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Pirate Bay P2P Trial Begins In Sweden
Many readers are writing to tell us that The Pirate Bay trial is now in full swing in Sweden. Looking at a possible two years in prison and $150,000 in fines (plus another $14.3 million if the record companies get their way), the battle of infringement is sure to be one of the most watched p2p trials. "The International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) which is representing the case of music and film producers, made a statement about the case on Friday. Stating, For people who make a living out of creativity or in a creative business, there is scarcely anything more important than to have your rights protected by the law. Copyright exists to ensure that everyone in the creative world from the artist to the record label, from the independent film producer to the TV program maker - can choose how their creations are distributed and get fairly rewarded for their work. The operators of The Pirate Bay have violated those rights and, as the evidence in Court will show, they did so to make substantial revenues for themselves. That kind of abuse of the rights of others cannot be allowed to continue, and that is why these criminal proceedings are so important for the health of the creative community."
Songs cost $1 to download when they should cost 11 cents with ten cents going to the artist and one cent going to the host/distributor.
Well, if we're dealing with iTunes (the biggest and most popular distributor of music that I know of), don't forget that Apple takes it's 30%, not ~8% you infer would be fair. That leaves 70% for the artist and the label (if appropriate) to deal with (and you can really do without the latter in many cases).
Also, I don't think that most artists could live off of 10 cents a song for downloads (or the $1-1.5 an album) unless they have a very good PR plan/comity to not get lost in the giant sea that is the iTunes store.
Mostly, I think our disagreements stem from the numbers, which are easily adjustable. At least we agree that the methods could change (and roughly what directions to go from what we currently have).
Of course they did. They are, after all, on the right side of Swedish law. All that remains to be seen is whether we can say the same about the Swedish courts.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The Pirate Bay is also a source to bypass the industry, which sometimes works against itself.
As an example, I have bought "Colossus: The Forbin Project" on VHS tape years ago. It's in widescreen.
Now, Universal, the owners of that title, butchered the North American DVD release by making it a 4:3 pan and scan title. They have no respect for their own property. There was some backlash on a lot of forums, and the UK release was made widescreen (not sure it's because of the backlash, but who knows). I've heard that they even butchered the interlacing on the UK DVD, to make things even worst.
So here's the problems:
1. If we go by the MPAA's terms of "buying a viewing license" for movies, I already paid my license for this movie when I bought the VHS tape.
2. Even if I was willing to pay the license AGAIN for the DVD, they botched the North American release DVD (4:3 instead of widescreen)
3. Even if I was willing to import the UK DVD, it wouldn't play in my DVD player
4. The only possible way to get a good digital copy of that movie would be to import the UK version and fix the interlacing problem while ripping it. But in some countries, ripping the DVD is also illegal, even though you bought the damn thing.
So, legally, the only good commercial version available for that movie still seems to be the LaserDisc. And we're In 2009. If that's not a good example of the industry being a slow dinosaur that can't even take care of its own products, I don't know what is.
I had a calculator once. It was a nice little Sharp model. It had a button for pi, and could even do numerical integration. I was pretty happy with it. One day, it was stolen. This theft left me calculatorless for some time. It was somewhat of a blow.
However, if instead, someone had looked at my calculator, taken out a 3D tricorder-mapper-duplicator-thingamabob and had made an exact copy of my calculator, complete with all functionality, and left me with mine, I don't think I would have been quite as upset. In fact, I think you will agree that if I ran around waving my calculator in the air claiming that it had been robbed from me and that I was a victim of "theft", I would not get a lot of sympathy. Indeed, some might even say my terminology was not entirely correct. If all this happenned, I would still have my calculator, which after following the actual theft I most certainly do not.
Copyright Infringement is not theft. Nor is it stealing. It is Copyright Infringement. Thank you for your attention, and for your sympathy in the case of my missing digital companion.
May the Maths Be with you!
Of course they did. They are, after all, on the right side of Swedish law. All that remains to be seen is whether we can say the same about the Swedish courts.
I dare say that very few of us here are qualified to make that statement, probably including you, my good sir. In fact, I believe that this trial is happening because a large number of lawmakers, layers, and judges in the Sweden can't even answer that question yet. We will soon see if they are breaking the law in Sweden or not, though.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
I download various Linux distros from TPB all the time, it's faster than hitting the source sites. If the site exists exclusively for pirating, how is this pirating?
The media hypes up the financial aspects of this greatly. Something tells me the money made off ad revenue barely covers the costs of servers, legal defenses and other aspects of their operations. I guess we will find out for real as the trial proceeds.
I am not endorsing theft, but this is not theft, this is copyright infringement. That is not a technical difference, that is a different class of legal dispute altogether. In most cases, I don't think it is even a criminal offense, but a civil one. Do we really want the police acting as the copyright enforcers for giant corporations?
M
If they could buy an unencumbered product at what are perceived to be low & fair prices, they wouldn't bother to pirate and there would be no Pirate Bay or its' ilk.
Massive piracy and disregard for copyright laws happens because consumers find it the only avenue to get the product they want, at non-extortionate prices, and in unencumbered formats that don't hinder their enjoyment and fair use. Remove these obstacles and piracy would go back to meaning something that occurs at sea.
I could not agree more. For example I went to go see a movie at the theater this weekend. It come my wife and I $9.25 a ticket. So why would I want to pay $18.50 to go see a movie. When I can wait 6 months for it to come out on netflix or wait for it to come to the $1 theater. The media companies fail to realize that their customers are starting to realize that they are simply getting ripped off. Now everyone has a limits of what they consider "ripped off". For example I do not feel like I am getting ripped off when I pay $15 a month for netflix. Some people do feel that way. I think the media companies need to figured out a happy medium to reduce their losses and then prosecute the rest. For example lowering the price of a song to say $.75 and then suing people who distribute.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Your analogy fails. What if you had invested a huge amount of money and time hiring people to program and build the machine?
The standard line about "sharing/theft" from the p2p crowd fails to consider that the person doing the sharing is not the creator, merely a user. For a user, there is no loss with a digital copy. For a creator, who depends on the creation for income, there is a loss of potential income. At which point we get to the "I would never have paid for that junk anyway" argument, to which the obvious response is "if it has no value to you, you won't mind not having it."
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I know pirates. They don't do it only because it's convenient. For example, one network-tech I know bought an Xbox 360, and he modded it the moment he got it. He's making fat cash, yet he doesn't want to pay for a single fucking game. Meanwhile, I have bought every game for my 360 (a lot of arcade titles), and I don't even have time to play the ones I could afford. That's no small pile, mind you.
Another person I know isn't much into games, but can he scrounge up cash for a less-than-$100 invoice program? No fucking way! It's not about convenience. Some people just don't think software is worth paying for, and movies likewise.
P-bay and the like are nice for sampling the entertainment out there, and it's the only option for people outside the US. The nice online viewing services are entirely US-centric (or UK-centric, for the BBC's iPlayer). Getting international ad-revenue shouldn't be hard, as I've been seeing an explosion of Google text-ads for local products/services in the past year. Somebody must have the tech to know where I visit from!
IFPI says:
"Copyright exists to ensure that everyone in the creative world from the artist to the record label, from the independent film producer to the TV program maker - can choose how their creations are distributed and get fairly rewarded for their work."
This is false.
Copyright exists (from a US Constitution perspective) "to promote the progress of science and useful arts".
Individual financial compensation is not the purpose. Promoting science and art for the good of the public was the purpose.
Of course, we are now closer to the medieval Stationers publishing monopoly than we are the intent of copyright.
A 95 year publishing retirement package was not the intent of the Constitution.
Start.
Okay, I gotta ask - exactly why do artists think they're owed a living? If you choose to make acting/singing/performing your way of life, more power to you. It's up to you to make that happen, however. Personally, I'd love to be a professional beach-bum. "Pursuit of Happiness" in the Constitution isn't "Guarantee of Happiness." I have a day job that pays the bills, and I spend whatever "extra" time I have on things I *want* to do. If I want to be a musician, why would I deserve a public subsidy? (that's basically what Copyright has turned into.) May I become a professional snowboarder by copyrighting my Amazing Shredz? May I sue other boarders for copying my Custom Faceplant Ollie? Why not?
is that the corporations running their fancy little money making machine got complacent and lazy after decades of profits from recorded sounds which they nearly had monopolized. I may be modded or flamebait, but honestly think - the radio stations were paid off, they purchase hundreds of thousands of copies of their own albums just to skyrocket it on the charts, the tv hosts were paid off... quite a complex machine just to convince people to buy music - sounds monopol-esque
but, as stated before my friends, they simply did not *recognize their opportunity* (ask any businessman how to be successul in what you do) and failed to adapt/correctly identify/implement any sort of plan to reach out to people via this new form of media (which was their business after all)
the riaa/mpaa have a right to be upset, at themselves. they missed the boat - the demand was there, so the internet communities generated a supply.
FURTHERMORE, I take issue with people who argue that "music is a team of people working in conjunction from the artist to promoters to managers" and blah blah blah. anyone can download a cheap and free wave editing/multitrack software editor and within one year of experimenting make music that rivals these alleged "best sellers" on the radio. People need to get over the hollow celebrity allure of these absolutely meaningless dance/club songs and realize that THEY AREN'T WORTH THAT MUCH IN THE FIRST PLACE. the industry is full of overpaid producers and overpaid promoters, all because 13 year olds go crazy over it... so can we all please just lift the veil of idiocy.
she was the daughter of a wealthy florentine pogen read em and weep was her adjustable slogan
This is so true - though the overlap between "stuff that the studios simply aren't releasing" and "foreign films" is considerable, with a third category of "foreign films hacked to ribbons by American studios" also applicable.
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
Yeah, if you use the word "theft" (or "stolen") to mean something completely different, then you can say the copyright infringement is theft. But using this method you can also claim that piracy is "robbery", "treason", "rape" and "murder". So how is "theft" different?
As I understand it there are 3 types of crimes:
1) Crimes against property -- things like murder, rape, trespass, theft, kidnapping, and the like.
2) Crimes against a contract -- things like perjury, violating a contract (eg, not paying your bills), anything where one party explicitly agrees to behave in a certain way, and then they don't behave that way.
3) Nuisance -- things that either a majority of the people consider illegal, or the minority of people consider illegal. These are things like minor traffic violations, being loud and obnoxious, public fornication, drunk in public, illegal drug possession, etc.
Now, which of these three does TPB fit. Not 1. Not 2. Possibly 3.
Now, at least in the US, number 3 is what is filling our prison system. Go search for crime on wikipedia or elsewhere. Look at the data for Incarceration in the US. In a nutshell, crimes in the 1 category have plummeted over the past decade. Things in the 2 category are probably constant. Things in the 3 category are filling up prisons. OK, heres a link for the US, and here are some plots regarding crime in the US.
These plots don't agree.
Now with the Disney "stealing" and getting infinite copyrights for public domain material, there seems to be a trend here. $$$||might == right.
Its nice that crimes of property have gone down. Its a shame that out prisons are full of people that are merely a nuisance. Has nuisance really become that much a burden on society? Are people really suffering because of said nuisances???
It pains me to have to explain this thing again, but maybe if it's said enough times people will actually take notice...
Copyright infringement is a distinct thing from theft/stealing. They are two separately defined legal terms, plain and simple, not the same thing. They are both illegal. They are not the same crime.
The ethics of whether copyright should be changed/abolished, whether infringement should be made legal (and hence would no longer be "infringing") and the fight between TPB and the industry, these are all entirely separate issues. The only thing I'm saying here is that "Theft" and "Copyright Infringement" are two clear and distinct terms with different meanings under the law. There is no reason whatsoever to conflate them, and pretend they mean exactly the same thing.
Well, not quite true - there is one reason, and as far as I can see it's the only reason, and that's because "Pirates are stealing our music" has more emotional impact then "Our copyright is being infringed". The whole "you wouldn't steal a..." campaign, for example, relies on erasing the difference in people's minds between theft and infringement, to make them feel bad about something they may have been doing without thinking about it. Doesn't change the legal side of things, only peoples' perceptions, but perceptions can be powerful. The industry are using that to their advantage and I for one don't like their way their doing it, so I'll insist on correct use of the terminology.
You could even draw parallels with Orwell (although doing so feels cliched) - the 'Newspeak' idea revolved around removing words with similar meanings so that varied and nuanced ideas would be collapsed into a single concept. So all forms of political dissent, freedom fighting etc would be lumped together with terrorism and the like under the label "thoughtcrime", making the not-so-bad parts sound as bad as the very worst parts. It's the same deal with putting theft and copyright infringement together under "stealing" - suddenly infringement sounds worse than it did before. Whether it's actually as bad as stealing or not is a side issue to be determined separately (and personally) but if we let them convince us that they're the same thing then the debate will be over without it ever having taken place.