]

..I intend on proving that P2P can be used to the benefit of content creators, as a cheap and global vehicle for distribution and promotion. ..

Hey thanx for the update.

I really like your idea of explaining how this technology can actually help the content creators, however I'm sure you realize that they are not interested in anything other than trying to control everyones actions, which is consumming them like cancer as we speak. :)

-- My favorite thing about OSS is it's militancy!

Blame God it's his fault...

[hrrY]

Bittorrent, ed2k, kazaa, et al. represent the will of a/the people that have been governed by corrupt, hypocritical system that is centered around maximizing profits per individual lifespan; meaning that as long as you are alive you MUST conform to the notion of being SOMEONE's customer i.e. Philip Morris, Exxon, the Bell's, ,etc. If you do not subscribe this ideal of existence you are not valued as an active, participant member of society. As dense as we are as consumers, is evenly measured by just how intrinsically inclined we are as individuals(and animals)to preserve our inherent nature. What these institutions do, and have seemingly succeeded in doing, is programming or creating another manifestation of human nature that serves only the institution and not the individual. This has backfired. People are waking up from their slumber, slowly my friends, and now after years of being under their submission and just graciously *accepting* what they deem approriate for us to see and hear to provide us with stimuli(and not even good stimuli as of late)Now we as a people collectively will take back what belongs to us rightfully for every bad movie with plastic, lifeless, actors; coupled with equally plastic and lifeless plots and storylines, or every *good* CD that contains 20 tracks and yet only 2 are good, 1 mediocore, and 17 that are absymal. And I say again, the masses will no longer be robbed anymore, lest the theif is willing to be robbed themselves...this is God's will.

Interesting idea...

[maillemaker]

Who says it'll be impossible?

I think you misunderstood me. What I said was:

Today, he can meet his condition by spreading those millions over a few million copies of his song.

Will he be able to do it tomorrow when that is no longer possible?

What I meant by "that" being no longer possible is the spreading those millions over a few million copies of his song. And that will be impossible when everyone copies and doesn't buy songs.

Just because you can't make money selling copies doesn't mean you can't make money.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I just don't think you can make nearly as much money.

And just because you can't make a million dollars by selling one copy each to a million fans doesn't mean you can't still make a million dollars - it just means you have to tell your million fans up front, "Give me a dollar if you want me to write another song".

The "rich patron" model is one possibility, but not the only one. We've seen political candidates raise millions of dollars from small individual contributions through their web sites. Now consider that more people vote for American Idol than vote for President! If a political candidate can fund his campaign by getting a lot of people to send in a little money, even when they know that the money will be wasted if their guy loses, just think how much easier it'd be for a popular musician to fund his next album the same way.

That's an interesting possibility I had not considered. I do wonder, though, if it could work. I mean, there's nothing stopping artists from doing that today, and I've never heard of anyone doing it. I imagine it's because if someone, I don't care how famous they are, announced, "Everyone send me a dollar and I'll write a new album!", most people would laugh. Who's going to pay sight unseen for something of unknown value, especially when you could just wait and get it for free anyway?

Steve

Re:Interesting idea...

[Mr2001]

That's an interesting possibility I had not considered. I do wonder, though, if it could work. I mean, there's nothing stopping artists from doing that today, and I've never heard of anyone doing it. I imagine it's because if someone, I don't care how famous they are, announced, "Everyone send me a dollar and I'll write a new album!", most people would laugh.

I'd say that's largely because there's already another more common model that both artists and consumers are used to. It's easier for the artist to just sign a contract, do his thing, and then hope that money comes in, rather than actually finding customers up front in order to make the money a sure thing.

Who's going to pay sight unseen for something of unknown value, especially when you could just wait and get it for free anyway?

Well, most theater patrons don't seem to mind paying $8.50 for a movie of unknown value, based on nothing but a 60 second trailer.

Yes, they could wait to get it for free, but at the cost of less assurance that they ever will get it. The question they must ask themselves is, "How much is it worth to me to see this work finished and released?"... keeping in mind that they only have to pay if it really does get released. As the amount of money collected gets closer to the goal, collecting the rest will get easier - never underestimate the motivating power of a simple thermometer graph.

200 lbs of DVDs?

[Comboman]

I don't know if you were joking, but I think the "GBP" he was referring to in this context was 'Great Britain Pounds'

Ahh that makes more sense. Lets see, DVDs weigh about 2.5 ounces (including case) so 200 pounds worth would be about 1280 DVDs (assuming pounds weigh the same in Great Britain as they do here).

Yes, I was joking (still am), but it's just not as funny if you have to explain it.

Re:200 lbs of DVDs?

[jp10558]

What's even more amusing is that's also within the bulk range for blank DVDs.

If they REALLY wanna stop P2P...

[mark-t]

... at least on a national level, they could.

The solution to which I refer would be for them to work at getting a law passed which required that all residential internet subscribers in the country be effectively locked away from the "real internet", by not allowing ANY incoming packets that in the case of TCP were not part of a stream that was initiated by the residential subscriber, and in the case of UDP was not destined for a port that the subscriber did not make a recent outgoing request from. Also, they would block all incoming traffic to residential subscribers that is not either UDP or TCP so that it would not be possible to subvert the blocking using either raw IP or ICMP. It wouldn't completely stop the problem, in particular non-residential subscribers would still be able to do it, but it would probably stop at least three quarters of it.

Of course, this is roughly the TCPIP equivalent of global thermonuclear war... there would be a fairly high level of "peace" afterwards, but the costs would be unacceptably high.

Re:If they REALLY wanna stop P2P...

[pezhore]

This article sparked a rather in-depth debate at my current workplace. I'm co-oping at NTID (National Technical Institute for the Deaf) which is situated on Rochester Institute of Technology's campus in Rochester, NY. Its really interesting to see the difference between piracy on campus as opposed to off campus. RIT has specifically attempted to leave their network as open as possible only blocking programs when legal action was threatened (think kazaa back in the day). Sure, we had our own little FBI raids in 2004, but for the most part the RIT community accepts file sharing as a social norm.

I believe that the only way to limit piracy is to shut off the internet - a suggestion as unrealistic and stupid as the current methods. Even then in this internet free world, piracy would still exist through the use of DVD-burners and good ol' sneaker-net.

The whole debate on file-sharing, IP is one that typically I try to shy away from, because unlike some other people (namely my co-workers) I can see both sides of the debate. In any sampling of file sharer's there will be leechers - those who merely want something for nothing. But I believe that the great majority of p2p users actually lay their money down when the product merits payment. I love the comment made previously by [some ./'er] they downloaded Stealth and The Island and after recognizing them for the flaming piles of crap that they are, deleted them and moved on. But after said user downloaded Doom and loved it, he gladly paid money for the older game.

I don't think we should have a pay-per-download, or even a subscription based site. I think that we should find someway to give money to the originating artist (not the record company) for their works if it tickles our fancy. Otherwise, it shouldn't take residence on our hard drive and the torrent file should die out.

my (very long) 2 cents

Re:When CD's are gone everyone will go to concerts

[maxpublic]

This seems to be the ongoing line of thought around here - that after CDs are produced no more because no one can sell them, artists will make their livings through live performances.

It's ironic that the college boys who bitch about the loss of our freedoms at the same time think that no artist should have the freedom to decide what to charge for their product. The advocacy of 'freedom' here on the Slashdot seems to mean (as it does anywhere else) "only the freedoms I personally approve of".

Max

Re:Same tired old mistake

[maxpublic]

Artists (real artists) make art for art, not for money.

Bullshit. Artists produce art for many reasons, usually with this appended clause: "...and also to make money so myself and my family can eat."

And boy, here's another wake-up call: you don't get to decide for the rest of us what constitutes art or an artist. You're just another Joe on the street, and your opinion on the matter isn't any more important than anyone else's.

Max

Now Britney will able to get that Gulfstream IV

[walterbyrd]

Thank God!!

"Come. There's more. [leads them away. Next seen is a small airport at night] Here's Britney Spears' private jet. Notice anything? [a shot of Britney boarding a plane, then stopping to look at it before entering] Britney used to have a Gulfstream IV. Now she's had to sell it and get a Gulfstream III because people like you chose to download her music for free."
- South Park episode 709

Why shouldn't they sue?

[walterbyrd]

It's free money for MPAA, right?

I predict that within 20 years, over 60% of the USA workforce will be lawyers. The rest will be paralegals, legal Secretaries, office assistance, etc. And lots of people will be professional plaintiffs: it's easier than working.

Of course the USA will need a military to keep those other countries in line - hell, somebody has to produce goods and services. All we do in the USA is sue each other.

Re:When CD's are gone everyone will go to concerts

[ksheff]

then they should check out archive.org, etree or any live show trading site and they can listen to free music that someone else heard when they went out to a show.

It's times like these I wish I knew how to mod po

[DesireCampbell]

I agree completely with everything you just said. Absolutely everything.

A couple points though - while not uniquely American, these lawsuits are almost exclusively American corporate endeavours. I've never heard of a Mexican recording company suing anyone, or a British publishing house trying to extend their copyright to other countries. In fact, there's one Canadian indie music label that's helping an American to fight the RIAA's lawsuit. So while it's wrong to say "only Americans" do this kind of thing, the frequency of American involvement cannot be ignored.
Also, posts here do tend to focus on national boundaries as culture boundaries. I've tried to say "society" to edge away from that - but I don't think it's worked.

I've taken quite a bit of flack for that post - because people don't read it properly, and try to infer that I hate America or something. I'm glad someone here is still on topic. :)

Exactly

[Propaganda13]

So if I'm paying tax to content providers on blank hard drives and cds, why shouldn't I be able to download anything I want from the internet.

I already paid for it.

This isnt about BT

[nurb432]

The discussion was about the pages with links, not BT itsself.

We were also talking US courts, and US citizens ( at least *i* was.. ) so laws elsewhere would require a different discussion.

Help Jam the Phone Lines of the MPAA

[Osinoche]

Remember folks it's MPAA.ORG. And they HAVE contact information. Now if we overwhelm them with contacts, call every office, alot, set up redundant callings from our PCs, and generally annoy the hell out of them, they will become angry and annoyed and lash out at small children, creating a whiplash which shall destroy them all. Muuuhahahaha Muuuhahahaha Muhahahahaha. Ahheeemm, Oh yeah, contact info. Office of the Chairman and CEO Washington, DC 1600 Eye St., NW Washington, DC 20006 (202) 293-1966 (main) (202) 296-7410 (fax) Los Angeles 15503 Ventura Blvd. Encino, California 91436 (818) 995-6600 (main) (818) 382-1795 (fax) New York (Anti-Piracy Office) One Executive Blvd. Suite 455 Yonkers, NY 10701 (914) 378-0800 (main) (914) 378-0048 (fax) Sao Paulo, Brazil Rua Sergipe 475, 10th Floor Higienópolis São Paulo, SP 01243-001 011-5511-3667-2080 (main) 011-5511-3825-5544 (fax) Brussels, Belgium 108 rue du Trône B-1050 Brussells 011-32-2-778-2711 (main) 011-32-2-778-2700 (fax) Singapore No. 1 Magazine Road Central Mall #04-07 Singapore 059571 011-65-6253-1033 (main) 011-65-6255-1838 (fax) Toronto, Canada (CMPDA) 22 St. Clair Avenue, East Suite 1603 Toronto M4T 2S4 (416) 961-1888 (main) (416) 968-1016 (fax)

Re:Help Jam the Phone Lines of the MPAA

[Osinoche]

Well that didn't post right. So Let's try again.
Office of the Chairman and CEO
Washington, DC 1600 Eye St., NW Washington, DC 20006(202) 293-1966 (main) (202) 296-7410 (fax)




Los Angeles 15503 Ventura Blvd. Encino, California 91436 (818) 995-6600 (main) (818) 382-1795 (fax)




New York (Anti-Piracy Office) One Executive Blvd. Suite 455 Yonkers, NY 10701 (914) 378-0800 (main) (914) 378-0048 (fax)




Sao Paulo, Brazil Rua Sergipe 475, 10th Floor Higienópolis São Paulo, SP 01243-001 011-5511-3667-2080 (main) 011-5511-3825-5544 (fax)




Brussels, Belgium 108 rue du Trône B-1050 Brussells 011-32-2-778-2711 (main) 011-32-2-778-2700 (fax)




Singapore
No. 1 Magazine Road Central Mall #04-07 Singapore 059571 011-65-6253-1033 (main) 011-65-6255-1838 (fax)




Toronto, Canada (CMPDA) 22 St. Clair Avenue, East Suite 1603 Toronto M4T 2S4 (416) 961-1888 (main) (416) 968-1016 (fax)

MOD PARENT UP and op down

[Anonymous Coward]

op is a cock head...

Re:Same tired old mistake

[dwandy]

Bullshit. Artists produce art for many reasons, usually with this appended clause: "...and also to make money so myself and my family can eat."

I call bullshit back.
Major "artists" have their lawyers add the make money clause at the request of the *aa while they vacation on their yacht.
Check with any new/starting artist and I can guarantee you that none are doing it for the money - 'cause they aren't making any. Playing bars pays next to nothing, and that's where they all start. Do they have dreams of making big money? Sure, but then don't we all? Having dreams of making big money, and doing it for the money are two different things.

And boy

Fuck off hick. Address people with some respect, and some might be returned.

here's another wake-up call: you don't get to decide for the rest of us what constitutes art or an artist. You're just another Joe on the street, and your opinion on the matter isn't any more important than anyone else's.

You're right, mine is worth no more than yours. And it is precisely for that reason that I balk at letting a multinatonal conglomorate decide what gets air-time. Because neither you nor I was consulted in that process. Some marketer decided that (s)he could sell a particular artist, and so they get played non-stop on the radio, regardless of what you or I think of them.
And before you say that sales is an indicator of what people like (as opposed to my version, which is sales are based on what was marketed) you need to take a quick primer on the effectiveness of marketing. As a hint/starting point, try looking at demandless products like diamonds and coca-cola.

It is precisely because I don't want others deciding what is art that I oppose the current system.

Thanks MIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

I had not had these other sites until you sued them. Now I have better access to your medium. You might want to think about offering a product I want and at a resonable price someday, until then I will pirate. Thanks to your lawsuite I now know of more places to get it

A ompany that only exists to sue somebody ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just realized : the only reason the MPAA and others like it exist is to sue *anyone* not being their masters. If they dont, they do not have a reason to exist anymore.

In short, that means that they will *never* add something to our society, but will allways (try to) find something amiss with it, just so they can proove their existence.

Even when someone, *anyone* could proove that existence being fully counter-productive the only ones that would get influenced by it would be the **AA itself, not the companies that have created it.

They will *still* continue to tell anyone that any kind of non-payed use of *any* kind of expression (even when it has explicitily been declared a free piece of work by the authors) is a violation against *their* rights, just because that is the reason for their being created/their existence, not because it is in any way prooved to be true ....

Re:When CD's are gone everyone will go to concerts

[triffid_98]

Have you ever seen what a record contract looks like? Artists already make their living off of live performances, except for those who've managed to buy some of their songs back from the real owners (BMG/Epic/etc). This is not to say that file sharing doesn't indirectly affect performers but it's hardly their primary source of income.

Go away, you're not 21

[tepples]

the independent productions are picking momentum.

O rly? Independent bands often can't get their music out to adolescents, who control a lot of disposable income through their parents. Radio? Payola. Portable music players? Nope; too many school districts prohibit kids from possessing those on school property. Live performances? Forget it; only bars have an affordable venue fee. The major record labels have proven themselves very adept at levering these limitations of promotion to minors in order to maintain its tight control of promotion of recorded music.

The only thing I agree with Michael Moore on

[NumerusSpy]

He said that you could learn everything you need to know about US culture by watching "Dude, where's my car".

Re:Yes!!! But be careful...

[NumerusSpy]

There is an Australian comedy called 'Chaser' and they do man in the street interviews with average USians. It is quite an insight into US culture (even more so than 'Dude, where's my car'. Here's the links (you need realplayer and a sense of humour. I have no personal affiliation with these sites).
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/video/
http://www.abc.net.au/cnnnn/