Slashdot Mirror
The Pirate Bay is Here to Stay?
vitaly.friedman wrote to mention a Wired article about The Pirate Bay, a file-sharing crewe out of Sweden that thumbs its nose at the MPAA just for kicks and has yet to be shut down. From the article: "The Pirate Bay's legal adviser, law student Mikael Viborg, said the site receives 1,000 to 2,000 HTTP requests per second on each of its four servers. That's bad news for the content industries, which have fired off letter after menacing letter to the site, only to see their threats posted on The Pirate Bay, together with mocking replies. Viborg said that no one has successfully indicted The Pirate Bay or sued its operators in Swedish courts. Attorneys for DreamWorks and Warner Bros., two companies among those that have issued take-down demands to the site, did not return calls for comment."
I always love when people think that writing or calling their elected official makes a hill of beans of difference. For me, all it generally did was give me a nice elated feeling when I received a signed letter in the mail thanking me for my opinion, and then writing a paragraph about why their decisions would never change.
I've lately become a firm believer in wasting the time of the company that has used the power of government against me -- in this case, the content and distribution cartels (RIAA, MPAA). Instead of calling your elected official, call the companies themselves and keep moving up the ladder with the fact that you have a general complaint about their products. Don't accept the underlings and don't tell them exactly what it is you're mad about. If that doesn't work, call up their sales department and work your way up the ladder there requesting information about their services.
The slashdot effect is great on the Internet, but it is even more powerful on the phones. Each and every server request you make costs any one company very little. Each and every phone call you make gets heard, at least in the bottom line.
I'm not telling people to do anything illegal -- don't hassle, don't spam, don't swear, don't threaten -- just call. Call and tell them you don't appreciate their actions, you don't appreciate their products, and you don't appreciate their lobbying to creatre a more powerful Congress.
I know my phone calls don't make a difference -- yet. But over time, as more people realize that voting with their dollars and voting with how they spend their time, we'll see change being made through a free market of motivations.
To stay a bit on topic: I recently spent quite a bit of time researching the Swedes, and I'm very surprised at the amounts of freedoms they had in a country that has typically been considered socialist. I think they'd be a dream country for most Progressives (which means it would be a nightmare for me), but it surprises me how many rights they still retain that we gave up in the US a long, long time ago. The freedom to do what you want with products you physically own is a great freedom, in fact I believe it is the basis for freedom. The freedom to do what you want with your labor and your mind is included in that freedom, and that is why I am against intellectual property rights in every way.
Go TPB!
Arrrrr, ye swabs cannot take back me booty so easily!
[sig]you really dont want the answers, trust me[/sig]
The only thing these guys will get done, is Draconian copyright DCMA-like laws to be passed in Schweden.
So they shoot normal people in the foot, even if they use OpenBSD.
I guess the Atlantic protects the europe from its American ally, as well as vice-versa.
But, I think this issue is just waiting for MPAA and RIAA to get off their asses and start a process in Sweden.
Good luck to our pirates in Sweden.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
as long as they keep having a go at the MPAA some kind of balance will exist. if theyw ere to stop; gods forbid people might actually start taking the MPAA and there digital/legal strong arm tactics seriously.
Money always wins, and in our increasingly global economy, the means for the big studios to finally take them down will eventually come into being. It's just a matter of time.
I'm not saying this is a good thing. I just think it's inevitable.
We demand that you provide us with entertainment by sending more legal threats. Please? :-)
The Pirate Bay isn't a "file sharing crewe", they're an open bittorrent tracker with a website. They're not a release group like Razor 1911 or The Humble Guys.
...
From the site's about page:
The Pirate Bay is the worlds largest bittorrent tracker. Bittorrent is a filesharing protocol that in a reliable way enables big and fast file transfers.
The Pirate Bay was started by the swedish anti copyright organization Piratbyrån in the late 2003, but is since October 2004 separated and run by dedicated individuals. Using the site is free of charge, but since running it costs money, donations are very much appreciated.
There is a nice directive-in-the-making called IPRED2 which criminalises copyright infringement.
They aren't hosting any of the content. Only text files (as explained on their web page).
:) )
It is not illegal (Again, according to their web page) to host files that *point* to the content. Untill that changes in their country, they will stay alive (also, so long as they can keep their bills paid, that would help...
bork bork bork!
Are ABBA and Ace of Base mp3s.
The socialist-democratic movement has always been very keen on protecting the little guy, and that doesn't happen without protecting his/her rights.
I tend to spend just as much on CD's even though I listen to a lot of P2P shared music. What changes is I might download the latest U2 albulm, but I then spend the money on less known bands, some of which I learn about through P2P.
The whole concept is hear to stay, whether or not PB does or not. Music companies have to stop feeling entitled to our dollars and get back into the business of finding and shaping great talent. Once they became a distribution and promotion medium, not a incubator of talent, they lost their focus.
Whether or not what they do is illegal or immoral, I'm glad to see people questioning their government instead of caving.
When finally reached for comment, representatives of **AA groups were reportedly in tears saying, "...they won't bow to our threats and demands! We don't know what else to do!!"
Uh... STUPID! BUY them out. With all the money those guys dump on lawyers, they should simply BUY their operation with a contract stating they will never again be involved in such activity and, of course, cannot ever discuss the terms. They would silently disappear and people would fear the worst had happened.
from tfa:
"Copyright laws are being enforced and upheld in countries all over the world and when you facilitate the illegal file swapping of millions of people around the world, you are subject to those laws", (said MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards)
so ISPs are liable?
computer manufacturers are liable?
the guy who designed your file system?
soundcard makers? video cards? screens?
of course, it all depends how far you're willing to take 'facilitating', but that statement just sounds dodgy, especially considering they're talking about applying US law internationally...
it's great to see someone that is anti esteblishment stay strong and alive in the face of big business and big government. Power to the People!
really? What are they stealing?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
they are not stealing. they are posting text files.
It costs $200 million to make some movies. If people stop paying to make the movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future.
Well with Bombs like Taxi, Duece Bigalow, and Dukes of Hazzard, this may not be such a bad thing, eh?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
RIAA Lawyer: We are petitioning the court to shut down this illegal operation, called The Pirate Bay, on the grounds they are trafficking in illegally obtained and downloaded material.
Swedish Judge: Worrrr dooooo ishky dishky mooooovvvviesss kannnnshhhhhh veeeeeeeee downshky looooooodshky?
RIAA Lawyer: What?
Swedish Judge: Worrrr dooooo ishky dishky mooooovvvviesss kannnnshhhhhh veeeeeeeee downshky looooooodshky?
RIAA Lawyer: I don't understand!
Swedish Judge: Caaaaaaaaasssssshhhh dushmiskked, bork, bork, bork!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
No, I'm already convinced. It's good.
For all the damage these industries cause honest and would-be honest customers, they deserve a true thorn in their sides. For all the monopolistic and oligopolistic crap they pull; For all the price-fixing and other dirty tricks; For all the innocent people they have attacked with their lawsuit crusades. We have no effective weapon against their activities since they have already bought all the politicians that are for sale. All we have is our defiance.
It's good even if it's not good enough.
The sad part is that a large number of slashdotters will convince themselves that this type of thing is good despite the fact that the site is very clearly engaged in theft. For the umpteenth time, no. Not theft. Copyright violation, or 'piracy', the land-based kind, where nobody gets boarded, killed and thrown to the sharks. And at that, they are not engaged in 'piracy' either. They are at most 'enablers' or 'accomplices'.
It seems (to me, a musician, not an intellectual property lawyer) that what they're doing is technically safe from getting nailed. However... laws governing the physical world are rife with clauses concerning "aiding and abetting."
I think I'd probably wager that the entertainment industry will discern or lobby a means of providing either law or precedence that will enable the industry to go after folks that enable non-sanctioned file sharing services. Has there already been precedence for shutting down servers like The Pirate Bay? For now, it seems, hosting and transmitting (catalogues of?) information isn't getting slammed.
A Passionate Independent Musician
No matter how many letters they send out calling for a shut down, no matter how many people they fine/arrest, no matter how many people they take to court, the record and movie industry should realize they are never going to stop bootlegs. It's like the war on drugs, except 10x more pointless.
6 in a row
Apologies to C.S. Lewis.
Okay, this is a tracker site. It's going to be harder to justify pulling the whole site down because of the torrents it tracks.
However, if the companies are determined enough, they'll get the site yanked.
First they go to the tracker site itself.
Then they go to their provider.
Then they go to the provider upstream.
And up, and up the chain until they reach someone who WILL yank the plug.
Granted, if they proceed above a multi-homed provider, they have to go to an increasing number of upstream providers. At which point, it becomes a MASSIVE hassle. But, as I said, it all depends on how determined they are to down a site.
Not that I'd know anything about downing a site in this fashion....
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They are storing the creative work that resulted from several man years of effort and the tremendous financial risk the producers took to produce a film.
"Regardless of the rationalization there is no difference taking content this way and going to a store and stealing a CD or DVD."
But that is not what Pirate Bay does. What they do is the equivalent to you telling someone, "Hey, they have music CDs at the corner store." If the person then goes to the corner store and steals a CD, well, that's his problem, not yours.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
"If people stop paying to make the movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future."
Good, perhaps Hollywood will have an incentive to produce, market, and release good movies, instead of expensive movies. It strikes me that you are the type of person to believe that the budget of a movie is an indicator of quality. You probably also believe that movies *always* net a loss, because they *always* post a loss, no matter the ticket sales, merchandizing revenue, distribution costs, etc.
So, which did you like better; Garfield, Fat Albert, or Stealth? I heard that Stealth cost a whole bunch to make.
So, stealing = bad, pointing to dl'able file = bad. Making $200 mil movie = good.
The big budget flicks will never go away, regardless of piracy. Unfortunately.
The sad part is that I have to go online to a swedish website in order to download the TV show that I missed last night. Look at iTunes. Give people a legal way to purchase things online, and people will use it. This is not about the $200 million dollars it takes to make a movie, its about the $1.50 the company could have made from me by providing an equally simple method of getting the content I want.
As the son of a professional musician, one who is barely known outside our small community, I can confidently say that there are plenty of other ways to make money without touring or selling merchandise. And $200 million movies will still get made, assuming the movie studios can keep up with the buisness models of the future.
.
What $200 million movie didn't make a profit? Is there a shred of evidence that the reason for that was because people were pirating it?
It costs $200 million to make some movies. If people stop paying to make the movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future.
This is as it should be, supply and demand. If a movie interests the public, they'll pay to see it in a theater with a big screen. If it's an uninteresting film that need not have been made, they won't get those ticket dollars, the movie flops and the studios hopefully learn that this isn't the sort of movie people want at the moment. I'm a bit weary of the entertaiment industry acting like it deserves our patronage whether or not the product is actually worth it.
You cannot make a big budget action movie by 'touring', 'selling merchandise' or any of the self-satisfied rationalizations people have suggested that musicians turn to.
But you can make it by selling enough tickets, tie-in merchandise, and DVDs. If this model fails for a particular film, perhaps it's a sign that this sort of film really isn't successful.
If my four-hour drama about a team of underwater basket-weavers who fight crime and play rock music is a failure, I'd take it as a sign I should maybe scrap plans for its two sequels and TV miniseries. I wouldn't keep on making them, and whine about piracy when they fail.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
No, these guys are more like the stores that sell the little razorblade devices that shoplifters use to slash the shrinkwrap on CDs at the record store very quickly, and pocket the disc. (They were a whole lot more common before a lot of stores went to using those hard shells that have to be broken open by the cashier.) Or the head shop that sells crack pipes "for tobacco use only."
They're not actually doing the stealing/drugs for you, but they're clearly facilitating it.
That said, I don't really give a damn. I can't work up much moral outrage for some kid who rips off Vivendi or Universal, whether its using bittorrent or a tiny sliver of metal. Leech it on your parents' cable modem, or stuff it in your pants, the only question I have is whether by pirating their media, are you still indirectly supporting their grip on content creation and distribution, by giving them free advertising and mindshare. I think the jury's still out on that.
But I save my outrage for crimes that have actual victims, of which there are far too many anyway.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
... your mind can't grasp the idea that ABBA and Ace of Base are considered... vitage?
My favorite was when they moved the servers to a new location across town. They even put up a GPS map showing their exact location so everyone would know how soon the site would be back up.
They must believe their country will protect them instead of hunting them down and arresting them.
I wonder if their government will still protect them when the US threatens to impose trade sanctions if they do not get rid of The Pirate Bay. Janet Reno did that with Australia and they caved soon after. Now Australia has some of the toughest copyright laws in the world. I think they are even harsher than the US equivalents.
If there were no movies and no t.v. due to piracy? I would cheer that the world had taken a shift for the better. I on occasion watch movies, however our entertainment options are used to placate us as a people. This way we don't think about our own failings. Nor do we strive to improve ourselves educationally and compete against the wealthy for the better jobs. We stand by as companies institute 401ks and do away with defined benefits plans. As we are sold out to big business and big government. As we're told that we don't need unions. That gold and silver are things we don't want to invest in. That we should buy buy buy but you better not go bankrupt! If we could get rid of movies and T.V. then perhaps people would think for themselves a little more and be more conserned with quality education. Keeping our jobs here and not outsourced. Concerned about invasion of privacy by the NSA, FBI and whomever else wishes to use the power that they were entrusted with in a corrupt and manipulative manner. If Piracy could bring down our now traditional big businesses then let piracy reign. I understand that many people would suffer but this would only bring about a greater good. We need to teach big business and big government that the people as a whole still make and break and rewrite the rules for the greater good.
Whether or not what they do is illegal or immoral, I'm glad to see people questioning their government instead of caving.
Let's see if you still feel that way if they decide to question the govt's stance on keeping peoples personal information personal (like cc#'s, medical info, etc). It's always cool until they do something that affects YOU negatively, then it's not so cool any more.
Waterworld failed because of pirates.
"""
Regardless of the rationalization there is no difference [betwixt] taking content this way and going to a store and stealing a CD or DVD.
"""
Hmmm... Interesting point. Since "my friend" is downloading an already decrypted/region-free AVI, "my friend" isn't in violation of the DMCA. So, that's one less crime "my friend" is not committing from the normal rip-a-rented-movie routine.
"... there is no difference taking content this way and going to a store and stealing a CD or DVD."
There is an obvious difference: stealing a CD deprives the store of a physical object they bought and owned. Copying data deprives no one of anything. Feel free to preach the evils of copying, but saying there's no difference merely displays ignorance.
"If people stop paying to make [$200 million] movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future."
The imaginary "right" for Hollywood to make $200 million movies at a guaranteed profit does not trump my right to copy and share speech, data, and information with my fellow humans. I reject the arguments of copyright, and only by using threats and violence against people like me can you, the RIAA/MPAA, and their bribed politicians attempt to stop it.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
that the companies did not return calls for comment.
What makes you think they actually listen to their voicemail messages?
Too late I realise, my children are my only real treasure...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
I can't work up much moral outrage for some kid who rips off Vivendi or Universal, whether its using bittorrent or a tiny sliver of metal.
I find it much easier to work up moral outrage against kids who shoplift, since retail isn't a particularly high-margin business compared to movie/music publishing. When someone pirates a CD, *maybe* it costs the record label a sale and maybe it doesn't. But when someone lifts a CD from Worst Buy, the record label already has their pound of flesh, while it *definitely* costs the retailer the amount they spent to wholesale the CD that got stolen.
No they are not. They are storing something that points to somewhere that is storing the creative work that resulted from several man years of effort and the tremendous financial risk the producers took to produce a film.
I wholeheartedly support TPB in their continued legal tensions, and I wholeheartedly support their goals and ideals, even if what they were doing were against the law. The thing that bothers me about this situation, though, is the fact that our Swedish friends' greatest legal mind is a law student. Maybe even a kid about my age. Frankly, I'd be scared out of my wits if the American media cartel / extortion machines were knocking at my door, law or no law.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, since American corporations write the laws here, and since our capitalist warlords have no problem negotiating international deals in the name of the almighty dollar, how long will it be until the USA starts making politicorporate deals with the Swedish industry / government like the ones we've had (or tried) with China, UAE, India, and any other place with oil or cheap labor?
I support the separation of oil and state.
If people stop paying to make the movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future.
That is fine with me. They need me more than I need new entertainment. I'm betting they're going to blink before I do.
Yes. That is called copyright infringement. copyright infringement != stealing
We can have a seperate argument about the morality of both, but for now it is good just to get our terminology straight.
*sigh* Yes, there is. If I have a hammer and you also want a hammer so you copy my hammer by manufacturing one yourself, just like mine, have you just stolen my hammer then? Even though I still have my hammer, right here? Because that's actually what you're saying.
You cannot make a big budget action movie by 'touring', 'selling merchandise' or any of the self-satisfied rationalizations people have suggested that musicians turn to.
No, but you can't realistically build a real movie theater at home either. Any way value is added, it can be exploited to drive sales of a good or a service. In Singapore, movie theaters have luxury seats and serve meals as an added value to the movie. Economically, there is no longer any added value in making a copy so it should not be used as the basis for value. Economics 101.
References:
Mindjack - Piracy is good?
International Herald Tribune - Imagine a world without copyright
A History And Possible Future Of Cinema
First Monday - Piercing the myths of p2p
TV Week - NBC: iPod Boosts Prime Time
Stealing Music
Roderick T. Long - The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights
Money for nothing, pix for free
The sad part is that a large number of slashdotters will convince themselves that this type of thing is good despite the fact that the site is very clearly engaged in theft.
Copyright infringement. If you're complaining about people playing mind games, you can at least have the decency to avoid doing the same thing yourself in the same sentence.
It costs $200 million to make some movies. If people stop paying to make the movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future.
This is the real issue. Not whether something is "right" or "wrong" -- those are just social norms that have been instilled in people -- but the pragmatic issues.
Currently, the fact that people pay to see movies allows the funding of the creation of said movies. If you endorse infringement, you need one of a couple of justifications:
(a) It's going to happen anyway -- in the presence of a worldwide system (the Internet) designed to cheaply replicate and distribute data, content funded on the predicate that duplication is hard and expensive cannot exist. That means an end is going to come to this funding system, at least for movies in the $200 million scale. Regardless of the methods used, social pressure to not infringe is not going to be effective. We will not be able to make movies that require $200 million in resources in the future -- movie prices will have to drop far enough that the convenience is worth the purchase. Future movies will have to be more thrift-oriented -- if this causes a drop in the enjoyment factor of movies, then that drop will occur. I know some people that dislike those "big budget action movies" that would probably fall into (a).
(b) Infringing movie usage does not damage movie sales. People will continue to go to theaters as the same level as before (well, sans the bite taken away by home theaters), but just spend a larger amount of time viewing movies, as they will infringe on some additional movies.
(c) Movies will continue to make as much money, but by using alternate approaches (like product placement or commercials) that are not affected by redistribution.
(d) Movies can be sold on a viable non-redistributable medium, but some type of DRM-enabled device will be used and this one will actually work.
Remember that, as technologies change, policies we use have adapted to fit the times. I'm quite certain that, in one form or another, the movie-making industry will be around in fifty years. The printing press, the cassette recorder, the VHS tape, home entertainment systems -- all have had significant impact on how content was provided, but content continued to be provided via one mechanism or another.
For example, the drive-in theater is pretty much dead today because of TVs and movie-playing systems at home. People rent tapes, which was a mechanism that really wasn't expected by anyone to make a lot of money at one point (and, in fact, was expected to kill the movie industry at one point).
It may be by simply instituting policy capable of fighting off all infringement; my personal guess is that the movie industry will instead morph and twist and adapt in one way or another. It may even be one that we haven't dreamed of yet. History supports this idea.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
It's because of $200 million movies that it now costs $7 for a small soda in a theater. If directors were more concerned about putting actual content in their movies instead of million-dollar special effects every 17 seconds, we'd have a shitton more movies with budgets like 'Blair Witch'.
Personally, I'd be glad if they stopped making $200 million movies. Then maybe theater ticket prices would drop and people wouldn't have to resort to downloading movies illegally.
That's where you fail. They're a bittorrent tracker. They don't host any copyrighted material at all (other than what they generate themselves).
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
I believe the original poster was referring to the end user, but I could be wrong.
Would they be prosecuted? And if so, then that would be a bad thing.
I'm just curious in case they ever in their life times ever want to visit the U.S. for whatever reason, and then they end up being on some terrorist watch list because of their involvement with the Pirate Bay.
From the pdf announcement:
Recent years? Try over 10 years ago. (from my knowledge anyway, probably closer to 15-20)
By Swedish this is perfectly legal. Some years ago a guy was sued for posting links to mp3's on his web page. And the Swedish court desided that it was nothing wrong with that. He didn't ditribute the mp3's only showing were they where. And the same thing is pirate bay doing now.
Hope my english is better the Swede in the muppets show.
I had images of eye patches, rusty swords, and Davey Jones' Locker for sale... Arghhh!
90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.
"Regardless of the rationalization there is no difference taking content this way and going to a store and stealing a CD or DVD."
Complete and utter hogwash! Stealing the CD or DVD deprives the merchant of goods, copying a CD or DVD doesn't deprive anyone of goods!
Depriving someone of their property equals stealing
Copyright infringement does NOT equal stealing, because no one is deprived of their goods or access to their goods. It MIGHT deprive retailers etc of sales. Deprivation of sales does NOT equal theft.
HTH
This sig kills fascists.
It costs $200 million to make some movies. If people stop paying to make the movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future.
1. Many large budget movies lately have been sucking and maybe should go away.
2. Directors with vision will still get money somehow because they make good movies (Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg for example)
3. People will still pay to watch movies in theaters and buy DVDs.
Seriously... I think a lot of crap gets churned out in the theaters is because Movie Execs throw money left and right and into fireplaces because some hack director *coughs* Uwe Boll *coughs* gave a fancy powerpoint presentation.
If these piss poor movie makers didn't get those big budgets we'd see more room for smaller more entertaining movies with reasonable budgets.
But then again... Maybe that would just lead to more smaller budget crap movies.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
There are some legal complaints and the response from TPB posted at their website: http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php Funny to read them though.
Daxy's Networking Blog
What the Pirate Bay is doing is...well, shady at the very least. However they are actually doing their part for democracy. There is a disconnect between what "fair use" currently means between the content providers (*AA and their ilk), and the content users (us). The law, as it is currently written in their country allows what they are doing. If enough legislators disagree with that, the law will be changed, but they are pointing out the discrepancy in such a public way, that the law cannot be changed on the QT, and so the voice of the people here really matters. They are pointing out the discrepancies in the law so that enforcement will be consistent - do you really want the law to read this instead of that? Are you sure? Because look what that will mean when it is enforced. Good for them.
...copy and transport the data in this post in any way you could possibly think of, the only restriction being that if you think of a really cool way to do it that you tell me. In all seriousness (kind of) the replies were great, im really glad someone is taking a major stand against the **AA.
... why would a web site trying to avoid being shut down by the MPAA/RIAA/etc. give itself a name called "The PIRATE Bay"??? Isn't this just a case of "Waving a red flag at the bull"?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I'm an Australian who has just returned to Australia from a 1.5-month long trip to Sweden. Sweden is doing so many things right and it's really unfortunate that Australia isn't a bit more like Sweden.
First of all, there's not nearly as much crime in Sweden as there is in Australia. The Swedish government takes proper care of their people, so no one feels a need to commit crime. There's no homeless people sleeping in parks at night. People are much, much friendlier.
They also don't have any terrorist panic. There's no "terrorism alert levels", and there isn't much security. There's not even nearly as many police around as there is in Australia. The Swedes haven't made enemies for themselves by invading other countries, so they don't need to be afraid of any terrorists attacking them. The Swedes are more "free" than Americans are, which proves that terrorists don't hate America because they "hate freedom", as George Bush wants everyone to think. They attack America because America attacked them and is occupying their countries.
Sweden will probably also now lead the way in having free culture. They will soon show that money can be made even from creating free culture. Hopefully the rest of the world will follow their lead. Unfortunately, the rest of the world seems to be going crazy.
I just hope everyone who reads this post can imagine what life would be like to live in a country where you don't need to be afraid of terrorism or crime, a country where almost all of the population gets a good education, and all this despite alcohol (and probably other drugs) being more easily accessible in this country. Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that such a country can't exist, but it's important that everyone knows it does, for that is how other countries can follow the Swedes' lead in being a more peaceful, calmer, and better educated population.
"It has in many ways been obvious to the public that the anti-piracy lobby is also operating in their own, very doubtful, legal gray zone," said Piratbyrån member Rasmus Fleischer. "They are dependent on the existence of police officers willing to give priority to the hunting of file sharers over real criminality."
I think it's true that our law-makers and enforcers have a skewed set of priorities when it comes to copyright infringement vs. real crime.
The sad part is that a large number of slashdotters will convince themselves that this type of thing is good despite the fact that the site is very clearly engaged in theft.
You must be new here. Write this on the blackboard 100 times: "Copyright infringement is not theft."
Steve Kubby maybe?
As far as what you get in return from your congress person, you do get a form letter. As far as the effect of you contacting you congress person, a letter means very much. Remember, congresspeople have to get elected at the next go-around, so they won't stick to positions that are seen as unpopular.
Congressional offices do an estimation for each contact they receive. Each type of correspondence carries a number of constitutents it is thought to represent. For instance, a letter might be 100, a fax, 50, a phone call, 25, an email, 10. When you write a letter, the office assumes you represent, say, 100 other people. So individually, your voice won't count much, but if you get four other people to write a letter, the congressperson will start to wonder if sticking to this position will cost them the next election.
As far as your single letter changing your congress persons' position, I'm glad you're not that powerful, esp. if I disagree with you. Nobody voted for you. A congressperson ran and was elected on a platform, amd presumably that's what the voting constituents want to see happen.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
"My guess is that Sweden is one of the worst places in the world when it comes to illegal sharing," said Martensson.
worst? or best? =D
Total crap, you've just been hoodwinked by the RIAA and MPAA. As long as the actors are making more than 50,000 per year then we the consumers are paying to much for their product. I stopped bying any and all music when napster got shut down. When napster was up and running I bought over 400 CD's from music I was sampling over torrents. I liked finding stuff I liked and supporting those artists. I still buy movies and games (just bought Galactic Civilizations 2 which has zero copyright protection!!), with movies the movies I buy it for collectable value, not because of the "art" itself. If all I wanted to do was watch it I could just Tivo it, thats not the issue at all. Don't fall for all this copyright crap, its only illegal because the music and movie industries spent millions lobing congress to make it illegal. Its time for the model to change, there are other options. Copyrights need to be shorted or changed. There are alternate methods for music and movie industries to make money without stopping all the free advertising from p2p networks. The should have exlusive rights to merchandise such as clothing, action figures, ect that are not digitally reproducable. Digital content free to duplicate (well there is bandwidth cost) but it doesn't necessitate $1 pluss download fees. If you want people to by the albums again make special inserts tot he albums, package them with band t-shirts, sell concert tickets. There are tuns of ways to make money off music and movies without charging for the actual work itself. Give the music and movies away for free and merchandise off the fanfare. Take pokemon for example, get the kids hooked on saturday morning (freely distributed content) and then hit their parents up with all the accessories and games that aren't digitally reproducable. The MPAA and RIAA are using the government to strongarm their position. The are standing on the greatest advertising tool ever and a potential booming market, but because of their closed and narrow mindedness their are missing the big picture and missing a golden opportunity to grow their market and expand, instead they are waisting their resources (and their income from legit sales) to promote a war that is being lost more rapidly than the war on drugs or the war on terror. They need to look at the world around them, see the new technologies, and then see how best to use it to their advantage, going with the flow not against it. How does that old saying go... you'll attract more bees/flies with honey than vinegar? The music and movie industries are standing on the verge of a golden age, but instead they want to drive it into the dark ages.
While the site might still be accessible to millions of users worldwide, here in Canada after you try to download anything from their website you won't get far.
Due to Rogers (Canadian Cable ISP) throtling down torrent packets it becomes impossible to download anything
Probably a lot more ISP around the world will start doing simular action to cut down on the bandwidth usage in the name of "fighting piracy" while just savin themselfs bandwidth which they over sold
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
"Let me quote my previous response: 'You should understand that your email and all further communication with us will be published at http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php , and that we will charge you for the web publishing and hosting services. Should I send the invoice to your address above?' So, where should I send the invoice? Our standard web publishing fee is 10E (or USD 15) per e-mail, plus an invoicing/S&H fee of 1E per invoice. If you decide to continue using our web publishing services, ask us about our great bulk rates!"
I had college once, but I drank some fluids and got a lot of rest and eventually it was cured.
"They need me more than I need new entertainment."
Indeed, that's what the MPAA and RIAA don't seem to get. Without customers, both organisations would die, whereas without mass-market music and movies, we'd just find something else to do with our time.
For that matter, the computer game industry has been heading in the same direction lately, with more and more invasive 'copy protection' scams required to play the games that customers have purchased. The idea seems to be that you can make more money by forcing customers to stick a red-hot poker up their ass before they're allowed to use your product... which would seem bizarre to any company that made real things, where 'the customer is always right'.
See above. The confusion of copyright and trademark with physical properties (partly through propaganda from the media and software companies, who successfully got copyright infringement first branded "piracy" and then "theft", in part by getting people to accept the innacurate appellation "Intellectual Properties") leads to egregious abuses of the system. It also leads to confused ontology. I'm sure, if you think about it, you can think of at least three ways that so called 'Intellectual Properties' differ from 'real properties'.
Others have already reprimanded you for incorrect attempted application of American precedent to a foreign Sovereignity.
Thinking outside my Head
Actually, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment that they are engaged in theft. They are a site which allows users to upload trackers. Trackers do not contain any protected IP, they simply point to where the IP can be found.
Their actions are similar to pointing out the location of a brothel to an stragner. Sex with a prostitute (for money) may be illegal, however, pointing out where one can acquire a prostitute's services is not illegal. These guys at the Pirate Bay aren't even pointing out where the illegal activity is taking place. They are hosting a bulletin board where people can come and post this information.
Am I convinced that this is a "good" thing? I can't say that. Should it be legal? I certainly believe so. I'm surprised that the activity that TPB is engaged in is not legal in the United States. Perhaps is has to do with our strong tradition of copyright protection.
IANAL
-Turkey
If the person then goes to the corner store and steals a CD, well, that's his problem, not yours.
He'd need to infringe on the CD's copyright, not steal it.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Actually what Pirate Bay is doing is something more like this:
"Hey, the disgrutled worker at the corner store over there is letting people steal music CDs. Oh, and here's a map to the store and a description of everything he has available."
Consumers of music and video products do not have distribution rights to those products. We are free to listen to that product, free to listen to it with our friends, free to make copies of it in case the first one breaks (at least this SHOULD be free...stupid blank cd tax), but we don't have the right to stand on the street corner handing out or selling copies of it.
Ceinwyn
I'm very surprised at the amounts of freedoms they had in a country that has typically been considered socialist
Your ignorance is showing. Why, pray, is it so shocking that you should see freedom in a social democracy (hmm, see also: UK, Canada) apart from the fact that you've believed every bit of pro-capitalist propaganda you've heard inside the crucible of American propagandism?
While the U.S. was busy telling its citizens that all socialists lived inside a grey dystopia of corruption and death, much of the industrial world was getting on with things nicely and developing a benign socialism that keeps much of Europe and Australia at the very top of the UN Human Development Index, ahead of everyone else year after year. These otherwise known to the popular press in the U.S. as the "UN standard of living rankings."
Their quality of life is very high, yet they are socialist-democratic. This makes all many US conservatives heads' explode, because without socialism as the "greater of two evils," their rape-and-pillage capitalism doesn't sound so great. So they simply pretend like Europe doesn't exist, or like it is entirely composed of naked gay French people.
The comment one always receives on Slashdot (and really elsewhere in the US) when wondering aloud why basic things like healthcare, impoverished wage slavery, homelessness, etc., are allowed to persist, is "Well it's the only working system the world has got. The [authors note: who?!?!] tried socialism, and it failed. So now we can't help anybody, or we'll fail, too." They say this because they're told this by a corrupt government and by capital, and somehow these critical Americans listen to the megacorporations and to the career politicians on the other side of the revolving door believe every word, while believing that the rest of the people on the planet are deluded or lying.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
No they aren't. There is no copyrighted material on their website. And even if there were, it wouldn't be stealing. If I shoplift a DVD from a store, I'm stealing. If I copy a movie from the net, I'm NOT stealing. I might be committing a copyright infringment, but it's NOT the same thing as stealing. If I steal something, it means that I deprive someone from their property. If I make a copy of that property, no-one gets deprived of anything.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
If I have a hammer and you also want a hammer so you copy my hammer by manufacturing one yourself, just like mine, have you just stolen my hammer then? Even though I still have my hammer, right here? Because that's actually what you're saying.
There are immense socio-political implications to this statement.. obviously, it applies less readily to music than to hammers.. (because a hammer is a tool.. a facilitator..) you see where i'm going with this?
without getting overly academic about the issue, i think it is quite obvious that if it were possible to file a patent for 'a hand powered device for attaching metal fasteners into solid objects' without that silly prior art stuff getting in the way, whoever managed to fight their way to the patent office first would be trying very hard to instill the idea that it was their moral right to do so.
and they'd be right... from a certain point of view..
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
We need to somehow make sure that the Pirate Bay's database survives in the unlikely event that their site gets shut down. How about a mirror in a select country or distributing the database on various P2P networks?
The real trouble with IP is that it's very messy. I'm just waiting for the day when its possible to catalog everything IP on blazingly fast computers. After it spits out a listing of all the infringers (ie people who patented something already covered by an earlier patent, copyrighted music that contains rythms/lyrics from other copyrighted music) - HEADS WILL ROLL. Maybe even your own head. Being a computer programmer my self, my own head may be on the chopping block. That one piece of logic I took as common sense, may just do me in.
It's going to happen. Those with enough money to buy out the others will survive the fallout, they will be the landowners in the new age of feudalism. The rest of us will be serfs.
I did preview, I swear, but somehow I made a mess of it. Replacement final paragraph:
The comment one always receives on Slashdot (and really elsewhere in the US) when wondering aloud why basic things like healthcare, impoverished wage slavery, homelessness, etc., are allowed to persist, is "Well it's the only working system the world has got. They [authors note: who?!?!] tried socialism, and it failed. So now we can't help anybody, or we'll fail, too." They say this because they're told this by a corrupt government and by capital, and somehow these critical Americans listen to the megacorporations and to the career politicians on the other side of the revolving door and believe every word, while also believing that the rest of the people on the planet are deluded or lying.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The MPAA and RIAA haven't got a clue. They think that if they keep closing down the sites they will eventually win. The problem is that when they close down one big site a lot of little sites pop up to try and take their place. Suprnova was an example of this in some respects. After it closed a lot of other sites popped up to replace it. If they succeed in shutting down one type of program. Another will program will replace it. If they get the trusted computing platform in place Linux will grow. Its kind of like a balloon. Squeeze it in one place and the other ends swell.
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
They are storing nothing but text files (trackers). They don't actually store any copyrighted material.
Your honor! My client will not plead guilty to murder. He did no such thing! He simply stole the person's life. He will accept a sentence for theft, but not for murder.
Clever signature text goes here.
this is so like two day old news!!!11111one ;)
It is more like, "Here is a list of music stores that are easy to steal music from."
The ms love letter was funnier than its EULA..
fifteen jugglers, five believers
The site is engaged in theft, they are not performing the theft themselves they are helping others to steal. Sure that makes them popular with the beneficiaries of the theft but it does not make what they do right.
A person who sells spam tools to a spammer is engaged in spamming even if they never use the tool themselves. A fence who receives stolen goods is engaged in theft even though someone else does the actual stealling.
Sure you can rationalize a set of values where taking a movie off bittorrent is different from stealling a DVD off the shelf of a store. But the reason people have moderated my original comment down as troll even though it is nothing of the kind is because they know deep down that what I am saying here is correct and they don't like to hear it.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
That needs to be said again and much much louder. They need me! I don't need them.
From tfa: "He said file sharing is widespread in Sweden because almost every household owns a computer and can get a cheap 100-Mbps broadband fiber connection from their ISP for 70 euros a month. "My guess is that Sweden is one of the worst places in the world when it comes to illegal sharing,""
I agree completely, only changing the word 'worst' for 'best'
thanks to m$ love letter for the nice links to sources of windows 98, NT and 2000.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
It could be argued that you are depriving the owner of the property the money that (s)he is legally entitled to for your copy of the content. It's all pedantry and petty semantics. It's (morally) wrong to infringe copyright. That said everyone does it. Just so long as you do pay for the majority of your films, music, etc. Really, just don't be a leach, if you enjoy content then the providers/artists/labels deserve some compensation.
But long term, this attitude is just self-defeating. It makes it really easy for the RIAA/MPAA to paint anyone who actually wants to use P2P or or download non-DRM infested music legally as just another pirate. I despise both organizations to the extent I pretty much don't buy their stuff anymore (I make an exception for my kids-they're too young to understand), but I'm not going to go to the Piratebay to download it. I'll just do without.
You really want to stick it to the man? Don't torrent something from Piratebay. Go buy something off of Magnatune or eMusic instead. Prove the RIAA wrong when they say that non-DRM music can't possibly work. Even buying music or a video from the iTunes store is vastly preferable
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Bittorrent trackers don't host any data, just links - so they could theoretically be ok under Sweedish Law. However, hosting Bittorrent data isn't so innocent, and easy to track if you get the locations from the tracker.
:)
However - what if you "improved" the bit-torrent protocol so that when a file is split up and distributed amongst hosts, that some of the files are NOT part of the original data. When recombining the pieces, they're discarded. If encrypted, you couldn't tell which were real, and which were not... making it difficult to prove that someone was hosting copyrighted data. It's sort of like a firing squad - one rifle is loaded with a blank so you don't know if you're the one that killed they guy or not.
Just a thought (un-informed, but inspired.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
If the case industry has against Pirate Bay were to go public, what would Pirate Bay look like? A group of immature adolescents making sport of mocking authority. Not defenders of freedom, etc. Losing public support means potentially losing whatever legislative support keeps the site running. Is it worth the lame jokes to lose such a site?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
It's important to realize that The Pirate Bay does not host any infringing content on its servers.
The Pirate Bay is identical in nature to Google:
Both sites allow users to enter searches from a web page, and both return a list of links to (sometimes infringing) content.
If The Pirate Bay can be shut down, then Google can be shut down.
That is the most bizare perversion of free market theology ever.
The movie will in effect face competition from the 'free' pirated version of itself.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
What crazy impression of Canadians do you have?
- keep what I earn: Yeah the tax bracket system does have a higher top value than in the USA. Yippie. If you're in that bracket, a good financial advisor can make you minimize any taxible income. Additionally, there have been countless comparisons that all show that by the time all is said and done (adding in health care, education, etc) we're not far off in the purchasing power of your income
- pay for your own medical insurance : why would you want to? I'm offering to give you an amazing doctor and the services you need, and you'd rather 'shop around'? It's there when you need it. You're not buying a car. You're not looking for a better deal. Everyone is entitled to a standard of health care. Note that there are 'extras' such as private rooms, that can be paid directly of through insurance, but why would anyone want to shop around for anything but a good grade of health care?
- Run across the border to have to use a doctor of my choice: You sir watch too much Dateline
- be poor through the sweat of my brow: see comment # 1
Going hunting on a full stomach? Imposing our views on others who couldn't care less what we think? Let's jump for joy!
Yeah- nothing quite like hanging out with the schoolyard bully. That'll just get us in detention as well , or put us near the line of fire when someone shows up at school with a weapon.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Theft means that someone deprives someone else from their property. Who is being deprived of their property here? I believe that the word you are looking for is "copyright infringment", not "theft". The two acts are called different, because they are different acts. downloading movies is not called theft because it's not theft.
There is a huge difference between those two
Or you were modeed down because your comment was just plain WRONG, not to mention stupid? What Pirate Bay or it's users are doing is NOT theft, not even close. You can't call it theft because it's not theft.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
"Regardless of the rationalization there is no difference taking content this way and going to a store and stealing a CD or DVD."
- There is a clear difference. It's much easier to get into legal trouble by stealing the physical media from a store!
Oh, and.. When they can no longer afford to make the CRAP they are trolling now, they will go back to making quality films. When they go back to making quality films that aren't pathetic remakes of 1970's TV shows, I will go back to paying for movies. See.. this is how it's SUPPOSED to work. Behold, the power of the dollar!
-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-
following my instincts not a trend...
Edit: "Hey, the disgrutled worker at the corner store over there is letting people make copies of music CDs. Oh, and here's a map to the store and a description of everything he has available."
There's a difference. Both are fundamentally unethical. Both may be ethically acceptable under certain circumstances. But there is a difference. Claiming otherwise is doing nothing other than polluting our language.
. . . Sorry, I got a little sidetracked there for a few. I haven't browsed PirateBay for a quite a while. ;-)
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
People tend to "justify" piracy in the mistaken belief that they're outlaws, fighting the cause of the common man against the evils of the mega-corporations. In reality, all they are doing is giving those same corporations justification for not actually fixing the core problems which are hype, over-marketing, inflated prices & poor quality products.
If everyone was more discerning, read reviews of products before buying and treated their money with a little more respect, nothing would force those corporations to clean up their act more than seeing their profits dwindle because people simply don't believe what they produce to be worth the money.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"The Swedes are more "free" than Americans are, which proves that terrorists don't hate America because they "hate freedom", as George Bush wants everyone to think. They attack America because America attacked them and is occupying their countries."
No, they don't hate us for being free, they hate us for trying to spread freedom. Sweden is free, but they are not trying to spread it. Theres the difference.
No, they're not stealing the movie, they're pointing out where illegal copies of the movie exists.
It's the same as if they were standing on a street corner telling all and sundry, including the cops, that bootleg dvds are available in stores x, y, and z. They may be responsible for customers going to stores x, y, and z, but they've also sent the cops to those stores also.
If piratebay lists where illegal copies of movies/music/etc can be found to the general internet-going public, then they're also pointing this out to the MPAA/RIAA.
Where the MPAA/RIAA are going wrong is holding the guy on the street corner responsible for the activities of the bootlegging storeowners, without building a strong link between the guy on the street corner and the storeowners.
*clapclap* Kip! Have the boy lay out my moderation shorts.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Some people beleive that they can be of service to goverments which have the right to tell them (and you) what to do.
Some people treat their government as a public service, which is told what to do by the people.
Guess which type of people the Swedes are?
Saying what you have about the draconian backlash is like saying that there would be a backlash of bull-fighting and bear-baiting in the UK after banning fox-hunting, or a backlash of 'gun-control' in all the other US states if one was more permissive than the rest about automatics. It is possible, but it's not in the nature of that culture.
As an example, 10 or so years after the abolition of free public transport in Amsterdam, it is still culturally acceptable to ignore buying a ticket, and ride for free. Most choose to comply with the imposed laws, but that doesn't mean they will stop you, and they would think you a better person for doing what you believe, even if they personally dissagree with it.
[ insert meme here ]
Yes it is. They're doing precisely that. And they're *still here*. And they're showing everyone you can do this and still be there. The MPAA would very much like people to think that what they were doing was illegal, but it isn't, and by being very blatant about what they're doing, they make more people aware of this fact.
I am trolling
...is exactly why things like the DMCA get passed and we're stuck with DRM systems that overcomplicate playing a CD or DVD. You have no rights to distribute intellectual property in any way shape or form, period. To go beyond that and thumb your nose at the MPAA only exacerbates the problem. You want legal digital downloads and on demand content from the MPAA? Then the online community is going to have to prove that they are a responsible group and are willing to play by the rules. So far, the willingness of the community to replace P2P distribution servers which were know for illegally distributed intellectual property only serves to strengthen the argments the MPAA.
-- Antipiratbyrån's efforts to halt file sharing have prompted Sweden's outspoken pirates to run for office as the Pirate Party. Party spokesman Mika Sjöman said pirates are alarmed by both the IP tracking and Sweden's newly expanded surveillance and wiretapping laws.
"People are getting scared," said Sjöman. "The two issues are really connected because copyright organizations are telling the government you have to invade the right to privacy if you want to defend copyright. That's really destructive for democracy because when you make lists of people that will be the end of privacy."
It may sound like a joke, but Sjöman said the Pirate Party has 1,500 members, and has gathered enough signatures to participate in the Swedish general election in September. He said the government estimates that there are 1.2 million file sharers over the age of 18 in Sweden, and the Pirate Party needs only four percent, 225,000 votes, to get seats in the country's parliament. According to Sjöman, the success of The Pirate Bay illustrates just how embedded file sharing has become in Swedish culture. --
now THAT could be democracy in action!
Is a library theft? If you read the book at the library doesn't that negate one sale?
Is borrowing a video game theft? If you borrow your friend's copy of Katamari Damacy and you finish the game, doesn't that negate one sale?
How about if you walk away from the TV while watching your favourite show? Don't commercials pay for the airtime?
What if you use the Adblock plugin in a web browser?
Or watch public access television without donating?
etc. etc. etc.
If you publish media in any way it is susceptible to free consumption and duplication. Nothing will ever change that as long as media is percievable by humans somewhere along the line. However, this is secondary to the point of sites like TPB. These sites are exercising the freedoms of the people to share culture with their friends. The traditional barriers of communication are breaking down and it's underground movements like P2P that facilitate this. It can't be uninvented and it can't be stopped.
It's up to media corporations to entice us to purchase its products in new ways because its monopoly on distribution is over forever.
In an ice age the rodents and cockroaches survive, not the dinosaurs.
Wow my public library's been doing that! Row upon row of Books, DVD's and Music. I really should call the RIAA / MPAA / Team America World Police. Distributing the creative works of man to a wider society it's like Murdering and Raping..... Those poor record exec's all alone and unloved in their Ivory Towers. Booo hoooo hooooo whhaaaa..
Though seriously how exactly is the P.B storing all this? They need donations for servers and bandwidth. Distributing a DVD, CD to 3000 people every second?! Ultimately it's the users that are the ones "infringing". If they want infringe and advertise it on a public web site shouldn't they be the ones to answer for it?
Personally I believe the copyright balance has tilted too far in favor of the multinationals. Copyright was only ever meant to be a temporary monopoly to allow creators to recover the cost of development. Now copyrights are effectively permanent. This is counter to why we have copyrights in the first place, to encourage innovation and creativity.
Good luck Pirate bay.
No, a fence is "receiving and concealing stolen goods." This is a crime that depends on theft, and which helps to make theft profitable, but it is not in itself theft.
Really? Am I speeding if I tell the driver of a car to put the petal to the metal? Am I committing assault if I sell someone a set of brass knuckles?
Rather the contrary, it is starting to sound like you don't get the point.
Stealing means a certain thing. There are other things that might also be bad, but just because they are bad doesn't mean they're stealing. As someone else posted above, murder is not "stealing someone's life". Likewise littering is not "stealing cleanliness", and libel is not "stealing a reputation".
Even if I really, really, really don't like piracy, I am not going to call it stealing, because that's not the correct word for it. As long as you continue to use words for other than their intended purposes, you come off as a dogmatist fishing to score emotional points rather than a rational participant in a mature discussion.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
(Arguing with myself here...) It does diminish the market value of that CD, however, which is why it may feel like theft to the producer and the store owner. On the other hand, so would competition. You could argue that because prices of CDs are determined by a cartel and not a competitive market, the existence of unauthorized copying merely brings (average) prices more into line with what they "should" be in the absence of the cartel.
For better or worse, consumer expectations and perceptions of value have changed. Many people now expect to be able to have access to (and an awareness of) a wide range of music, something that simply isn't feasible if it costs $18 a pop to check out every new or unfamiliar artist. This broadened consumer awareness and choice is something greatly feared by studios that base their success on being able to predict (and to a large extent control) what will be a "hit" and should therefore be locked up under contract.
That needs to be said again and much much louder.
:-(
I would but the lameness filter won't let me
The sad part is that Slashdotters mod a critical, but well-reasoned and coherent statement down as "troll". Sad, sad sad.
And yes, I have used TPB extensively before I got decent broadband (I now use DC++ instead - 10mbit+ hubs ftw!) - yet I never deluded myself to the point that I believed that I was involved in some sort of great cause.
I don't care. I don't like watching movies as they are empty shells of egocentric sociopaths (a.k.a. "actors") adding nothing to my life.
So if they stop making movies so many people in world would get the time to reflect over life, talk, listen to music, read, watch the clouds, raise their children and a lot of other good stuff.
So for my sake, they could stop making movies today. I'd be glad...
I am a 19 year old swede, and I wouldn't say Alcohol (and definatly NOT other drugs) r easy to obtain in sweden.. In sweden u have to be at least 20 year old to buy alcohol in a liquor-store (The only stores that are allowed to sell anything with >2.5 % alc (% of volume) is owned by the state and r way too often closed). To buy beer/booze in a bar u need to be 18, at least that is reasonable..
I'll pay for my software the day the guy who wrote it will get extra money for each extra sold copy. A software editor sells a million copies of a program for millions of bucks, the engineer get no extra cent. This is legally "Fair Game" because of the few $10k he got. Millions of people each share a few copies for free on the internet, it's a Crime. Probably because the editor did not make his dollars. (This is coming from a programmer)
If you want an example of a socialist state look to Europe - Denmark, Sweden and to a lesser extent the UK, France, Netherlands, etc.
Those are not socialist states. Social democratic, yes, but not socialist. Just because those two terms sound similar doesn't mean that they're synonymous.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Sweden, and the rest of the nordic countries, is as bad as Bulgaria with piracy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that this one particular warez host is getting away with it does not surprise me any more than all the sites in Bulgaria getting away with it. I don't mean to pick on little Bulgaria. It's just well-known that it has a 100% piracy rate.
I suspect a large (ok, maybe not that large) section of pirated downloads would disappear if they only distributed the same bloody content in a lawful, paid-for manner over the internet themselves!
Perhaps I'm only speaking for myself, but I hate having to wait 4 months for the latest hollywood blockbuster to open in the theaters here in Sweden, then wait another 4 months for it to appear on an (overpriced DVD), then waiting another 4 months for the price to drop to reasonable levels. If I could pay $20 to download the movie legally after a few days of its release, I would gladly do so!
Of course this doesn't justify piracy in any shape or form, but if the industry would only realize that half the downloading is about convenience, maybe we could get somewhere?
When the experience of going to a theater equals that of watching the pirated version at home, perhaps that will be true. But until everyone has a huge home theater with large screen and surround sound, and bootlegs of pristine video and audio quality, watching a bootleg will continue to be about as close to the cinema experience as watching the flick on video or cable, flipping through the comic book version, or reading the spoilers on the Internet.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Hint: You're confusing two unrelated issues. They may be helping others to perform copyrigth-violations, but they are *not* helping others perform theft.
Despite the propaganda of the **AA these two are two completely unrelated crimes. Described in different laws, with different punishments, different rules, different *everything*.
Yes. Both are illegal. But you don't go calling "speeding" "rape" just because both are illegal.
Well, at least if he was in the US and giving legal advice before he was actually a lawyer he'd be SOL as soon as he wanted to take the bar and become a real lawyer. They're not too keen on the unauthorized practice of law.
How do you know you don't appreciate their products unless you have been BUYING them?
Wait a minute, what th...!!!
You haven't been PURCHASING the enemies' WARES have you? For shame!
No, it couldn't be. You must be a "purist." You're just PIRATING their products, and THEN calling them to tell them of your lack of appreciation, aren't you!
Way to go, sport!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
I wonder how long will it take the industry to force the ISP's by law to filter these kind of sites.
I think this will happen eventually.
Nope, money talks. If you really want your Congressman to know your opinion you have to drop $1500 for one of their fund raising dinners and corner the bastard in person. Just be careful not to use any logical paradoxes within their hearing or you'll overload their circuits and their head will explode. That's always awkward at a $1500 fund raising dinner...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
yeah, and guns don't kill people - people kill people.
We should boycott RIAA and MPAA affiliated companies until they go bankrupt. it would take a year at most... That would salove the problems without breaking any law...
If you have enough people, this type of DOS attack could be devastating. Everybody goes around picking out non-perishable items in large quantities and putting them into their carts. Go for the cat food cans (50 varieties!), the spice aisle, maybe the Jello aisle, and top off your cart with a few large 50-lb bags of kitty litter or something. At a predetermined time, everybody drives their loaded carts up to the front, parks them randomly in the way, and exits the store. It takes them forever to put everything back correctly. And if your group has a message, the management gets it because you can leave flyers everywhere on the shelves or at the bottom of the carts. Fun fun fun.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
The bay and its band of pirates might eventually damage the finances of Tom Cruise and Scientology ... that can't be tolerated and must be stopped. I can't afford for the cost increases on my e-meter that are sure to come as a result of lost licensing revenue.
Translation:
If you for then someone and gets have they done something wrong or unethical?
There are a lot of ways I think that the recording and media industries are doing things the wrong way, but I am not about to stand here and argue that it's a persons right to copy something which someone else makes their livelyhood off of with the pretense of "it wants to be free".
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
If people stop paying to make the movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future.
So wait a minute...are you saying that I download and distribute, say, 10,000 copies of Legally Blonde, they won't make any more of them? Deal!
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
In reality, all they are doing is giving those same corporations justification for not actually fixing the core problems which are hype, over-marketing, inflated prices & poor quality products.
So what you are saying is that if there was no piracy, the corporations wouldn't be able to justify producing low quality products and selling them for high prices?
To which I would have to point out that no-one has ever pirated a WinModem but they are still produced.
Actually the WinModem line came to me at the last second. I was just going to point out that you were fucking deluded, but some mods consider that flamebait, even when it is amply justifed by the original post.
If everyone who smokes pot voted for the Marijuana party in Canada then they'd have some seats in parliament.
While there may be millions of downloaders in Sweden, I highly doubt that a) they're all of legal voting age and b) concerned as much about downloading copyrighted music as they are other issues.
I'm in my 40s, I've been into computing for over 20 years now but I still find it very difficult to pay money for something that isn't tangible. Aside from a handful of Windows utilities that I have registered correctly, I cannot bring myself to pay for a music or movie download - I need a nice shiny disk & a case, I'm afraid! :-)
On Usenet, occasionally, I download the MP3s of a CD I'm interested in buying. If I like what I've downloaded, I buy the CD because I like sleeve notes and a disk; if not, I delete the MP3s because there's no point wasting disk space. Because I live in the UK and listen to some obscure rock music, I never get to hear those same CDs on the radio so as a result "previewing" the MP3s, I've save myself a lot of money because I now I just buy stuff I know is good as opposed to just "taking a chance" and being disappointed. Then I buy all my CDs on eBay or other online sellers, I get a price I'm satisfied with and everyone is happy. I'm happy, the seller is happy & the record company is happy.
I buy DVD movies the same way except that I don't mind waiting a year or two for price drops & special offers.
So downloading is not for me although I can appreciate why others like the convenience of it. And whether you download or buy disks, it still comes down to not parting with your money until you are *sure* what you are buying is worth it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The story has some notes on the Pirate Bureau and the Pirate Party, too.
Overall, the pirate movement is very strong in Sweden. And I'm damn proud of that.
(Yes, that's Pirate Party as in political party. Pirates are running for office. Not a joke and they're serious about getting a foot in the door - they only need 225,000 votes, in a country with 1,2 million file sharers.)
No, really, it is theft. The Pirate Bay has hired Magical Trevor to disappear the DVD master and all unsold copies of any software shared on TPB. Whenever something shows up on TPB you can't ever buy it again, anywhere. You can buy lots of beans, though.
Everyone loves Magical Trevor
Because the tricks that he does are ever so clever.
Look at him now, disappearing a show.
Where is the show heading right now?
Taking a bow is Magical Trevor,
Everyone has seen that the trick is clever.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Socialism is about trying to elevate the lives of everyone, rather than letting the rich grind the poor into dust. If keeping the sick, the disabled, and the elderly alive means slightly decreasing the affluence of a few millionaires, I'd call that a bargain.
Besides, look at Canada or Sweden -- supposedly socialist countries. Where is the "collectivism"? There's a great deal of debate and diversity in both of those countries. It's fascist states the US that force everyone to follow the same path of greed, hatred, and destruction.
This in turn makes life more difficult for people like me who are happy to pay fair prices for good quality products because the corporations can always blame piracy & loss of revenue for selling second-rate products.
I was just going to point out that you were fucking deluded,
You're entitled to your opinion but your argument is lessened by the fact that you need to resort to insults to get your point across. And can you also please explain to me why on some DVDs I have legitimately bought (like CSI and The Simpsons), I have to sit through the whole of a "Piracy is a crime" advertisement when any pirate who copied those DVDs would probably strip that advert out anyway? Things like that detract from MY legitimate enjoyment of the product & the blame for that falls equally on the creator of those DVDs and the pirates who create the need for the advert in the first place.
To which I would have to point out that no-one has ever pirated a WinModem but they are still produced.
A TOTALLY irrelevant comparison. Piracy assumes easy and cheap access to a duplicating mechanism - most people have CD/DVD burners, very few I know have machines in their garage to create component-filled circuit boards.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Let's give them lots of media attention. That's sure to help a site like this stay active.
Short version : Pokemon
Long version
This is were you loose. People are just NOT discerning, otherwise marketing people wouldn't be needed : the products would just be bought on their qualities. It just doesn't work.
If you mean military power you are WAY off the mark, we can't even hold the 5 mile stretch of road between the heavily fortified "green zone," and the airport with our maximum number of military people deployed to the point where some military commanders think the military is dangerously close to broken. Even hard core neo-cons like William Buckly are conceding the war in Iraq is most likely lost and it's time to withdraw.
Nor are we even economically powerful our economy is propped up by a 750 million dollar trade gap with China PER DAY. In addition we are a nation of people in heavy credit card debt, with no manufacturing base, a declining IT base, and 1/6th of whose people have no health insurance and who could die of a simple infection. Furthermore compared to Japan or Europe our transport infrastructure is dangerously dependent on cheap oil.
Powerful my ass, more like arrogant and full of the hubris that happens before a great fall. Humpty Dumpty probably thought he was powerful too...
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
I don't have to rationalize anything because the *reality* is that copying and stealing *are* different:
Both of those definitions are the first ones that show up in Webster 1913. I might also point out a particular word used in the definition of copy: "duplicate". As in:
As in, "where there was one, now there are two." As in, the original holder of a set of bits still has his, and now I have those bits as well. Who's lost anything? No one! Who has been harmed? Nobody! Therefore, no crime has been committed (by any rational definition of crime).
Oh yeah, sure, you're being moderated down and ignored because "people don't like what you're saying." I got news for you pal: the moderation system on slashdot works pretty well (especially with meta-moderation) and most of the time posts get modded down becaus they are just plain wrong or don't contribute anything constructive to the discussion. Are there occasional vendetta's? Yes. Is your post being modded down an example of one? No. So out of the three options for being modded down (vendetta, being wrong, not constructive), the first of which (vendetta) being eliminated, which do you think your's is? (hint: some comments fall into more than one category for being modded down).
Nathan's blog
UHHH? Which part of the Middle East were we occupying before 9/11?
Well it is a more consensual thing, but one of the reasons of 9/11 was Al Queada's desire to get the Americans out of Saudi Arabia so they could topple the Saudi Royal family.
Secondly, our support for Isreal is pretty much seen as American backed occupation. And don't forget what happened with Iran and the Shah.
My suggestion is that we stop publicly supporting Israel. Doesn't mean you can send money, weapons, and secret CIA type of assistance, but not so out in the open.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
1. China and the USSR were not Communist nations. They were facist dictatorships that borrowed communist rhetoric to justify the horrible things they did.
2. Globalism breaks Capitalism. Adam Smith envisioned a world where capitalists would act responsible because they lived right next to the squalor they create. Capitilism was layed out in an era before global transportation and telecommunications, not to mention before modern militaries eclipsed what a civilian militia could stand up aganst and modern propaganda/populace management techniques existed. These things combined mean a modern capitalist can live detached from the hellhole he creates, pit labor in one country aganst another to lower everyone's standard of living, and use the military and gov't propaganda engines to put down any serious challenge to his power.
3. The US became the most powerful country because we're on a continent with two really weak countries at either end. We have no serious rivals, and could prosper as such. While the rest of the world was reeling from WWII, we just kept on growing. It has nothing to do with Capitalism and everything to do with Geography and dumb luck.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Ahh, the whole theft vs copyright infringement debate. Wouldn't it be great if all arguments could be settled by such technical hair splitting?
Example:
Common Man:
He hit me with a bat! That's assault!
Bat wielding punk:
No no, when you actually hit someone it's battery. You're stupid and wrong. *goes off to hit more people with a bat*
Further example:
Worker:
You were cooking the books and killed my pension! You stole all the money I was going to retire on!
CEO:
No no no, that's FRAUD. Although I may have taken something that belongs to you, because you used the wrong term I can laugh at you and pretend it's something different.
I've burned copies of CDs and DVDs that didn't belong to me, so I'm as guilty as the next guy. But I've never felt the need to call someone on the whole "Copyright Infringement isn't theft!" Since both boil down to "Taking something that doesn't belong to you", why the hell do people need to focus on the hair splitting rather than the crux of the argument?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
No problem, there's more movies being made than I have time to watch anyway :).
Most movies do indeed tour in movie theaters prior to getting to DVD, and make a considerable amount of money that way. And I've seen quite a bit of merchandise as well from almost every succesfull movie.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"Theft means that someone deprives someone else from their property."
Interesting, but not quite correct. Dictionary.com provides a whole series of definitions, and the common theme is that theft involves an acquisition of goods or services without the consent of the owner.
You should note that none of the definitions explicitly provided the concept that the rightful owner is denied access to the goods or services which have been wrongfully acquired. Your definition depends on that concept.
Intellectual property is, by use of the term property, easily categorized as goods. The fact that these goods are ephemeral is a non-starter, since the same can be said of many items which qualify as services.
Intellectual property has a clearly identified owner.
Acquiring intellectual property without the consent of the owner would, therefore, be theft.
Trying to justify to yourself that you are not a thief does not mean you are correct.
As it happens, we have reliable information that the two countries in question have been: committing ethnic cleansing, producing weapons of mass destruction, gassing their own people, promoting instability, undermining the spread of democracy, funding osama bin laden, and are threats to freedom.
Colin Powell will now show the photographic proof of two trucks they have been clandestinely driving around in order to commit these heinous acts. We also have some memos from Nigeria that were sent anonymously by email, all totally legit.
Regime change starts on Monday.
But yes, capitalism-the-ideal does grind the poor into the dust. If you believe in private ownership, it generally follows that you don't believe in redistributing wealth when a minority of people have so much wealth that the trickle-down effect no longer functions -- after all, no one spends 100 million dollars in one year. Even people making a quarter of million dollars spend only a small proportion of it. The rest gets hoarded. And that causes the economy to grind to a halt and the poor to suffer. Creating wealth is worthless when all of the new wealth just goes straight into the hoards of the rich.
Not to mention the fact that capitalists invariably oppose any form of organized behaviour on the part of workers that might give them enough power to successfully bargain for better wages/work conditions/rights/whatever with their employers. Anyone who would deprive people of the right to organize and peacably assemble is monstrous, and that's what capitalists want to do.
It seems when something has gone on long enough people or even groups automatically consider it a right. This is something akin to the hockey strike (which was forever in the Canadian headline while it was on). Players, even rookies, were getting exorbitant amounts of money. Yes, they were skilled, but where they *that* skilled. At some point, the game has gone from something that everyone could watch to something that only the wealthy can afford to see (live) on a regular basis. Moreso, most of the big seats are purchased by corportations.
Movies, and many other industries, are the same. The massive multi-million dollar paycheques that movie stars receive, record execs (not the musicians in most cases, unfortunately), and others has gone on for so long that it seems normal, and they consider it a right. You'll see them blowing away that money on private jets, hookers, and crack, and then they will complain that it's our fault when people have had enough of their washed-out lack-of-talent and are no longer willing to pay such increasing amounts.
There is nothing that requires a movie cost $200 million. Go watch some classics like "Clerks," which was popular despite it's rather low budget. Better yet, go download (or if you're really into supporting the true artists, buy) a copy of Star Wreck, at least to view the SFX. You know what... the acting isn't bad at all, and the effects... pretty damn good if you ask me. All that down with hard work and a passion for what was being done. Sorry, but I'm down with paying for a movie in order to see a ruined reversion of a book, a dozen previews/commercials, and some idiot telling me that I shouldn't pirate movies (if I was, would I be sitting in the damn theatre watching that crap) and equating it to stealing a purse.
This really is the bottom line! The courts are being wasted (and indirectly our tax dollars too!) with this drivel when we as a nation and justice system could be doing more important things. How many collective man-hours have been wasted on just this one slashdot article instead of doing something (anything!) more useful, just because some stupid-ass organization wants to maintain their slipping strangehold on music and movie profits?? Don't we as a society have something better to do? Ok, Ok, I'll sit down and shut up now :-)
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
>Who are the people who are so poor they can't afford music and so addicted
>that they must have it?
Completely unrelated, but have you EVER borrowed something from someone instead of going out and buying it yourself? Have you ever, for example, read the newspaper at someone elses place instead of buying your own copy? Have you ever done anything without paying when there have been an alternative were you could pay instead? Or are you so poor that you can't afford to pay for any of that yet must have it?
It's really quite simple; I like Dragonforce but I somehow cant bring myself to go to a shop and be seen buying their album.
Well piracy has been going on for 20+ years now and that's achieved nothing apart from restricting the freedoms of honest consumers.
Short version : Pokemon
That's simply down to clever corporations capitalising on parents' guilt at not buying little Johnny the latest over-hyped gimmick when all his friends might have one. Blame parents for that.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
What a load of crap, even basic commodity p.c.'s can record BETTTER than c.d. sound as in 24 bit samples at 96,000 samples per second. On a Mac it's even pretty easy to record a professional sounding cd on say pro tools. Yes there is maybe a 6 month learning curve to learn about things equalization, how to mic drums, whether or not to use compression, etc. After that you are good to go. Then it's just a question of getting the word out and gigging and selling cds. And hint if there is no middle man gouging 90% of the sale price of the cd into their greedy little pockets you have to sell far fewer cds to make money.
Artists from Public Enemy to The Throwing Muses are figuring this out and telling the record companies to bite them.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
:O You're linking to copyrighted stuff! I'm calling the police!
And I don't care about what justification they use - I care about being allowed to release materials I produce myself, being able to use things that I have bought the way I want to (No stupid advertisements I have to watch. No forced subtitles to avoid it being sold in a different area. No stupid zone coding.)
I also believe that a certain amount of what is presently illegal copying is to the benefit of everybody, and just releasing it all (removing all protections for digital copying for private use) might be to the benefit of society.
Also, I happen to buy roughly everything except books, which I borrow. I've copied about three movies in my life, and the last year I think it's about three CDs, buying about 10 - down from about 100 the year I copied 50.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Property is theft.
Explain?
I care about being allowed to release materials I produce myself,
What stops you releasing an unencrypted or Region 0 DVD for material that you own?
I also believe that a certain amount of what is presently illegal copying is to the benefit of everybody
Well, whether it's a benefit or not depends on the honesty of the individual. I don't personally download movies or video content, I download some MP3s from Usenet and if I like what I downloaded, I buy it; otherwise, I delete it. No different to 30 years ago when I could go into a record shop in the UK and listen to part of an album before deciding to buy it.
the last year I think it's about three CDs, buying about 10 - down from about 100 the year I copied 50.
Same for me now I know what I am buying beforehand. It means I'm happier with what I buy and therefore have no objections to the record company making money from my purchase.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It's not just the music industry... Don't forget software....
Microsoft sells "OEM" versions of Windows, Office, etc for 1/2 - 1/3 the price of their "Retail" versions. The OEM has all the functionality of the retail version except its EULA states that you cannot transfer it to another computer after you install it. The EULA also states software is licensed, not sold.
But in this case, the PRIVATE COMPANY is dictating how you may use the LICENSE that you OWN.
Yes, the state government says I can't transfer my driver's license to someone else and they use it. But IP licensing is the old kind of license [that I can think of] that is not given out by a government entity. When did private companies acquire the ability to do this?
Can you imagine a furniture company "licensing" its tables & chairs to customers? Under the agreement that if they move the chair or table to another room, they must purchase another "license"? Or to give them the option of paying 2-3x as much for the ability to transfer their "license" to other rooms in their house or to other houses?
After all, the design and construction of that furniture is a trade secret. We simply can't have people using it as they please...
About the stupid lies that Hollywood keeps telling you, that they don't have money to make movies if you don't allow them to steal you every penny.
How did you managed to survive all those years until the VHS and DVD apeared?
If you do bad movies ... to hell with you. ... you know what I do! ... if you add something to the DVD, a booklet would be nice!
If you do mediocre movies that I have interest to see you it goes
If you do good movies I'll go the the cinema (although I already feel that 5 is too much)!
If you do excellent movies I'll go to the cinema and I'll buy the DVD
So you morons at Hollywood stop stealing us, you already earn much more that is acceptable, do you know that are people dying of hunger out there?
Great, rather than Taxi, Duece Bigalow, and Dukes of Hazzard we will just have the Dukes of Hazzard.
Movie companies will just play even safer to ensure at least average box office returns.
Because we are talking legalities and illegalities, and when we do talk about things in such sense, specifics do matter. Call it splitting hairs if you wish, but in fact (since we are talking about legalities) your definition is pretty broad in the scope of the argument... you don't "own" the air, water from that nearby stream, or that independent artist's song you downloaded, but you aren't going to be accused for theft when it can't be done, right?,/P>
In legalities and illegalities, specifics very much matter, and in this case, we are solely talking about copyright infringement, not theft. Moralities and ethics - that is a larger issue in itself on topics like this, which is why here I think is where the broadness should remain.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I don't think a tracker site would be at quite as much legal risk if it just hosted LINKS to trackers. Those links could be moved around as required by RIAA and MPAA pressure, but there would still be a single URL for everyone looking for trackers to bookmark and return to.
Such a site might even be possible to maintain in the US, since it gets pretty hard to argue against making something illegal that just links to something that is itself not illegal but only provides people with the information needed to illegally copy material distributed across thousands of machines all over the world.
I was reading Forbes and how the billionares list got 18% richer over the previous year. Last I looked, Im going to say that the world's GDP could not be more than 5%. Exactly where is all this revenue coming from?
Worst analogy ever.
Maybe not to you morally and ethically, but we are talking legalities here, and legally and logically speaking, there are numerous factors that nullify the exact parrallel of theft and copyright infringement beyond morals and ethics.
That's one hell of an if there bud... not everybody in the world owns a computer... not everybody who owns a computer is smart enugh to know how to pirate, and not everybody who has a computer - who does or does not know how to use it to its fullest extent - want to or will pirate, so this little conspiracy thought of the industry - that this might happen - should already be extinguished due to this fact... considering the billions of people on the earth, I seriously doubt this idea will ever happen,
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
No- you were moderated down because you said it was stealing.
The use of the word "stealing" and "theft" in this case are industry propaganda which is being vigorously resisted.
I agree with you to some extent. I think creators should be able to try to sell their work for whatever price they desire.
However, any content which has been sold that is over 28 years has no protection in my opinion. We agreed to give creators a 28 year monopoly on their creations. They have successfully increased that period to effectively "forever" legally-- but not morally.
They have placed restrictions on their product which require us to purchase them multiple times for each form of media. I disagree here as well.
If I own the DVD set for friends- I have no moral problem downloading the IPOD format episodes instead of buying them again.
If I own the CD to the beatles white album, I have no moral problem downloading it in another format.
For the most part- this is a very artificial situation and it -is- collapsing on its own. When there are a million good bands- and a million good television shows, then their monopoly will be over and they will have to compete on price again. The creators distribution companies have had a monopoly on tools to create content and on distribution to audiences but that day is ending.
Copyright has a purpose- to encourage creators to create new content. As such we should respect that for a reasonable period of time. Since our legal system is so corrupt however, we should strongly resist by any means possible, anyone who attempts to extend that copyright monopoly to an indefinate period.
It is even more galling since many of the people extending these copyrights are -not even the creators of the materials-. When people sold their rights to these materials- they sold them under terms of a limited copyright- so these companies are trying an endrun around our legal system. And our corrupt government officers are selling their votes and letting them do it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I work for a Swedish software development company, and we have no issues with PirateBay and similar sites. Our software is used basically by three categories of people - academic researchers, students and industry. Only the latter can afford it anyway and they generally don't get their stuff from warez sites. The other two, especially students can't afford it anyway, so there is no loss of profit if they use 'illegal' copies of our software. On the contrary, they get to know our product so when they start working there's a good chance that they'll buy software they are used to working with.
;)
So why don't we give out the software with a non-commercial use restriction? We tried that for a while and it was a disaster - the commercial users ignored the license restriction and used the free version instead of buying it.
As it is now, we do provide a free student version, but only through their universities - which is a load of extra work for us and inconvenient for the students. So it's actually much less of a hassle for us if they obtain the software in other ways.
However, this is not good enough, especially when it comes to academic research licenses. We provide them at a lower price, but would in reality like much more control over that. A European or US university can afford our software for research use (discounted), while a university in a third-world country can't. We'd like to charge the former and give it for free to the latter (again, we may as well give it to people who wouldn't buy it anyway). This is fairly impossible today without lots of manual work on our part.
Ideally, the system should be socialized and automated. Our goals are that we 1) Get as much money as possible (duh!) 2) Get as many people as possible to use (and benefit) from our product. The old Karl Marx quote "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." fits quite well in that context. Basically the ideal solution is that people pay for the product relative to their income. (Even more ideally, the return-on-investment should be factored in, but that's nearly impossible to measure.) Although unrealistic, the automated part would be possible with verifiable global digital IDs and verifiable income statistics. Some form of market regulation of that type of pricing would have to be invented as well.
Utopian ineed, but one can dream.
So the owner of the content gets deprived of sales? But even that is not "theft". And still: just because I download some song (for example) from the net does not mean that I would have bought the song legally, had it not been available illegally on the net. I admit it: I have downloaded "Reign of Fire" from the net. Had it not been available on the net, I wouldn't have bought anyway. So my downloading that movie did not deprive the creators of the movie one dime, since I wasn't going to buy it regardless. Yes, what I did was a copyright infringment, and I'm not even trying to justify it in any shape or form. I'm just showing that downloading content from the net does not automatically mean that the creators of the content were denied sales.
I also downloaded "Equilibrium". And once it became available in Finland on DVD, I went out and bought it. Were the creators of the movie denied sales? Furthermore: since the movie was never shown on cinemas in Finland, I wouldn't have bought the movie, since I had no way of telling that is it any good. Now I downloaded it, made sure it's good, and bought it the moment it became available. Were the moviemakers harmed by my downloading? Did I "steal" anything?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
A few days a go a swedish reality series (on public service TV) called "toppkandidaterna" (top candidates) with young people with political ideas competed was finished. The winner was a leftist guy who will give 50000 SEK (US$6270) of the cash prize (250000 SEK in total, the rest will go elsewhere) to the pirate bay. The money is to be used for new hardware (the site has been running a bit slow lately and the search function has frequently been unavailable). That's public service money well spent!
Bullshit!
You were modded down because your posts (especially the first one on this page) consisted of nothing but industry lies, FUD, and unrealistic senarios that have been dispouted and disproven. Actually bring a logical and well presented argument to the table, no matter what the position, and I am sure that there will be kind moderators to mod you up accordingly. ^_^
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
No it would not. It would be "copyright infringment". I would be infringing on the copyrights of the creator of the content. But I wouldn't be stealing anything. Really, this is all in the law-books, go look it up.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Here we agree on something. As I pointed out earlier today the legislative manipulations of RIAA and Disney were both wrong and counterproductive.
They were wrong in the first place because the RIAA tried to steal copyrights from its own artists by having Congress declare them to be 'works for hire'. Disney stole copyright works from the public domain.
These actions were wrong morally and they were wrong tactically. It is much harder to convince people that stealling is wrong when you are stealling yourself.
I think that the DVD zone system is foolish for the exact same reason. First it is wrong because the real purpose of the zone system is to support illegal differential pricing schemes. Once you have cheated the public by overcharging for the product it is going to be much harder to convince them that stealling content off bitorrent is wrong.
Off course people are very popular when they are giving away other people's property. The Kray twins were very popular in London's East End, Buch Cassidy, Jessie James and his gang were all pretty popular with the people who benefited from their generosity. And you will find the exact same rationalizations at work in the comments written at the time, the real criminals are the railway bosses etc etc.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Although your post has been refuted quite a lot of times now, and that you have been moded troll (which I think is not good for slashdot discussion as, it is your personal POV) I just have to make one comment.
;) and Copyright infringement (violation of the rights secured by a copyright ). THey are both something like rotten fruits, they are ugly and bad for your body, but theft is a rotten ORANGE and copyright infringement is a rotten APPLE.
Imagine if lets say, I have a homepage. In that homepage I list the address of all the crack houses, coke houses, weed providers, etc etc etc.
Will my page be illegal?, will the police try to put it down?. I am sure if I had that information the governmetn will be interested in telling me how did I know that. Imagine then, if it is a Wiki, where anyone can write that information. Is my page still illegal?, granted, on those places illegal activity is going (similar to the torrent network where some illegal activities are going on).
Now for another similarity, now lets assume the page only lists weed dealers/houses. My wiki is on the Internet, what happens if my server is in the Netherlands? of course people from USA can go there and read/write information about those houses. But neither I or the people writing the addresses is doing anything wrong. Also, by the eyes of the Dutch government the people on those houses is not doing anything wrong.
Who is doing wrong then?, well, it is the people smoking weed, but only if the address happens to be in a country where it is prohibited. So, lets say if people is sharing things in France (where it is legal) then, they are not making anything illegal.
I will not get into the theft thing because already a lot of people tried to explain you the difference. Although I thing you and a lot of people find it hard to understand. Let me explain it this way. Theft (the unlawful taking and carrying away of personal property with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it PERMANENTLY
Of course, who says that it is bad for your body is the government.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Actually, France has the best healthcare system in the world. The World Health Organization rates France as the best nation for health care. Despite spending half of what the US does on health care, France has a higher average lifespan and much lower infant mortality rates. In fact, France beats the US on just about every health statistic. See http://www.nationmaster.com/ for an online reference.
0 5-04-09-voa10.cfm?CFID=35543148&CFTOKEN=24153006 and many other references.
The US ranks #37 in the world in terms of health care, though it ranks #1 in both total and per-capita spending on health care. The second fact is the reason that Americans fly to India to have heart surgery. See http://www.voanews.com/burmese/archive/2005-04/20
If I had an acute health problem, I'd take the US over Mexico, but I'd take France over the US too.
The reason people care is because the *AAs are trying to leverage negative public opinion of things that the public does *not* like -- like, say, pursesnatching -- to push their take on other things.
If the public doesn't like copyright infringement, then it's just fine to call the act "copyright infringement" and let popular support handle things.
The only reason not to do this is if you think you can't muster enough popular support for your position while calling something what it is.
So the *AAs steadfastly keep intentionally misusing the word "theft" to try to garner public support. That, to me, is a bit of an indictment of how little even *they* believe that the public wants to clobber copyright infringers.
You don't call someone who accidently killed someone while driving recklessly a "murderer". Don't call copyright infringement theft.
Now, copyright infringement *is* a civil offense (and can even be criminal in some cases). But one thing it certainly is not is theft. And people who are interested in honest, productive debate on the topic do not insist in injecting the word "theft" constantly into the discussion.
The example you gave is absurd. Nobody is "getting away with anything" by insisting on correct definitions.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Amazing. I provided you a direct reference to a specific source, I provided the flow of logic from that source to a conclusion, and your response is "Nah! You're wrong!"?
Provide a specific reference in order to demonstrate a minimum of effort to maintain a balanced conversation.
What all this does is show the very real problems in trying to treat ideas as physical things...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
So, you mean: of the three major possessive freedoms (life, liberty, property), property is the least important to the Swedes because there is less that they need?
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Nothing presently prevent me from releasing region 0 DVDs. I am not sure that is going to be kept up, though. And there are things the prevent me from referencing most of the culture that people actually are part of, which is a significant new restriction (added in the last century or so.)
To be more specific on what parts of copying is beneficial and which are potentially negative, see my previous comment.
As for buying things: I sample much less music now that it's not as easily available, so there's less that I'm interested in buying. I want the artists to get money from me; I'm not so hot on the record companies, because I feel they abuse the position they are in. The last CD I bought was directly off a band member - I feel good about that :)
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Not quite - you provided him a reference to a definition for common language, not legal language, which are completely different things.
If you're arguing that downloading music and movies is morally theft, then sure, you're right, I'll agree to that. But legally, it's not the same thing. For something to be legally theft, a physical item must be taken away from someone. In any other case you're looking at fraud or copyright infringement, or destruction of property, or whatever, but by the legal description of things, it is not theft.
Sorry, your argument doesn't wash that way.
s
That is not correct. They are running the worlds largest tracker, not just hosting the torrent files. The tracker is organizing every single download from the page. If they would turn the tracker off, the dowloading would stop.
Whatever they say, running this kind of massive distribution of copyrighted content is NOT legal in Sweden. The only reason they have been allowed to run it this long, is because the guys that is supposed to stop them is incompetent idiots that don't understand the technology.
But now, with this massive attention it's been getting, it is only a matter of time before the site is down, probably in less than two months. And the guys running it will not get away unpunished. I would bet on a year in prison for each of them. I think they have been very naive about how the law works in Sweden.
"Am I convinced that this is a "good" thing? I can't say that. Should it be legal? I certainly believe so. I'm surprised that the activity that TPB is engaged in is not legal in the United States. Perhaps is has to do with our strong tradition of copyright protection."
..
Hmmm . .
Well, as a rather conservative American, I don't WANT it to be legal in the United States.
Why?
Because the guy who enables a crime needs to be held responsible for doing so.
To use some examples posted earlier: The guy who tells somebody that wants to solicit sex where to find willing agents is explicitly choosing to assist in the execution of a crime. Whether the indivdual who receives the answer chooses to go and and actually perform the crime or not, the enabler has actively supported the criminal act.
The guy who runs a head shop selling paraphenalia that he knows is going to be used to consume illegal drugs is explicitly supporting illegal activity. He knows that laws will be broken, and is trying to make a living by helping people break them, while trying to claim that he has no moral or ethical responsibility for the actions he has chosen to support.
I WANT these people to be criminally responsible for supporting illegal activity.
I don't understand why people expect blatant support of and dependence on illegal activity to be legal.
There are different words to describe different actions for precisely the reason you are illustrating. Despite what the *AA's want you to believe, the specific action is called copyright infringment, and is very different from 'theft' or 'piracy' (which generally requires a boat, and sometimes a parrot). Just as armed robbery is different from theft, and joy-riding different from grand theft auto. (the action, not the game...)
It's imporant to keep the language pure, because the *AAs have no end of money to hire marketers to turn restrictive technologies into 'features' using words like 'rights' instead of 'restrictions' and phrases like 'plays-for-sure' instead of 'plays-if-we-let-it'.
While you are free to disagree with my disagreement of IP law, let's at least ensure that any conversation we have uses terms that accurately reflect what is happening, as opposed to the marketing spin they are selling.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
You've not seen roms sits lately have you? GBA is cracked like a whore with a needle in her arm.
The reason pokemon sells so well to people who can pirate stuff (like myself) is that it feels better on a handheld, we get to keep our pokemon even if our PCs crash, we can still play the games for years and such. Basicly the content is superior on a portable, so we pay for a good portable RPG. The merchandise and anime are aimed more at children, but don't think they're the only reason the games sell.
Pokemon is one of them strange popular series which is damn good. It takes a classic theme (monster/bug/demon/whatever collecting) and does it really well. It's deep enough for hardcore RPG players (lots of various hidden stats, move combos and such), while still being simple enough that with some basic common sense (replace old moves with better ones, use the right types against the right monsters) that you can brute force your way through the game.
I like muppets.
You already have a far more powerful weapon that is absolutely 100% guaranteed to not break any laws, in the opinion of anyone anywhere: DO NOT BUY THEIR PRODUCTS.
(Of course, that means doing without the latest movies, music, and games, but your principles are more important than that, right?)
The thing is, they need to bump up the quality of itunes. I was going to use them to get Boston Legal episodes, but the divx rips are much better.
Ok, now you're just being obtuse. The argument of "Stealing something off the shelf is the same as downloading files" vs "Stealing something off the shelf is not the same as downloading files" doesn't have much to do with breathing or drinking water. If you explain to a 5 year old that "Taking something that doesn't belong to you is wrong", they know what you mean. I'm pretty damn sure every else knows what I mean too.
The GP poster that started this whole thread (at this point it's probably the great, great, great grandparent poster) got marked as a troll for saying "Regardless of the rationalization there is no difference taking content this way and going to a store and stealing a CD or DVD." People fired back with "Screw you, it's not theft. End debate." So rather then focus on the ethical they just picked the legal, and used that to flame away. Kind of like saying "You used the wrong legal term for what you are doing, so that makes your argument wrong. You're stupid. Blah blah blah." Hence, the man with the bat and the corrupt CEO examples. Just because someone uses the wrong legal term for something does not immediately invalidate his or her argument.
I'm arguing for following copyright law on Slashdot, which is like arguing for gay marriage at a Southern Baptist Church, so I lose before I even start the argument. Not that copyright law (or gay marriage!) is wrong, but the group think will cut you down or drown you out before you can even get started.
Think of it this way:
If someone stole* a term paper you spent 6 months working on to turn it in before you, would it be wrong? According SlashLogic, it wouldn't be. It would just be copyright infringement.
*Stole in this case would mean "Grabbed a copy off of your hard drive, while not removing the original." I know, I know, "Not theft, I'm stupid, blah blah blah."
I cannot explain how much much i dislike and hate the content comming out currently. Movies, Mucis, TV, Blah blah blah. It's all crap. I don't spend my money on the latest boy band or some teen whore. I don't spend my money watching crap movies that get fluff reviews just so the reviewers can keep thier job. I spend my money procurring acess to the interent. I spend my money on imported CD's because PEOPLE, not instruments and soundboards, make music. Today's america is full of one problem: Too much. There is simply too much to do, too many bills to pay, too many debts to correct, too many cars in the traffic jam, too many people in your department. People are so sidetracked with their wordly shit that they spend their hard earned money on crap that makes them feel better for 20 minutes. That being said, i'm all for piracy. Not only do i support TFSM (The flying spaggehti monser) i'm all for mass digital content delivery. Since studios and content makers feel it is their right to demand my money for crap i don't even want, I go out of my way to avoid paying for the content I do want. Movies, TV Shows, it's all about what the CONSUMER wants, not what they think we want. Instead of handling this technology like mature people, they have chosen to sit on their Copy Rights like the fat kid hoarding his cake. Instead of being smart and offering their own way of digital converstion and distrobution, they choose to stick to old methods that are simply obsolete in today's world. TPB is not just a piracy site, it's a community. Real people have real opinions and are making it known in real ways. They are executing their powers under their laws, and I think it's fantastic.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
First off, we both believe that artists should be compensated for their work, right? As in, the more people enjoy what they produce, the more they should get paid (this should really get worked out in the marketplace, like the burger example; it costs such-and-such to make the burger, consumers pay extra for quality).
The problem that comes up when you move to things with marginal material components (an album, or a song) to those with substantial material components (a burger) is that the cost (material and spent time) of reproduction approaches zero for no difference in quality. With burgers, a consumer is almost never going to get one from a producer (McDonalds) to save money, but to save time, or to save effort while retaining quality. With an album or a song, there is no real time saved by getting it from the producer (might actually be faster to look online these days, perhaps that's why iTMS is doing alright), and there is no loss in quality. Outside of morality, there is no market reason to bother with the original producer.
I'm a believer in the simple and elegant. I also like to support the artists that provide me with music I enjoy. However, I know that with a majority of artists that I like, money I use to purchase albums will almost entirely go someplace else (like the RIAA, which I don't support), and not to the artist that I want to help out.
Perhaps what we need is a way to be a patron to certain artists. Instead of the old patronage system (one patron to many artists), we could use a new subscription-based system (many to many). This way, I could support my favorite artists directly, and perhaps recieve new albums early, or have better contact with them. Artists would also have income direct from people who enjoyed their music.
The problem then (on the artists' side, anyway) becomes one that has plagued artists forever; how does one get a fan base? That's really why artists put up with people like the RIAA anyway, right? That's the problem I think we should be trying to solve; the solution to that will put a lot of the meddling middle-men out of business.
In summary:
The consumer should only support artists they enjoy, and should get benefits from that support.
The artist should get support based on the number of consumers that enjoy them.
The problem is the initial PR work and the middle-men, and only indirectly the compensation model.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
When I was having trouble collecting money from an eBay sale, I researched the person who owed me money, found out he was a pastor of a church, and have asked his co-pastors, and his secretary to help me motivate him to settle debts.
Sometimes indirect approaches work. And so.. I had a thought.
Pirate Bay clearly has a lot of energy, and will get a lot of news coverage. This public awareness can be useful. What if they partnered with some business-savvy new college grads and wrote a business case study (5-10 pages long) showing how the record companies were ripping off the artists.
Then send a copy of each threatening letter, along with the business study, to every artist who's material is referenced in a threatening letter. It will make the original authors think, and they may realize there are better ways to distribute their work or make money from their work.
Done well, this could dry up the people in the middle screaming "violation". I have pursued protection of some material I wrote, so I understand from the artists' point of view. I honestly want to compensate them for their added-value into my life. But I sure don't like the intermediaries.
And regarding US economic growth, apparently you've failed to notice that the US economy is in the process of collapsing under the pressure of a massive deficit and widespread corporate corruption and incompetence. But if you really haven't noticed that most new investment is taking place in privately owned companies in China and India, then I doubt you're capable of even questioning your religious conviction in the infallability greed to solve the world's problems.
Well, I would think that using industry groupthink to argue your point would make you unpopular - groupthink combatting groupthink, in a way. I don't nessecarily think that copyrights are bad, only the way it is implemented now.
This isn't really a case of groupthink more than it is just mis-using language - more dishonesty and fraud in play. Still doesn't take on the definition I was taught as a child (going back to that mentioned in your post) where your definition was always explained to our generation(s) and generations past using examples where people always lost something they had - which is most likely the reason for this line of thinking here on /.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
between youtube and democracy player and all the people out there publishing stuff today, I'm having a harder and harder time fitting in time for the hollywood trash... sure, the downside is it's raw, some of it sucks, sometimes the quality isn't all that great, but it's raw and pure and made for their own reasons - to entertain, to be artists etc and that really shows through ... Art can't be made for 'profit'. Art can only be made to free the soul.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Thanks for the laugh - that's one of my favorite quotes from one of the better tv shows ever made. :)
Clealy we should enact legislation that ensures a profitable return on any film made, even if that means that we drop tax dollars. Maybe a new tax. This is important people! We are on the brink of losing even the possibility of having $1-billion costing movies to be made! Think of the children! oh won't someone please think of Lucas' children!
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
In the states, I can schedule an MRI for the same day. Why does it take 6-12 months in Canada? My guess is your family dog Rufus gets better medical care than you do.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
"Not quite - you provided him a reference to a definition for common language, not legal language, which are completely different things."
.. I thought the whole point of laws was SUPPOSED to be to set a moral standard that we force as a minimu set of acceptable behaviors. True, our legal system has failed to maintain this status, but that doesn't forgive accepting it as being anything less.
So, on a board which serves geeks, not lawyers, in a conversation filled with people demanding that they are not lawyers, you want to restrict the language used to legalese?
Which one of us has an unusual expectation of behavior?
I'm expecting normal people to use normal language, you expect normal people to correctly use legalese.
As for this quote:
"If you're arguing that downloading music and movies is morally theft, then sure, you're right, I'll agree to that."
Uhmm . .
I have spent 13 years of my life in the US and moved back to Moscow, Russia recently. The reason was that from day one in the US I felt like I'm "back in the USSR" in some strange way - capitalizm, sure, but also lack of freedom,and there was much more freedom in Russia in 1992, and it is still lots left, although the constant anti-freedom pressure from the West and US on these topics is felt: :-) conscenting adults. There are so many reasons why people might want to have sex, I don't see why govt. should be involved at all. And the girls are very good IMHO. Just look up on the Web.
:) for $3 each. And most latest software for evil OS (MS-Windows).
:-)
:-) "Those that trade freedom for some security end up with neither"
a) copyright (although, my economical and political beliefs are Linux/GNU/FSF, and repressive law against Windows lusers benefits me economically). And prohibiting hollywood movies and music would only benefit (any) country.
b) war on (some) drugs - overall policy that results in black market prices grouth for said products, with strong govt. corruption and consumption grow, accoppanied by constant media hypocrasy.
c) human rights erosion under the pretext of "war on terror" - like x-raying my boots and stealing my nail-clippers at the airports, phone and internet surveillance. Although - right now in Moscow you can buy 1) anonymous GSM phone card 2) anonymous internet access card 3) anonumous electronic cash cards 4) cannabis seeds selling and buying is legal
d) prostitution - at least it's still not a criminal offense in Russia, for private, individual relation between two (or more
e) erosion of state/church separation - but at least in Russian schools children are not forced to pledge submission to Govt. and GOD on a daily basis
f) untill now complete databases for all private information from phone numbers, to passport, drivers license, property, taxes paid were available for no more then $30 complete set. Unfortunately lately FSB(KGB) got upset that such complete information discosure was available to anybody, not just them. But, Westen position on this is such - give that wealth of information only to Govt. agencies. Whereas, if there is no choice, better everybody has it, rather then only Govt.
Speaking of "Pirate Bay" - well, firstly, I prefer eMule. Secondly, I never bother to download movies since on every metro station there are kiosks that sell DVDs with up to 8-6 latest Holywood shit movies on a two sided disk (russian creativity!
p.s. my wife delivers a baby in 10 days and althouth I can't say it was not without a hassle to get all paperwork and state medical insurance papers - it's free. We probably feel obligated to tip doctor with $200-$300 for delivery, but that's our choice and in case we were broke it would still be the same hospital and doctor. And Govt. gives a $250 bonus for a newborn baby. Of course it costs a hell more to rise a child, but
Now, I do hate socializm
Vassili Leonov
C'mon, these guys are pros, and have a long history of understanding their market.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
I'm asking RIAA and the fellows: why would I want to pay for Blueray and HD-DVD movies, which I cannot watch in Hi-Definition due to copy-protection? I go and pay money for hidef dvd player. Then I go and pay money for the films, while boys with *PIRATED* movies can watch these movies in hi-def, while me, a paying customer cannot?
:)
:) Stay cool boys, pass up new bills and go invent more copy protections. Like the one in DVD's.. wasn't that hacked by a teenager schoolboy from Norway? Go figure. Well, anyway, good luck to your amazing plans. :)
I mean, where's the inclination to actually go and pay for stuff that is *inferior* to what pirates provide FOR FREE!?
(I have a Pioneer 50" Plasma Screen, the 720P and 1080I inputs are.. component video = analogic = no HDCP = no hidef playback, or playback AT ALL!)
Ofcourse! I don't have to buy these films if I don't have the *equipment* to watch them! *slaps the forehead* No one is holding a gun in my head, afterall, oh well, neither is anyone holding a gun on my forehead for going out and pirating the stuff.
Good job RIAA! In your *greed* you fucked this up royally! I have like, 200+ original DVD's.. guess how many original BlueRay or HD-DVD movies I will have?
Best guess - everyone else got poorer
"Leech it on your parents' cable modem, or stuff it in your pants, the only question I have is whether by pirating their media, are you still indirectly supporting their grip on content creation and distribution, by giving them free advertising and mindshare. I think the jury's still out on that."
1 &tid=98&tid=95
//even the pop sugar you don't//, because every lost boy band album sale is that much less revenue that can be used against us in our legislature.
I used to agree wholeheartedly with this take. I thought we needed to get over piracy, and start enriching the commons, instead.
Then I read this:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/26/14622
It appears that sharing does indeed hurt the cartel's bottom line, rather than supporting their cultural hegemony. You might be perpetuating their popularity, but piracy really DOES hurt their bottom line - and those are the dollars that go toward bribing politicians. At the same time, smaller indy and commons acts are actually aided by increased sales as more people share them. The difference is scale. Once you get too popular, sharing backfires, but it's actually around the 75th percentile of artists.
So, for those who are aimed at bringing down the Hollywood plutocracy, the tactic seems to be: share. pirate. Share the indies and commonists you do like, and
This is an argument a hear a lot in rallys/debates by the democratic group at my college. That it is somehow the government's job to run around the school yard and topple anyone who gets too big.
The Death tax hurts little people, too. I have a friend who's parents died recently, and as an only child, left him pretty much everything. Unfortunately, he couldn't afford the taxes associated with his parent's estate, mainly the house his parents were living in - a house that had been in their family for four generations. Yeah, that death tax was real fair!
Because the property you earned during you life work and investiments was due to a stable society, economy and government investment in infastructure.
Indeed, that is why your parents pay taxes during their entire working lives. And that is why I'll also be paying taxes my entire working life.
I would prefer to have a society were wealth is based more on merit and hard work and not just because some distant ancestor made it big in plastics. There are several key arguments for an estate tax.
Great, so teach your kids the value of a dollar and a hard days work. My parents did. Not everyone has megawealthy ancestors who are responsible for their wealth - my parents simply worked their entire lives for it (and were the first generation to ever graduate high school, let alone college).
Continued concentrate of power in the elite...
It is undeniable that there is a connection between wealth and political power. And unfortunately, no one, not democrat, and not republican, seems willing to separate the two, by any means. I don't think the solution, however, is letting the gov't jump in and say "HA! You died, now gimme half!!!1" Protecting consumers has nothing to do with an Estate tax and everything to do with regulatory bodies such as the FTC. There are other ways with dealing with such issues and a Death Tax is certainly an indirect and overly broad method.
Limit Innovation.
Please, it is a gross generalization that all rich kids are snobs and do nothing with their lives, and some kid being rich hardly limits your ability to innovate. If anything, your argument would eliminate your competition and make it easier for you to innovate!
Govt research and investments. Reducing taxes could crimp government research and investments in education -- the source of innovations that create jobs. With less education, growing numbers of workers can't get ahead.
Neither of which, I would argue, are the purpose of government. With the exception of military research, the government has no business funding research. Sure, it's a great pie-in-the-sky concept, the government dumping billions of dollars into cancer research to help humanity. But is that their job? No. If I want to fund cancer research I'll fund it myself knowing that it was *my* decision, not the government's, to do good.
Clearly, education has worked its way into the purpose of government (and it has done a terrible job) and that fact wont be changing. I would love to see the government give interest free loans to ANYONE, regardless of race/ethnicity/class/religion/sexual orientation/geographic location, who wishes to go to college (I'd say you need to be a citizen, however). But that's pretty pie-in-the-sky as well, isn't it?
Instead of solving the problems of society by giving the single thing we should keep in check the most - the federal government - why do people (especially democrats, who always say they are looking out for the "little guy") insist that giving more wealth, and by your own statement, power, to the government is the solution to all of societies ills? When did we stop being grown ups and instead being children of the government our parents gave their blood and sweat for? Giving the government more power is a sure fire wire to give yourself less.
By conflating theft and copyright infringement groups with vested interests seek to take advantage of the public view of the effects of theft, i.e. the obvious loss of something tangible, so that copyright infringement is seen the same way even though there is no obvious loss with copyright infringement. They want people who copy movies and songs to be branded criminals in the minds of the people. They are trying to change the public perception of copyright infringement via the use of emotive terms rather than logical argument. That sort of underhanded tactic deserves active resistance IMHO. Also, to accept the conflation of theft and copyright infringement as you apparently do is to accept the argument that an unauthorised copy represents the loss of revenue equal to the retail price of the original. The groups in question want you believe that, but it is still very debatable.
And in my "normal language", downloading movies/music from the net does not equal "theft". And, as it happens, legalese shares my viewpoint on the matter.
You are then free to say that in YOUR "normal language" it does equal "theft", but your definition is not my definition. And just about all the people I have talked with equal "theft" with actual removal of someones property. And that's something that making a digital copy of a song (for example) is not.
Few definitions of "theft". From dictionary.com:
"the act of taking something from someone unlawfully".
If I copy a song from the net, the original owner of the song still has the song, so I'm not "taking" anything from him.
From wikipedia:
"In the criminal law, theft (also known as stealing) is the wrongful taking of someone else's property without that person's freely-given consent. As a term, it is used as shorthand for all major crimes against property, encompassing offences such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, trespassing, shoplifting, intrusion, fraud (theft by deception) and sometimes criminal conversion. In some jurisdictions, theft is considered to be synonymous with larceny, in others theft has replaced larceny."
Again: if I download a song from the net, the owner of that song still has his copy of the song, so I have NOT taken his property. Hell, he might not even know that I have a copy if his song.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Since both boil down to "Taking something that doesn't belong to you", why the hell do people need to focus on the hair splitting rather than the crux of the argument?
Because they want to justify their immoral actions. Like in your examples, people love to pick the best definition/meaning --for them-- so that they can rationalize it off. It is a lot easier to shrug of "copy right infringement" then "theft".
I illegally download and use stuff that I didn't pay for, nor have permission to use. Yet like the parent poster acknowledge what I am doing is theft. Come on people, lets be more honest here...
"The sad part is that a large number of slashdotters will convince themselves that this type of thing is good despite the fact that the site is very clearly engaged in theft." Is it a good thing? This free advertising may be just what Swiss kids need to find what DVD they should get, what album they should buy. Are music sales in Sweden going up, or down? I'd be interested to know.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
...take a certain amount of money to be happy, physical needs (housing, healthcare, food, medical care, a couple others that aren't coming to me right now)must be met fairly easily. After that, more money doesn't equate to more happiness. You can be homeless and happy, but that kind of happy ebbs and flows with circumstances, ditto poor health or regular meals.
I make 6-7K a year less than I did in 1997, but I'm happier, have more toys and tools, eat better, spend more regularly on diversions and hobbies, help my kids out more constructively, and I think that makes me wealthier and definitely more prosperous.
BTW, I like my job enough that I never get pissed off or frustrated, I just wish the overtime would drop a little (I don't work the hours some IT guys do, but they don't fit up steel building assemblies, so on some level it probably evens out). If I die today, I die wealthy. And happy.
You'll notice a lot of 'I', 'I', 'I' in that statement.
YOU only are able to get that MRI the same day because someone else who needs it won't, because that system doesn't allow them to. Health care is every citizen's right in Canada. If you don't like the system, go somewhere that has different values, or try to influence those values.
And where are you waiting 6-12 months for an MRI? Various family members have got them in local Toronto hospitals over the past few years within days if not hours? It sounds like you're toutting the latest news sob story. Do you actually have first hand experience getting an MRI in Canada?
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
so... are you tired or rested?
Quick Precis:
:)
1) That's theft!
2) No, copywrite infringement.
3) It's legal in Sweden anyway.
I wonder if CD sales are down over there? It's good their example gives us something to learn, either way.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
CD = tangible item.
mp3 = intangible string of 1s and 0s.
Comparing the theft of the two is silly, as stealing tangible items is often much more problematic to the victims than intangible items, when all that is lost is the possibility of extra money, but nothing that they current have is lost.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I happen to be an estate planner, and I can say that the current system doesn't work that way. The rich, who use good financial planners (like me) never have to pay estate taxes. There are way too many loopholes, and a bit of good planning can usually elimate most death taxes. It's only the financially uneducated middle class that usually ends up paying death taxes. And what that usually means is the difference between their kids or grandkids going to college, versus getting mcjobs when they drop out of high school.
The system looks good from afar, but in reality it's just a clusterfuck. I try to help, by giving my services for free to the middle class as well, but there's only so many people I can educate.
They sure pissed away the money spent on your education.
Some people beleive that they can be of service to goverments which have the right to tell them (and you) what to do.
Some people treat their government as a public service, which is told what to do by the people.
Well we were told not to ask what our country could do for us, but to ask what we could do for our ccuntry....
What you say means that one cannot concurrently hold these two opinions, but you are wrong. In order to be able to speak a common language and debate the matter you must separate the two because they are different!
The brainwash work the copyright folks managed to pull off on an entire population is impressive.
I was told to shut up and eat my greens.
[ insert meme here ]
If someone stole* a term paper you spent 6 months working on to turn it in before you, would it be wrong? According SlashLogic, it wouldn't be. It would just be copyright infringement.
*Stole in this case would mean "Grabbed a copy off of your hard drive, while not removing the original." I know, I know, "Not theft, I'm stupid, blah blah blah."
So you know that the distinction is important (you bothered to make it) but you still used the word "stole" in order to equate the two. You are being dishonest already, and then you complain that people don't even argue with you on the merit of your arguments. If the argument IS whether copyright infringement is wrong or not, by calling it theft during the same argument even though you know there is a distinction, you are simply invalidating your whole argument.
In your example, by the way, the wrongdoing is neither copyright infringement nor theft: It is breaking & entering, or a computer violation. Its wrong, but it doesn't make copyright infringement wrong because it has little to do with it.
"My guess is that Sweden is one of the worst places in the world when it comes to illegal sharing," said Martensson." And yet "He said file sharing is widespread in Sweden because almost every household owns a computer and can get a cheap 100-Mbps broadband fiber connection from their ISP for 70 euros a month." I'm guesing that Sweden is one of the best places in the world when it comes to so-called "illegal sharing".
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
Sweden too has signed the Berne convention, the government is generally too afraid to get in a fight with anyone, its unlikely they will make a stand on something as this.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Interesting, but not quite correct. Dictionary.com provides a whole series of definitions, and the common theme is that theft involves an acquisition of goods or services without the consent of the owner.
For the sake of moral discussion of copyright (whether infringement is right or wrong) you should not clump in the two meanings of the word theft at the same time. Or ofcourse you can, but I can simply reply with "data theft" is not morally wrong while "tangible property theft" is morally wrong, because the two are distinct.
By using the same word, however, you do make the discussion more difficult and imply the wrong ideas to people not in the know about the subject (that there is conceptual moral equivalence between copying against copyright law and taking someone's tangible property against property law - which is wrong even if you believe that such actual moral equivalence exists).
You should note that none of the definitions explicitly provided the concept that the rightful owner is denied access to the goods or services which have been wrongfully acquired. Your definition depends on that concept.
The original definition of the word theft (before being overloaded with the copyright infringement meanings, before the term "intellectual property" was coined) spoke of only physical tangible things which are implicitly unavailable to their owner if taken without permission by someone else. This is the picture people have in their mind when they hear the word "theft". This is what it communicates.
Intellectual property is, by use of the term property, easily categorized as goods. The fact that these goods are ephemeral is a non-starter, since the same can be said of many items which qualify as services.
That is, ofcourse, if you don't reject the whole notion of "intellectual property" like the framers of the US constitution did.
Intellectual property has a clearly identified owner.
When copyright law is applied, yes. But whether it should or should not be applied is what the discussion is about.
Acquiring intellectual property without the consent of the owner would, therefore, be theft.
According to one of the definitions of theft, yes. But to use this definition in a discussion of this nature is confusing, so please don't.
Trying to justify to yourself that you are not a thief does not mean you are correct.
If copyright infringement makes someone a "thief" or not is a matter of interest to language philosophers. Ask a random person you know what he would think if he was told person X was a thief - and you will see that he gets the wrong idea. He would not say: "Person X is probably a Kazaa downloader" but would more likely say "I better watch out for my purse".
By calling infringement theft and infringers thieves, you are being academically correct while communicating everyone the wrong ideas. I believe language is more about communicating ideas than about being correct academically, but maybe that's just me.
Before, I used to think copyright infringement is not "theft".
Now after more careful study of the word "theft", I know copyright infringement is, by the book, a type of "theft".
It is the good kind of theft though, and people calling it "theft" imply that it is bad theft. So people, please stop and use a more specific word!
If the word "rape" is overloaded to also mean "eating cupcakes" would it become morally wrong to eat cupcakes? A lot of posters here sure would think so. I would say it would be stupid to use the word "rape" in a discussion about the morality of eating cupcakes in such a case.
I applaud TPB for their continuing support of good moral "data theft" for information freedom for the masses! Good work!
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I define my "foes", as you call them, as anyone who thinks that the disabled should be left to die if they don't know anyone rich and generous enough to support them. Knowing some seriously disabled people myself and having seen the inside of psych hospitals while visiting relatives employed at them, I can say with absolute moral authority that anyone who wants to abandon these people for the sake of slightly faster rate of economic growth is monstrous. Having such a profound lack of empathy marks neocons and libertarians as barely Human.
Check out how much of your tax money actually goes to welfare programs, and how much goes to farm subsidies to support people who want to keep living on barren patches of dirt that no longer support life, subsidies for corporations that haven't been profitable in decades but happen to have a CEO who is friends with a politician, how much goes towards buying useless missile defence systems like the PATRIOT or shitty naval helicopters that crash more often than they land. It costs practically nothing to help the needy -- what exactly makes you think it's such a terrible idea?
The communist ideal isn't state owned property - it's the dissolution of the state.
And if you look at the anarcho-capitalist libertarians, they too seek the dissolution of the state. How can it be that two such seemingly different approaches seek the same goal?
That's a rhetorical question, mind you - I see perfectly well how they can reach the same goal, and I myself preach (and try to practice) in all matters something which I've just now coined a term for, "paradoxical centrism". This is basically the notion that a balance has to be struck, not between the two extremes, but entirely encompassing them. The solution is not to compromise, but to take both extremes to their ends at the same time. Resolving the differences between two positions just entails seeing that they are not actually different.
The economic system I advocate is one in which there is no such thing as government-owned property. No central planning of anything. No government programs. From this angle it is an entirely free-market capitalist system. However, analogous to the basic civil rights to liberty (the right act according to your will) and security (the right not to be acted upon against your will), which limit one another, there are economic rights that might be called property and prosperity - though I've not really settled on a good name for the latter right. And while free markets satisfy the right to property, they alone do not satisfy the right to prosperity, and so to compensate for that, I advocate a form of wealth redistribution that will be detailed at the end of this post.
The right to property is not, as most conservatives and libertarians make it out to be, analogous with the right to liberty. Property is not about your right to do with your stuff as you please - that's just liberty itself, your right to do whatever except as limited by other rights. Property is primarily a negative right, one which limits necessarily limits liberty, just like security does, in the sense that it is your right keep others from doing something. In particular, it is your right to keep others from doing what they please to "your" property.
But just as liberty is the more primitive of the civil rights (in that in a completely lawless primal anarchy, everyone has liberty, but no one has security), and security is brought in to counterbalance it and ensure mutual liberty for everyone (as opposed to the liberty of just a few powerful people), so property is a secondary right brought about to counterbalance the basic, primal state of everybody taking and using or abusing whatever they want. In a sense, the same way security rights are rights against crimes like assault, property rights are rights against theft and vandalism. And the purpose of property rights are to ensure the mutual enjoyment of the more basic economic right to prosperity (though be careful, that's just a name) - to have and use the available resources around you.
From a procedural and legalistic point of view, this notion of property as a negative right analogous to security, and of a right to prosperity analogous to a right to liberty, has two consequences. One is that a person has a responsibility not to deprecate public resources - basically, we have a responsibility to our environment and ecology. This ties in to Green Economics (from that Wiki link: "a theory of economics by which an economic system is considered to be a component of the ecosystem in which it resides").
But beyond that, and the real point I'm driving at here, is the system of wealth redistribution laid upon a free market, which I promised a description of earlier. What I advocate is a system whereby exactly one half of every person's income (from any source, sale of product or service, gift, inheritance, etc) is "taxed", the result of these taxes pooled, and then evenly redistributed back to those same people. I'm sure the capitalists and such in the audience are shrieking right now, but consider: if ever
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Dumbass... He asked if you have first hand knowledge - not if you would go over the border or not in a hypothetical situation. And being a canuck myself, I can pretty much tell you what he is saying is spot on, and you sir, are frankly an idiot.
I used to have passing out spells, I got an MRI scheduled 5 business days AFTER I was diagnosed. This 6-12 month bullshit just doesn't happen - except only to be trumpeted by puppets who are trying to make the system look bad and come in and try and get for-profit healthcare instituted.
It seems those with the biggest pocketbooks always buy everything, including overhyped and false information into the media.
I got twenty canadian that say's you aren't even a canuck... so seriously, shut the hell up.
Party?!? What kind of party is this? Where's the damn keg?
Virtus Junxit Mors Non Separabit
I don't understand why people expect blatant support of and dependence on illegal activity to be legal.
Probably because they don't believe having sex, smoking weed, or sharing files should be illegal activities.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Anyhow, waitlists are a big problem in Canada. For instance, from the British Columbia Ministry of Health website (I picked BC because that's what google gave me first), let's say I want to have Knee Replacement Surgery. At this point, I'm needing a new knee, so I can't frickin' walk, and I'm in a metric shitload of pain (I'm told in Canada they use the metric system). So, picking a random hospital, I see that the wait time is currently 58 weeks with one surgeon and 99.1 weeks with the other surgeon. The third doctor does not perform knee replacement surgery, it seems.
Do you really feel that waiting between 1-2 years for essential surgery is acceptable? That kind of shit would never fly in the US. We do not sit around here for 1-2 years with busted knees. We get them fixed.
Maybe that's the cause of your dizzy spells. The knowledge that if you were to have a health problem in Canada, you will be unable to obtain prompt treatment at any price. Well, I shouldn't say "at any price". You can always seek treatment down here in America. Growing up in Minnesota, I knew of many wealthy Canadians who obtained heart surgery in the US because they did not want to die in Canada on some waitlist.
I can't believe you fail to see the problem here. In the US, we don't have waitlists. We just call the hospital and make an appointment. We look at your waitlists (with waits measured in years) up in Canada with sheer horror that you would tolerate such a system. The last place on earth I'd want to fall ill is Canada.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
The internet is a different beast than the book. In the internet, information is copied ALL THE TIME. Every time somebody reads a web page, they aren't accessing the original content, but a COPY of the content, cached on the user's computer. Every bit of information passes through many nodes and is temporarily stored as a copy in memory, or in wires, or airwaves.
The content of the internet was designed to be copied. This doesn't mean it's ok to steal a work and present it as your own. But providing a mirror of content while providing citation is simply part of the flow of things. There's hardly a difference between being a mirror of a site, and being a proxy server that will communicate with the site and pass it to the user. And if the proxy caches a copy, there's no difference.
Helping out lazy leeches? Of course that's a problem. Here in BC, you can't receive income assistance (a more flexible variant that also covers people who earn too little money to support themselves) unless you apply for a certain number of jobs each week (they even check with the businesses you applied at from time to time), complete employability courses, and demonstrate a reasonable level of effort at job hunting. Disability assistance and persistent-multiple-barriers assistance aren't quite as demanding; they provide the same employability courses (the majority of disabled people actually want to work), they're just not mandatory. It's still far from perfect, but at least the beauracrats are thinking, and that's far better than the customary alternative.
On the specific topic of drug testing, I'd say that the Giuliani approach is a bit backwards. It keeps with the harmful notion of treating drug addiction as a criminal activity, rather than a mental illness. Putting drug addicts in psych hospitals and rehabilitating them is far better than making them homeless. You are right about treating the disease. My dispute is with the idea that you should stop treating the symptoms as well. If you don't treat symptoms, patients wont last long enough to ever be cured.
Strictly speaking though, what is the difference between a welfare recipient who rents $5 worth of movies each week as recreation, a welfare recipient who leases a $20 internet connection each month for recreational web surfing, and a welfare recipient who buys a joint each week to relax with? Just because someone has no job doesn't mean that they shouldn't be free to spend a small reasonable amount of their money on R&R in a manner of their chooosing. That's setting aside the ridiculous fact that non-harmful drugs like pot are illegal of course.
These Russian Hackers sure did.
Which is why he isn't buying the products you fucking douchebag. Read the post.
I should hope so. But it's simply re-stating the obvious - that copying can never be theft in any way, shape or form. You can not steal what you leave behind and no man can exclusively own immaterial values, ideas, knowledge or culture. Copyrights are voodoo economics, plain and simple. There are numerous values in life that are not bound by a magical "right to profit" by someone.
whoever managed to fight their way to the patent office first would be trying very hard to instill the idea that it was their moral right to do so.
Yep. Not to mention that it was "their moral right" simply because they got there first, thereby reducing the whole lofty notion of "inventor's rights" to a simple driving contest. Stuff that in yer morality pipe and smoke it, Ayn Rand!
Money for nothing, pix for free
Marketing has been going on for 100+ years and people still don't choose on merit.
Thanks, you just made my point.
s/found/lived/
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Eh? The point is that some call copyright infringement "theft", which it isn't. The industry uses "theft" to make copyright infringement sound worse than it really is. In my little text, the murderer used "theft" instead of "murder". He was wrong in doing that, just like people who call copyright infringement "theft" are wrong.
Clever signature text goes here.
Great post.
Here in the UK it seems to me the immigrants have a better work ethic than the native white-trash (chavs).
My gf's father described how his country-village has given all the jobs to the polish immigrants because they work harder and for less. The english they replaced just sit around in pubs nowadays moaning about it.
Somehow we have to figure out how to persuade the chav-populace to stop living on benefits and give back to society before it all crashes due to too many people living on benefits and not enough work getting done to pay for it.
Otherwise I may emmigrate, things always seemed better on the continent, although I don't think I should make conclusions based on a few weeks here and there. I owe this country the cost of my education, so I'll pay that off and then skidaddle if things haven't improved.
Heheh, I spy a new Slashdot meme...
"By Swedish, I am entitled to Halo 2!"
Do you provide free support to non-paying users?
If not, and they have problems or issues understanding your product, what is to prevent them from just telling everyone that your product is crap because they can't make it work?
Assuming even a small ratio of 2 non-paying users for every supported paying user you could have a real problem on your hands.
The estate tax is unpopular in two situations: the average small farmer or small business owner, and anyone whose parents live in California and own a moddest home, but die, leaving it to their children. Here's a question for the vast right-wing conservative Christian majority: if the Death Tax were to die, how would that impact charitable organizations? For my own self, I can envision a scenario where I have "just over the limit" to distribute to my surviving family, and I just lop off enough to give to a charity so that I don't deal with the tax. Alternately, a truly clever, humble, and wealthy person (perhaps few exist) would, prior to a death by old age or chronic disease, transfer asset holdings to his/her surviving family, and effectively die poor. In fact, I think back 100 years ago in the USA, this may have been done, as grandparents often lived with their families toward the twilight of their years. I do know that if you have at least $1,000,000 in holdings, you can create a trust fund, and assign your surviving family to be participants/executors in it.
We all know what fun those kids can be in school. I knew this one guy, he got something like $1400 a month plus rent off his family's trust fund. The guy lost his freaking mind with no job to cement his purpose, and joined some armed sedition force in Southern California. Suffice it to say, thanks to my exposure and efforts, the local FBI knows a lot more about this secret organization.
So, to all you venerate, wealthy slashdotters, learn from this suggestion, and die humbly and in the care of loved ones, giving freely to charities. It will drive the lawyers nuts and simultaneously help keep your kids out of cults seeking a bankroll, and that may be the greatest thing you can give to the world upon your death!
Indeed it is. Unfortunately for them, it's not working very well. The trend *I* see (yes, really) is that of more and more people questioning the reasoning (and obviously faulty logic) of the media conglomerates and their speaking mouths. It's not going (nearly) fast (enough) for my tastes, but it's happening. The brainwash *will* fail. How painful it will be for the instigators remains to be seen.
RIAA: 1.800.BAD.BEAT badbeat@riaa.com cdreward@riaa.com 202.775.0101 isrc@riaa.com bblock@riaa.com cgarza@riaa.com 202-775-7253(fax)
MPAA: 202-293-1966 202-296-7410(fax) (818) 995-6600 (818) 382-1795 (fax) (914) 378-0800 (914) 378-0048(fax) Canada: (416) 961-1888 (416) 968-1016 (fax)
If the line is busy, just call the next number down.
When you say "I believe language is more about communicating ideas than about being correct academically, but maybe that's just me." I know (think) that you're being ironic/sarcastic. I'd just like to add that whether one subscribes to that opinion or not can be heavily influenced by you having a specific agenda. Not that your counterpart in argument would have any reason to be suspected of that...
It's not as cut and dry as you make it.
When you copy someone's movie off the Internet, you're still not buying their movie just the same as if you boycotted it. If you honestly believe the creator's rights as granted by law are unjust, and that it is ethical to defy an unjust law, then it is neither more nor less "principled" on your part whether you boycott the movie or you copy it.
I suspect a better analogy would be to say that you see the hammers I'm making, and decide that they're really good, so you go to make one for yourself, instead of asking me to make you one, and giving me half a sheep in return. That said, the point is very much correct, and I'm probably just nit picking. Sorry! And I'd like the right half of the sheep please.
On the other hand, maybe he had a bad experience with the "International Talk Like a Pirate Day", and now fears one-eyed men with parrots.
On the third hand, if that's true, how is piracy not stealing?
Just to settle the matter, I could show up on his doorstep tomorrow with my three hands, my parakeet, an eye patch, and some o' me swarthy mates (you should see what my ex-girlfriends look like). We'll tell him to stop slandering our royally-sanctioned profession, or be keelhauled. Then he'll either run away in fear, or stop being a hypocrite - either way, we'll have our answer.
Avast ye!
...from the 2000 campaign, that was featured in Fahrenheit 9/11. Two seconds on Google will get you plenty of info. It was intended as a joke, but was jumped on by Bush's opponents, probably because it just rang too true.
On the question, yes, our economy is not efficient at all, and yes,for those reasons; thats why our people risk their lives to work in USA.
Our economy, despite being the 13th largest in the world, is going down the tubes; massive concentration of wealth; (sp?),INCREDIBLY,AMAZINGLY corrupt politicians; worthless, bad joke political parties -a side note, a very small, but increasing minority is in favor of a military goverment, since they are the only members of goverment that deserve respect-; a vanishing middle class,the only improvements in the standard of life come from technology; a shickening, american style individualism without (sp?) american style passion for hard work, coupled with cronyism, nepotism and corruption at all social levels, from poor to rich.
The worst part is that instead of Mexico becoming like USA, the USA are becoming North Mexico, and usians can't blame that to the immigrants.
Post Data:
I always thougth from your posts that you were from Canada, I guess then that you are from Washington or Wisconsin
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Well death tax is sick twisted and amoral, so is it a suprise Bill gates supports it?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I found your comments interesting - I was just ranting the other day somewhere on my site that the Iron Curtain wasn't destroyed, it was just imported into the US. While your country is gaining freedom and respect throughout the world, ours is losing it at a frightening pace. A few years from now, you might look back and be glad you got out while you still could!
It will be ironic to our children, years from now, that all the old American movies showed Russia to be an evil empire police-state, versus the benevolent, free United States. That idea will surely seem ludicrous when your country is prospering nicely and enjoying your new-found freedoms, and American children are providing a DNA sample to their video player's DRM system just to be able to WATCH those old movies.
"We probably feel obligated to tip doctor with $200-$300 for delivery, but that's our choice and in case we were broke it would still be the same hospital and doctor." In my inlaws experiance in a smaller russian city (about 8hours drive from Moscow) that "tip" is manditory to get the doctors to give anything but the worst treatment.
I do believe that people in the US would be able to stop the slide away from freedom and democracy without going the the lows that Europe (inluding Russia) had to suffer in the 20th century.
Vassili Leonov