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Wife of Harried Pirate Bay Witness Gets Buried in Internet Love
treqie writes "During the trial of pirate bay yesterday, a professor (Roger Wallis) took the witness stand. He told the court things that the prosecutors did not want to hear. The prosecutors then tried to discredit both him and his team's work in the area, as well as his title, it was a real spectacle. In the end, the judge asked if he wanted compensation for being there — he replied that he did not want anything, but they could send flowers to his wife. Many listening online heard, and began sending her flowers, from all over the world. As of this submission, the sum is over 40,000 SEK worth of flowers. There's even a Facebook group for it."
Nah, if they did that then Monsanto would sue 'em for patent infringement...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
And that, my friends, is how you spur on economic recovery. With one sentence, he managed to save the floral industry in his town.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Business is a brutal and if you are not willing to do something like Valve's Steam that gives something for giving up something I have no sympathy. Adapt to the market place and quit complaining.
I really, really doubt that there is zero loss to piracy. It goes against all I know of human nature to suggest that there are no people out there who look for ways to get something for free before they look to pay for it. Besides, there are a lot of people who simply don't believe that authors and artists deserve more than a flat fee for their work. David Pogue certainly heard from a lot of them when he complained about people pirating his work.
That said, it is credible that unauthorized copying can lead to a net gain by IP owners, with extra sales from viral spread of a work offsetting piracy losses. Certainly authors who make their books available online don't seem to suffer for it.
Correllation does not imply Causation.
Having seen some of the karaoke subs produced by anime fansubbers, I'm willing to bet that fan made karaoke videos will produce higher quality content than any professional label. In the face of ubiquitous video editing software, your industry has simply succumbed to its own irrelevance.
May the Maths Be with you!
$4,446 worth of flowers might not seem like much, but don't forget, that was before the article got posted to Slashdot.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I don't think you appreciate how frightening Monsanto actually is. They make the *IAA look like cuddly pussycats in comparison.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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I think you meant a Facebook group claiming to own all Facebook groups that do not own themselves.
The really disheartening thing is....you didn't.
Question everything
Seriously - you may not agree with what the prosecutors are doing, you may not even like them. But it's nothing to do with their wives and families. Leave them out of it.
This is an academic that is being *asked* to give up his valuable time to help the State in a case. Trying to destroy his reputation is completely unacceptable. To the professor, giving evidence in this trial is just a brief inconvenience whilst he pursues his career. Instead it turns out he was very brave to take on an organisation that acts like the mafia. His wife deserve those flowers, and the Pirate Bay have scored a massive victory in swinging public opinion in their favour.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Those that just out and out steal (yes it is appropriate, because it means taking something without paying
In copyright infringement nothing is "taken," something is "copied." If you're trying to sell a painting, and I sit down next to it and paint an exact copy and walk away, I have done something that is illegal, but I have not stolen your painting. The same concept applies if I copy your painting through easy technological means, such as taking a very high resolution picture of it.
A requirement for theft is that the victim no longer has the product. And no, you can't argue that I've "stolen the money from the sale" because that's not money you had which you no longer have. When I copy your painting in the example above, I may decide not to buy your painting, but I'm not being charged with theft of your sale, you'd sue me for copyright infringement.
I'm not going to get into the ethics of pirating, because there are obvious philosophical differences at hand and it comes down to your beliefs. However, there's no gray area on the theft thing, no room for discussion. Many things are wrong and many things are illegal, and most of things are not theft. You don't call fraud theft, you can't call copyright infringement theft either.