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MPAA Scores First P2P Jury Conviction

An anonymous reader writes "The MPAA must be celebrating. According to the BitTorrent news site Slyck.com, the Department of Justice is proclaiming their first P2P criminal copyright conviction, against an Elite Torrents administrator. The press release notes, 'The jury was presented with evidence that Dove was an administrator of a small group of Elite Torrents members known as "Uploaders," who were responsible for supplying pirated content to the group. At sentencing, which is scheduled for Sept. 9, 2008, Dove faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.'"

335 comments

  1. Fuck the MafiAA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Bunch of fucking crooks.

    1. Re:Fuck the MafiAA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sir, your video is truly a work of higher art and portrays a clear representation of the relationship between the MPAA and their loyal customers.

    2. Re:Fuck the MafiAA by sgant · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wait, since when is copyright violations punishable by prison?

      I could see this going to civil court and this guy being sued. But prison? Was he actually getting money for these? Or was it just sharing over the internet for free?

      Again, how did this go from a civil matter to a criminal one?

      --

      "Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
    3. Re:Fuck the MafiAA by Dragonslicer · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wait, since when is copyright violations punishable by prison?

      If the summary is accurate (I know, I know), the person convicted was responsible for large-scale distribution. There is a threshold where copyright violations become a criminal offense.

  2. Not "really" P2P by Gewalt · · Score: 5, Informative

    This was a release group, and altho they were releasing onto p2p, this is NOT the same thing as all those other cases where the **AA is demanding 3000$ tributes to ignore wrongdoings.

    --
    Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
    1. Re:Not "really" P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      No he was not. As far as I can understand it he leaked material from the warez scene onto P2P.

      Most (except probably a few unrespected crap groups) do not upload their material to P2P networks and don't want their material getting there. It is a security risk and it is exposing the scene.

      These so called Uploaders on P2P torrent trackers are mostly people who have access to scene material in one way or another. Maybe just a crappy courier that isn't contributing or maybe someone who pays for leech or is hosting a server. Anyhow they are usually not respected individuals within the scene and upload things to P2P for either ideological reasons or just to get a bigger epenis.

      Sorry for my rant but someone had to say it.

    2. Re:Not "really" P2P by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In other words... these guys were using P2P at the technical level, but they were really doing the uploading of the content. **AA has a long win streak against uploaders, it's downloaders that they've had so much problems with.

    3. Re:Not "really" P2P by Gerzel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How easy for the **AA's to stretch this win to make it P2P itself to be the crime?

    4. Re:Not "really" P2P by Nullav · · Score: 3, Informative

      Seems like quite a stretch, considering that rounding them up en masse didn't have such an effect. Also, I can't be the only one disturbed that so many resources went to that.

      --
      I just read Slashdot for the articles.
    5. Re:Not "really" P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the interesting post.

    6. Re:Not "really" P2P by againjj · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Agreed, this is not the same as what all those other cases are, but you can be pretty sure that the MPAA is going to try and make it look like it to the general public. Unfortunately, I must agree with the conviction -- this really is clearly wrong (I am not commenting on the sentencing). It was being distributed before the movie was even showing in theaters! This clearly crosses the line of copyright law in both spirit and letter, unlike those other cases.

    7. Re:Not "really" P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You bring back memories of TeamXPC, those guys are 7331.

    8. Re:Not "really" P2P by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 1

      A paid Usenet account is the way to go. alt.binaries.* gives you what you want.

      If I was going to pay for the content that I download, I would want my money going to the people who made it, not people who maintain a network of stolen goods. But that's just me, I guess...

      P2P is going to die unless it can be made more secure.

      Illegal P2P may die if it isn't made more secure. Legal P2P doesn't need to do anything. I wouldn't be too worried if the illegal P2P scene died anyway...

    9. Re:Not "really" P2P by oloron · · Score: 1

      AC and informative, mark you calendar folks

    10. Re:Not "really" P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      **AA has a long win streak against uploaders

      One in a row?

    11. Re:Not "really" P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Courier's pretty much died with BBS's. Broadband has made distribution ubiquitous, the 'scene' is easy to get into, and hell-yea it's going to get onto P2P. Huge respect to the groups that kept my BBS supplied, and I - gaming through highschool, but it's not the elitist wankfest above AC would have us all believe. The people who crack & package, sure. The rest of the chain is all the same.

    12. Re:Not "really" P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree.

    13. Re:Not "really" P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Anyhow they are usually not respected individuals within the scene and upload things to P2P for either ideological reasons or just to get a bigger epenis.

      So, they do it for the same reasons everyone else in the scene has for doing what they do? Golly, that's insightful.

    14. Re:Not "really" P2P by 0111+1110 · · Score: 1

      If I was going to pay for the content that I download, I would want my money going to the people who made it, not people who maintain a network of stolen goods.

      And exactly how are you going to do that? With a "donate" button on the artist's website maybe?

      --
      Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
    15. Re:Not "really" P2P by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

      a bigger epenis.

      Well, maybe they should get some eViagra for their epenises.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    16. Re:Not "really" P2P by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 1

      It worked for Radiohead. Also, online music stores like iTunes does give *some* of the proceeds to the artist, which is better than nothing.

  3. Insanity by aztektum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    10 years in prison? I realize that's a maximum, but the reality is he's done nothing that should be even closely considered to being a danger to society.

    This hangup about defending our bullshit economy which truly only services the "haves" in the first place is being taken to extremes and I'm getting tired of it.

    I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?

    Fuckers.

    --
    :: aztek ::
    No sig for you!!
    1. Re:Insanity by EdIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can see how you got the flambait mod, mainly for the last sentence.

      However, you do have a valid point about just what danger to society this person poses and whether or not 10 years is a punishment that fits the crime.

      It would certainly seem that the powerful in this country are pushing for stronger and stronger criminal punishments for what would otherwise be a civil matter between 2 entities.

    2. Re:Insanity by Cocoshimmy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I totally agree, the punishment does not fit the crime. 10 years in prison should be reserved for things like rape, manslaughter, assault with a deadly weapon and other crimes of similar severity. Music/Movie/Software piracy should not be put in the same category.

    3. Re:Insanity by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A stiff fine would seem to be in order, and civil damages. Jail time is pretty harsh for this kind of IP crime though.

    4. Re:Insanity by deathcow · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sounds nice.. if it was people versus people... this is corporations versus people though, I'm surprised they don't have roving death squads.

    5. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      > Are they going to throw us all in jail?

      Of course not. Only those with enough money to pay, but not to defend themselves.

    6. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Goddamn selfish people trying to earn a living producing music, art, software, games, etc! Who do they think they are?

      Look, I'm not a huge fan of the MPAA/RIAA tactics. But I AM someone who makes their living making software. Good software. Software I'm proud of. And while I get some satisfaction from my work, I need to make a living here. I work for a company that charges for software. I'm not ashamed of that, and I don't feel I should be. We charge reasonable fees for a superior product and good support.

      So when someone feels there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking my work and making it available for free on the internet, well, I'd kind of like to punch them in the face. I'm not a millionaire rock star. My company isn't a huge billion dollar corporation. We still struggle to make payroll sometimes.

      "Pirate everything! What are they going to do?" Well, here's what WE'RE going to do with your ridiculous philosophy. We'll go out of business, and stop making good products for people to use. So will a lot of other small software houses.

      I'm sure this will come as a great shock to you, but you're not somehow magically ENTITLED to enjoy whatever you want whenever you are for free. Things cost money. Deal with it.

    7. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Clearly it already is in that category -- as "pirates" are regarded to have committed "assault with a deadly modem".

    8. Re:Insanity by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 1

      Ten years for copying a fucking movie, well a bunch of fucking movies? Sounds like a good excuse to become a citizen of Canada to me.

      --

      Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

    9. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are they going to throw us all in jail?

      They'll try.

      Then where will they be?

      Sitting on top of a lot of cheap labour.

    10. Re:Insanity by seeker_1us · · Score: 1
      "Should not be put in the same category."

      Agreed. So why is it?

      Realistically, the "problem" is that there is no billion dollar industry bent on expanding control in the name of profit that wants to lobby and shell out insane amounts of $$ in "campaign contributions" to give long jail terms to rapists, killers, and other violent offenders.

    11. Re:Insanity by EdIII · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Jail time is pretty harsh for any kind of IP crime. That's just it though; It's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY crime. It's not tangible.

      A copyright defines rights which are granted to somebody from the government. They use these rights to diminish competition and allow them to have an advantage to collect profits for a reasonable period of time. The period of time is certainly no longer reasonable IMO, but that is up for debate.

      What is not really up for debate, is that violating these rights falls within the jurisdiction of the civil courts. It was never supposed to be a matter for criminal courts. The GP of your post tried pointing out that seemingly corrupt government entities have been responsible for turning into a criminal matter, what has always been a civil matter. Simply to give them the upper hand. They don't need to spend money in the court systems defending their intellectual property against minor violations.

      I recently watched a special about prison systems. I am 32 years old right now. I can remember being 22 years old, but that seems to be as far away from me now as being 11 years old. 10 YEARS is a very LONG time. Assuming that you get 60 years of adult life in this world, 1/6th of that being taken away is a huge punishment.

      It's easy to forget that. I'm all for the death penalty and harsh criminal convictions, but only for violent crime. IP infringement is not a crime that we need to take 10 years from somebody for. Let's not forget that we will spend anywhere between 300K and 400K as taxpayers to do it too. Is is really that cost effective for us to do this? To protect big media companies? To protect society, or our values?

      I just don't think so. Maybe huge fines and 6 months in jail or prison might be adequate.

      I am more concerned by the fact that turning this into a criminal matter has provided government and corporations the impetus to do away with our privacy and rights altogether simply to provide protection for a few companies profit margins.

    12. Re:Insanity by Mprx · · Score: 1

      Free Software will be produced even without copyright law. So will music, novels, and games. Maybe not at the same rate it is now, but that's a small price to pay for every human having complete access to every existing game/movie/music recording/novel/textbook/scientific paper/etc. With the rapidly decreasing price of computer hardware and improving communication infrastructure I do mean *every* human. Poverty can be eliminated, and without intellectual monopoly everyone can have unimaginable intellectual wealth. Imagine a global filesharing network that gives everyone access to knowledge far exceeding their own personal Library of Congress. Everyone with access to a good private torrent tracker has already had a taste of how good it could be. There's already enough good entertainment out there to last your entire expected lifetime, and useful software and research will continue to be produced because of the productivity benefits. Complaining about slightly reduced production is distracting from the real issue of just how enormous the cost of all this artificial scarcity is.

    13. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bye have a nice time. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. Write if you get work, oh wait, I don't actually care if you get work.

      Since I make my living both from the movies that are being pirated and from writing software, I'd rather have paying customers stay here and the dead beats go away. So again BYE!

    14. Re:Insanity by mrbluze · · Score: 1

      I'm surprised they don't have roving death squads.

      I think those are reserved for treacherous staff of said organizations.

      --
      Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
    15. Re:Insanity by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Clinton signed in a law making copyright infringement a felony. He also passed the DMCA, and a bill that withheld all federal funding to any group working on embryonic stem cell research. He also fucked a 19 year old in the Oval Office when he was supposed to be working on his presidential duties -- which is legal, but we got a bitch match over it and then he lied in court and almost got impeached for perjury.

      Clinton is a remarkable man as president; he seems to have caused all kinds of economic and legislative nightmares, and spent most of his time stripping the rights of the American People.

    16. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about a gang that stole your credit account data and purchasing history, along with that of thousands of others, then sold them to a fence which sold it to yet another gang which eventually used it to turn your life (and those of many others) into hell for 2-3 years? You could argue the first gang didn't perpetrate much of anything, they just copied some bits that were incompetently protected by a clueless organization headed by greedy executives who earn way too much money. Therefore these mere enablers of "identity infringement" (not "theft"... this is Slashdot!) should be let off after a short sentence, especially if they are under age 30 in which case what they did was obviously part of growing up.

    17. Re:Insanity by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Sorry, Richard Stallin says you're a criminal. Software must be free.

    18. Re:Insanity by maxume · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So what do you consider the prison industry?

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    19. Re:Insanity by PylonHead · · Score: 1

      Someone should point out to you that Free Software is currently produced even *with* copyright law.

      This way authors have the freedom to choose. Do I want to give my work away, or do I want to charge for it?

      This way users have a choice: is the current open source solution the best choice, or would I like to pony up for a commercial product?

      Why should we force everyone down one path, when clearly there is a place for both options?

      --
      # (/.);;
      - : float -> float -> float =
    20. Re:Insanity by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, if someone steals the secret designs for the new Widget(tm) that a company has then they should get jail time and that is an IP crime, although you could argue it's industrial espionage. We agree on this matter though. I would think probation would be enough even (plus a fine), not even six months. Six months in jail can totally ruin a person's life, whereas if they get probation they might just be able to keep their job/house, etc.

    21. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Look, I'm not a huge fan of the MPAA/RIAA tactics. But I AM someone who makes their living making software. Good software. Software I'm proud of. And while I get some satisfaction from my work, I need to make a living here. I work for a company that charges for software.

      Making a living by writing software doesn't mean you have to charge for copies of that software. If copyright didn't exist, you could still make a living as a programmer (or an artist, etc.) by charging for your labor.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    22. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I've got to agree; while pirating anything certainly costs *someone* *some* business, it's *definitely* not worth TEN YEARS of someone's life! That's absolutely ridiculous!

      That being said, i'm currently *absolutely smashed* and my opinions not worht taking into account.

      sorry -_-

    23. Re:Insanity by HockeyEngineer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not if Bill C-61 (aka the Canadian DMCA) becomes law.

    24. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But anything large-scale that isn't infrastructural (meaning recreational software) is going to essentially die in your sick little fantasyland.

      No, it'll just need to be paid for differently: by charging for the programmers' labor instead of charging for copies of the files they produce.

      How dare those people expect to make a living out of their work. It should all be free for you to use, and god [i]damn[/i] the whole "making enough money to eat" thing.

      More like god damn the people who are too blind, or too attached to a broken business model, to realize that you don't need copyright to get paid for working. People in most other industries manage to get paid for their work without any special monopoly protections like copyright.

      You tell those "fucking GNUtards" to "get a job in the real world", but maybe you should follow that advice yourself. You'll find that in the real world (i.e. industries that haven't become addicted to copyright), people don't do the work first, for free, and then spend months or years trying to get people to pay them for the work they've already done. They find customers first, and do the work once those customers have agreed to pay them for it.

      Or is it just that now they've [i]already[/i] made the games, it's okay in your entitlement-based mind to say "oh, fuck you, we're going to take it and make it free for everyone, and too bad for you if you relied on it for income"?

      If your income depends on people not being allowed to share information with each other, then you're doing it wrong.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    25. Re:Insanity by JimDaGeek · · Score: 1

      10 years in prison? I realize that's a maximum, but the reality is he's done nothing that should be even closely considered to being a danger to society.

      ...

      This hangup about defending our bullshit economy which truly only services the "haves" in the first place is being taken to extremes...

      Umm. the "haves" are the ones bribing our so called "representatives", until that changes, nothing else will. Your preaching to the quire brother!

      --
      General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
    26. Re:Insanity by Dan541 · · Score: 1

      10 years in prison? I realize that's a maximum, but the reality is he's done nothing that should be even closely considered to being a danger to society.

      Thats twice the penalty for murder.

      Shows where our priorities are.

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
    27. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Why should we force everyone down one path, when clearly there is a place for both options?

      Because copyright laws affect everyone, not just the people who choose to use a copyright-based business model. Web hosts have to police their users' content. Electronics manufacturers have to restrict what their equipment can do. Average folks have to restrict what they say to each other because some pieces of information are off-limits.

      A copyright-based business model would be fine if it were opt-in for everyone, not just the copyright holders, but of course then copyright would be toothless.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    28. Re:Insanity by Dan541 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's easy to forget that. I'm all for the death penalty and harsh criminal convictions, but only for violent crime. IP infringement is not a crime that we need to take 10 years from somebody for. Let's not forget that we will spend anywhere between 300K and 400K as taxpayers to do it too. Is is really that cost effective for us to do this? To protect big media companies? To protect society, or our values?

      Copyright laws have a huge cost to society, I think they should be abolished then we wouldn't have to deal with this crap.

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
    29. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I agree that 10 years is absurd, maybe 1 year and a boatload of community service.

      As for your assertion that this shouldn't be a matter for criminal courts, well, the law disagrees with you:
      copyright.gov
      Title 17 Chapter 5 506.a.1.B was probably violated, though not mentioned in DOJ press release.
      Title 17 Chapter 5 506.a.1.C was definately violated.

    30. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's no market for labor unless someone is willing to pay for it. If anyone who wanted to could enjoy the fruit of my labor for free, who has incentive to pay me? Who, pray tell, do I charge for my labor?

      I'm sure someone will throw the notion of "well, some open source companies charge for support contracts. So that's a business model. Nyeah nyeah." Yes, some do. But I want to make software, not support it. I HATE doing production support, and most other programmers do too.

      Plus, if I don't have copyright and everything's open source and freely available, the model will fall down, because someone else is perfectly free to offer support services for my software too. Now I have no incentive to offer new features, because someone else will leach half my profit away without lifting a damn finger to improve the product.

      Believe it or not, there are real problems with OSS business models. Most contributors to OSS projects have day jobs, and in a large number of cases, they're people who either a.) pay the bills writing proprietary software or b.) work for companies that make most of their money from proprietary software.

      I love that passionate, interested people have built things in their spare time that rival what larger behemoth companies couldn't do. But without for-profit software companies, a majority of the labor behind FOSS would be unemployed, and have more pressing concerns than creating new Firefox plugins.

    31. Re:Insanity by nurb432 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      he's done nothing that should be even closely considered to being a danger to society

      Ah, but you forget piracy funds terrorism...

      I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?

      The government would love this, as the entire populace could be stripped of most their constitutional rights and be easily controlled and turned in to virtual serfs as 'restitution'.

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    32. Re:Insanity by nurb432 · · Score: 1

      It would certainly seem that the powerful in this country are pushing for stronger and stronger criminal punishments for what would otherwise be a civil matter between 2 entities

      When you can buy the laws, and are called by the house 'the most important industry in this country' what do you expect?

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    33. Re:Insanity by JimDaGeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Huh? Your not even CLOSE in your stupid analogy.

      First, someone uploading a copyrighted item is NOT the same as "turning someones life upside down". Sorry, it is just not even close. Can you tell me that one high-paid exec of the RIAA/MPAA has had their "life turned into hell" because someone uploaded "Spiderman 3"? No.

      Please get some perspective.

      Oh, and spare me the "little artist" crap. The MPAA/RIAA take away the copyrights of those "little artist" and then do "creative accounting" to basically pay them shit for their works of art while trying to maximize their profits.

      I have an idea, how about no corp can buy a copyrighted work from someone, they can only exclusively lease it for a period of no more then 5 years. This way the TRUE artist still holds the copyright. If the work is great and makes great money, THEN the real ARTIST has the corps by the balls after 5 years and can get a real fair deal for their work.

      Not this "creative accounting" deal where a popular artist seems to have made NEGATIVE money in the first few years.

      Yeah, this will never happen as long as the MPAA/RIAA are allowed to bribe our "representatives". Mickey Mouse needs another 200 years!

      --
      General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
    34. Re:Insanity by deimtee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They don't want nasty violent people in there, they want nice malleable workers who will do what they are told because they are too shit scared to move. You know, white colar recreational drug users.

      --
      I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
    35. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why we're better off just beating the shit out of our neighbors. We'll feel better and we'll get less time in prison. And c'mon, beating the shit out of your annoying neighbors has to be more entertaining than the crap coming out of Hollywood these days. ;)

    36. Re:Insanity by stinerman · · Score: 1

      10 years? We should be so lucky.

      We'd get sent to a white-collar, minimum security resort!

    37. Re:Insanity by JimDaGeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Please. Your not even close. If someone takes my 42" HDTV, I have lost a physical possession that I cannot get back, unless it is recovered by the police.

      If someone COPIES Spider man 3, guess what, no physical property was taken. Someone copying spider man 3 doesn't take away the ability for other copies of spider man 3 to be sold.

      I am not saying it is right. However, there is a HUGE difference and it should be treated as such. Maybe the cost of the movie/video/game/etc X 10?

      So illegally upload/download spider man 3, and get fined $20 X 10 = $200. Sounds fair. The copyright holder would not have gotten a sale so now they get 10 sales! How more freaking fair can you be?

      Oh, wait. Yeah, lets charge $1,000's for that copy AND put the person in jail for a long ass time.

      Ah, the laws bought by Corporate America!

      --
      General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
    38. Re:Insanity by Awptimus+Prime · · Score: 1

      I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?

      How about we start voting for people who are more concerned with citizens than lobbyists for big corporations? With the economy in the dumps, states are going to be looking for new ways of getting people in jail for the nearly free labor (as far as state budgets are concerned) they provide at taxpayer expense.

    39. Re:Insanity by Logic+and+Reason · · Score: 1

      We'll go out of business, and stop making good products for people to use. So will a lot of other small software houses.

      Good. Go out of business, and take your culture of victimhood with you. We'll get along fine without you.

      I'm sure this will come as a great shock to you, but you're not somehow magically ENTITLED to enjoy whatever you want whenever you are for free.

      You have the gall to accuse file-sharers of a sense of entitlement, when your entire business model is based on government-granted monopolies?

    40. Re:Insanity by maxume · · Score: 1

      You raise an interesting point, but I'm not sure they care.

      Besides, most people in prison on drug charges are anything but white collar. White collar people are casual users that can afford to pay other people to deal with the risks associated with acquiring drugs (i.e., they only buy what they need for a short period of time from a dealer they (sort of) trust, they never have a large amount in possession).

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    41. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed - you are right. A prison sentence is not justifiable in this case, and totally irrelevant to the people due royalties and payment for the creative content and investment raised to produce the stuff that was shared.

      If I write and record a song, it's mine. If I choose to give it away for free then that's up to me, and covered by the license I choose to distribute it under, much like Apache or Windows Vista. If you want to give my property away to your friends, then so be it. But if I don't want you too and I catch you then you should pay me the royalties I have lost.

      You're right though - a prison sentence doesn't pay my mortgage.

    42. Re:Insanity by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 1

      I suggest you pick a few good games, and a few good movies, and take a good hard look at the complete credits.

      It takes millions of dollars to get that many skilled people together for the time it takes to make a game or move. Can you make a concrete suggestion as to where the money for this would come from if every movie and game were immediately available for free to everyone? By concrete I mean an actual mechanism that would lead to anyone being willing to put up the tens of millions of dollars to produce these games and movies, not just the empty hand waving you gave above?

    43. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All of This Is A Result of People Being So Conservative About Everything And People Letting The Government Get Too Large. Welcome To The Future, Where the legal system is a BUSINESS....

    44. Re:Insanity by Rudolf · · Score: 1

      Thats twice the penalty for murder.

      Must depend on where you live.

      Around we have the death penalty or life imprisonment for murder.

    45. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ever hear of Tower Records? What happened to them? What happened to most of their big competitors? They've pretty much vanished within the last ten years, didn't they? And most of it was well underway before iTunes appeared... in fact iTunes has helped keep what's left of the music industry afloat.

      That's just the tip of the music industry iceberg, the visible part. Below the surface, thousands of working musicians are struggling. The vast majority *aren't* making much if any money on concerts, contrary to the advice dispensed by the hip tech blogs (run by people who never tried making a living that way).

      P2P sharing has had devastating consequences for workers at all levels of the music business. It is not a victimless crime. I'm sure that when you do it, you're just downloading stuff you wouldn't have bought anyway... and you know what, sometimes if you like the stuff well enough, you've actually gone out and bought the record. Guess what? Every other f***r has exactly the same line. It's pure rationalization. It's like the oil executives saying there's no global warming. That's why the labels have laid off half their workforce and the retail chains went out of business.

      BTW funny how all the posts in this thread who don't agree that illegal file sharing is harmless, have been modded down. Wheeze 'jes trolls...

    46. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was not trolling. Just attempting to make a fair comparison. Theft is theft. Whether the property is tangible or not, it is still property. Next time you are writing code and expect to get paid for the intangible resulting application, you better hope your client/employer doesn't read your comments slashdot. Because the slashdot community as whole has decided intangible property does not merit monentary compensation.

      This comment will probably get marked as "Troll" again, but at least I made one more attempt to express my point.

    47. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry to burst your little bubble, but age of offender is weighed as heavily as crime committed when deciding where you are going to serve. At 26, unless he's also very rich, he will most likely be spending his days at a medium security facility. Granted, it's not supermax with the most vile criminals, but it's no "Club Fed" either.

      "Club Fed" is reserved for older white collar criminals who screwed their organization from the INSIDE with things like embezzlement, fraudulent accounting...

    48. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because the people in other industries are producing physical objects.

      Look a little harder. Open the yellow pages and you'll find hundreds of businesses that don't produce physical objects - they perform services.

      Writing software is a service too, and you can get paid for performing it, just like a barber gets paid for cutting hair and an accountant gets paid for balancing books. Just because copyright encourages you to think of a program as a thing that you create and sell doesn't mean that's the natural way to treat it, and certainly doesn't mean that's the only way to treat it.

      And you're utterly, factually wrong about businesses "doing the work once those customers have agreed to pay them for it." Never fucking heard of retail, dipshit?

      Why yes, I have. But it seems you haven't heard of services, so I'll give you a few minutes to look them up on Wikipedia.

      Ready? OK.

      Now, is there a reason you think retail is a better model than services for software development? Or are you just going to swear and insult me some more to distract from the lack of substance in your argument?

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    49. Re:Insanity by Jason+Earl · · Score: 1

      Oh please. Most people are not effected by copyright law in the slightest. Sure, someday black helicopters might swoop down every time someone sings "Happy Birthday" at their backyard birthday party, but I personally doubt it. Until that time, please check the histrionics at the door.

      The reality of the situation is that you really have to work at it to run afoul of copyright law. This particular individual basically ran a commercial bootlegging operation. He paid for and administered a server and recruited people with a lot of bandwidth. Now he's going to prison. If he was smarter he would have plead guilty and ended up with a 5 month sentence, like his compatriots, instead of a possible 10 year sentence. Either this guy is several sandwiches short of a picnic, or he got some spectacularly bad legal advice. He apparently hoped that the jury would feel that his crimes were justified or some such crap.

      It would appear that the average jury member in the U.S. disagrees with that sentiment.

      Now, you can try and equate what this guy did with me singing along with the new Coldplay album while I drive to work, but that's simply not realistic. I'm not going to end up in this guys shoes because I made a dvd slideshow with "The Luckiest" as background music.

    50. Re:Insanity by Slashdot+Suxxors · · Score: 1

      Riiight. Because everything the government says and does is right. All the time. No matter what.

    51. Re:Insanity by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, if someone steals the secret designs for the new Widget(tm) that a company has then they should get jail time

      I disagree. If they are in jail they are costing society money. If they are given a massive fine that won't go away with bankruptcy then their life will be dedicated to contributing money back into society in one way or another. They might not like it, but it sure beats jail time, and it's not like they are at a high risk of hurting anyone.

    52. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Oh, by the way...

      You and your GNUtard friends (and keep in mind, I write open-source code) plainly don't give two shits about the rights of those who are actually making things.

      That's funny, because I am one of those people who are "actually making things".

      I write software, both open-source and closed-source. I make a living by writing code: not by duplicating code I've already written and selling it in discrete little packages like it's coming off an assembly line, but by exchanging my code-writing labor for money. I don't need to worry about whether people copy the code I write, and neither does my employer, because we're not in the business of selling copies of files.

      You don't need to be in the business of selling copies either. People can make their own copies. What they can't do is write the software in the first place: that's something there will always be demand for, copyright or no copyright, P2P or no P2P, so if you can provide it, you have nothing to worry about as long as you're willing to adapt.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    53. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > Well, if someone steals the secret designs for the new Widget(tm) that a company has then they should get jail time and that is an IP crime, although you could argue it's industrial espionage.

      That's still just a matter of money, so we should stick to fines and such. I wouldn't go with jail time unless they did something worse than just that (e.g. were repeat offenders at least). Otherwise, they become a drain on society.

      After all, what do we do when a _company_ 'steals' and idea from another company? But the unequal justice between what companies can get away with and what people can get away with is another matter entirely.

      Sometimes, I wish I was a company so that I wasn't bound by all the laws normal people have to obey.

    54. Re:Insanity by clang_jangle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe we should just build Imaginary Prisons for those who "steal" Imaginary Property? Then the punishment could truly fit the crime. :)

      --
      Caveat Utilitor
    55. Re:Insanity by Mprx · · Score: 1

      The existing games aren't going to suddenly vanish. Have you really played every good game in existence, read every good novel, watched every good movie, listened to every good album? Also, without copyright, costs to produce games and movies will be dramatically decreased, as duplication of effort simply to bypass monopolies will become pointless.

    56. Re:Insanity by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      I could live with that. I was just pointing out that not all IP crimes are created equal.

    57. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      There's no market for labor unless someone is willing to pay for it. If anyone who wanted to could enjoy the fruit of my labor for free, who has incentive to pay me?

      Why would you perform the labor for free in the first place?

      The point of charging for your labor is that people can't enjoy the fruits of labor you haven't performed yet. They can't use your software before you've written it, and you don't have to write it for free. So if someone wants that software, they have to pay you to write it first.

      Who, pray tell, do I charge for my labor?

      Whoever is willing to pay, i.e. whoever benefits from you having done the labor. That probably means some combination of end users (who benefit from having new software available) and system integrators (who can use your software to make their products more attractive). You wouldn't have just one customer, unless someone were willing to pay your entire asking price out of their own pocket.

      I love that passionate, interested people have built things in their spare time that rival what larger behemoth companies couldn't do. But without for-profit software companies, a majority of the labor behind FOSS would be unemployed, and have more pressing concerns than creating new Firefox plugins.

      I'm not suggesting that software would only have to be made in people's spare time. You can write software for profit even without copyright.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    58. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's easy to forget that. I'm all for the death penalty and harsh criminal convictions, but only for violent crime. IP infringement is not a crime that we need to take 10 years from somebody for.


      Well, we don't have a say, do we? THEY make the laws and WE suckers enforce them upon each other.. Doh. More fool US. What WE need to do is to collectively grow a spine and get THEM to do THEIR own dirty work. Then where will THEY be? Of course this will never happen because THEY are devisive bitches and WE are backstabbing disorganised losers - always ready to stab EACH OTHER in the back when THEY wave their cheque book. I mean, the same powermonger assholes have been ensuring that most of the rest of the world are always fighting each other, selling them weapons to do it and even getting more of US suckers to invade foreign countries on their behalf. I don't think WE are organised enough to withstand THEIR level of organisation; do YOU?

    59. Re:Insanity by Dan541 · · Score: 1

      I live in the worlds largest prison (Australia) locking convicts up is a violation of human rights.

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
    60. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interestingly enough.. a case here (BC) where a guy took a hatchet to someones back (four times) and paralyzed the guy for life only ended up with a sentence of something laughable like 4 years.

      Atrocious if you ask me. I get less jail time if I go after an RIAA executive with an axe than if I download some movies.

    61. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Oh please. Most people are not effected by copyright law in the slightest. Sure, someday black helicopters might swoop down every time someone sings "Happy Birthday" at their backyard birthday party, but I personally doubt it. Until that time, please check the histrionics at the door.

      I did, they're right there next to your strawman-- oh wait, you brought the strawman in with you.

      I gave you three examples of how copyright affects people other than the copyright holders: service providers who have to enforce copyright complaints against their customers (e.g. YouTube taking down videos), manufacturers who have to restrict what their products can do (e.g. DVRs that can't record/transfer certain shows and HDTVs that need to support ridiculous encryption schemes), and end users who are prohibited from sharing content with other people (including public exhibition of something they've purchased).

      You responded with silly scenarios about backyard parties and singing in the car. Not only does that fail to address my comment, but it also suggests that you think copyright is all right because it's poorly enforced. I hope I don't have to explain to you what an awful idea it is to have a bunch of laws on the books that are unenforceable or selectively enforced, especially with penalties like these!

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    62. Re:Insanity by Mprx · · Score: 1

      More importantly, there is no ultimate global P2P network, sharing the sum of all human art and knowledge. This is technically but not legally possible, and the lack of such a valuable thing is the real cost of copyright.

    63. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I think it's time you consider the possibility that people are not buying your records simply because you are not very good.

    64. Re:Insanity by westlake · · Score: 1
      This hangup about defending our bullshit economy which truly only services the "haves" in the first place is being taken to extremes and I'm getting tired of it.

      The median household income in the U.S. is $46,000.

      It interests me when the geek places himself among the "have-nots."

      I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?

      No deposit. No return.

      The production budget for Wall-E was $120 million. If the Geek wants to see more from Brad Bird ["1906'} and Pixar {"John Carter of Mars'] than the studio has to see a return on its investments - which the pirate cannot deliver.

      There is, of course, the small matter of the export dollars and tax revenues the studio generates, not to mention employment for over four hundred skilled artists and craftsman....

    65. Re:Insanity by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, Mexico?

      --

      Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

    66. Re:Insanity by jmac1492 · · Score: 1
      I'm not the original person who you were debating this with, but I don't understand where you're coming from. The guy who you're arguing with seems to work for a company as a programmer. Sure, HE gets paid a salary based on the service (programming) he provides. But the way the company he works for gets the money that pays his salary is by selling copies of the software he wrote. If the software is written well enough/not complex enough* that it doesn't need support once it's in the customer's hands, how is the company he works for supposed to make the money they need to pay him a salary?

      *Most consumer software should fit this standard. Games, office software, and pretty much anything a non-buisness user would use that isn't an operating system or physical hardware shouldn't need tech support.

      --
      Jenny's got a new number! 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    67. Re:Insanity by Cocoshimmy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your analogy is flawed because it involves a home invasion in which an individual is severely hurt financially. The amount of financial damage this hacker has done to the movie industry or any individual is equivelant to someone breaking into your house and stealing a can of pop from the fridge.

      But i'll play along anyways. Lets say this robber stealing your TV, movies, or whatever and got caught in the act. He then says to himself "hmm...i'm gonna get 10 years if this guy catches me and calls the police. But, if i beat the living shit out of him i'll only get 5 years and possibly less since it's a first offense and thats only if he manages to get to the phone so i might as well break his spine just in case." What do you think he's going to do? He should be punished and your desire for vengence is understandable but if you make a petty offense a felony with a huge prison sentence, you encourage those involved to commit violent acts, which they otherwise would not undertake, in order to avoid capture. (in this case breaking your spine)

    68. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Hey communist open-sores loving fucktard, go pour some fucking gasoline on your miserable little self and light a fucking match at lets say a fucktarded linsux lusers group so you can take a few communist fucktards with you.

      -FishWithAHammer (957772)

    69. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Sure, HE gets paid a salary based on the service (programming) he provides. But the way the company he works for gets the money that pays his salary is by selling copies of the software he wrote.

      Right - in other words, the company he works for has chosen a copyright-based business model. They've decided to use their own money to pay their employees to write code, and then (hopefully) make it back later by selling individual copies of that code.

      But they didn't need to choose that business model. Instead, they could've chosen a service-based model, where they offer to write software for a certain price, instead of selling copies of software that's already been written.

      This model involves more coordination between buyers and sellers, because the dollar amounts are much bigger and so you're unlikely to get all the money from a single customer: instead of selling one CD-ROM for $50 to one person, you might sell several months of labor for $100,000 to a group of people pooling their money. But it has advantages. The developers get a guaranteed income without having to worry about piracy or unenforceable copyright laws; the end users get to use and distribute the software for free once it's written.

      If the software is written well enough/not complex enough* that it doesn't need support once it's in the customer's hands, how is the company he works for supposed to make the money they need to pay him a salary?

      I'm not talking about selling support. That's one additional way for a company to make money from software, but they can still make money just by writing the software in the first place.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    70. Re:Insanity by ozphx · · Score: 1

      Or you could think about the game theory for a minute. If I steal someones television I just cost my countries economy a thousand bucks. Similarily if I punch some guy in the face.

      If I upload every damn movie the movie industry releases and stop a thousand people buying a copy, then I've already cost the industry many times a thousand bucks.

      These laws are from the original pirates with printing presses destroying the literature industry. Now making copies is more accessible, but the laws still apply.

      Tip: Its easier to kill people using modern technology as well. Doesn't mean we consider lowering the penalty.

      --
      3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
    71. Re:Insanity by suck_burners_rice · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Ok let's think about this. What was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights supposed to defend? Your rights, right? Ok, now that we've established that, from whom is this Bill of Rights defending you, the individual? Mainly from the government. Now you need to realize that the government is not some ephemeral entity that determines the order of the universe. It's a bunch of dudes who happened to get elected and happen, therefore, to have power to make things happen. It is from THOSE DUDES that the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect you. Unfortunately, the Bill of Rights is only a piece of paper. It is YOU who must always monitor what is happening and to fight violations of your rights. I believe that in that Bill of Rights somewhere, it says something to the effect that:

      Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

      Now don't you think that getting the kind of sentence that a rapist might get is a tad bit CRUEL AND UNUSUAL for downloading or uploading some worthless garbage?

      --
      McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
    72. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Been to Iraq recently?

      Google for Blackwater...

    73. Re:Insanity by Kuroji · · Score: 1

      Actually, there are plenty of rapists and murderers getting convicted and given lesser sentences than this. I'm hoping this gets completely overturned on appeal.

    74. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10 years in prison? I realize that's a maximum, but the reality is he's done nothing that should be even closely considered to being a danger to society.

      This hangup about defending our bullshit economy which truly only services the "haves" in the first place is being taken to extremes and I'm getting tired of it.

      I say pirate everything, convince your friends, family, etc. Let's see what they do when EVERYONE is downloading their shit. Are they going to throw us all in jail? Then where will they be?

      Fuckers.

      Insightful??? Always blows my mind. I'm from the supply side and I often risk everything I own producing content. I've set a date for getting out of the industry and I'm encouraging everyone I know to do the same. If you think it's cool to steal what will you do when there's nothing to steal and we all invest in energy futures or some other more profitable venture than producing content for people that don't appreciate it? Troll away but it sickens me this "us against the man" attitude. Most of the ones you are stealing from are people no better off than you are you are just robbing them of their livelyhood. Right now I'd rather put the effort into something that people can't so easily steal. The good fairy doesn't make films and music, people that work 80 to 100 hours a week sweating blood do.

    75. Re:Insanity by REJOSU · · Score: 1

      While I feel your comments go a little too far, on the other hand, it seems as if this is VERY light in actual economic impact, whereas you have a war that is sucking billions every month.

      It just doesn't seem right, because the only problem that the stealing of software can do is produced an economic loss, whereas a war has produced the perfect conditions for a recession.

    76. Re:Insanity by bds1986 · · Score: 1

      Try thinking of examples other than software for a change. Think about a movie. Who exactly is going to come up with the money to contract a film crew, and actors, to make a movie?

      I might want to see the movie, but I sure as hell don't want to poney up the million dollars it would require to produce it. I guess I could try finding other people who want to see the movie, and convince them to pay for it, but that brings two problems:
      - I don't have anywhere near the resources to contact all potential movie fans who might want to contribute. I could probably only contact a hundred people, tops, even using the internet (I'm just a nobody, why should anybody get onboard with my movie?).
      - What incentive do any of these people have to help pay for this movie, when they all know that if they sit back and let someone else pay for it, they can get it for free?
      - If I do somehow get thousands of potential donors to pay for my movie, what do I do if they want input into the production process in exchange for their money? How will I reconcile disputes concerning thousands of stakeholders?

      Hmm. What I could do is poney up the million dollars for the movie, and then retain the rights to it for myself. Then, I could charge people token amounts to see the movie in theatres, or buy copies on DVD. Perfect! I get my money back, and consumers only have to pay for a tiny fraction of the cost of the movie. Now that I can sell copies of my movie, I can convince others that there is profit in selling copies (they can have a cut of any sales they make), which encourages a distribution network to form and expands my potential audience, making it even easier to pay for my movie. Sound like a familiar system?

      FOSS has been a beneficial business model for some types of software, but people really need to stop insisting that it is a "one size fits all" business model replacement for all sectors of the economy. It ain't.

    77. Re:Insanity by bds1986 · · Score: 1

      "The existing games aren't going to suddenly vanish."

      That's not a valid defense. "Well, we won't get any new games, but the old ones that were produced under the old business model will still be on Pirate Bay!".

      "Have you really played every good game in existence, read every good novel, watched every good movie, listened to every good album?"

      No. But I don't really want to go back and play that installment of Commander Keen that I skipped. I would like to play new titles.

      "Also, without copyright, costs to produce games and movies will be dramatically decreased"

      Decreased, maybe, but not eliminated. You still haven't answered the question of where the money to pay for even this reduced figure will come from.

    78. Re:Insanity by magicbutton · · Score: 1

      ...more like anarchy. I don't know why I still get surprised when punk comments like this get modded 'insightful'.

      'They' would wouldn't BE anywhere.
      Since it seems you think no one should ever earn a profit (e.g. 'pirate everything') while running a business, YOU would be forced to make your skater do-rags from palm-tree fronds and any movies you watched would consist of a light bulb (the yummy, warm incandescent kind) and a hand making animal shadows on a wall.

    79. Re:Insanity by Mike610544 · · Score: 1

      Would the Iron Man movie have been made if they were only going to sell one ticket?

      --
      ... also, I can kill you with my brain.
    80. Re:Insanity by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 1

      So essentially your argument is that we have enough good movies and games now that we don't need to have any more? Where would you put the time at which the existing material was enough to be worth giving up on new stuff? Considering that some of the best games and movies are less than 10 years old, I find it hard to believe that we've reached the peak yet.

      As far as costs go, why do you think not having to license or work around copyrighted material would cut much of the cost of making a movie or a game? It might save some costs for the score, but most movies want an original score. The costs are for things like sets, effects shots, costumes, travel to location shots, electricians, carpenters, and many many more--go read the complete credits of a major film. There are a LOT of people involved, and most of their work would be the same whether or not they are using or producing copyright work. Same for games--you've got artists designing characters, modelers making the models, animators, people designing levels, and things like that, and voice actors, and of course, programmers.

      To give a concrete example, let's look at the latest Dreamworks movie. Here's what I count:

      • 2 directors
      • 4 writers
      • 26 voice actors
      • 4 producers
      • 2 composers
      • 1 cinematographer
      • 1 editor
      • 1 production designer
      • 1 art director
      • 6 production managers
      • 11 person art department (1 sculptor, 7 visual development artists, 2 storyboard artists, and 1 art researcher)
      • 17 sound people
      • 110 or so visual effects people
      • 40 animation people
      • 2 people in casting
      • 26 people for music
      • 75 listed as 'other crew'

      That's animated. How about a big more conventional movie? The new Hellboy movie looks like it has over 500 people in the credits.

      Hell, Clerks, about as minimalist as you can get, has somewhere between 50 and 100 people listed.

    81. Re:Insanity by Mike610544 · · Score: 1

      If your income depends on people not being allowed to share information with each other, then you're doing it wrong.

      How would you suggest I recoup my expenses from making a very expensive movie?

      --
      ... also, I can kill you with my brain.
    82. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Who exactly is going to come up with the money to contract a film crew, and actors, to make a movie?

      Anyone who thinks they'll benefit from the release of that movie: probably some combination of people looking for entertainment, venue owners looking for something to bring people into their theaters, video equipment manufacturers looking for content that people will want to watch, etc.

      I don't have anywhere near the resources to contact all potential movie fans who might want to contribute. I could probably only contact a hundred people, tops, even using the internet (I'm just a nobody, why should anybody get onboard with my movie?).

      Connecting filmmakers and audiences is a niche that middlemen can fill fairly easily. Imagine a web site where you can see each artist's past works and new proposals, contribute money, and get recommendations from other fans.

      What incentive do any of these people have to help pay for this movie, when they all know that if they sit back and let someone else pay for it, they can get it for free?

      If everyone sits back and lets someone else pay for it, then no one will pay, and the movie will never get made -- and everyone knows that.

      Their incentive to pay is the same as their desire to see the movie completed. The people who end up paying will most likely be the people who care the most about the movie or benefit the most from its existence.

      If I do somehow get thousands of potential donors to pay for my movie, what do I do if they want input into the production process in exchange for their money? How will I reconcile disputes concerning thousands of stakeholders?

      That's up to you.

      If those customers are coming to you through a middleman, you can probably negotiate with the middleman instead of dealing with thousands of individual customers, and let him worry about counting their votes or whatever. But in any case, you aren't any more obligated to cater to them than anyone else who provides a service. If they want something you're not willing to provide, tell them to take their money elsewhere.

      Hmm. What I could do is poney up the million dollars for the movie, and then retain the rights to it for myself.

      Funny. But when you say "retain the rights to [this movie]", what that really means is "demand the right to veto everyone else's communications and actions in order to stop them from showing the movie to anyone without my permission".

      And that's where I object: what I say to other people over my phone line and internet connection, or burn onto discs and give away, is my business -- not yours. It's awfully presumptuous to think you can just limit my speech for your own benefit, and tell me what I can or can't do with the equipment and media I own, just to make your business run a little smoother. I'm not your employee.

      If you can come up with a way to make this business model work without taking rights away from everyone else, then you'll have something worth trying.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    83. Re:Insanity by Fustican · · Score: 1

      Sometimes this entire society seems like an Intellectual Prison.

    84. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      How would you suggest I recoup my expenses from making a very expensive movie?

      Don't incur those expenses in the first place until you've found people who are willing to pay you to make the movie.

      Similarly, if you're a commercial road paver, you'll be better off going around to the people who live on the road before you pave it and getting them to agree to pay for the work and materials, rather than paving it at your own expense and then trying to sell the paved road to them after the fact.

      The advantage to you is a guaranteed income: you'll know, before you even set foot on the movie set, exactly how much profit you'll see when the work is done. You won't have to worry about piracy, because you will have been paid already by the time anyone sees the movie. And although it requires a little more work up front to do market research, find customers, and so on, that's already the norm in nearly every other industry (like paving roads).

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    85. Re:Insanity by OnlineAlias · · Score: 1

      ..venue owners looking for something to bring people into their theaters...

      Uh, why would anyone go to a theater, as they have this work freely available all over the internet, on disk, everywhere. That is, unless it is only being shown in theaters, which is exactly the way it is now.

    86. Re:Insanity by Dun+Malg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ever hear of Tower Records? What happened to them? What happened to most of their big competitors? They've pretty much vanished within the last ten years, didn't they?

      Wal-Mart happened to the big record chains. Tower and all those other bastards sold CDs at list price. Tower also expanded over aggressively in the 90's. High-volume, low-margin discount sellers is what killed the record chains, not piracy.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    87. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Uh, why would anyone go to a theater, as they have this work freely available all over the internet, on disk, everywhere.

      A lot of people still prefer the theater experience, watching a movie on a big screen with 200 other people and gut-shaking surround sound, instead of in their living room on a 10 year old CRT with tinny speakers.

      On the other hand, many people would rather watch movies at home. It's up to theater owners to provide more than what people can get at home if they want to stay in business. Some theaters offer loveseats, serve dinner and wine, etc.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    88. Re:Insanity by bds1986 · · Score: 1

      Imagine a web site where you can see each artist's past works and new proposals, contribute money, and get recommendations from other fans.

      That's definitely an interesting idea, I'll grant you that. I still think you'd have creating anything other than small films via this method, but I would be very interested to see someone try this concept.

      But when you say "retain the rights to [this movie]", what that really means is "demand the right to veto everyone else's communications and actions in order to stop them from showing the movie to anyone without my permission".

      No argument there.

      And that's where I object: what I say to other people over my phone line and internet connection, or burn onto discs and give away, is my business -- not yours. It's awfully presumptuous to think you can just limit my speech for your own benefit, and tell me what I can or can't do with the equipment and media I own, just to make your business run a little smoother. I'm not your employee.

      I disagree. I do think the current methods of copyright protection have gone overboard in this regard; I don't see the need to send the black helicopters because someone takes a few minutes of a movie, dubs it to music and whacks it on Youtube. However, I also don't see how someone torrenting a complete copy of a movie over the internet is a freedom of speech issue, any more than someone selling stolen property at a pawn shop qualifies under freedom of expression. With regard to your equipment and media use not being my business, the contents of your truck aren't any of my business, unless you've parked it in my driveway and are loading it up with my property, in which case yes, it is.

    89. Re:Insanity by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1

      I was not trolling. Just attempting to make a fair comparison. Theft is theft. Whether the property is tangible or not, it is still property.

      You're a fucking idiot. Copyright infringement isn't theft, and "intellectual property" isn't property. This isn't just the opinion of a bunch of commie pinko pirates on slashdot, this is the fucking law as stated in the Constitution and US code. A blanket proclamation by a fucktard like you who can't make the distinction doesn't change that. Honestly, how many fucking times has the difference been explained to you on slashdot?

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    90. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Free Software will be produced even without copyright law

      I think you'd be amazed at how much Free Software(tm) is subsidized by large software and services companies. Linux might as well be the next version of OS/2, given IBM's involvement. They use it to tweak Microsoft's nose.

    91. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      That's definitely an interesting idea, I'll grant you that. I still think you'd have creating anything other than small films via this method, but I would be very interested to see someone try this concept.

      Sellaband.com is doing something similar with music, although their business model is still a bit different from what I have in mind.

      Specifically, they get fans to contribute whatever they feel like contributing (in increments of $10), toward a goal of $50,000. Once the band reaches that goal, the money is used to hire a recording studio and produce an album. Copies of the album are then sent to everyone who contributed, and sold through the web site, with three tracks available for free; some fraction of the revenue goes to the people who contributed to the production.

      What I'd do is let artists set their own goal and keep the money for themselves: if someone wants to ask the users to pay him $2500 to produce a single track in his basement with a laptop and an acoustic guitar, more power to him. That would allow artists to get their profit up front instead of selling copies.

      However, I also don't see how someone torrenting a complete copy of a movie over the internet is a freedom of speech issue, any more than someone selling stolen property at a pawn shop qualifies under freedom of expression.

      Er.. because communicating over the internet is speech, but hauling property around isn't. If you tell me I can't say a certain string of bits, because it encodes a copy of your movie and anyone who hears me would be able to watch the movie without your permission, then you're restricting my speech.

      Maybe it's easier if we consider books. If I have a book, I can use my freedom of speech to tell you certain facts about it: the cover is blue and has the words "Moby Dick by Herman Melville" written on it. There's a sticker in the corner saying "20% off". The story is about a man's quest to hunt a whale.

      But, if it were still under copyright, I'd be forbidden to tell you certain other facts about it. I could probably get away with saying "the first word printed on page 1, beneath the chapter heading, is 'call'", and "the next word is 'me'", and "the word after that is 'Ishmael'"... but keep that up for long enough and I'd be breaking the law, even though these are factual statements just like the ones above. Copyright makes it illegal to describe your own property in detail to another person.

      With regard to your equipment and media use not being my business, the contents of your truck aren't any of my business, unless you've parked it in my driveway and are loading it up with my property, in which case yes, it is.

      Well, exactly. Copying isn't like parking a truck in your driveway and loading up your property. You don't lose anything, you're not involved in the act, you can't watch it happening, and you can't tell whether or not it's already happened even if you suspect it has. After someone copies your movie, you're no poorer than you were before.

      Property is subject to ownership because it can only be in one place at a time; someone has to decide how it'll be used at any given time, because some uses conflict with others. Information, however, can be everywhere, and it's impossible for one person's use to conflict with anyone else's.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    92. Re:Insanity by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      Well, perhaps after he gets out of prison for 10 years, he can go get revenge and serve the 5 year sentence they give out for beating someone nearly but not totally to death. I'm sure after 10 years, he'll won't have much to lose and he'll have a lot of experience getting beaten and beating up people and be very nicely desocialized.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    93. Re:Insanity by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 1

      Couldn't he just imagine he was in jail for ten years instead? I think that would be a more appropriate punishment.

      --
      Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
    94. Re:Insanity by Lord+Flipper · · Score: 1

      This hangup about defending our bullshit economy which truly only services the "haves" in the first place is being taken to extremes and I'm getting tired of it.

      God Damn! Exactly. Nobody comes out and says this. I'm sure individuals have, but it seems ridiculously rare.

      None of us are born taking shortcuts or aspiring to be thieves, per se. But after decades of seeing the corporations bowed down to, and fed poorly-paid, no-med coverage slaves, have laws crafted to facilitate their operations, caps on liability suits, etc, and then seeing them whine like the weakest bitches when their exorbitant profits take a blip somehow... I've fucking had it too.

      And I know people are going to say, "You can't afford, don't read/play/use, etc. I understand that. But there's a flipside to it also: Paying these people just validates their inhuman, criminally out-of-whack model. I won't do it. And I also encourage others to take what you need, leave the rest, and give back to the world at large.

    95. Re:Insanity by Lord+Flipper · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I am more concerned by the fact that turning this into a criminal matter has provided government and corporations the impetus to do away with our privacy and rights altogether simply to provide protection for a few companies profit margins.

      Don't Forget

      These companies are also either in, or connected to businesses (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Honeywell, Wackenhut, etc) that are in the prison business for profit. So, it is in the corporate ruling class interest to criminalize as many people as possible, for long terms, etc.

      There's a reason why America, per capita, is the most heavily imprisoned population in the history of the World.

    96. Re:Insanity by jonaskoelker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A copyright defines rights which are granted to somebody from the government.

      Almost true.

      A copyright defines a set of rights which is temporarily given up by everybody except one entity, for the benefit of that entity. The giving up of those rights is mandatory, in the sense that the law says you have to, and voluntary in the sense that The People (in theory) chooses what the law says.

      I think the generally accepted philosophical POV on /. is that when you're born, you're granted some set of rights. No more rights can come into existence, but they can be taken away or not. The government has the power, when backed by the will of the people, to take away some of those rights, but is unable to create rights.

      Just a random tangent.

    97. Re:Insanity by jonaskoelker · · Score: 1

      Well, the problem is that it's called Intellectual Property. I have nightmares about an Intellectual Prison, where instead of my usual diet of Agarwal and Lewin (EE 6.002 and physics 8.02 from ocw) I'm forced to watch Teletubbies and Fox news.

    98. Re:Insanity by jonaskoelker · · Score: 1

      Your suggested business model works great for some kinds of software, and not at all for others.

      One case is the mass-market software. In economic theory, this is the transaction overhead cost (is that the right term); you can afford it if you have five big customers. You can't afford it if you have five million small customers. You also lose the opportunity of making something and finding out later who your customers are.

      This also happens in the real world: the wii, the iphone, the thinkpads; they might be made with one or more particular market segments in mind, but no agreements with the buyers before they were made, which is of real benefit both to the buyers and the sellers.

      I'm not saying that your parent isn't wrong or presenting his view with bad rhetoric, but let's get the whole truth on the table, yeah?

      (goes and hugs his gnu, tux and beastie dolls)

    99. Re:Insanity by dodecalogue · · Score: 1

      not to mention that so many of these games are just variations, or outright rehashes on the same old things, which inexplicably get passed off as new. I'd say it was practically a scam if I didn't know that most people making games really like making (or at least playing) games, despite their limited creativity or corporate pressures. but there's probably at least 30 "NEW GAMES" between doom2 and halo5 in the FPS "genre" that I don't really feel like I'm missing out on. [different maps, probably about 10 weapons with predictable range of utility + a couple surprises, some boringass plotline, more and more epic film worst-of-both-worlds cut scenes....] "Side-scroller". "Real-time-strategy". I'm not going to play or buy (most of) these games, but I'm certainly not going to buy them.

    100. Re:Insanity by dodecalogue · · Score: 1

      Considering that some of the best games and movies are less than 10 years old



      And some of the best first-person shooters are less than 2 years old. You see how that works?

    101. Re:Insanity by dodecalogue · · Score: 1

      Uh, why would anyone go to a theater

      This reminds me of parts of "Meeting Woody Allen" where they talk about how going to the cinema has changed/died.

    102. Re:Insanity by MSZ · · Score: 1

      Imagine a web site where you can see each artist's past works and new proposals, contribute money, and get recommendations from other fans.


      That's definitely an interesting idea, I'll grant you that. I still think you'd have creating anything other than small films via this method, but I would be very interested to see someone try this concept.


      I think "Wreck A Movie" people are trying something in this vein.
      These are the same people who made "Star Wreck" series and now will be releasing "Iron Sky", their first "big" budget production.

      --
      The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
    103. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      grow up. nobody with any brain cells believes this oft-repeated BS about somehow people only losing out if you take something physical.
      Your bank balance is just numbers, I be you would whine like a baby if I was to swap them for zeroes.
      get a clue.

      And stop whining about 'corporate america'. Copyright protects everyone who actually gets off their fat ass and makes something. Your juvenile attempts to imply all copyright holders are wealthy execs is just pathetic.

    104. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you are forgetting some very important crimes, like corrupting high government officials (or beign corrupted on part of the same officials).

      that is a serious danger to the society!

    105. Re:Insanity by Kjella · · Score: 2, Informative

      Now don't you think that getting the kind of sentence that a rapist might get is a tad bit CRUEL AND UNUSUAL for downloading or uploading some worthless garbage?

      Unfortunately, the eight amendment is rarely used to find whether a crime is comparable to the punishment, but rather on the punishment as such. This is more like the classic eight amendment stuff: "In Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1878) the Supreme Court commented that drawing and quartering, public dissecting, burning alive and disemboweling would constitute cruel and unusual punishment"

      Jailtime is not normally cruel or unusual punishment for a crime. In 1983 they found that "life imprisonment without parole for cashing a $100 check on a closed account was cruel and unusual." but have since retreated to a "gross disproportionality principle." where basicly as long as you get the same punishment as others in the same position it is not unconstitutional. They've upheld several others, like:

      • In Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263 (1980), the Court upheld a life sentence with the possibility of parole for fraud crimes totaling $230.
      • In Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957 (1991), the Court upheld a life sentence without the possibility of parole for possession of 672 grams of cocaine.
      • In Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63 (2003), the Court upheld a sentence imposed under California's three-strikes law when the defendant was convicted of shoplifting videotapes worth a total of $150 fine.

      Unfortunately, I can see why the Supreme Court wants to stay out of it. Congress passes a law that says you can get up to X years in jail. Is it then really the Supreme Court's job to go in and regulate each and every case to determine if the punishment is reasonable? It'd essentially turn the court another level of appeal on the case, not the law. Plus it comes dangerously close to the courts writing their own law by lowering sentences on some crimes compared to others. Instead they've taken the amendment to be a restriction on the type of punishment, not the scope of punishment. Reading the classic cases, I think this is the original and intended scope of it.

      If you think ten years for copyright infringement is excessive, you should ask Congress to lower it. If you think the conditions in jail are cruel and unusual, you may have a case for the Supreme Court but otherwise not. I think the separation of powers in this case is right, that Congress is completely bought by the content industry doesn't justify asking the courts to do Congress' job. Two wrongs don't make a right.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    106. Re:Insanity by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      And then they go into imaginary prison where the floors and walls are switched?

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    107. Re:Insanity by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      I like being conservative about Not Capitalizing Every Word.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    108. Re:Insanity by Mjec · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Copyright laws have a huge cost to society, I think they should be abolished then we wouldn't have to deal with this crap.

      For those who haven't seen the argument a million times before, I feel compelled to post it again. Copyright law is a benefit to society.

      The whole point of IP law is that innovation can be protected for a short period of time (sufficient to guarantee a worthwhile return on investment) and then remove that protection to allow the advancement to be used by society.

      In other words, IP laws both reward innovation and encourage openness that wouldn't otherwise be viable. In theory at least. Good principle, shitty implementation. Don't abolish the whole thing though, or we'll go back to black-box inventions and no cooperation.

      --
      "But everyone should know everything." -markab
    109. Re:Insanity by Mjec · · Score: 1

      Now don't you think that getting the kind of sentence that a rapist might get is a tad bit CRUEL AND UNUSUAL for downloading or uploading some worthless garbage?

      Absolutely. But let's hear what the judge determines to be the sentence before leaping to conclusions, shall we?

      --
      "But everyone should know everything." -markab
    110. Re:Insanity by Mjec · · Score: 1

      *creak*

      That's the sound of a long bow being drawn.

      --
      "But everyone should know everything." -markab
    111. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      One case is the mass-market software. In economic theory, this is the transaction overhead cost (is that the right term); you can afford it if you have five big customers. You can't afford it if you have five million small customers.

      Well, you might not want to deal with five million individual transactions by yourself, but you can contract that out to someone else. Software companies do essentially the same thing already, by selling copies in quantity to distributors and retailers.

      This also happens in the real world: the wii, the iphone, the thinkpads; they might be made with one or more particular market segments in mind, but no agreements with the buyers before they were made, which is of real benefit both to the buyers and the sellers.

      How does the seller benefit by not knowing who's going to pay him?

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    112. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speaking only for myself, but, after reading through your posting history, I'd prefer that you moved to someplace that doesn't have Internet access. I'd thank you, and perhaps others would as well.

      Barring that, can't you got to Digg, or MySpace, or something? You're not a nerd, and I don't know why you hang out here - is it because you're a nerd fanboi?

    113. Re:Insanity by Jinjuku · · Score: 0

      Blah, blah, blah, blah... You should realize not everyone out there is that stupid. The sentencing is meant to be PUNITIVE. Paying for what you stole/infringed upon and calling it even doesn't even come close.

    114. Re:Insanity by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1

      Ok let's think about this. What was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights supposed to defend? Your rights, right?

      Amendments 1-10, okay, but the purpose of the Constitution isn't to defend anyone's rights, it's to establish the roles and responsibilities of the federal government. One of those roles is to grant copyrights and patents to those who's creations (e.g. art and inventions) benefit society. Of course, whether or not the current "limited" times are in line with the purpose of benefiting society is a separate issue.

    115. Re:Insanity by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1

      You have the gall to accuse file-sharers of a sense of entitlement, when your entire business model is based on government-granted monopolies?

      I know, how dare anyone expect to be able to earn enough money to feed their family in exchange for their work.

    116. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wow what drivel. SO you never want to see ANY new games?
      Listen you retard, if you love freely made games, then fucking woohoo, knock yourself out, but the rest of us sane people enjoy commercial stuff too and don't appreciate knuckleheads like you trying to fuck up OUR industry.
      If your fucking hippy-shit free business model is so fucking cool, why the fuck aren't the most popular games free ones?
      Fucking retard

    117. Re:Insanity by glindsey · · Score: 1

      I'll admit quite freely that it does harm certain people whose livelihoods were based on the fact that it was very difficult and/or expensive to share perfect copies of music, movies, games, and other data. But you better get used to it, because you aren't going to stop it. Nobody is.

      This is an honest-to-goodness sea change in the American -- possibly the world -- economy, made possible by the ability to cheaply store, copy, and transfer huge amounts of information. The propogation of pirated material was inevitable once this happened.

      If the attitude that persists today had existed in the past, the printing press would've been outlawed because it put thousands of hand illuminators out of business, and owning an automobile would've been a imprisonable offense because it adversely affected so many people who made their livings on horse-driven carriages.

      Yep, you and thousands of others are going to be harmed, and in some cases pretty badly too. That's too damned bad. Deal with it, or die out trying to cling to an outdated business model.

    118. Re:Insanity by 0111+1110 · · Score: 1

      Amendments 1-10, okay, but the purpose of the Constitution isn't to defend anyone's rights, it's to limit the roles and responsibilities of the federal government.

      Fixed it for you. The founders were essentially Libertarians.

      --
      Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
    119. Re:Insanity by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 1

      And if that happened, I cant see the USA being out of a interesting work, either artistically or technologically.

      Also, Iron Man was a great example of how Hollywood has no original ideas. They instead raid the old coffers of comic books and movie-ize them.

      --
    120. Re:Insanity by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 1

      Well speaking for whoever wants me to and my legions of fans I hear Hell is good this time of year. Why don't you take off an hit the road.

      Coward.

      --

      Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

    121. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but you can make the exact same point about spam, malware, identity theft, governments spying on their people, and GPL violations. This is how the world works, so suck it up and deal with it. Get a new "model" for conducting your daily affairs.

    122. Re:Insanity by bpjk · · Score: 1
      The problem with that model is margin. As long as producers (of anything) have a shot at generating many, many times their initial investment, they'll do it the way they've always been doing it: producing and then putting it out there for money.

      Asking potential customers first if they want to pay for it and then negotiating a price, will almost certainly lead to very limited profit margins (since you're limiting your maximum revenue up-front).

      So, the model you propose may work in some industries (mostly industries that can't scale cost-efficiently) but not if the alternative potentially leads to profits that are an order of magnitude or two bigger. This difference in potential profit even justifies investing in preventing/fighting piracy, since that's a relatively minor additional cost. Hence DRM and court cases.

    123. Re:Insanity by gorbachev · · Score: 1

      The conspiracy theorist in me is convinced jail times for intellectual property related crimes have more to do with distribution of wealth from tax payers to the private prison industry than the justice system as such.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
    124. Re:Insanity by easyTree · · Score: 1

      Absolutely. But let's hear what the judge determines to be the sentence before leaping to conclusions, shall we?


      Yah, we don't we. Why don't we also look into the bank accounts of the judge and everyone the judge knows so that we can partially satisfy ourselves that [s]he hasn't been taking bribes from the penis-herders at the MPAA.

    125. Re:Insanity by gorbachev · · Score: 1

      Tower Records died because of online music sales, not because of piracy. They couldn't compete with the lower prices on online stores like Amazon.com and died.

      Their demise had NOTHING to do with music piracy.

      One of the main reasons why artists are struggling is, IMHO, because of the music industry itself. It's built on the mega hit model, where nobody but the mega stars make it rich. The record companies are raking artists and the margins for small time artists are negative because of that. Meanwhile, in addition of the raking they also take away the artists rights to their own creations, so not only does the artist pay for everything, but they also get robbed of their IP.

      Artists continue supporting this, because all of them hope and believe to become the Next Big Thing (tm), and they feel like they have no other choice. It's a dream machine. Obviously the large majority of them never make it.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
    126. Re:Insanity by Mprx · · Score: 1

      It's worth cutting the production of new entertainment to 1/100th or even 1/1000th of what it is now because eliminating copyright would create an unimaginably huge quantity of wealth. I'm not sure how to calculate the total value of all works currently restricted by copyright, but it must be at least 1 billion USD. Multiply by 7 billion world population, and you get a number that doesn't fit the human imagination. Admittedly not all humans would have access to this at first, but it would create an extremely strong incentive for improved access to computer hardware and communication, so the number would rise rapidly. That you would deny this potential utopia just to get more new games indicates that you are evil, or at the very least stupid.

    127. Re:Insanity by easyTree · · Score: 1

      mod parent up.

    128. Re:Insanity by easyTree · · Score: 1

      Oh, and spare me the "little artist" crap. The MPAA/RIAA take away the copyrights of those "little artist" and then do "creative accounting" to basically pay them shit for their works of art while trying to maximize their profits.


      It warms the cockles of my heart to see that others feel anger towards blatant corruption and double-speak. Perhaps there is still hope for the world as we knew it. Now if we can just persuade a critical mass of people to revolt against those that want to become our corporate overlords. I mean revolt, not just say "I don't support their actions".

    129. Re:Insanity by JimDaGeek · · Score: 1

      That is why I said the cost of the item X 10 or something similar.

      Download one song that is valued at $1 shouldn't cost $1,000's in "damages".

      --
      General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
    130. Re:Insanity by JimDaGeek · · Score: 1

      Go troll somewhere else AC.

      --
      General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
    131. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I also disagree with the punish

      Lets' change your situation to more accurately reflect the situation:
      You have 5 apples, they are identical, you have 5 potatoes, also identical, and 7 oranges. Someone comes and looks at your apples, potatoes and oranges, but I don't take any, only the ideas of them, possibly pictures. You still have 5 apples 5 potatoes and 7 oranges, but now I also have a picture of your food.

      Had this been theft, you would have had less than 5 apples, 5 potatoes, and 7 oranges after the "Infringement" or "Theft".

      and the only issue is the trespassing in this case.

    132. Re:Insanity by DeadlyBattleRobot · · Score: 1

      It should be more like $200 fine and 40 hours community service. But:

      1. prisons are a profit center, so harsh penalties complement this arrangement. It's absurd what they imprison people for.

      2. considering who really owns everything, according to George Carlin, the penalty makes perfect sense.

    133. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      So, the model you propose may work in some industries (mostly industries that can't scale cost-efficiently) but not if the alternative potentially leads to profits that are an order of magnitude or two bigger.

      Well, we can solve that by abolishing copyright.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    134. Re:Insanity by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      No, it's not worth it in the slightest and you still haven't given a decent reason why it is.

      The current system (sans the incredibly long length of regular copyrights) is perfectly fine. If someone wants to make a game for free (the OSS model) they are absolutely free to do that. If they want to charge for it, they are free to do that too. Your entire argument centres around feeling that OSS is crap[*] so therefore you should be able to get all the commercial stuff for free. Fuck that.

      [*] This doesn't represent my opinion, this appears to be the viewpoint of the parent post.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    135. Re:Insanity by marnues · · Score: 1

      Might want to lay off the kool-aid for a bit, its affecting your thinking.

    136. Re:Insanity by whathappenedtomonday · · Score: 1

      see the Journal of Jeremiah Cornelius: throwing people in jail has become a very profitable business. it's not insanity, it's a business plan.

      --
      I hope I didn't brain my damage.
    137. Re:Insanity by Mprx · · Score: 1

      Software is only a small minority of copyright restricted content, and Free Software's only significant weakness is games.

    138. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No stealie, no jailie.

    139. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      /Trademark Claim on www.(E-)affect.com, and any otherwise various protocol information mechanism delivery systems that may be subsequently inclusively amended in the future.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBeUGqeYsQg

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRYsaGGHm24

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TppRjknOryk

      This commercial brought to you by the Real(TM) Kool-Aid. Please cease and desist any and all references to the copyrighted, trade protected, secret formula'd, recipe and or recipEEs (hehe), to the brand Kool-Aid, and all its (E-)affiliates. Thank you for your cooperation. This message may serve as subpEEna notice depending on your jurisdiction. Check your local municipal laws for applicability. Kool-Aid has thus far bben declared and regarded as a safe refreshing product for the thirsty masses for many decades. On behalf of Kool-Aid trademark IP owners, we regard such negative stereotypes as libel, and may undertake appropriate legal action to defend our Good Name. Kool-Aid. Bustin' Ass through the Walls of your mind, long, long, before Pink Floyd, bloody usurpers.

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    140. Re:Insanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2 percent of Americans in Jail - and accelerating, costs exploding.

      In 2006 Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 US residents.

      Something is seriously wrong here -the priorities are all wrong.

      The masses are turning to Obama, who wil have to make some tough decisions that dont result in recurrent costs. Maybe the IRS can audit the money trail.

    141. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      Maybe the IRS can audit the money trail.

      The IRS responds with the Tax Snack Act(TSA).

      One for you, two for me.

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    142. Re:Insanity by jonaskoelker · · Score: 1

      five million individual transactions [...] you can contract that out to someone else.

      True, but it doesn't escape the problem I'm trying to point out: it's sometimes beneficial to not ask for the money before you start working.

      How does the seller benefit by not knowing who's going to pay him?

      In no way. However, he does benefit from not having to know who's going to pay him. For instance, he can base his decisions based on statistical market research (i.e. 95% of people who wear orange sunglasses want to buy ipods) without having to get the buyers' money first (something that's unlikely to happen).

    143. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      How can the "seller" even theoretically afford to produce before being paid? Obviously if he does, copyright has done exactly zip zero stingy with deniro contributory effect to the creation of that art. Copyright is completely useless. If, on the other hand, such artists were to be paid in advance, to remove reason for holding their customers hostage, to the tantalizing details intentionally leaked to drum up "demand", then copyright is completely unnecessary to wholly satisfactory free market trade of services rendered.

      So "useless", or "unnecessary", copyright is an anachronism in the modern 21st century era. But nevertheless true that (sometimes represented as "tru dat") if I start knocking down walls in my neighbor's house without advance permission to improve the spacial dimensions of His Majesty's Manor, I undertake merely a sledge hammer experimental demonstration of unsolicited charity pleading for payment in spite of any contrary wishes of the owners of potentially exchangeable real property. Keep the change, bitch. ^_^

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    144. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      Right - in other words, the company he works for has chosen a copyright-based business model. They've decided to use their own money to pay their employees to write code, and then (hopefully) make it back later by selling individual copies of that code.

      But they didn't need to choose that business model. Instead, they could've chosen a service-based model, where they offer to write software for a certain price, instead of selling copies of software that's already been written.

      When it comes to software, front-loading the process--getting the customer to pay you ahead of time--doesn't work well in most cases; it works only in very specific industries.

      Example. Take Joe Blow, an indie games developer. Just a one-man developer. Who the hell is going to come to him and pay him to make a computer game for them? What standing does he have? The answer is "absolutely nothing." So in your dream world, he can't get a handhold to move up. There's no effective way for him to do so. Sure, he could release a bunch of games for free, but the whole "needing to eat" thing breaks that down. Whereas under the current system, Joe Blow can go "hmm, that's a pretty cool idea, I'll make that!" and sell it. The back-loaded process has more risk, but actually has some chance of success (and a potentially very high reward)--whereas there is no chance of success in a front-loaded process.

      Your argument falls on its face, unless all you want making software are established companies. Personally, as an independent game developer myself, I'd rather avoid that.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    145. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      Ooops, almost forgot.

      it's sometimes beneficial to not ask for the money before you start "working".

      Fixed. That's certainly the P2P International Brothers and Sisters United Union Pledge, you dumbfuck discredited Marxist Labor Theory of (Intrinsic Objective) Value, dumbass believer. Q.E.D. /Reported to the Prime Director for Faulty Reasoning, punishable by up to and including death of your false and misleading intellectual creations, up to and including any posts which may appear on public message board sites, such as for instance "Slashdot", which may be represented on unauthorized duplicated physical tangible matter. Because "We're the Government, and Mindless Destruction is Our Middle Ages Name!" Those "bad" cds must be burned and shredded as the witch impostors they are!

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    146. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      Your business model is simply unsustainable in most industries, as I stated above. It may work for service-based applications--it's much like the business model I use for website design, in fact--but for consumer applications? Impossible for small developers and impractical for large. Large developers would have to charge huge amounts of money up-front in order to cover expenses for work done, more than any of your magical aggregate "groups" will ever fork over. Small developers don't have name recognition, and so nobody will come to them to pay them to make software in their field (and their prices for the same software can't be brought low enough to make them a seriously attractive option over a larger company--it still takes roughly the same number of man-hours to complete a project).

      It'd also entirely fuck over content creators like novelists--no publisher would ever be able to effectively sell books to the majority of readers, "special editions" aside, and the idea that an advance could be provided to an author under such a business model. So not only do you lose quantity, you lose quality due to a lack of professional writers! Brilliant!

      Something tells me you don't understand how the current business model actually works, to be honest. Large companies can complain about piracy, but it doesn't really affect them. It does affect small companies, and brutally so. Those small companies are the same ones that would be unable to manage contracts in your business model due to a lack of name recognition--but they're able to sell Some Sleeper Hit Game without problem. A customer doesn't care how big and effective your organization is because the product's sitting right in front of him--the risk to the customer is minimal. A client does care, because he has to pay up front and the risk to him is huge.

      There's simply no way for an entirely service-oriented economy to prosper. It doesn't scale and you push all the power into the hands of cartels and conglomerates. Horrible, horrible proposition, built on the terribly foolish idea that copyright is "bad." I suppose the idea makes sense if you don't subscribe to the notion that creators deserve rights over their creations, but from a practical standpoint it's simply infeasible in too many markets. Ideological failure, practical failure.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    147. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      The ACs are getting more and more retarded these days. Kind of funny, really. :-)

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    148. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      Example. Take Joe Blow, an indie games developer. Just a one-man developer. Who the hell is going to come to him and pay him to make a computer game for them? What standing does he have? The answer is "absolutely nothing." So in your dream world, he can't get a handhold to move up. There's no effective way for him to do so. Sure, he could release a bunch of games for free, but the whole "needing to eat" thing breaks that down.

      Such is also the Case for any Barber or Hair Dresser one happens upon to Visit for the First Time, a *Profession* (epistemologically refuting your "model") perhaps for which your intellectual capabilities may be better suited, BITCH!. ^_^

      But then again perhaps my quoted "picture" of your so called logical reasoning indeed stole a portion of your balding Biblical Samsonite shaving of the locks of your Soul. Get back to us, after you graduate from Barber College.

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    149. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      Now, is there a reason you think retail is a better model than services for software development? Or are you just going to swear and insult me some more to distract from the lack of substance in your argument?

      Retail: consumer-push system; the consumer sees a bunch of products, all priced fairly cheaply, and has his pick of which one he wants. Low cost to the user. Low risk to the user. High risk to the developer, but the process seems to succeed enough that developers stay in business.

      Service-based: consumer-pull system; the consumer has to hope he can find a bunch of like-minded people willing to pay enough money to get software written (given how much software actually costs to get written, the likelihood of this is slim). If the end product delivered sucks, the group of users have wasted a huge chunk of money gambling on a developer. High cost to the user00if you think you're going to find enough users willing to pay money up front to cover costs to the point where software would cost anywhere near the same as a retail box, you're nuts. Very high risk to the user. Low risk to the developer, but if the developer can't drum up business, the developer's going to go under--and your system ensures that all but the big-name developers are going to tank. Bravo.

      One of these systems puts the risk on a corporate entity and affords consumers choice--and if the consumer guesses wrong, oh well, it's $50. The other makes consumers shoot blind and the costs are far, far greater if they guess wrong.

      More reasons why this is unsustainable, in addition to other posts downthread. And you have not given one single reason why your business model would work for consumable software (games, Microsoft Office in the home, whatever). Nobody is going to pay.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    150. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      but if the developer can't drum up business, the developer's going to go under--and your system ensures that all but the big-name developers are going to tank. Bravo.

      Except that new competitors can appear as quickly and as easily as I just quoted your post. And consumers can vote, can seek out, those who have done for them more lately with all the incentive ever needed. That wouldn't perhaps also be related to "advertising"?

      We get it. You suk. So go out of business already. Retire. The world needs more ditch diggers to drill for new oil (and alternative energy) sources anyway. But who can afford to risk resources on such endeavors if they might not pay off in the end? Why would any Oil Exploration Company, or any business whatsoever, ever hire any Laborer on a mere Gamble? That's what We in the Union Industry call the "Long Pour". Sorry, it plainly looks like the observable DATA disagrees with you. Trust and Reputation exist in the free market, and have many various institutions devoted to the expression of their market value. Copyright already exists, and Still scarce resources are misappropriated directed to it's allegedly wasteful duplication purposes of lessening Ignorance of Unknown Unknowns. And nobody ever sat in on a movie they subjectively felt was "bad" and walked out early with no Refund. Caveat Emptor. To Whenever I go the Bat Cave to PWN silly intellectually small fools like you.

      Best Regards,

      --monxrtr

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    151. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      FishWithAHammer (957772)

      I got more satisfaction from M.C. Hammer's "U Can't Touch This", An Early Exploratory Foray Into the Evolution of 1337 Speak". You are an Insult to Carpenters with Tools everywhere! Drop the Hammer, Sir, before you Hurt yourself.

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    152. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      Barbers and hairdressers are nonfungible jobs. Software development is entirely fungible. You're a fucking moron.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    153. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      Is this some kind of new drooling troll with which I am not familiar? Or is it just a moron?

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    154. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      No, it's just you, reduced to pure ad hominem insult without even the prettied up pretense of concurrently demonstrating anything otherwise of interest or merit, or even coherent bearing. Perhaps you should see a psychiatrist regarding these fetish visions of drooling trolls you talk to in public, schoolboy. Next time come prepared with pen, paper, and highlighter, so that you can take notes in your fish tank, you anthropomorphic fool. If you want to get paid for your insults, you're just going to have to try harder. But don't stop trying to promote whatever it is you're trying to promote, FOR FREE! Moron.

      RACK IT! PWNED.

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    155. Re:Insanity by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      Barbers and hairdressers are nonfungible jobs. Software development is entirely fungible. You're a fucking moron.

      Like burying your head in the sand and pretending that nobody can see you does anything to remove the epistemological scientific DATA FACT that such a real world existing *Profession* as the Barber/Hairdresser does indeed exist, and may be appropriate as a career option of lifetime service for you.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility

      Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. ... A good is fungible if one unit of the good is substantially equivalent to another unit of the same good of the same quality at the same time and place. ... Examples of highly fungible commodities are petroleum (gasoline), electricity, precious metals, and many currencies.

      Which has nonetheless nothing do with any subjective valuation of anything.

      Here Dumbfuck:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_value

      The first marginal unit is not equally valued to the last marginal unit. But keep on pretending there is a global warming crisis that threatens the supply of the copy-ability of any software code. We might run out of ideas if too many people think the same thought at the same time! Moron.

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    156. Re:Insanity by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      Sorry, so you're also saying the freely available books and music are crappy and that you demand that you can get the higher quality commercially available ones for free?

      Again, the current system is fine. If you as a producer want to charge for the fruits of your labour, you can. If you want to give it away free, you can too.

      And actually, the significant weakness of OSS is usability. Very few OSS products have an interface that doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out (this insistence on refusing to use the native OS widgets for example just pisses me off - OpenOffice seriously looks like ass on Windows with any theme other than "Windows Default")

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    157. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Take Joe Blow, an indie games developer. Just a one-man developer. Who the hell is going to come to him and pay him to make a computer game for them? What standing does he have? The answer is "absolutely nothing."

      He can promote his services in the same places as anyone else would. If he has no "standing", then he can make his services more attractive by charging a lower rate until he builds more name recognition.

      Really, this isn't anything unique to software development. Anyone who starts up any kind of service-based business has to deal with the same thing.

      Sure, he could release a bunch of games for free, but the whole "needing to eat" thing breaks that down.

      Or he could release just one. Maybe even a short one. Look at how Doom was marketed: you get the first episode for free, and this convinces you to buy the rest of them. It'd work equally well to convince people to fund the production of the remaining episodes.

      Again, this isn't unique to software development. Artists do the same thing, building up a portfolio which they can show to potential customers, in order to convince those customers that their future work will be of the same high quality as their past work.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    158. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Large developers would have to charge huge amounts of money up-front in order to cover expenses for work done, more than any of your magical aggregate "groups" will ever fork over.

      What makes you think that? People are clearly willing to spend that much money already. The demand exists.

      Small developers don't have name recognition, and so nobody will come to them to pay them to make software in their field

      So they'll go to the customers instead. You can't expect to just sit on your ass at home and have people knock on your door with briefcases full of cash.

      It'd also entirely fuck over content creators like novelists--no publisher would ever be able to effectively sell books to the majority of readers, "special editions" aside, and the idea that an advance could be provided to an author under such a business model. So not only do you lose quantity, you lose quality due to a lack of professional writers! Brilliant!

      Er... WTF? Why would it be impossible to sell books, and how is an "advance" even relevant? An advance is a loan against future royalties; it has no place in a business model that isn't based on royalties.

      Something tells me you don't understand how the current business model actually works, to be honest.

      I'm sorry you got that impression, but I assure you it's wrong.

      Those small companies are the same ones that would be unable to manage contracts in your business model due to a lack of name recognition--but they're able to sell Some Sleeper Hit Game without problem.

      Are they really? For every company who manages to do that, don't you think there are a handful of others who invest all that time and money into making a game they think will be a Sleeper Hit -- and then it turns out to be a flop?

      Getting paid for production means you're guaranteed to make money if you do the work. The copyright-based business model, on the other hand, is a crap shoot.

      Horrible, horrible proposition, built on the terribly foolish idea that copyright is "bad." I suppose the idea makes sense if you don't subscribe to the notion that creators deserve rights over their creations

      And I suppose copyright makes sense if you don't subscribe to the notion that people deserve the right to communicate freely and to use their own property as they see fit. But given the choice between preserving free speech and making it slightly easier to earn a quick buck, I think I'll choose free speech.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    159. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      the consumer has to hope he can find a bunch of like-minded people willing to pay enough money to get software written (given how much software actually costs to get written, the likelihood of this is slim).

      Not at all. People are clearly willing to pay that much in aggregate for software development already. The demand exists, and it isn't going away.

      If the end product delivered sucks, the group of users have wasted a huge chunk of money gambling on a developer.

      And if the new addition to your house sucks, you've wasted a huge chunk of money gambling on a contractor. Somehow, this hasn't undermined the market for construction work.

      And you have not given one single reason why your business model would work for consumable software (games, Microsoft Office in the home, whatever). Nobody is going to pay.

      Of course they are. If they want software written, and the only way to get that done is to pay for it, what do you think they're going to do instead?

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    160. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      The idea that the consumer is going to pull-aggregate ahead of time is nonsensical. Can you even point to one industry where this happens, where a huge group of consumers gets together and says "we will pay $X now for this widespread consumer product to be brought to market"?

      It doesn't work that way. The reason people are willing to pay that much in aggregate is because they aren't taking a risk on it. They can buy it right then. It already exists. It's a product that they can pull right off the shelf or order off the Internet.

      Of course they are. If they want software written, and the only way to get that done is to pay for it, what do you think they're going to do instead?

      It won't be developed. You'll still have the little shit open source games (like I said before--all of the worthwhile open-source games are based off originally closed-source code), but it would be the death knell of the Half-Lifes and their ilk because the consumer won't offer money ahead of time for a product with as wide a variance as software. Even pre-orders happen when the game is essentially done.

      You are attempting to use those who create physical objects as a blueprint for an industry that creates information instead. It does not fit the situation. Does copyright need fixing? Yes; the durations are far too long. Is abolition of copyright even remotely sensical? No.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    161. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      Which has nonetheless nothing do with any subjective valuation of anything.

      Wrong. Jobs are fungible, too.

      Since an established conglomerate could offer lower prices for the same services, the free market would push out of the market smaller developers. That's not a good thing. The retail model of software development and dissemination ensures competition by flattening the market.

      A barber has a nonfungible job; it can't move a hundred or a thousand miles away. Software development can. If you understood this, you would understand why your example is retarded.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    162. Re:Insanity by jonaskoelker · · Score: 1

      How can the "seller" even theoretically afford to produce before being paid? Obviously if he does, copyright has done exactly zip zero stingy with deniro contributory effect to the creation of that art.

      He could borrow some money, invest it in developing a product he believes in, and try to recoup his investment later when he's done. I hear there's a lot of that going on. For some types of investment, copyright makes recouping the cost practically feasible.

      Now, copyright of course isn't without cost to society: it cuts off people from using the work for some time. The trick is to find a way that gets the most benefit for the least cost. I don't believe the way is to have our current copyright with our current terms. It may be with copyright in its current form and a reduced duration, or copyright with a different form, or mandating the GPL on everything; I don't know, and I don't know how to convince those who decide for me that they should (1) find out; and (2) base public policy on their findings.

      Also, don't get me wrong: I like free music (thanks, Jamendo); one would possibly have more of that without copyright, or without upholding it. I also like free software (thanks, cat AUTHORS), in both senses; currently copyleft relies on copyright. But let's not distort reality because we are blinded by our love, okay?

    163. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      The idea that the consumer is going to pull-aggregate ahead of time is nonsensical. Can you even point to one industry where this happens, where a huge group of consumers gets together and says "we will pay $X now for this widespread consumer product to be brought to market"?

      If you want an example of consumers pooling their money to pay someone to perform a service, look at private road paving and other neighborhood works. If you want an example of thousands or millions of people pooling their money to reach the kind of figures needed to fund high-quality software development, look at political campaigns. If you want an example of many people paying for the production of artistic works, look at Sellaband.

      If you want an example of exactly what I'm proposing, sorry, it doesn't exist yet. That doesn't mean, however, that it's impossible or impractical. It just means that in the past, the cost of finding an audience and conducting transactions has been too high (although that's no longer true in the era of social networking sites and one-click payments), and no one has bothered because copyright provides a workable alternative (at the expense of everyone else's freedom, of course, but who cares about that when there's a quick buck to be made?).

      It doesn't work that way. The reason people are willing to pay that much in aggregate is because they aren't taking a risk on it. They can buy it right then. It already exists. It's a product that they can pull right off the shelf or order off the Internet.

      And yet people "take a risk" on other services all the time. You seem to think software development is a magical service that's different from everything else people pay each other to do, but you haven't come up with an explanation for why that might be.

      You are attempting to use those who create physical objects as a blueprint for an industry that creates information instead. It does not fit the situation.

      Er, no. Not at all. Quite the opposite, actually.

      Copyright advocates are the ones attempting to use physical objects as a blueprint for information. And you're right, that doesn't fit the situation, because information is not subject to any of the limitations that physical objects are, and so any attempt to fit it into the "property" model of ownership and control is doomed from the start.

      What I'm doing is using other services as a blueprint for the act of writing software. That fits the situation quite well: writing software is an application of labor, just like cutting hair, painting houses, balancing accounts, or any of the other thousands of services that people get paid to do every day.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    164. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Since an established conglomerate could offer lower prices for the same services, the free market would push out of the market smaller developers. That's not a good thing.

      What's so bad about it? If the same service is getting done, at a lower cost, that seems like a pretty good thing.

      This is almost the same argument people make against big box retailers, except in those cases, they can at least point to the differences between Best Buy and Pop's Corner Electronics Store: big boxes might have poorly-informed staff, inflexible policies, shallow selections, etc.

      In this case, though, you're positing that the conglomerates are providing the same service -- writing the same software and fulfilling the same needs -- but at a lower cost. That sounds like progress to me.

      And if the conglomerates ever stop offering competitive prices, or fail to fulfill some consumers' needs (which they surely will, since no company can write all the world's software), that opens up a niche for smaller developers to move into. In that respect, it's much healthier competition than in retail, since you don't need a storefront and millions of dollars of inventory to move into that niche: all you need is a computer and some knowledge.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    165. Re:Insanity by PylonHead · · Score: 1

      I will grant you that the hardware limitations are lame. I would favor letting people buy hardware that lets them do the useful, fair use things they want to do.

      But...

      "Average folks have to restrict what they say to each other because some pieces of information are off-limits."

      Sound familiar? You can't throw it out there, then claim somebody else brought it in as a strawman.

      "Web hosts have to police their users' content"

      Yeah, since when. Do you think Cmdr. Taco reads all the posts that go up on slashdot? That people at YouTube look at each new video?

      You know they don't. They do take-downs when the actual copyright owners ask them to. So the owners of the content have to police the websites themselves.

      "end users who are prohibited from sharing content with other people"

      Yeah, well, that's really the whole point, isn't it. The end users have purchased a license to the content that lets them use the content. If someone else wants to use it, they need to buy a license.

      God knows nobody is forcing them to though. Maybe if they feel strongly about it they should go find an open source alternative to the content. Then they can share to their heart's content.

      --
      # (/.);;
      - : float -> float -> float =
    166. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 0

      "Average folks have to restrict what they say to each other because some pieces of information are off-limits."

      Sound familiar? You can't throw it out there, then claim somebody else brought it in as a strawman.

      Yes, I said that and I stand by it. The GP's silly scenarios about singing in the car and at birthday parties were, indeed, strawmen, because that wasn't the sort of thing I was referring to -- we all know no one has to worry about being arrested in their back yard for singing Happy Birthday.

      Average folks do have to restrict what they say to each other, though. If I want to send you a copy of a song, but I can't because of copyright law, that's a restriction on my communications. If I want to explain to you how to decrypt a movie (or give you a program that does it), but I can't because of the DMCA, that's another one. (No pedantic hair-splitting over "communicate" vs. "say", please. Sending you a file over the internet is equivalent to calling you on the phone and reading a bunch of numbers; it's just more convenient.)

      "Web hosts have to police their users' content"

      Yeah, since when. Do you think Cmdr. Taco reads all the posts that go up on slashdot? That people at YouTube look at each new video?

      You know they don't. They do take-downs when the actual copyright owners ask them to. So the owners of the content have to police the websites themselves.

      YouTube may not have to look at each new video, but they do have to spend time responding to takedown notices and counter-notices, or developing and administering a system to handle them. You don't think those videos just magically disappear when someone complains, at no cost to anyone involved, do you?

      The sites also become less useful as a result. If I want to share a news clip, maybe I'll choose to host it myself instead of putting it on YouTube, because I'm wary that someone portrayed in the clip might file a takedown notice, which will waste my time even if I manage to counter it. Or maybe I'll download a clip to watch later instead of just adding it to my YouTube favorites, because I know there's a chance that the clip won't be available next time I want to watch it. Presumably, YouTube wants people to use their site, so this is another negative from their perspective.

      Yeah, well, that's really the whole point, isn't it. The end users have purchased a license to the content that lets them use the content. If someone else wants to use it, they need to buy a license.

      Right. Like I said, that's one of the negative effects that copyright has on people other than the copyright holders: if they want to share something, but they're forbidden from doing so, that's hardly a good thing for them.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    167. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      We're obviously at an impasse. Fortunately, the law agrees with me. If you want to spend your money to commission software with loose copyright or even no copyright at all, more power to you. I will continue to use copyright to ensure that I can make a living from my work. (And no, unlike RMS's retarded assertion, I don't use "make a living" as a euphemism for "getting rich.")

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    168. Re:Insanity by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      Why isn't that a good idea? Because encouraging more monopolistic companies and cartels is not a good idea? Couple that with consumers who are none too bright about what they want and you have a recipe for complete and utter suck.

      I also haven't even addressed the issue that your idea would entirely stifle innovation (why would a programmer come up with an idea for an awesome new product if he can't get paid for it?) and pretty much all products except for what consumers think they want. In recreation software in particular (which I keep coming back to because it's my own field), what they want is usually not what they like.

      How do you propose to address the sudden death of all so-called "sleeper hits" coming out of left field? Or do you sacrifice innovation and creativity on the altar of stripping developers' freedoms? Or do you really think that there would be enough interested consumers for somebody to be able to sell that idea to them? At a living wage? Please.

      You've obviously given it a lot of thought, and in an ideal world maybe it'd work, but you've given no incentive for content creators to want such a thing. It's just like the GPL: good for users, horrible for developers (if they're forced to use it; fortunately, they are not--it has its place and that place is well away from my open-source and closed-source code alike). And sorry if it sounds selfish, but there's absolutely no benefit to this idea to me or anyone who doesn't want to draw a paycheck from some multinational.

      Copyright protects the little guy, not just the big faceless corporation.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    169. Re:Insanity by PylonHead · · Score: 1

      (No pedantic hair-splitting over "communicate" vs. "say", please. Sending you a file over the internet is equivalent to calling you on the phone and reading a bunch of numbers; it's just more convenient.)

      I'm afraid I'm going to have to object to this. File transfer and human speech are distinct operations in my book. I suspect most people would agree.

      You don't think those videos just magically disappear when someone complains, at no cost to anyone involved, do you?

      It would be silly to deny that there are some costs to Google. They aren't complaining and don't appear to be suffering for it. It's only one of the regulatory issues that they have to deal with on a day to day basis. I'm sure they appreciate you stepping in to fight for them though.

      The sites also become less useful as a result. If I want to share a news clip, maybe I'll choose to host it myself instead of putting it on YouTube, because I'm wary that someone portrayed in the clip might file a takedown notice, which will waste my time even if I manage to counter it

      I think there are two different issues here... one, you don't own copyright to a news clip, so you probably don't actually have the right to post it to YouTube.

      But there is another issue you touch on that I think is a problem: The people with the biggest lawyers often win these competitions. So there are cases where even legal behavior is quashed through overreaching legal coercion. I'm not sure how to best address this, but I don't think it means we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

      Right. Like I said, that's one of the negative effects that copyright has on people other than the copyright holders: if they want to share something, but they're forbidden from doing so, that's hardly a good thing for them.

      If you're going to start considering everything that people want to do but aren't allowed to as a "negative effect" then I'm sure you'll find many examples. I don't want to pay taxes. I don't want to obey speed limits. We as a society have decided that these things are important for the common good.

      In addition, it's unclear that without copyright laws, the copyrighted content that the people want to share would even exist. Do you think Pixar would spend fifty million dollars creating their next movie if they couldn't charge licensing fees to make back their investment?

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    170. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      I'm afraid I'm going to have to object to this. File transfer and human speech are distinct operations in my book. I suspect most people would agree.

      I suspect they wouldn't. If I can tell you something in person or on the phone, but I can't tell it to you over the internet, I think most people would quite rightly consider that a restriction of freedom of speech (or at least freedom of press).

      I think there are two different issues here... one, you don't own copyright to a news clip, so you probably don't actually have the right to post it to YouTube.

      If my use of it counts as fair use, e.g. if I'm critiquing their coverage, then I certainly do have the right to share it. And yet bloggers are still faced with takedown notices for obvious instances of fair use. HorsesAss.org just had to deal with something like this, where they posted a short clip from TVW (basically a statewide C-SPAN) and ended up having to host it themselves because TVW complained to YouTube.

      If you're going to start considering everything that people want to do but aren't allowed to as a "negative effect" then I'm sure you'll find many examples. I don't want to pay taxes. I don't want to obey speed limits. We as a society have decided that these things are important for the common good.

      Yes, those are negative effects, and it's important that they be balanced out by sufficient positives. The negatives of copyright, however, are not, and there's little evidence that copyright really is important for the common good. The ability of moneyed interests to influence legislation is not proof that the legislation is good for society.

      In addition, it's unclear that without copyright laws, the copyrighted content that the people want to share would even exist. Do you think Pixar would spend fifty million dollars creating their next movie if they couldn't charge licensing fees to make back their investment?

      The landscape would indeed be different without copyright, but it's a fallacy to conclude that "different" means "worse".

      Even if we agree that, say, Toy Story wouldn't have existed if not for copyright... what does that tell us? Who knows how many works we're missing out on because of copyright? I wouldn't mind giving up a handful of blockbusters if it meant gaining tens of thousands of additional lower-budget works.

      Without the ability to peer into an alternate universe, we can't know for certain which works would or wouldn't exist in a world without copyright. We don't know whether we'd have access to more works or fewer, or if they'd be better or worse. We do, however, know that we'd all have more freedom without copyright, and that artists in general would still be able to earn a living.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    171. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Why isn't that a good idea? Because encouraging more monopolistic companies and cartels is not a good idea?

      Large != monopolistic.

      You seem to be arguing against economies of scale in general here. Sorry, but I don't think you're going to convince anyone that small, inefficient firms are preferable to large, efficient ones.

      And like I said, as soon as the large, efficient firm fails to meet consumer needs (by not writing a particular program that people want to see written), they leave room for an independent developer to move in. So either we have large developers writing all the software that anyone could ever want cheaply, or we have large developers writing some of it cheaply and independent developers writing the rest of it for a higher price. Either way, it all gets written.

      I also haven't even addressed the issue that your idea would entirely stifle innovation (why would a programmer come up with an idea for an awesome new product if he can't get paid for it?)

      That question rests on a false premise. People can get paid for writing code whether they implement a boring old idea or an awesome new one. Coming up with the idea isn't really the hard part anyway; plenty of people have awesome new ideas, but few of them ever get implemented.

      How do you propose to address the sudden death of all so-called "sleeper hits" coming out of left field?

      I suspect they'll be more than balanced out by the sudden appearance of new works which had been prohibited by copyright: mash-ups, fan tributes, sequels and other universe continuations, etc.

      Or do you sacrifice innovation and creativity on the altar of stripping developers' freedoms?

      You misspelled "the altar of restoring everyone else's freedoms". HTH!

      You've obviously given it a lot of thought, and in an ideal world maybe it'd work, but you've given no incentive for content creators to want such a thing.

      If they aren't convinced by the prospect of a guaranteed income (rather than gambling on whether they'll sell enough copies to recoup their investment), then they won't be convinced.

      But that's OK. I don't need to convince them.

      And sorry if it sounds selfish, but there's absolutely no benefit to this idea to me or anyone who doesn't want to draw a paycheck from some multinational.

      Actually, there's plenty of benefit to consumers, service providers, and basically everyone who isn't a copyright holder. Maybe copyright holders don't think they'd benefit, but that's OK: the playing field has been tipped in their favor for long enough already.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    172. Re:Insanity by PylonHead · · Score: 1

      And yet bloggers are still faced with takedown notices for obvious instances of fair use. HorsesAss.org just had to deal with something like this, where they posted a short clip from TVW (basically a statewide C-SPAN) and ended up having to host it themselves because TVW complained to YouTube.

      Agreed. This is a problem. I talked about it in the last post.

      Yes, those are negative effects, and it's important that they be balanced out by sufficient positives. The negatives of copyright, however, are not, and there's little evidence that copyright really is important for the common good.

      And this is really where we disagree I think. I see copyright as being important for the common good. Even something as interesting as the GPL would not exist without it. You might say that the GPL would be unnecessary, but if you think about it, that isn't quite true...

      And like you say, we wouldn't have Toy Story or the Incredibles, or for that matter any movie with a budget of more than a hundred thousand dollars.

      There would still be music, books, and software, although there would probably be a smaller selection of them.

      The landscape would indeed be different without copyright, but it's a fallacy to conclude that "different" means "worse".

      Heh. Perhaps I'm just short sighted then. I look at the content we agree we would lose, and I don't want it to go away. Of the content we would gain... I'm not really seeing the added value.

      Perhaps you could have people building up movies organically like open source software. But I can't really picture that working out.

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    173. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      Even something as interesting as the GPL would not exist without it. You might say that the GPL would be unnecessary, but if you think about it, that isn't quite true...

      I disagree: copyleft licenses, of which the GPL is one, fundamentally serve to give back the freedoms that copyright takes away. With no copyright, there'd be no need for copyleft, so the GPL would indeed be unnecessary.

      It might be less convenient to develop open source software without the GPL, since others would be able to modify your software and distribute the modified binaries, without releasing their source changes (which they can already do if you use the BSD license). But then you'd be free to reverse-engineer their code and port the changes back into your open source version - or you could just freely use and share their binary version.

      I look at the content we agree we would lose, and I don't want it to go away. Of the content we would gain... I'm not really seeing the added value.

      Well, first, I don't necessarily agree that we would lose that content; that was a hypothetical. As long as there's demand for movies like Toy Story to be produced, I have a hard time seeing how they could just "go away": if the market has taught us anything, it's that money will eventually find its way from the people who want something to the people who can provide it.

      Second, even if you can't see the added value yourself, surely you agree that's a matter of personal taste. Pixar movies aren't "better" in any objective sense than, say, the music of Girl Talk or Negativland.

      Perhaps you could have people building up movies organically like open source software. But I can't really picture that working out.

      It's already happening, slowly but surely. See Big Buck Bunny, for example.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    174. Re:Insanity by PylonHead · · Score: 1

      It might be less convenient to develop open source software without the GPL, since others would be able to modify your software and distribute the modified binaries, without releasing their source changes

      Exactly.

      But then you'd be free to reverse-engineer their code and port the changes back into your open source version

      You throw around the word reverse-engineer like it were a trivial thing. Sure, unobfuscated java class files decompile quite nicely, but as soon as you get away from that, you're massively ramping up the overhead required to modify their code.

      - or you could just freely use and share their binary version.

      But not change it... which is really the whole point of the GPL.

      As long as there's demand for movies like Toy Story to be produced, I have a hard time seeing how they could just "go away": if the market has taught us anything, it's that money will eventually find its way from the people who want something to the people who can provide it.

      Exactly. And that system is called copyright! It's a novel idea that lets a movie maker recoup the cost of creating a movie from many, many interested parties, meaning that no single one of them has to fund the entire venture.

      It's already happening, slowly but surely. See Big Buck Bunny [bigbuckbunny.org], for example.

      I didn't watch BBB, but I did download Elephants Dream. It was an interesting technology demo, but it wasn't much of a movie. I'm not quite ready to trade in all of Hollywood for it yet.

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    175. Re:Insanity by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      You throw around the word reverse-engineer like it were a trivial thing. Sure, unobfuscated java class files decompile quite nicely, but as soon as you get away from that, you're massively ramping up the overhead required to modify their code.

      *shrug* Then don't modify their code; just reimplement their changes in your own code. With no copyright, you don't have to worry whether your program is too similar to theirs.

      I don't really see how this poses a problem for free software. You can use it and distribute it however you want; that's as free as free can get. If you can't change it, then so what - either use their version or make a better one.

      Exactly. And that system is called copyright! It's a novel idea that lets a movie maker recoup the cost of creating a movie from many, many interested parties, meaning that no single one of them has to fund the entire venture.

      The system I had in mind is called "the free market", where people willingly pay each other to perform services. If customers want the service performed, and they have money, that money will eventually find its way to the people who can perform the service, the same way it does in every other industry. You don't need any kind of special treatment for that to happen - all you need is one group of people who have a demand and another group who can supply it.

      Copyright isn't what lets creators get paid by many, many interested parties; the market does that by giving them a place to advertise and sell their services to as many people as they want. What copyright lets them do is pretend that they're manufacturing a product.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
  4. Not that bad... by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Despite how bad it may sound, this is more or less not a big deal for the average person. It is like video game companies going after people who host ROMs of copyrighted games... Not that bad. Now if they won for a downloader or innocent uploader... That would be different.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    1. Re:Not that bad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not too bad? I'm an average person who was a member of the uploader team and now on top of real concerns I have had already I now have this to think about... :(

    2. Re:Not that bad... by plover · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Now if they won for a downloader or innocent uploader

      Define "innocent" uploader. Do you mean "uploader of copyrighted content who has not been arrested, given a jury trial, and convicted?" Or do you mean "uploader of uncopyrighted content"? Because there's a lot of legal difference between the two.

      --
      John
    3. Re:Not that bad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then you're not an 'average person' and you are making it harder for real average people by engaging in blatantly criminal activities. I hope they catch you and your new roomate has a taste for geeks.

    4. Re:Not that bad... by Darkness404 · · Score: 1

      I'm an average person who was a member of the uploader team



      Then you aren't average. You were admin. My post was about the average people who download Limewire or hunt on TPB and download warez not the creators of Limewire or the admins of TPB.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    5. Re:Not that bad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The innocent uploaders are people who don't know anything about computers and think they are only downloading, they don't realize that they are uploading as well.

    6. Re:Not that bad... by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While I dislike the **AA's tactics as much as the next guy...you wouldn't cut somebody slack for not realizing that, say, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit is illegal, would you? Or that going 105 MPH in a 55 MPH zone was illegal?

      Ignorance isn't an excuse.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    7. Re:Not that bad... by Darkness404 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      you wouldn't cut somebody slack for not realizing that, say, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit is illegal, would you? Or that going 105 MPH in a 55 MPH zone was illegal?



      Both of those though are inherently dangerous. Would I cut someone some slack if they were say, jaywalking? Yes. What about not having a penny needed to buy something if you have a penny on you. Yes. What about a guy who comes back for another free sample? Yes. Downloading things illegally is much like my situations I just gave, it isn't harming anyone really and therefore shouldn't be tried in criminal court and really, all the *AA's fines are excessive, $1 per song max. Any more and it should be considered excessive.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    8. Re:Not that bad... by plover · · Score: 1
      Ignorantia juris non excusat.

      "Ignorance of the law does not excuse." It's a legal principle that has applied since at least the Roman empire. If you are driving a car, you are expected to know the traffic laws. If you're using a computer, you are expected to know the laws pertaining to computers. If you are copying music, you are expected to know the laws regarding copyright.

      For example, if you are driving a car across an unfamiliar state, and your state law permits you to turn right at a stop sign without stopping (Wisconsin), and you roll through a right turn at a Minnesota stop sign, you are indeed guilty of violating the Minnesota statute.

      Without this principle, a defendant could always claim: "I thought every state was the same as my state" or "I didn't know armed robbery was a crime" or "I didn't know downloading music was against the law."

      However, ignorance *can* buy you sympathy from a judge when it's time for sentencing. That's one reason you see laws with phrases like "willful intent" or "knowingly did commit". If you knew you were uploading copyrighted materials, the judge would probably hand you your ass.

      Bottom line: if you are using a computer to download copyrighted music, you are in violation of the law. If your computer is uploading that music to others, you are in continued violation of the law. You are not innocent because you are ignorant.

      --
      John
  5. It might be a good idea... by deft · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...to NOT name your group on a torrent site something that allows information about structure to be gleaned.

    Sure, uploaders may be only uploading only legal content blah blah blah, but there's no reason to publicize your role in the organization unless you can sure as hell sheild yourself while these lawsuits are bounding about.

    Even the mob knows to call people "freinds of ours", not money launderers, assasins, gun runners etc. Please don't flame me because this is "security through obscurity".... because sometimes it works i.e, I still don't know where angelina jolie lives. Well played angelina, you hot little baby collector.

    --

    There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    1. Re:It might be a good idea... by autocracy · · Score: 1

      It might not be a good idea to tattoo gang signs all over your body. I think that analogy may help make the point in itself.

      --
      SIG: HUP
    2. Re:It might be a good idea... by xx_toran_xx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Security through obscurity" is what can sometimes make or break a lawsuit. The ability of a juror to make the connection between what a website might call an "content administration officer" and that user's actual role is what is at stake. The obscurity in a title like that leaves their role at the website open for interpretation. Obviously the plaintiff (MPAA) would argue it for uploader, but the defendent could argue it another way.

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      Arrrrrrr
    3. Re:It might be a good idea... by deft · · Score: 1

      maybe everyone should just have the title "ascii art guy".

      that'll show em.

      --

      There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    4. Re:It might be a good idea... by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      I still don't know where angelina jolie lives.

      123 Fake Street

      Springfield, Oh-hiya-Maude 90210

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    5. Re:It might be a good idea... by LostCluster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Reminds me of the time the SF Police raided TechTV (while TechLive was on the air) because the company had been associated with something called "CyberCrime". Cops thought they had the dumbest criminals ever, they actually had a canceled investigative news show.

    6. Re:It might be a good idea... by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 1

      ROFL, seriously? Link please!

      (...I miss TechTV. :( )

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    7. Re:It might be a good idea... by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Informative

      TechTV.com did a full write-up, only to give in to a request to delete it by the cops. CNET's coverage was gone the next day too. MSNBC mentioned the situation on their station as well, pulled in because they had two former TechTVer's on-air. (One was at the anchor desk, and a former host of CyberCrime was working at the Laci Peterson trial.)

    8. Re:It might be a good idea... by tuxgeek · · Score: 1

      I know where Angelina Jolie lives. She's in France with Brad.
      He's a lucky guy! Well done Brad ...

      --
      "Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
    9. Re:It might be a good idea... by Alsee · · Score: 5, Funny

      Please don't flame me because this is "security through obscurity".... because sometimes it works i.e, I still don't know where angelina jolie lives.

      Ok, I won't flame you. However I will mock you mercilessly.

      If you want to give an example of security through obscurity working, next time you might want to go with something that's obscure, or maybe something that's working, or better yet maybe even go with something that is obscure AND working. LOL.

      Château Miraval. 83570 Correns, France.
      Google Maps Satellite Photo.
      Article with close aerial photo.
      The WIKIPEDIA page for Château Miraval.
      Château Miraval's own website.

      And no, don't even think of suggesting what is Angelina Jolie's bra size? as a better example of obscurity than her address. 36-C.

      Ahhhh... yeah.... the next time you want to say security through obscurity sometimes works, you might want to go with a slightly different example. In fact never ever ever again attempt to use Angelina Jolie in the same sentence with the word obscurity. You're punished. Go sit in the corner.

      And no, you can't take pictures of Angelina with you. You're punished means you're supposed to sit in the corner thinking about how bad you've been, not thinking about her being a naughty naughty girl.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    10. Re:It might be a good idea... by deft · · Score: 1

      I just said it worked for me... not for those with likely a pre-exsiting restraining order. For people like you, she has real guards as well.

      --

      There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    11. Re:It might be a good idea... by Alsee · · Score: 1

      For people like you

      "People like me" would be anyone with even the most minimal ability to use Google.

      Actually Jolie isn't much to my taste. The satellite photo of her home and the other links I compiled was purely a geekish game about the information challenge itself. It wasn't much of a challenge though. It all came up really fast and easy with no effort and no special search skills at all.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  6. Those types of people legitimise the MPAA efforts by Jailbrekr · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sadly, when you are pushing prerelease stuff, you cross a very firm line into illegal territory. There is no grey area. They *are* costing the studios money, and they *are* violating both the spirit and word of copyright law. The maximum possible sentence is definately overkill, but I can't really argue with the conviction itself.

    --
    Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
  7. A tradeoff by peipas · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ten years? That could be fair if they show movies to the inmates sans FBI warnings. That way I don't think he would be losing any more of his life than the rest of us.

  8. Darknet, GO! by The+Master+Control+P · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Uploaders have doubtlessly noted that this never would have happened if they were using an encrypted darknet for initial distribution.

    Quite possibly things may evolve to the point where you aren't allowed to join without proving your identity and uploading something illegally. Compare Russian Business Network, who do this for the same purpose: you won't betray the group if they have the dirt on you also.

    Mix that with segmentation among darknets to prevent inevitable compromises from taking everything down and you're golden once you set up trusted peers between different subdarknets to diffuse data between them.

    1. Re:Darknet, GO! by Dan541 · · Score: 0

      and law enforcement wonder why they are having some much trouble with encryption.

      The Idiots bring it on them selfs.

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
    2. Re:Darknet, GO! by Software · · Score: 1

      Compare Russian Business Network, who do this for the same purpose: you won't betray the group if they have the dirt on you also.

      If the FBI could finger one of the pirates (maybe on an unrelated charge), couldn't they roll up the rest of the group by offering a deal to the nabbed guy? Reduced time, amnesty, etc. if he rats out his buddies? If this tactic worked for the Italian Mafia, I'm sure it could work for movie pirates.

    3. Re:Darknet, GO! by Inda · · Score: 1

      Uploading something illegally, ratios, fast speeds - sounds like FTP from back in the days. BitTorrent's days are numbered, rewind the evolution.

      --
      This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
    4. Re:Darknet, GO! by Neo+Sharkey · · Score: 1

      "Quite possibly things may evolve to the point where you aren't allowed to join without proving your identity and uploading something illegally. Compare Russian Business Network, who do this for the same purpose: you won't betray the group if they have the dirt on you also."

      Good idea in theory, but cops can do illegal things during an investigation. If they can buy/sell drugs to try to get to the importers, I don't think they are going to balk from uploading a rip of a movie.

      An alternative might be that people are going to go back to only sharing with people they trust, like the BBS days, or even to sneakernet.

  9. 10 years for bullshit, nothing for sendin thousand by unity100 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    to death in goddamn desert.

    HOW ?

    corporate america. thats how, and why.

  10. NOT P2P by EdIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You gotta love these people. They are trying to make it sound like P2P itself is criminal, or certainly criminal by association.

    This piracy group merely chose P2P as a medium to transfer it's files.

    That would be like government catching a bunch of whatchamacallit smugglers on bicycles and then announcing "the first bicycle whatchamacallit criminal conviction". Ummm, yeah right. What the hell does bicycles have to do it?

    It's not surprising that piracy groups have chose P2P to transfer their files. It is most efficient transfer medium with the highest market share. It used to IRC DCC transfer, and then before that it was FTP. A long time before that, it was file transfers through BBS. Bootleg copies used to be made on cassette tapes as well. Did that mean cassette tapes were also inherently "evil" and predisposed towards piracy? I think not.

    Sorry, I guess I just can't get over how completely full of shit some people are. We can argue about piracy and intellectual copyrights all day long. That's fine. Let's just not be intellectually dishonest doing it.

    1. Re:NOT P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, I guess I just can't get over how completely full of shit some people are.

      You are obviously not a gastroenterologist. Some people are still full of shit even after a double dose of bowel prep.

    2. Re:NOT P2P by ClarisseMcClellan · · Score: 1

      I like your analogy. It is a bit like blaming door users for shoplifting.

      Nowadays I claim to be totally against pirated software (including music) and I preach the 'pure FOSS' way. In reality I do download from pirate-bay once in a while, usually for things I own already. When I think 'oh, I will have that too' I tend not to actually use/listen/install whatever it was that I downloaded. The same used to happen in the days of mix-tapes - I would never listen to a tape someone gave me, yet I would gladly spend fifty quid on vinyl records that I had never listened to.

      I would never listen to a U2 song (or Metallica), however, I would download their entire back-catalogue just to piss them off. Maybe it is time for the P2P community to try and beat the Mozilla most dowloads in a day record. Just think how cool it would be if the Guinness Book of Records had:

      Most downloads in one day: 08 August 08, the entire U2 back-catalogue, number of downloads 8 million...

  11. 10 years? Please USA, get a grip by The+Fanta+Menace · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.

    --
    -- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
    1. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by urcreepyneighbor · · Score: 1

      I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.

      Got any tips?

      --
      "The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
    2. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by lena_10326 · · Score: 1

      I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.

      Money.valueOf() > Life.valueOf()

      --
      Camping on quad since 1996.
    3. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by evilviper · · Score: 2, Insightful

      10 years? Please USA, get a grip


      10 years is just the maximum possible penalty. In a few extreme cases, such as, say, the head of a large-scale commercial piracy ring, I could see it occasionally being appropriate.

      I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.


      You've seen murders getting much more than that, too, however.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    4. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's the maximum sentence, dumbass.

    5. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How about the 8th Amendment? Or am I going overboard with the interpretation of "cruel and unusual punishments"? It seems 10 years for copy infringement and piracy seems to be overboard in my books.

      I've also seen murders get less then this, so yes. I think 8th might apply.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    6. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by fnj · · Score: 1

      I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.

      This is the United States of Corporate Tool America here. Exactly what did you expect?

    7. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by fnj · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's the maximum sentence, dumbass.

      You're the dumbass. It's immoral, stupid, hateful, vindictive, corrupt, and absurd to even have the option for a penalty this severe in a case like this. Under any sane legal system, this would be a CIVIL case, not a criminal one.

      Death was "only the maximum" sentence for witchcraft too at one time, dumbass.

      Excuse the language, guys, but I'm replying to a witless anonymous coward. Anything goes in this case.

    8. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by Belial6 · · Score: 1

      Maybe, but the maximum punishment for copyright infringment should be smaller than the minimum punishment for murder.

      For me though, the biggest problem I have with this is that I have never met a single individual over the age of about 10 that has not committed some form of "IP" crime. Hell, my kid is only 4 and has committed literally hundreds of illegal public performances of copyrighted music. Every time someone in a grocery store hears him singing a song from one of his favorite TV shows, he has technically committed a crime. Who here has never played their car stereo with the windows down while they drove down the street, or sang "Happy Birthday" at a birthday party, or at least one of the other day to day things that people do.

      Hell, look at all of the "fan fiction" out on the internet. It is illegal if the "owner" of the source material didn't give express permission to use their characters. Should we be locking up little Sebastian because he handed in a school essay that involved Harry Potter?

      No one wants to really have ideas owned. No one. What some people want is to be able to charge other less powerful people to think. Truly recognizing the ownership of ideas is simply unworkable. Every single person I have ever had a conversation with used ideas that were unauthorized by the person who originally introduced the ideas. That includes YOUR comments.

    9. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by evilviper · · Score: 1

      the maximum punishment for copyright infringment should be smaller than the minimum punishment for murder.


      That's... incredibly arbitrary.

      First off, "Murder" can have innumerable extenuating circumstances, as can most any other crime. For example, anyone who feels their life is threatened, but the circumstances weren't immediate to justify their actions, can be charged with, and convicted of murder. Things like that are primarily why high "minimum" sentences are a bad idea.

      Secondly, copyright infringement isn't necessarily a victimless crime. You're bringing up absolutely trivial examples of copyright infringement, and acting as if they would inherently merit the maximum sentence, when they obviously would not.

      Third, everyone SCREAMS for harsher criminal penalties for white-collar crime, right after a CEO or the like rips-off hundreds of millions of dollars from individuals. But when it's individuals ripping off companies, like this, any punishment is too strict for the public.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    10. Re:10 years? Please USA, get a grip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      murders only hurt family's, copying hurts corporations so the crime is going to cause far more damage...

  12. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by jaymz666 · · Score: 1

    How do you prove that the people who downloaded whatever they downloaded would have paid for it if that was the only way they could get it?

    Just because someone downloads something for "free" does not mean that they would have purchased that product if the only way to obtain it was from a store.

  13. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by mattack2 · · Score: 1

    That is absolutely irrelevant. They have still violated the copyright owner's wishes for the movie/software/whatever.

  14. Re:10 years for bullshit, nothing for sendin thous by urcreepyneighbor · · Score: 1

    to death in goddamn desert.

    Wah? I don't.... Are you trolling or are you really that fucked up in the head?

    corporate america

    Uh.

    thats how, and why.

    you have a computer? Yeah, we know. Damn you, Dell! See what happens when you let anyone buy your products?! DAMN YOU!

    I'm not even going to use my karma bonus. The parent just isn't worth it.

    --
    "The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
  15. Deep conflicts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obviously this brings out the deep conflicts within the geekoid community. On one hand we have a group of people doing something illegal (stupidly) and getting caught (obvious). On the other, this does not fit well with the everything-digital-should-be-free-now mindset.

    My experience says that the folks that believe digital==free are going to win in about 30 years. At that point there will be few left in mainstream life that have not been downloading whatever they could get their grubby little hands on since childhood. It is also a fairly common view that a "creative work" is the same as clicking a few times with a mouse and nobody needs to get paid for clicking.

    This view of "creative works" comes as part-and-parcel of a view that pretty much everything that could be culturally expressed has been done sometime in the recent past and therefore everything is a derivative of a previous expression. When most of your music consists of "samples", "mix tapes" and "mashups" this is an easy view to adopt and is pretty seductive. Hollywood and the major record companies outputting recycled pablum and new P.C. versions of older successes just encourages this view.

    This probably means that in 30 years all media will be exactly that - recycled versions of past successful works. Creativity, true creativity, will be gone. Originality will be drowned at birth because it might be either offensive or unsuccessful and either is a sin in the new world.

    1. Re:Deep conflicts by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Originality will be drowned at birth because it might be either offensive

      South Park says you can suck my fucking balls.

  16. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by LostCluster · · Score: 1

    The concept is that those who downloaded owe more than the purchase price because not only did they get the benefit of whatever they would have needed to buy, they did it illegally and we don't want them doing that again. It's called punitive damages.

  17. Good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let the capitalist mind police snag the occasional foolhardy/stupid individual. It will make them think their tactics are actually effective. hahahahahahaha

  18. Worst idea evar!!!!! by TiggertheMad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Despite how bad it may sound, this is more or less not a big deal for the average person. It is like video game companies going after people who host ROMs of copyrighted games... Not that bad. Now if they won for a downloader or innocent uploader... That would be different.

    No this is horribly bad. First, it is a basic travesty of justice. Prison time for P2P? Unless he was putting nuclear weapon designs on P2P, there is no reason for this. lets put people in jail for twenty years if they steal a loaf of bread. That's progressive thinking!

    Second, the legal system loves basing later decisions on prior landmark cases. this has just told every judge for the next fifty years that criminal punishment id ok for civil infractions.

    Third, the economy is in the dumps, and every peerson we imprision for piddly ass crap like this is costing taxpayers $$$. Ten years is not cheap. The people responsable should be dragged into the street and tarred and feathered for such frivilious use of taxpayer money.

    Finally, bad laws erode respect for good laws. The more people become acoustom to breaking laws that are poorly written, the more acoustom they become to breaking laws in general.

    Very bad ruling.

    --

    HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
    1. Re:Worst idea evar!!!!! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      We established 30 years ago that you can freely distribute designs for nuclear weapons. There's books out on how to build an atomic bomb, come on.

    2. Re:Worst idea evar!!!!! by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 1

      Second, the legal system loves basing later decisions on prior landmark cases. this has just told every judge for the next fifty years that criminal punishment id ok for civil infractions

      That's not how the law, or precedent, works. This was not a civil infraction.

      Judges cannot impose criminal penalties for civil infraction. And if one did, it would not stand. Furthermore, it would not be precedent, since district courts do not set precedent.

    3. Re:Worst idea evar!!!!! by Buran · · Score: 1

      At the end of Tom Clancy's novel "The Sum Of All Fears" (or, at least in the copy I have), there is a note from the author in which he states that while researching the book, he taught himself how to build a nuclear bomb. He states that he was surprised at the ease of obtaining such information, and especially that he could order it to be sent by overnight delivery directly to his doorstep.

      (The book does not provide anything that would be classified although it does describe in detail how critical mass is achieved and how the bombs are triggered and why they are perfectly safe before being detonated, and it also states in several places that the precision required to build a bomb is way out of reach of anyone who doesn't have very specialized, expensive, restricted equipment -- and also clearly describes what happens if the bomb isn't assembled correctly. Nothing to fear from the book's existence).

      So, you can distribute not only designs (although probably not in great detail) but also how to build one -- and Clancy at least explains why it's perfectly legal.

    4. Re:Worst idea evar!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The basics of a nuclear weapon design were in several of my high school physics textbooks. The rest is just refinement.

  19. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sadly, when you are pushing prerelease stuff, you cross a very firm line into illegal territory. There is no grey area. They *are* costing the studios money,

    I don't agree that distribution of pre-release content costs the studios any more than distribution of post-release content. The MAFIAA do not have a business plan that is significantly based on release of content. I.e. they do not use something like the "ransom" model where they charge money for the release of content rather than the distribution of content. Thus illegal distribution of pre-release content is not significantly any more costly to the MAFIAA than illegal distribution of post-release content.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  20. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Jailbrekr · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Ah yes, the classic counter arguement. I was waiting for this.

    Your arguement is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Prerelease stuff is entirely different to already released material. You are, in effect, committing a form of industrial espionage by releasing a product before its release date. The fact that they used p2p as the medium to distribute it does not suddenly make it a p2p arguement.

    --
    Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
  21. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by cdrguru · · Score: 1

    Could you come with me to the Ferrari dealer? Please? I'd like to convince them that since in no way am I ever going to actually purchase a Ferrari they shouldn't mind if I take one of their extras. It wouldn't be a lost sale, because with the gas mileage they get nobody in their right mind is going to buy one today anyway. I don't have the money, so they should just give me one.

    Right?

  22. wareze 'scene' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I have seen the obscene scene on mah screen. First it was green, then tangerine, or I might have been foreseen a mean, lean pirating teen.

  23. But how far should punitive damages go? by tepples · · Score: 1

    The concept is that those who downloaded owe more than the purchase price because not only did they get the benefit of whatever they would have needed to buy, they did it illegally and we don't want them doing that again. It's called punitive damages.

    Say I write and record a song, and then it later turns out to contain a hook that was written by someone else years ago. Are punitive damages warranted in this case?

    1. Re:But how far should punitive damages go? by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 1

      Typically punitive damages are based on intent and knowledge. If you can prove that you did not know (say, the person before you was far before your time and never popular), then no. If this is the third time you've done this, or theres some way to link you to the original work, then yes.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
  24. Uploader Vs Downloader by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    How does one distinguish between an uploader and a downloader? If someone seeds a torrent, they're an uploader. Yet, if someone downloads a torrent, and lets it seed for a while, are they an uploader? Can we distinguish uploader versus downloader with P2P? I don't think the distinction is clear enough, except in cases like this, where the person's purpose was explicitly to distribute pirated content. Overall though, i think the server, not the p2p is what brought him down. The seeding might be an issue as well as the group classification, but still, the server would be a hub for piracy.

  25. 10 years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    One of my buddies, who was in Fastlight, got a year in the slammer for running one of the central ftps. 10 years is sorta overkill.

  26. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by whyareallthenamestak · · Score: 1

    Are you kidding me? Your analogy is broken. What if I had some sort of duplication machine and went to the Ferrari dealer, pointed my machine at a Ferrari, made a copy and drove off? They lose nothing. There is no way I can afford one but if I can make a copy that costs them nothing where is the crime?

  27. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by adminstring · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you'd like to come over with your car-duplicating equipment and make an exact copy of my Ferrari without damaging it, you're welcome to do so.

    :-)

    --
    My truck is like a series of tubes.
  28. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by dahitokiri · · Score: 1

    Comparing digital data to real life objects? Seriously? Hasn't this been pounded into the ground by now? Until mass replicators become feasible and cheap, this isn't the same thing. You aren't copying the content then deleting the original copy (essentially what stealing in real life is).

  29. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by roadsider · · Score: 1

    It's perfectly relevant when the industry makes its claims and bases its arguments on how much money they're losing. "The record industry has lost a billion dollars this year because of illegal downloading." Bullshit. I always ask myself, if it wasn't available on the Net, would I have bought it? Nine times out of ten, no. Absolutely not. You want to argue the validity and importance of copyrights, then fine, but don't try to frame your argument with dollars lost. The latest success of Radiohead pretty much blows that idea out of the atmosphere.

  30. P2PJury? by camperdave · · Score: 2, Funny

    MPAA Scores First P2P Jury Conviction

    I thought all juries were supposed to be composed of peers.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    1. Re:P2PJury? by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 1

      They aren't in France. Many nations have professional jurists. "Jury of peers" is an English idea.

      --
      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
    2. Re:P2PJury? by onecheapgeek · · Score: 1

      There is nothing, anywhere in US law that mentions a jury of one's peers. Just a fair and impartial jury, as picked by the lawyers for both sides with guidance from a judge.

    3. Re:P2PJury? by shark72 · · Score: 1

      You are correct.

      This is the joke that the parent was making:

      "jury of one's peers" is a well-known expression.

      The "p" in "p2p" stands for "peer."

      Thus, he finds it humorous that this is claimed to be the first "p2p jury conviction." He is saying: aren't all juries "p2p"? You see, it's a play on words.

      HTH.

      --
      Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
  31. The sad case of Hew Griffiths by Hackerlish · · Score: 1
    > Dove faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

    The power the MPAA greasers have over government is amazing. Here an Australian who never made a cent from and had never stepped foot in the US was arrested by the Australian Police and extradited to the US where he now sits in prison. Australia is famous for not looking after their citizens, but extraditing someone for something like this is insane. His name is Hew Griffiths.

    http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/australia-hands-over-man-to-us-courts/2007/05/06/1178390140855.html

    1. Re:The sad case of Hew Griffiths by Eponymous+Crowbar · · Score: 1

      For what it's worth, I'd like to offer an apology on behalf of the USA.

    2. Re:The sad case of Hew Griffiths by nomadic · · Score: 1

      The power the MPAA greasers have over government is amazing. Here an Australian who never made a cent from and had never stepped foot in the US was arrested by the Australian Police and extradited to the US where he now sits in prison. Australia is famous for not looking after their citizens, but extraditing someone for something like this is insane. His name is Hew Griffiths.

      So how would you have the law handle it instead? Just curious.

    3. Re:The sad case of Hew Griffiths by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks. It's worth something and is a reminder than government != people.

  32. Knowing how corrupt the *AA is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it possible that they paid the jury and/or judge? Yeah it's illegal, but of course, in the good ol' US of A, the law only applies if you are not a corporation.

    1. Re:Knowing how corrupt the *AA is by Dan541 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well they are involved with organised crime groups such as "Media Defender".

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
    2. Re:Knowing how corrupt the *AA is by fnj · · Score: 1

      Is it possible that they paid the jury and/or judge?

      I'd like to think so, but I think it's more likely they paid a fancy lawyer while the defendant couldn't possibly come close to matching their investment in the expensive machinery of "justice.". Juries are easily swayed by such, and judges are part of a corrupt system, even if they are not personally corrupt in the sense of having a hand out.

    3. Re:Knowing how corrupt the *AA is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think its more possible that the jury and judge understood that hundreds of people work their balls off to produce new movies, and some punk kid comes along and tries to wipe out that movies profits by distributing it to the entire world, just to grow his e-penis.

      This kid was an immature dork who got busted for knowingly, repeatedly and openly breaking the law and causing fuck-knows how much financial damage to an industry employing tens of thousands.
      No wonder he got the book thrown at him.
      but if you want to live in some fantasy land where this was all just fine, and it must be a corrupt judge, have fun kid.

  33. Bad reviews? by Mathinker · · Score: 1

    > Thus illegal distribution of pre-release content is not significantly any more
    > costly to the MAFIAA than illegal distribution of post-release content.

    It seems to me that it would be more costly if it generates a lot of bad third-party reviews before the movie hits the theaters. Maybe the **AA are worried that the content is getting to people over whom they have no control? And no, I don't believe they actually control the professional movie reviewers; however, they have much more of a chance of swaying their opinions via lobbying and other tools, if only because they know who they are.

  34. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by kramerd · · Score: 1

    Not exactly. People want to purchase a Ferrari. They generally don't steal one through P2P. Should you take one of their vehicles, someone else who was willing to purchase that vehicle will be prohibited from claiming that it was worth the price. Furthermore, the price of a Ferrari is negotiable. The price of media is not. Distributors say buy this product at this price, or dont use it. With a Ferrari, you at least get a test drive, and information about what the car is, and quite frankly, it is a purchase that will affect other purchases in your life. Not buying a movie or a song isnt necessarily a lost sale. Maybe a consumer hasnt heard of the movie, or hasnt heard the song. Maybe its played so much on the radio that buying it seems stupid at the time. Maybe they can download a higher quality version than is for sale, or maybe they can't transfer the purchased version to a purchased media player. In these cases, downloading the media isnt a lost sale. I would not buy something I can't use. If I cant transfer it to another media player, Im not buying it. I will do my research to make sure that something I want to purchase is something I want to purchase. If I download something and then decide it isnt worht the purchase price, I will not buy it. I will delete it from wherever I have it saved. Before I used the internet, I bought maybe 2-3 cds a year, at concerts I attended, because I knew that I wanted the media. I never bought movies because going to a theatre isnt worth the cost, so bringing it home isnt worht 4 times the cost. Since I started downloading, I have introduced to movies that arent in theatres, and have purchased them in multiple formats. Same for music that isnt on the radio. But if I dont feel that the cost is worth the purchase, I dont purchase. Bonus features arent worth the money unless Im a collector. My viewpoint as a consumer is will I use the media enough to warrant the purchase price. I even give the benefit of will the purchase price include the value of everyone I invite over to enjoy the media with me. Even the most moronic of media moguls has to admit that 95-100% of the time, this just isnt true. Change the business model where I can pay based on use and make it reasonable. I should be able to watch a movie whenever the hell I want for $1. I can do this buy renting a movie from the grocery store, and can create theatre conditions by investing in hardware. The media itself doesnt create my speakers, or my projector television, or my electricity to run these things, or my rent to pay for a place to keep everything, or my insurance to protect myself in case something happens to my items. My dvd/blu-ray/cd/cassette tapes arent worth the insurance premiums. I work for a living, and thus I dont have time to watch a movie enough times to pay for it. Or listen to a song enough times to pay for it. Often, Im in the mood for a specific genre, but not a specific song. Honestly, the proper business model is that of XM and sirius: to provide continuously updated content for an ongoin fee, so that I get something for my money, without the interferance of things I dont want. There are very limited exceptions to these economic and social rules. I will download movies I havent seen, and when I find one worth its market price, I will buy it. If not, I will get rid of it. But unlike a ferrari, society doesnt have the option of paying what we think media is worth (at least not on a large scale). This "illegal downloading" is simply civil disobediance. Society values a ferrari not because of the software running its gps and the dashboard showing the low mileage, but because of the hardware allowing the vehicle to perform the value added basis of driving fast with control, the sleek looks, and the ability to get laid by owning it (women like expensive cars, men like sex, therefore men will pay for it. Women still like the cars for the hardware, not the software. They also like the pretty color, but that isnt a purchase/"steal" factor). Dont get me wrong, I do not agree with outright theft. I just think that peo

  35. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by mattack2 · · Score: 1

    You have to frame the argument with dollars lost to be able to 'win' something in a lawsuit. Even you admitted that sometimes you would have bought something that you downloaded.

    (BTW, I do not claim to have never done any of this.. I was on BBSes in the mid 80s... but most people grow up and realize that things need to be paid for.)

  36. Trickle down theory? by seanonymous · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, maybe the Warez scene should sue, too, if they're so upset about people stealing their stolen goods.

  37. p2p yeah u know me by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Funny

    banner ads from eharmony
    Dave drop a load on 'em

    P2P, how can I explain it
    I'll take you packet by packet
    To have y'all nattin' while we be seedin' it
    P is for peer, 2 is l33t for "to"
    The last P...well...that's kinda simple
    It's sorta like another way to call a client an equal
    It's the server that be missin' here
    You get on a torrent and be leechin' from the swarm
    And your movies and shows appear gotta start to explainin'
    Bust it
    Hosting movies direct will get the feds to say hello
    They get your IP and address and your knees fee like jello
    And if not for feds, the hosting costs will eatcha alive
    There's gotta be a better way to distribute and survive
    Imagine there's no hardware, hosting or bandwith fees
    just a torrent to download and and trackers to see
    Every peer has a piece to share with every other peer
    Reducing the burden and increasing redundancy without fear
    Who thinks it's wrong 'cos I'm downloadin' and uploadin' at
    Well if you do, that's P2P and you're not down with it
    But if you don't, here's your membership

    Chorus:
    You down with P2P (Yeah you know me) 3X
    Who's down with P2P (Every last IP)
    You down with P2P (Yeah you know me) 3X
    Who's down with P2P (All the IP's)

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
    1. Re:p2p yeah u know me by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      Excellent. You deserve another P2P song for that.

      "Fight For Your Right"

      Copy it!

      You wake up late for Court man you don't wanna go
      You ask the Judge, "Please?" but she still says, "No!"
      You missed two summary judgments and no jury instructions
      But the MAFIAA lawyers preaches to the Court like you're some kind of jerk

      You gotta fight for your right to COPY!

      The government caught you downloading and they said, "No way!"
      Damn hypocrites download and analyze ten terabytes a day
      Man, dealing with copyright law is such a drag
      Now your MAFIAA shut down your best tracker sites (Busted!)

      You gotta fight for your right to COPY!

      Don't surf the internet if that's the information you're gonna share
      I'll kick you out of my swarm if you don't cut that leaching
      Your government busted in and said, "What's that noise?"
      Aw, government you're just jealous it's the P2P Boys!

      You gotta fight for your right to COPY!
      You gotta fight for your right to COPY!
      COPY!
      COPY!

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
    2. Re:p2p yeah u know me by monxrtr · · Score: 1

      Ahh yes, I could go all night in this vain meme.

      Auric Goldfinger: "Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He's fired rockets at the Moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor... except P2P Uploading!

      I give you Operation Project Spoofenberg. Parody absolutely everything, and in a lot of cases the results can be even better than the originals. And then somebody at some point plays those parodies in a Court of Law as an exhibition of evidence to achieve ever lasting fame. It will be exactly as if you have walked into Court wearing a Chewbacca costume!

      Han Solo: [sounding official] Uh, everything's under control. Situation normal.
      Voice: What happened?
      Han Solo: [getting nervous] Uh, we had a slight wardrobe, er computer malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
      Voice: We're sending a MPAA squad up.
      Han Solo: Uh, uh... negative, negative. We had a viral information leak here now. Give us a few minutes to lock the internet down. Large leak, very dangerous.
      Voice: Who is this? What's your operating number?
      Han Solo: Uh...
      [Han shoots the intercom]
      Han Solo: [muttering] Boring conversation, anyway.

      I hearby dedicate this next song to the concept of poetic justice. And humbly submit that the RIAA MPAA et al be charged with various conspiracies to promote moral bankruptcy, glorification of pirates, and whatever the fuck else I feel like making up with copyrighted imaginary laws. You wouldn't morally corrupt a child, across state lines, now would you?

      "Been Caught Downloading"

      I've been caught downloading;
      once when I was 5...
      I enjoy downloading.
      It's just as simple as that.
      Well, it's just a simple fact.
      When I want something,
      I don't want to pay for it.

      I copy the bits right through the inter tubes.
      Copy right through the inter tubes.
      Hey all right! If I get by, it's mine.
      Mine all mine!

      My girl, she's one too.
      She'll go and get her a song.
      Dance to it in her thong.
      She grabbed a movie for me.
      And she did it just like that.
      When she wants something,
      She don't want to pay for it.

      She copy the bits right through the inter tubes.
      Copy right through the inter tubes.
      Hey all right! If I get by, it's mine.
      Mine all mine!

      We sat around the computer.
      We sat and laughed.
      We sat and laughed and
      Maxed our taunting skill into the air!
      And we did it just like that.
      When we want something,
      We don't want to pay for it.

      We copy the bits right through the inter tubes.
      Copy right through the inter tubes.
      Hey, all right! If I get by, it's mine,
      Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine...

      --
      "From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
  38. Intellectuals by Jupiter's+Moon · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't the sentence be served in "intellectual jail" if the transgression is against "intellectual property"?

    1. Re:Intellectuals by Dan541 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree,

      Theft of imaginary property should be served in an imaginary jail.

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
  39. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Jason+Earl · · Score: 1

    Actually, copyright is as much about control of the copyrighted material as it is about anything else. A perfect example is the GPL which uses copyright to guarantee source access to end users. There's no money involved, but the lawyers still get excited when someone distributes GPLed software illegally.

    The movie industry doesn't have to claim that they are losing money. They simply have to point out that someone else is distributing their copyrighted material illegally.

    Now, I'm not a fan of the MPAA, and I am certainly not a fan of the RIAA, but I do believe that copyright has its place. For example, if TelevisionHead (a band I hopefully just made up), started distributing Radiohead's music as their own (or even without Radiohead's permission) copyright would be there to make sure the real owners received some justice.

  40. Re:Only One Solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Go Team!

  41. Re:10 years for bullshit, nothing for sendin thous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good job identifying a troll and feeding it immediately.

  42. 10 years? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, some pirates can get 10 years, yet we have Massachusetts' representative James Fagan calling a 10 year mandatory sentence for 3 time offending child predators 'draconian'. Ridiculous.

    -Bradley H.

    1. Re:10 years? by RPoet · · Score: 1

      This 10 year sentence would be called draconian too, if it was made mandatory for all copyright violators. Apples and oranges. Some child sex offenders get life (60 years + without parole) in prison.

      --
      "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
  43. Re:Cut OFF THEIR BALLS man - oh wait by Trauma_Hound1 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Funny calling someone a pussy while posting Anonymously. I bet you don't get the irony in that do you.

    --
    Don't Vote for Norm Dicks! http://www.nodicks2008.com Another nutless dirtbag that voted for the FISA bill!
  44. The cynic in me says... by hyades1 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...somebody should take a close look at the bank accounts of the jurors.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  45. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Dan541 · · Score: 1

    Here's an interesting idea!

    If you don't want people to have your data then DON'T release it to the public.

    It's like keeping a blog then getting upset when people find it and link other people to it.
    âoeIt wasn't my wishes for this blog to be linked to, only the people I show it to are allowed to read itâ

    I know bad analogy but I think you can see where I'm going with this.

    --
    An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
  46. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Dan541 · · Score: 1

    The MPAA are well aware of the benefits of free downloads,
    but they will never admit this because it means losing a major revenue stream.(lawsuits)

    --
    An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
  47. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is your argument that if you can copy something for free, then it costs nothing to produce it? That's not exactly right... At best, you eliminate distributers and the cost of producing the media, only a fraction of the overall cost. You also introduce new costs for hosting and the like....

    What you are sayin is you wanted to remove profit and dictate how much money the various employees are paid...?

    (Yes 10 years is stupid in this case)

  48. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Dan541 · · Score: 1

    What sort of crack are you smoking?

    How are they not losing a sale? they have one less Ferrari to sell!

    Sorry I forgot, Ferrari make money by building cars noone buys. /sarcasticmokeryofidiocy

    --
    An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
  49. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Paragraphs, man, paragraphs.

    If you can't be bothered to format the expression of your thoughts properly, it is often a pretty good indication that you can't be bothered to form your thoughts properly either. I would like to have read your post, but it promises too much effort for too little reward.

    While you're at it, we have these things called apostrophes too.

  50. It's the MAXIMUM sentence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IANAL, but my girlfriend is, and she says that judges only rarely award the maximum sentence. Think about it - if the ringleader of an organization that managed to pirate almost everything the US entertainment industry produces and give it away to the rest of the world for free was caught, would he deserve ten years? Maybe.

    For a case like this, I doubt the judge is going to award 10 years in prison - it's still up to the judge's discretion. The maximum sentence could be 1000 years and it probably wouldn't make any difference to this case.

  51. stanjam by stanjam · · Score: 1

    While I must agree that jail time is perhaps a bit inappropriate, I also take issue with those that think there was no real crime committed, that this is a have vs. have not issue, or that this is about "imaginary property." There IS something being stolen here. If you built a new computer, with a new design, started to sell it, and someone simply started stealing your supply and gave them away, I imagine you would be quite upset! If you create something, be it physical, or a creative work, and you want to get paid for it, you have that right. Those who steal that product and give it away are not "noble" or "altruistic." They are thieves, and they deserve to be punished. If the original owners wanted it given away, they would have open sourced it, wouldn't they? So, to the poster who stated that we should start stealing and redistributing everything and asked "What would happen?" I will tell you this: What would happen is people would STOP making these products, and you would be left without a major part of our culture and entertainment industries. All you would have left is the ability to watch skaters taking railings in the crotch for your amusement. Going after the uploaders is right, and much better than trying to go after the downloaders, who often are completely unaware that they are committing a crime. Uploading of copyrighted material is the problem. 10 years of jail time though? Makes no sense. How is society bettered by THAT action? Maybe they are trying to make an example of this person, but they are also setting a bad precedent in a country that already throws way too many people in jail for really poor reasons.

    --
    Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
    1. Re:stanjam by Annoid · · Score: 0

      This is mostly right.

      Where it is not right is the leniency shown towards downloaders. They are guilty as well. And ignorance of the law is no excuse. Ever try to tell a judge you didn't see the speed limit sign?

      Intellectual property is property, just as much as anything else is, and theft is theft.

      If you create something, you have the perfect right to decide to give it away or if you want to be paid for your work. In the case of IP, you can release it via OSS / GNU, etc., or you can sell it if you want to be paid, or work for a company which sells your products. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be paid.

      Those who defend illegal file sharing, ask yourself one question. What if someone decided to steal your paycheck?

      Yea, I know. This post will get a poor rating from the communists who run these boards. Too frakkin' bad. Facts are facts, and just because you don't like them doesn't mean you can ignore them.

  52. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by bit01 · · Score: 1

    They *are* costing the studios money

    Nonsense. It could be free advertising and a net win for them.

    The fact that you've been round slashdot long enough to see that argument many times, and others, and still pretend that those arguments don't exist strongly suggests that you are being willfully ignorant.

    Copyright fanatics like you really need to get out more.

    ---

    Paid marketers are the worst zealots.

  53. Re:Cut OFF THEIR BALLS man - oh wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nah, make him WATCH the crap he's pirating. That's punishment enough. If he's a pussy as you say, prison might be just where he wants to be.

  54. And we wonder why .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > I've seen cases of murderers getting less than this.

    Yeah, but did they hurt any important corporations with lots of money and political influence when killing?

    Didn't think so.

  55. Misleading headline by abbamouse · · Score: 1

    The MPAA doesn't prosecute anyone. This isn't France, where private citizens or organizations can prosecute. In the US, it is the government that prosecutes. Indeed, the press release didn't even mention the MPAA, and it appears thjey had little (if anything) to do with the case. Even the law that was used (the No Electronic Theft Act) wasn't an MPAA creation (although I'm sure they were supportive). It was largely a BSA/RIAA creation back in 1997, before movie piracy was common.

    I hate the MPAA as much as the next guy, but this is our elected government prosecuting this case. If we disagree, then perhaps all you "small government" people ought to vote on who persecutes little guys the least, rather than who'll give you the biggest tax breaks.

    --
    Make cheese not war 8:)
  56. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by shark72 · · Score: 1

    "How do you prove that the people who downloaded whatever they downloaded would have paid for it if that was the only way they could get it?"

    You don't have to. Copyright law isn't about proving damages; it's about respecting rights.

    Other laws work like this, too. If you violate my property rights (say, by trespassing), I can have you removed and punished even if I can't prove that, say, you trampled my flower bed.

    --
    Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
  57. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Stevecrox · · Score: 1

    I disagree with this, a few years ago when the Matrix Reloaded was screened it took 5/6 months to be released. My parents boot a boot leg copy of the DVD 3 months after its screening cause they liked the film and wanted to watch it. Sure they went out to buy the DVD when it was released so the companies didn't lose any money but in that particular case I didn't know a single person who didn't own a boot legged copy of the film.

    I've always thought that film showed what can happen if you delay the release of something too long. Personnally I prefer to wait, most films released at £12/14 will be between £3-7 3 months after release. But most people won't and with P2P getting access to films has gotten so easy the computer iliterate like my Dad can use it.

    Don't get me wrong I agree 10 years inprisonment is insane and would like to see an overhaul of copyright law (worldwide) so non-commerical copyright infringement becomes legal. I do think prelease material can cost companies money but then those same companies need to work out how to add value to their product rather than take value away (DRM, Force you to watch trailers/adverts force you to watch piracy is a crime video, etc....) The only reason I've been buying Blu-ray disks is because at the current moment they don't have that sort of crap on them.

  58. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

    I disagree with this, a few years ago when the Matrix Reloaded was screened it took 5/6 months to be released.

    Again, their business model is not significantly based on release.

    Anecdotal cases like yours, where a film sits on the shelf for months or years tend to be films that the studio thinks suck, and usually they are right. I don't think a strong argument can be made for encouraging sucky movies.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  59. Re:Cut OFF THEIR BALLS man - oh wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny calling someone a pussy while posting Anonymously.

    So, tell us how you feel about your parents naming you "Trauma_Hound1"?

    I bet you don't get the irony in that do you.

    I now know why some people write "Wow, just, wow", and where I once sneered, I now join them.
     
    Wow. Just... wow.

  60. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    people use DRM as a minimum security measure to stop people taking it. Just like you lock your front door to stop people from swiping your TV.
    But fuck it, if you don't want people to steal your TV, don't fucking buy one!

    idiot.

  61. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    god you are fucking ignorant.
    People with a lot more brain cells than you, and a lot more data an d money and information decide the best advertsiing strategies for their million dollar movies. they don't need some ignorant arrogant cunt like you sat in mom's basement to lecture them about free advertising.
    grow up and get a job you retard

  62. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by CitizenJohnJohn · · Score: 1

    If you violate my property rights (say, by trespassing), I can have you ... punished

    Actually in many jurisdictions (the UK and Australia, to name but two), you can't. You can ask someone to leave your property, and law enforcement will assist you if they refuse, but to punish someone for trespassing you will have to be able to prove damage. In Scotland, if you own open land - moors, mountainsides and the like - then you're SOL because people have the right to roam over it.

  63. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm curious: You don't appear to be a nerd, so why are you here?

    In fact, you don't appear to even be intelligent. You'd be happier on Digg, I think.

  64. Re:10 years for bullshit, nothing for sendin thous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good job identifying somebody you disagree with and labeling him a troll immediately.

  65. not efficient by dj245 · · Score: 1

    P2P (as in bittorrent) is not efficient at all.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  66. the land of the fee and the slave by 0111+1110 · · Score: 1

    The Land of the Fee?

    --
    Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
  67. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by tonique · · Score: 1

    Similar freedom exists also in Finland (and most other Nordic countries), called freedom to roam. You can move unmotorized in forest, pick berries and mushroom, camp temporarily and a few other things. But you should respect other people's privacy and homes and fields etc.

  68. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by Stray7Xi · · Score: 1

    Cost has a definition. It is the amount of resources needed to produce a good or service. A thief stealing a DVD, costs the studios money, they paid to print the DVD. So tell me how are these pirates costing any content producer money? They cost internet providers bandwidth (which can be argued is a resource). But no extra cost is imposed on studios by what pirates do.

    Their real "crime" is not earning the studios money. They're free riders. Which should hardly be a jailable offense.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem

  69. anonymous coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He should of accepted the numerous plea agreements they sent, he would of then served 5 months like the 8 others...

  70. Sith Piracy Video by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Short video using media recorded around the release of Sith documenting the perception of piracy in relation to Star Wars.
    http://noneinc.com/sound/Thee_Backslacpkping_With_Media/
    File Name: %20-BSWM-SithPiracy.mov

  71. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by (H)elix1 · · Score: 1

    If you'd like to come over with your car-duplicating equipment and make an exact copy of my Ferrari without damaging it, you're welcome to do so.

    MacLaren tried that... did not go well.

  72. Re:10 years for bullshit, nothing for sendin thous by unity100 · · Score: 1

    I'm not even going to use my karma bonus. The parent just isn't worth it.

    thank you for sharing this wonderful piece of information with us. our lives are now much brighter, thanks to it.

  73. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by volpe · · Score: 1

    You might change your tune if your name were Mr. Ferrari and you made your money by designing, building, and selling those cars.

  74. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by adminstring · · Score: 1

    In a world where car-duplicating equipment exists, it doesn't make any economic sense to build and sell cars. If my name were Mr. Ferrari and I made my living that way, I could either fight against technological progress by lobbying the government to make car-duplicating equipment illegal, or (my own personal preference) I could stop trying to make my living using an outdated economic model.

    The question that this raises is how we as a society can best encourage people to design better cars than we now have while encouraging the widest adoption of improvements. The current system of patents and, outside this analogy, the current system of copyright, are one answer to this question, but not necessarily the best answer.

    I would prefer an answer that makes the benefits of new technology more widely available to more people, discourages practices such as patent trolling and sitting on new technology so that others can't implement or build on it, and keeps more effort and resources focused on meeting people's needs and less on supporting an army of lawyers.

    --
    My truck is like a series of tubes.
  75. Music vs. Movies by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

    I feel compelled to purchase on DVD or better the movies I've taped in the past from television (typically HBO). I don't feel compelled to purchase on CD or buy a download of music I've recorded in the past from radio.

    However, while I also don't download music, I would make my own DVD of some movies if they would just air somewhere. I'd still buy a copy if it came out (and have done), but I'm not interested in paying for a download unless I can burn it to common and compatible portable media. A short list:

    Electric Dreams (1984) Probably never released due to rights issues, wide sampling of television, commercials, and movies
    Moontrap (1989) Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell and orange pods on the Moon containing cannibalistic robots, effectively remade as Virus (1999) 10 years earlier
    TAG: The Assassination Game (1982) Campus rubber-dart game (like the paintball in Gotcha! (1985)) where one player obsessed with winning decides to start killing for real
    Prime Risk (1985) Two teenagers plotting to get back at a bank that wronged them by cloning ATM cards stumble across a terrorist plot to bankrupt the nation (currently only available in full-frame Region 2 PAL in German)
    The Squeeze (1987) Poker player unable to bluff convincingly ("Did my eye twitch?") stumbles upon plot to rig the lottery when his ex-wife wins playing their divorce date
    Terminal Entry (1986) Teenage kids stumble onto a network used by terrorists and think it is a game (3 years after WarGames (1983))


    And yes, I realize that most of these are considered crap and not considered popular enough to warrant a pressing.

    Yet still I can't bring myself to buy Tank (1984), Iceman (1984), or Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) due to them not being widescreen. Perhaps they think the latter two are too wide for DVD, unable to keep enough vertical resolution even as an anamorphic DVD (can I hope for a Blu-Ray release?), but they released Tank (1984) twice at 1.33:1 (4:3) when the movie is 1.85:1 (16.65:9). an almost perfect fit.

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  76. Re:Those types of people legitimise the MPAA effor by jaymz666 · · Score: 1

    However the comment I was responding to was claiming that the studio was losing money. So 100% relevant.