Why Web Pirates Can't Be Touched

gwoodrow writes "Forbes has a brief article about, essentially, the ultimate futility of fighting online pirates. From the article: 'As the world's largest repository of BitTorrent files, ThePirateBay.org helps millions of users around the world share copyrighted movies, music and other files — without paying for them ... That's illegal, of course — at least it is in the U.S. But when Time Warner's (nyse: TWX — news — people ) Warner Bros. studio accused them of breaking U.S. copyright law in 2005, the pirates gleefully reminded the movie company that they didn't live in America, but rather in the land of vikings, reindeer, Aurora Borealis and cute blond girls.' The article also touches on the many YouTube clones and AllofMP3.com."

Comments

Readable version (i.e., no obscene amount of ads)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Printer friendly" version.

It's also much more eyeball-friendly.

Biased article, but what can you expect from Forbe

[whoever57]

For example:

The music-selling site AllofMP3.com uses a simpler business model: Base your company in Russia, steal music from American labels and sell it cheaply. AllofMP3 allows users to download full albums for as little as $1

The whole point of, and the reason the RIAA has not been able to shut it down, is that it is not stealing -- in any sense of the word. Firstly, the owner is not deprived of the work and secondly, AllofMP3 apparently operates within the legal framework of Russia -- in other words, it has a license to run its business model that way. The use of the word stealing is inflammatory.