Slashdot Mirror
The Pirate Bay Comes To Facebook
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report I just read in Mashable, Pirate Bay is coming to Facebook. Writer Ben Parr says that The Pirate Bay site now includes links under torrents to 'Share on Facebook.' Once posted to a profile, the Facebook member's friends can click the link on Facebook to begin the download right away, provided he or she already has a torrenting client installed. I just hope people do not use this feature to download copyrighted materials which are not authorized to be downloaded, or at least not materials copyrighted to litigation-happy RIAA Big 4 record labels. No doubt, if their song files were downloaded through this method, the record companies would sit back for awhile, derive profit from the promotional excitement generated for their dying industry, and then — armed with Facebook's data — sue the pants off all the hapless Facebook users who fell for it."
Nothing in the .torrent file itself is illegal. The **AA still needs to actually show that the person was illictly downloading the copyrighted material. If I downloaded every .torrent on TPB for archival purposes, I would be doing nothing wrong.
I'm not against pirating, just against the drama that goes with it. I really don't want the RIAA on my ass; I'm sure facebook doesn't either.
I am waiting for the **IA to sue Facebook for "aiding piracy." That will be a fun one to watch.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
they have been loosing money from their lawsuits last time i checked the ##'s
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
Yep, I'll click on that link while logged in with my real name. I'm sure nothing bad will come out of this.
I just hope people do not use this feature to download copyrighted materials which are not authorized to be downloaded, or at least not materials copyrighted to litigation-happy RIAA Big 4 record labels.
Knowing the Internet community at large, I think there is probably no risk of this happening. :p
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
What the *AAs are losing through piracy, more than sales and such, is control. The buzz "center" is moving from the old media into the piratebay's top100. Essentially. Such a development will eventually kill off the content-for-money industry (though a content-with-sponsoring may rise to take it's place, you'll notice that the TV industry is much more laid back).
This is a step in that direction, so look for a quick and angry reprisal, legally warranted or not.
The **AA will wait for facebook to generate that ever elusive revenue before it tries to sue them...
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
I always thought that the facebook link was a sort of civil disobedience type deal at worst, or at best, a humorous poke at how every site on the planet has Digg this, facebook this, mixx it, etc attached to every page generated.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
If you're going to encourage people to screw someone over, screw over someone who can't defend themselves!
Fred has sent you a torrent. Download?
Send 20 more torrents to get a "FUCK THE RIAA" gift!
C'mon, gimme your best shot.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
I don't get it. The Pirate Bay launches a cheap, unlogged VPN in order to provide a more private service, but now they're encouraging sharing via Facebook?
You'd think that Facebook is the last place they'd want to be, since it just seems to be the complete antithesis of what I understood the Pirate Bay to be about.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
I know your just trolling, but...
Whenever you download a torrent, you must simultaneously upload it.
No, downloading Metallica_St_Anger.torrent is the same as downloading Ponies_n_kittens_playing.jpg from a website.
If you send the downloaded torrent file to a torrent application and allow it to connect and download files, then you are downloading the (possibly) illegal content, and usually, but not always, uploading the same content to someone else. There are quite a few torrents that I've downloaded where the Upload is 0kb.
The parent was talking about downloading the .torrent file, not actually using it with a bittorrent client. There's a difference.
OTOH, I agree with another poster on this thread that no matter how you view it, although the .torrent file itself does not violate copyright, you could still get into legal hot water.
I have an excuse ready to get out of any legal threats.
And no, I'm not posting it here.
99% of the excuses that Slashdotters have come up with for legal threats probably won't work at all. I sincerely hope you're one of the edge cases. In any respect, if I were you, I would run your excuse past a lawyer before attempting to use it.
My blog
I don't think "downloading all the torrent files for archival purposes" means what you think it means.
(Correction) Well actually it would be more like, copying the URL to the ponies & kittens image, and saving it to a text file.
So this genius argument continues with, I was just downloading the .torrent files, not the copyrighted material.
Well that might work if you weren't actually downloading the copyrighted material.
> ripping off artists so that leeches don't have to pay for their work.
Dude. Come. Fucking. On. We have 2009. Everybody and their dog has a computer, which is designed to copy stuff. Also we have broadband which is, again, designed to... move stuff around the world. So is what youre actually pointlessly advocating is that we collectively should... actually what? Abstain from using a common technology in order to make absurdly archaic 50's business models of "manufacturing and selling single copies" viable in day and age when everybody _can_ manufacture and distribute those copies themselves? Yawn.
If you and your fellow artists cannot bear the thought of your works becomming part of our culture and shared with other people, then stop producing and publishing them. If you cant manage to make money from the fact that people actually like your works and actively share them with their friends, go flip burgers, maybe thats where your real talent lies. However, wide-scale censorship, which is what you and your likes are proposing all the fucking time, wont work, so forget that idea really fast.
Are you an idiot? Of course this is what it will be used for. It's the primary reason Public Libraries exists, ripping off artists so that leeches don't have to pay for their work.
I'm so tired of the naive facade people put on when talking about Public Libraries. We all know exactly what it's used for. Stop pretending you don't know.
Until the laws are changed to make downloading a torrent 'intent' to commit.
Then with that they have grounds for either a search warrant, or just grounds to sue outright.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I saw this a couple of days ago looking for a torrent ..
of a show I missed on discovery, and thought, kind of
interesting, everywhere else is adding bookmark this,
share that, so of course thepiratebay could become more
social
What is shared on TPB? A lot of content, its hard to
say that its mainly pirated, but of course HDTV shows
and any free software is probably indexed by it.
When I saw it I didn't think it'd be 'slashdot' worthy,
but it was peculiar, I'm sure that for pirates that use
facebook it is going to make sharing all the easier.
Block it? Thats utterly silly, I think it is a precedent,
maybe isohunt and mininova will add this feature, as they
seem to have larger communities that release their own
media through these portals.
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
The pirate bay exists simply to share stuff, illegal or not. Show me something where the developers/maintainers of TPB have said they designed it with the main intent being to distribute illegal content. Just because 'illegal' content is prevalent doesn't imply it's initial intent.
Slashdot, has hordes of trolls, but it wasn't designed for trolling.
On another note, it doesn't mean that's what it will be used for on Facebook. Facebook currently doesn't have any way for people to share files directly, you can share links to images, links to video's, etc... you can even upload videos and images, but they get re-encoded/downgraded to low resolutions and high compression, so using TPB people could create a torrent of the stuff they want to share, and share it with all of their friends at the same time, or say an artist who has created a group, can share links to the torrents of their stuff.
Obviously sharing torrents URLS was already possible, but having a quick glance at the way it now does it, it allows for Icons/Images, and notes to be attached to the link as well, plus it's "easy", as easy as 2 button clicks, [Share on Facebook], and then [Submit]...
Come on, it's called "the Pirate Bay". What do you think that means?
You must be new here...
Sort of. A lot of people use it to break copyright of an still-being-sold bit of work. I'll admit, I do indeed download copyrighted material to things impossible to buy anymore from the copyright holder. BeOS builds, a copy of Trilobytes 11th hour, Adobe Photoshop 4. Who am I ripping off here?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
wtf am I missing? So, I used the Ubuntu example given by TorrentFreak (linked in the mashable article) and hit their Share on Facebook button. It posted to my FB profile as expected, but when I hit the link in my profile, it didn't start the download, it took me to the Pirate Bay page for the Ubuntu torrent. I have mutorrent installed... Is it just me? Maybe I need to tweek something to make the magic happen? Am I waiting for another FB redesign to go active? Or is the article completely wrong about this behavior, and then who really gives a fuck because I could have shared this on FB already through the Share on FB button I already have on my browser toolbar? (iow, this ain't news: Pirate Bay adding a link to a web page, whoopdeefuckingdoo).
Are you an idiot? Many people using one thing vs. people making copies. Copying a book is a lot harder than copying and pasting a file and quality will usually be degraded (taking a picture or OCR failings). Plus you don't get to keep library books.
I'm so tired of the naive facade people put on when talking about file sharing. Face it, you want something for nothing.
please post link to - Ponies_n_kittens_playing.jpg
thanks in advance.
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
"The Pirate Bay"
Yes, but that depends on your definition... legal definition, its someone who partakes in piracy.
But, metaphorically it's just someone who takes shit for themselves, you could be a sand pirate, and travel the world scooping up sand on every beach you landed on, yeah, might be illegal on some of the beaches, at least in large quantities, but for the most part it's not.
I generally think of it as that, just piling a bunch of coins (files) into your little private chest (hard drive)... "The Pirate Bay" is simply a docking point where you start from... others may only consider it by the legal/dictionary definition, but it's capable of both legal and illegal methods, and shouldn't be banned strictly by name alone. Should "Death Valley" be banned, stuff dies there all the time, but stuff is also born too, maybe the name will inspire someone to kill people there, omg think of the children. what about places named "Happy Valley" (quite a few of those here in Canada)... banned for false advertising because it didn't make you happy?
The pirate bay exists simply to share stuff, illegal or not. Show me something where the developers/maintainers of TPB have said they designed it with the main intent being to distribute illegal content. Just because 'illegal' content is prevalent doesn't imply it's initial intent.
This is a disingenuous argument. It doesn't matter what the creators or maintainers say or don't (ok, it matter legally, but ethically, it doens't). TPB is use *primarily* to distribute torrents, locators, to copyrighted material. Period. Copyrighted material is not a little bit of TPB torrents, or a small minority, or half. It's the main reason it exists. If there were someway to magically make illegal torrents go away, the TPB would cease to exist.
Denying that TPB is uses primarily for distributing locators to copyrighted material shows you are either painfully ignorant, blind, or are lying.
Google images
Your search - Ponies_n_kittens_playing - did not match any documents.
the (possibly) illegal content
I'm still having trouble with the idea that an arbitrary string of ones and zeroes could be "illegal".
If I generate a sequence of random numbers, write it to disk, and it happens to be, say, a copyrighted song when fed into an audio player, am I breaking the law? Who gets to determine if it's the same as the song?
Besides, any song can have an infinite number of representations. If I write an audio decoder that takes a Win32 dll and plays it as audio, am I breaking the law if one of the system files in my licensed copy of Vista can be played as a copyrighted song? Is Microsoft?
How about the same with Linux? If it's both covered by the GPL and some random music company, which one takes precedence?
What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number>normal numbers? Are they partially copyrighted? If not, how am I breaking the law if I download portions of them? If I download "Champernowne's number, digits 6752138974562389465 to 6752938972565379465 in base 256.mp3", am I breaking the law if it's actually playable?
If they ever had a firm case against pirate bay they'd be hitting them long time ago.
Luckily , here in EU our laws don't get created by monopoly companies .
To actually sue someone here (and TPB is EU portal) you actually need some hard evidence or you'll just waste a ton of money and publishers know that.
If we were in the US where every JonDoe can sniff your privacy and give it to court as "evidence" we'd already be in civil war or something.
> artists still have to make a living to continue to make art.
And its still their job to find out how to do that. Back in the 50s, they were able to sell copies of stuff, since copying was hard. In 2009, neither copying nor distribution is hard any more, so people make their copies themselves and distribute them. If the artist completely used to rely on selling copies to make a living, he now has to adapt. IF he refuses to, he'll have to go flip burgers.
> You seem to think all the people out there illegally copying files are somehow noble
Nope, never implied that.
> and if they liked it, pay the perform(s)
> or if they didn't like it, delete it never view it again.
Also never said that.
> 1) don't have permission to copy
We dont have to ask for a permission to exchange informaiton and share stuff. Everybody who thinks that, like you seem to, is mistaken.
> 2) have not paid
Since i do the copying and the distribution myself, i dont have to pay.
> 3) and are NOT exercising Fair Use
I am excercising Fair Use which _I_ defined.
> Committing a crime
I dont consider it to be a crime.
> Stealing from the artist and those who have invested money in producing/distributing
> the thing you want to copy
Copying stuff and sharing information with other people is not stealing, no matter how much youd like it to be.
> Removing incentive for the producers to renew the artist due to reduced sales
Their problem. (You know, you and they can still go flip burgers if you cant cope with the fact that we have 2009 and practically everybody learned how to use a networked computer.)
> If you think differently,
Which I do
> then you have the ethics of a common thief
But I have the luck that its not you laying out our ethics code.
> and I'd love to see you in jail wedded to Bubba the ass fucker.
Since you have to call for physical violence and violent anal rape of anybody who doesnt agree to your ageing ideology, you lose.
lol, yeah i tried too, and in the text search it just shows my comment. Yahoo, ExaLead, MSN is 0/0
Sorry, this is the link.
kinda figured...that's why i asked for a link.
my kittens and ponies porno collection has become stale.
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
I'd say Palm, The Learning Company and Adobe.
http://yirmumah.com/webcomic/draw-anything-292.gif
Maybe that will satisfy you... it's kinda close to what my mental image of it was...
not even that, it would be like saving the google search result for ponies and kittens, a .torrent doesnt say where to get the file, it only says where to find a tracker that might be able to point you in the direction to find some file. The tracker does not ever see any part of the file.
Because it doesn't make any sense to keep library books. Because, by keeping a library book you are depriving someone else of that book. On the other hand, if I share somesong.mp3 and 400 people download it, me and those 400 people have a full, working copy of somesong.mp3, we can all listen to it at once. If I have Harry Potter checked out of the library, 400 people will have to wait for me to finish or return Harry Potter before they can read it. USA copyright law was based on that. In the 1700-1800s when it was written, to make a copy of a work under copyright I would have to have a printing press (or spend an absurd amount of time with paper and pen). When the photocopier was invented, people tried to apply the same law to it, it didn't really work, however, because copiers are not networked, enforcement was low, so the public didn't suffer much. Today though, we have the same ancient laws attempting to be applied to digital works while strictly enforcing them. This does not work, and today the artists who create works are suffering from it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Pretty obvious why this is an anonymous reply.... Palm does not and will not sell BeOS. Adobe does not an WILL not sell Photoshop 4 (official reply "... is no longer supported, therefore is not being sold ..."). And "The Learning Company" DOES NOT hold copyright to these works. They bought overstock in bulk and sell them for a pittance IF you can even FIND THEM (Look at their website... "As of December 17, 2008, The Learning Company® products are no longer available via the Web and will only be sold at retailers until further notice.")
Your post is meaningless.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
True, but the URL to an image doesn't point directly to the file either, simply the server that (may) contain the file, or know which server does, and a way of checking to see its the right file (name).
The actual image would be something like C:\MySites\OMGPonies\Content\Images\Ponies_n_kittens.jpg
Radiohead - In Rainbows, pay what you want. Average value paid: £4.
And all those people who could just enter 0 in the price box actually have paid the band!
Dilbert RSS feed
OK, all y'all are wrong, fer fuck's sake.
Yes, downloading a .torrent is not a big deal. You could simply argue that you clicked the .torrent link, had not client installed, and nothing much happened, so you went on with your day. That's not the issue though.
If you download a torrent, and your system loads a client and starts contacting a tracker, then THAT is when big media and their minions can notice. They connect to the trackers, and look at who else is listed as peers on those trackers. It's got nothing to do with downloading the .torrent file, and everything to do with not using public bittorrent trackers like The Pirate Bay.
Just get yourself a usenet account that supports SSL, usenet client that understands SSL and NZB files (analogous to .torrent files), and be happy.
I appreciate your efforts to give a smackdown, but its clear you don't fully understand the concepts either. Jeez, I must be in a "teach a man to fish" mood today.
Look, every piece of work created by someone has a copyright associated with it. It is up to the holder of the copyrighted material to decide how the materials and all copies of the materials can be distributed. You need to understand that even free software is copyrighted. It is the license under which the copyrighted materials are released that makes all the difference.
If you want to find a cool wallpaper for your phone, don't just save an image with your browser and transfer it to your phone. Check the distribution rights and respect them. Even easier is to go to Flickr and look for pictures released under a Creative Commons license.
There. That's your lesson for today. Every work of art is copyrighted. The key is to know and understand the distribution rights permitted by the license under which the materials are released. So please continue with your bashing, but don't call people idiots when you don't know what you're talking about either.
400 books would need to be purchased. Were 400 mp3s purchased?
They are doing it wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that you would be getting something for nothing by just copying the file.
Facebook has never given a crap about which apps run on it. They allow all sorts of apps on there that are nothing more than viral scams designed to steal user data. And, as a corporate machine, why wouldn't they? Every time one of those apps sends a message to a user, that user comes back to their site, might click on the invite friends link, and expand the facebook empire further.
Anyway... there's one good side to all this. Facebook is HUGE. Quite a big portion of the whole internet is using it, and if more of that portion starts using P2P, it pushes momentum in P2P users' favor, and away from big media's interests.
On the level of philosophy and principles, I tend to agree: more and more, I'm seeing what amount to thought crimes being enacted in law. You're not allowed to write this, you're not allowed to look at that, you're not allowed to copy this with your own computer, your own electricity, and your own blank media... all of this is a violation of fundamental laws of supply and demand, natural rights, civil liberties, and the basic principle that adults don't need to be hand-held by other adults. I can only hope that one day, the powers that be will go too far, and citizens will wake up. Chances are it won't happen until the vast majority of citizens are online, and some simple mechanism allows easily whipping up that backlash under the right circumstances.
However, all that said... it's not really about that, when it comes to Joe Citizen being in court for something. Principles don't matter; legal precedent matters little. Rights? Most everyday judges probably don't even grasp the concepts well enough to consider them properly. Basically, if you piss them off, you're screwed. And trust me, arguing that downloading Metallica-St_CrapRIAALovingBand.torrent is the same as downloading an integer, however right you may be, is going to land you in some shit.
But that's security, and pretty much off-topic.
The OP was simply stating that torrent files unto themselves cannot be "illegal" (not yet anyways).
Plus, this is about implications and possible consequences of using The Pirate Bay (public torrent tracker), and Facebook (public social network), not about which way to best circumvent authorities using something that is not TPB + Facebook.
Ahh, right. Fair points :)
Is there any illegal content made avaliable via torrents on TPB? :) it makes TPB sound worse to say they are distributing illegal stuff than to say they're providing a means for one to get copyrighted stuff free of charge!
Illegal content would be what, child porn? Not sure what else..
It may be illegal to downloaded copyrighted material for no cost but the material in the torrents itself isn't illegal afaik.
Just making a little distinction
Don't panic
I dont consider it to be a crime.
(Un)fortunately the judge is not going to ask whether or not you considered it a crime at your trial.
Piracy encourages you to be an artist, not a professional.
You're not thinking like a lawyer. (You should probably be thankful for that)
If I generate a sequence of random numbers, write it to disk, and it happens to be, say, a copyrighted song when fed into an audio player, am I breaking the law?
If the sequence is really random (and not "really" in the sense of mathematically random, but "really" in the sense of not being some obfuscated way of recreating the song in question), congratulations, you've just independently created an identical work. Of course, the chances of this are very low, and I'm not even sure if having a computer generate a sequence of random numbers would meet the ever-so-low threshold for creativity to warrant a copyright. But the point is that copyright law allows for independent creation of identical works, whereas patent law doesn't.
Besides, any song can have an infinite number of representations. If I write an audio decoder that takes a Win32 dll and plays it as audio, am I breaking the law if one of the system files in my licensed copy of Vista can be played as a copyrighted song? Is Microsoft?
It probably depends on how you write the audio decoder. If you write it to use the DLL as a sort of hash with the intent of recreating a copyright song, you've probably infringed. If it just happened to do it, then no.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
and the basic principle that adults don't need to be hand-held by other adults
They do, they just don't listen to us before passing laws.
I can only hope that one day, the powers that be will go too far, and citizens will wake up.
By the time a change happens that would seem "too far" now, it will seem like only a minor annoyance. Not only are the rights taken away, people are conditioned to believe that's how it's always been and there's nothing they can do about it. Plus any uproar is drowned out by things like American Idol.
So this genius argument continues with, I was just downloading the .torrent files, not the copyrighted material.
Well that might work if you weren't actually downloading the copyrighted material.
Which has been the argument since the great great grandparent post, you illiterate troll.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
FYI, if you find yourself agreeing with the parent post, you probably have not ever read a Supreme Court or Appeals Court opinion, or decent law review article.
There are of course a number of frankly idiotic opinions, but on the whole judges (or at least good judges, i.e., the ones whose opinions you read in classes) are a fairly analytical bunch. You kind of have to be.
The impression I get when I ponder the relationship between the judiciary and the legislative branches is that we have a lot of well-educated, well-spoken judges trying to make sense of laws that have been cobbled together by a bunch of monkeys flinging poo at one another. It's a little depressing.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Sounds like a RATIONALIZATION to me.
So many here are arguing legality, right, wrong, weather or not it'll fly in court...
It. Doesn't. MATTER.
The **AA can serve me with a lawsuit for raping the corpse of Pope John Paul II while wearing nothing but a purple party hat and pink woad.
It'd make a judge pop a vein from laughing so hard, but if I don't have a lawyer or can't afford one...
Then I'm shit outta luck and lose the lawsuit.
Remember, it's not how much justice you can get, it's how much justice you can afford. Or in the case of the **AA, it's how long you can hold out under sustained bombardment.
[End Of Line]
If the sequence is really random (and not "really" in the sense of mathematically random, but "really" in the sense of not being some obfuscated way of recreating the song in question),
I meant /dev/random.
congratulations, you've just independently created an identical work
What does that mean in the legal sense? Can I distribute it?
And if I download a .mp3, introduce some salt, recode it as an .ogg, and claim it came from /dev/random; how do you prove it?
Your post assumes that "since filesharing is possible, it's moral".
Could you please justify this vast assumption rather than taking it for granted and then ranting about "censorship"?
I wanted to get "March of the Penguins" so I found it online and purchased it. In the notes area of my purchase I told them not to bother shipping it as I would just download it. Which I did. They still shipped it but I would have much prefered to download it from them.
You are arguing that what I did was wrong. I feel not pangs of being unethical at all.
Although Facebook is the cancer of modern day society where idiots gather, i find what TPB are doing extremely amusing. This will catch on insanely fast in a short time unless Facebook buckles under pressure and removes it. (Which i foresee happening quite soon).
What does that mean in the legal sense? Can I distribute it?
From what I've learned, yes, you can. To take a more realistic example, if two poets, working independently, write two short poems that are "substantially similar" or even identical (meaning that had one relied upon the other's work, there would be a finding of infringement), they both have separate copyrights, and if one distributes the work, it's not infringing upon the other's copyright.
And if I download a .mp3, introduce some salt, recode it as an .ogg, and claim it came from /dev/random; how do you prove it?
Therein lies the rub. To return to the example of poets, if one of the poets is famous, and his poem has been widely published, the other poet will have a hard time convincing anyone that he actually created the identical poem independently. If he had drafts or notes from earlier versions, that would work in his favor, as it would support his claim of independent creation.
If some teenager read your comment, then claimed that his entire collection of MP3s were really just collections of output from /dev/random, obviously no one is going to buy that.
The other thing is, independent creation isn't really about the "source" of work. Whether your music came from /dev/random or a piano is kind of irrelevant. If you're doing it after a popular song has been published and played everywhere, and you're actively seeking out something that sounds identical to that song, it's clear your aim is to violate the copyright. If you had never heard of the song whose copyright you were violating, then you could claim independent creation, but merely using /dev/random as a trick to get around playing the song on a piano is a silly technicality.
Independent creation is there to protect people who legitimately create works that just happen to correspond to other copyrighted works. If the second poet looks for a string from /dev/random that corresponds to the first poet's poem, that's not really independent creation.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Legally, you would have the right to distribute it. You would need some damn good proof it was randomness that produced it for there to be any decent chance of it holding up in court, though.
I suppose, although technically TPB doesn't host anything but code and text, so maybe in some countries the comments on the torrents, or words/links within the torrent could be "illegal".
But, there are other illegal things ontop of (a few types of) porn, like software/instructions that can by-pass/breach security, or documents and software that have been illegally obtained, and therefore illegal to distribute because you don't legally have the privileges to view, run or distribute but not illegal in the fact that it exists. In some (rare, maybe non-existent) countries it may be illegal to possess certain types of software that is legal elsewhere, like encryption/decryption, or maybe even certain types of calculating software.
Blueprints, satellite footage, signal decryption, nuclear physics, etc etc... "Anarchists Cookbook", and with some recently proposed and/or passed laws, even religious books.
And do it on the post-modern narcissists' soapbox, the pulpit for the modern day lazy attention-whore, facebook.
Anybody who does this and then gets sued for it - well that's the elecronic equivalent of natural selection isn't it.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that facebook will remove this, esp. now they're a possible target with newscorp money to be had. They'll comply with anything the media corporations thrown at them as they have absolutely nothing to gain by fighting the good fight, so to speak. And they won't.
Besides this is not an issue of RIAA mafia tactics or innocent till proven guilty or even punishment does not fit crime, no loss in utility like caused by physical theft etc. - people are actively advertising their civil liability, whether you think that liability is fair or not.
And do we really have to rehash all this copyright != theft, fuck the RIAA etc. why don't we argue about the year of the linux desktop or in soviet russia whilst we're at it.
No I'm not new here :)
The chances of a random collection of notes on a piano being a recognizable song is infinitesimal. Society grants copyrights to works which are not completely random, but have a certain organization of its contents, be it words or music.
Copyright may not be desirable for society, but that is a different argument. Arguing that music is equivalent to a random sequence of 1s and 0s is silly. And frankly irrelevant since people are being caught uploading music on torrents, presumably with evidence that the files they are sharing are in fact copyrighted material.
400 books would need to be purchased. Were 400 mp3s purchased?
Yes. If you buy 1 computer file, it is the same as buying 2 identical computer files. With computer files, there are two relevant quantities: none (don't have a copy), and one (have a copy). If you have more than one copy, it is no more valuable than having one copy.
And it follows that if 1 copy was purchased, then 400 copies were purchased. That's how computers work, that's what they do. You can want reality to be different, but it isn't. You aren't getting something for nothing, because those 399 copies are worth nothing if you still have the first.
A corollary of this is that computer-copyable creative works are only worth as much as the first copy. I.e. they should be (and will be, and mostly already are) funded by commission, performance, micropayments, or similar means, rather than expecting to make a profit from each copy.
If you are an aspiring musician who wants to make money from CD sales, grow out of it. You should find a patron, charge for performances, or flip burgers---that's reality. Micropayments also work if they (1) guarantee that you get a good copy of what you want, and/or (2) allow people to be micropatrons, to fund the musicians they like.
And Radiohead's manager said they wouldn't be doing that again. Apparently, it didn't work out well for them - except as a one-time publicity stunt.
I'm always amazed at how people twist logic in order to justify getting stuff for free.
"If you and your fellow artists cannot bear the thought of your works becomming part of our culture and shared with other people, then stop producing and publishing them."
I think you meant to write, "If you and your fellow artists cannot bear the thought of working for free (forget about paying a mortgage or buying groceries like the rest of us), then stop producing and publishing them."
"If you cant manage to make money from the fact that people actually like your works and actively share them with their friends"
The funny thing is: artists don't get paid when people "share". The whole "sharing" trick is way overplayed. Companies don't *share* your mailing address, your email address, or your credit card when you do business with them. Stop pretending that you're doing anyone a favor when you *share* digital works. In fact, I think it would be poetic justice of companies shared your credit card numbers with the world whenever you shared digital media. Hey, it's all just ones and zeros in both cases - how can there possibly be laws attached to ones and zeros, right?
A society that refuses to pay their artists will eventually learn the true cost of their selfishness.
> 3) and are NOT exercising Fair Use
I am excercising Fair Use which _I_ defined.
"Committing a crime"
I dont consider it to be a crime
I won't state my personal opinion, but philosophers such as Rawls would argue that by being part of society you don't have the right to do "whatever you want". You have implicitly agreed to a social contract and if the rest of society thinks that it is a crime, then what you personally consider it to be doesn't matter.
Of course, there are other philosophers who don't agree with social contract theory. I'm not sure they'd stand behind you though.
Another thought I've had, what if this is all part of the RIAA's strategy of going after BitTorrent?
1. Until now, out of 40,000 cases, not a single one has involved BitTorrent.
2. Every single case has involved Gnutella (e.g. LimeWire) or FastTrack (e.g. Kazaa).
3. Maybe this is the RIAA's way of finding a method of creating some new BitTorrent users, and catching them using Facebook's data.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
TPB would not die if torrents did, do you *gasp* remember what destroying napster did? Oh yeah, it spawned tens of other programs that do the exact same thing.
Do you remember a site called, hmm, suprnova? Yeah... when it got axed... mirrors upon mirrors of the site were up within hours with all the same data. Over time, each of those mirrors developed into a new torrent website.
Basically, you hurt something that works so well... It will come back stronger. Piracy isn't going to disappear, you're dreaming in technicolour if you think we can't teach another generation to use IRC. Torrents aren't the problem, they are the reason and future of the internet which is controlled by people who want to see torrents fail. I can't wait til they force some of these old foggies out of jobs and into retirement.
If it's on Facebook, it's sharing... not distributing.
An interesting potential point of view, and possibly within fair use rights? These aren't strangers you're giving out links to... they're friends. It's no different than emailing a link to a file to someone you know, or writing it down on a napkin at a coffee shop... it's sharing, not distribution.
Now with Facebook, RIAA would have to tackle the fair use scenario of friends sharing with friends. It could be a whole different story.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The parents were arguing about ethics (which are a matter of opinion), not law.
This will come in handy as I release all my LEGAL self created media as torrents through Pirate Bay. It's an excellent tool to help promote independent artist's work.
Thanks Pirate Bay!
I know that lawyers try to twist it around so it doesn't look this way but in fact it is. Isn't this one of RMS's arguments to illustrate the absurdity of copyright law as applied to applications? I'm afraid that we have all fallen through the looking glass. Can somebody please send me the red pill? I want out!
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
I actually agree with you, at least in terms of musicians. I'm assuming that's the basis of your argument but what about movies, books and to a lesser extent even TV? Musicians have the ability to tour and sell merchandise to make a living. This is not applicable to the others and I personally see no other way for them to make money other than by the selling of their actual product.
This is the problem with geeks, everything needs to be formally and absolutely defined... The nice thing about law is that many parts are actually quite well written -- written in ways that allow new inventions to be handled within the the same legislation. Some specific areas of copyright have some problems at the moment, but your questions aren't really problematic.
Something that might help understand copyright, is realizing that it really is about "right to copy": It's not about bits, bytes or codecs, it's about whether you copied another work or not.
There are grey areas of course -- this is sort of intentional to keep the law books from overflowing -- but usually common sense gives you a fairly good approximation of the situation.
I say we must start a Facebook group where we decide to post our real identities fully open about it and if there's 1 million of us EACH of us SUES all of the others in some kind of Amicus Curae or Class Action *FOR* the xxAA.
With this dirty sue-fest we could make the headlines one every f00king newspaper about what the whole thing is about without even overstepping The Letter of The Law(TM).
So that The Law(TM) then realizes that it cannot afford to remain an ass and that the whole nation is laughing at it.
Unity of the people works in surprisingly effective ways. This will also send real shockwaves through the entire sue-happy f00kers in IT and all other industries, including dirty parasitism-only lawyers.
***
Totally civilized, totally legal, but openly demonstrating the most important thing about law - the letter of the law must always obey the spirit of the law - that the law is for man and not man for the law.
***
Start a Facebook group, get a million people behind it, make a cool set of widgets, buttons and what not, and start filing cases against each other.
You are free later, to make out of court settlements like at parties where you could celebrate the permanent death of the xxAA in this name and form.
All this can be typed out as such because you are not violating the letter of the law.
***
They might have surely kept a few laws with VERY LOOSE WORDING which allow me to sue you on THEIR behalf - this is a hack - and it is so crazy that almost surely, it will work.
***
Surely merits a little serious thought, given the ways laws are worded and chained to make a lethal combination to isolate individuals and attack by stealth.
HA. Tricked you!!! Early April Fools joke.
I hope unauthorized material is shared, without the consent of the creator.
First off, please get this right. All things are "copyrighted" immediately upon creation/composition/whatever, whether or not they wanted it to be, or so the law states. Secondly, you never know if someone has the consent of the copyright holder. It's perfectly legal for me to download a movie if the movie creator told me that I could, or if I have a "right" to do so as defined by law. Regardless of what the stupid law says (dumb DMCA, go to hell please) if you purchased a movie and want a backup or want to restore a lost disc or whatever it may be, that definitely should be completely legal, and there's no way for Facebook or any of those retards to know if your need is a "legitimate" one or not.
Regardless, everyone should keep sharing ideas and utilizing them to their full potential. Copyright and patent laws be damned.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
be complete, sir.
Not true at all. Copyright covers the original work (in this case the song). This means that the actual sequence of data is irrelevant: The song can be transformed to almost infinite number of other sequences that also sound somewhat like the original song: all those are under the same copyright -- in other words the number does not matter at all.
If I'm "twisting it around" as well, please let me know...
Only a tirade of abuse like this, basically telling the people who make entertainment to go fuck themselves, gets modded insightful here at slashdot.
Telling people who make music and movies that they should fuck off and flip burgers if they can't pay the bills when everyone takes their work for free.
and you wonder why artists don't give a fuck about the attitudes of pirates?
Even shoplifters have the common fucking decency not to abuse the store manager and laugh in their face, so I guess the anti-copyright crowd are a step below even that.
Let me ask you this:
If you are prepared to pay the people who grow your food for their work, why are you not prepared to pay the people who entertain you?
Face facts, its because you've found a way to steal one commodity and not the other.
Any other rationalisation is just bullshit.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
couldn't agree more but here on torrentfreak (sorry slashdot) pirates and kids stealing music are heroes, and people who actually make stuff are scum.
In an amusing side issue, there is a lot of whining from the 'heroes' that all music and movies suck. This is obviously because the guys who made the music and movies they like now flip burgers.
They don't comprehend this, so they end up torrenting 'serenity' with one hand, whilst signing on-line petitions for a sequel that will never happen with the other hand.
One day, they might make the connection.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Even if the copyright holders no longer wish to sell copies of their older works, why are you entitled to them?
If I generate a sequence of random numbers, write it to disk, and it happens to be, say, a copyrighted song when fed into an audio player, am I breaking the law?
Yes. For the same reason that if you fire a machine gun in random directions, and the bullets happen to, say, hit a bunch of people, you are breaking the law.
In the long run legality is a matter of opinion: the point of copyright is (in most places) to promote the advance of arts and science. How to accomplish that is purely a matter of opinion.
Okay, now apply that to a computer program. It IS a unique number.
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
> and if the rest of society thinks that it is a crime
Thats ok, since my whole point is that it actually doesn't. Only the written letter of the law does, but since it is, at least in the case of copyright, that much detached from the actual sense of right and wrong of the society around me, i do not at all have a moral urge to feel bound by it.
The majority of the 'fellow artists' play covers. Even most of the real 'artists' do not play their own songs. We are talking copyrights, so that is the importand part. Do not infringe on copyrights by copying songs.
Real musiscians make their own music and see that they can keep their fans close.
So close, no matter how far couldn't be much more from the heart.Forever trusting who we are and nothing else matters.
Never opened myself this way,Life is ours, we live it our way.All these words I don't just say and nothing else matters.
Trust I seek and I find in you. Every day for us something new. Open mind for a different view and nothing else matters.
Never cared for what they do. Never cared for what they know but I know.
So close, no matter how far couldn't be much more from the heart. Forever trusting who we are and nothing else matters.
Never cared for what they do Never cared for what they know but I know.
Never opened myself this way. Life is ours, we live it our way All these words I don't just say.
Trust I seek and I find in you.Every day for us, something new. Open mind for a different view and nothing else matters
never cared for what they say
never cared for games they play
never cared for what they do
never cared for what they know
and I know
So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No, nothing else matters
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It assumes that, since exchange of information, learning from each other, passing on of culture, sharing things you like with people you like and P2P-ing have been basic human deeds and activities from the beginning of time, they are moral by nature. Since filesharing is nothing more than an electronically amplified form of the above, it can not become morally wrong for the sole fact that someones business model (manufacturing and selling single copies of stuff like it were biscuits) based on yesterday's scarcity, breaks down today when that kind of scarcity is overcome.
Artificial scarcity, like in "you must not use your own copy machine and must pretend you didnt have one in order for someone else's yesterday's copying-based business model can still work like it were still needed" is for-profit censorship (aka ban on information exchange), on a wide scale.
Are you just trolling me? Either that or you need to do some reading... There are various ways to copy programs without ending in the same exact binary:
All of those end up in a different binary (the last one even ends up with totally different source), yet they are still under the same copyright.
Well, if an independent artist makes her living from "selling copies", you're not generally paying for the process of creating the copy. You're paying for the art itself.
What exactly is the "absurdly archaic 50's business model" you're referring to? Creating something and then selling copies of it digitally? Many, many independent artists (including myself) make their living this way.
Of course there are alternative models which encourage copying. Record music, charge only for live performances. Write a multiplayer game, charge just for additional services, etc. Great. I'm sure that's perfect for artists who happen to want to do those things and have the resources for it.
If nobody wants to pay for digital copies, that's fine too, but they'd have to say goodbye to a very large group of creative enterprises. Of course I want my work to become part of our collective culture, but it wouldn't exist in the first place without support from my customers. How does this help the freedom of artistic expression you seem to be advocating?
(sorry for AC post -- no account)
I would *LOVE* to post links to every linux-livecd that is currently shared with the help of Piratebay. And wait for the big companies to try sue me.
Becouse it must be piracy if there is a download that they cannot earn money on, is it not?
"Ah may be a backwoods country hyperchicken...".
Why not? Wasn't that the purpose of copyright? "To promote the arts and sciences etc...."
This implies that if they no longer wish to sell it then copyright no longer applies.
It is, after all, blatantly obvious that no-one can "own" information, and indeed the very name "copyright" says that it controls the right to make copies, not "ownership".
You can only listen to one song at a time. So, unless you have less than 400 songs, you won't be listening to 399 or more of them. In fact, it's unlikely that anyone else will be listening to the same track as you when you DO listen to one of the 400 tracks you have and shared.
so what's been lost? One person listening to the track at a time. One purchase made to listen to that song.
I'm in Norway, a country that has decriminalised downloading for personal use. I also use Facebook. Come and get me RIAA!
no wonder I cant get onto FB right now. I added an app someone said was great yesterday, then when i woke up today i cant get on!! oops
Why are all the comments about sharing torrents of copyrighted work? /. that the lawsuits were about control. This is your chance to take that control away. Don't screw it up sharing Britney and Metallica. Share indie, get your friends to share indie, fuck the **IA.
Use this to share torrents of non-**IA affiliated artists.
Facebook claims to have 175 million active users. 175 million people sharing torrents of indies, music recommended by your friends, is the best advertising these artist could hope for.
It is also the record industries worst nightmare. Music they have no control over being shared (legally!) on a scale they cannot match.
It has been stated many times on
> What exactly is the "absurdly archaic 50's business model" you're referring to?
Making the natural usage of computers and networks (passing information and content) artificially (without actual public support) illegal in order to simulate the 50's content distribution.
> If nobody wants to pay for digital copies, that's fine too, but they'd have to say
> goodbye to a very large group of creative enterprises.
I and large, large parts of the public are obviously ready to say goodbye to parts of the creative enterprises which business models rely exclusively on enforcement of artificial scarcity and for-profit censorship.
> but it wouldn't exist in the first place without support from my customers.
So find out a non-forceful way to get their support. If you can't, they obviously do not _want_ to support you, fully knowing that you wont be able to continue your art.
> How does this help the freedom of artistic expression you seem to be advocating?
Arguing against large-scale censorship, lawsuits and mass punishments of people who use their computers for what they're designed for doesnt have to do anything _at all_ with your freedom to express yourself. Youre confusing funding and freedom of expression. All I'm arguing for is, that if you can get funding for your art without relying on means of goverment-sponsored network-surveillance, censorship and mass punishments, the better for you. If you cant, better quit because it wont work in the long run, because most people value their freedom to share information and communicate freely more than the commercial viability of someones censorship-based business model.
You're well aware, of course, of photocopy machines, scanners, and (horrors) books on cd that can be ripped to MP3s? All while not depriving other users of access to the work for longer than the check-out period?
Not to mention the large collections of DVDs and music CDs that many libraries maintain?
i just dont fucking care
fuck.
you.
all.
yes you!
hahahaha!!!
FUCK YOU1
Yes, YOU!
in THE TEETH!
Whenever you download a torrent, you must simultaneously upload it. This is required for .torrents to work.
Not if there are enough seeders. Some BT clients (Transmission for one) allow you to throttle your upload speed to zero kb/sec. You can therefore leech 100% of the desired content without seeding a single byte to anyone else.
Squirrel!
If the copyright holders don't want to make money from their copyrights, why should anyone be denied access to them?
There is no loss. There is no potential loss even.
If nothing is lost, what's there to go to court for?
Let me ask you this:
If you are prepared to pay the people who grow your food for their work, why are you not prepared to pay the people who entertain you?
If food became infinitely copyable through consumer technology you can be sure I would be distributing copied food all over the world wherever there was still any lack. I do not raid farmers paddocks or stores to steal produce though, troll. I've had conversations with you before so I won't reply again. I'm well aware that you have no intention of allowing anything to change your mind.
Maybe one day, because you went broke clinging to an outdated business model, you'll be starving, and I'll come by with a truckload of fresh copied fruit and vegetables.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Wow what infantile drivel.
So in the medium term, when music is copyable and food is not, thieves like you will just swipe the music and not give a flying fuck how the musicians afford their food?
People like you are fucking shameful. At least shoplifters admit what they do is wrong.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
And by not selling the item, they are indeed exercising the right to control how and when copies are made. You answered your own question.
That sum it up correctly?
What you want to do with your creative works is your business. If you want to give it away under a license, or no license, that is your choice. The world benefits from all the people who create and distribute works under licenses like creative commons, GPL, etc, and other open source initiatives.
But they choose to make their work freely available. Imagine the uproar of someone came along and said, "Nope, sorry, you have to charge money for what you do. No exceptions." The problem in that scenario is the creator has lost control of the distribution and licensing their work. Just like your ignoring their rights to require payment for use.
Respect the copyright holders wishes.
And by the way, you may not want to call copyright infringement theft, but if someone sells an electronic file, and you copy and use it without paying for it, you have stolen money from them. I am not going to quibble definitions. Just admit what you are and be done with it. Or are you ashamed of the truth?
Asking people to pay for something you've created is not forceful. If you don't want it, DON'T FUCKING BUY IT. It's not like digital artists are price-fixing water during a drought.
I will laugh my ass off when greedy talentless fuckers like you get sued into oblivion for stealing something you have no right to at all. Go RIAA! Sue the entitlement generation into bankruptcy!
> but it wouldn't exist in the first place without support from my customers. So find out a non-forceful way to get their support. If you can't, they obviously do not _want_ to support you, fully knowing that you wont be able to continue your art. Your assumption is that IF people liked what they downloaded, THEN they would pay for it in some way.
So where are all the checks flooding into artists pockets? They don't exist becuase people WON'T pay for what they can get for free. Face it.
Hey, I am all for the utopian vision where IF people would act ethically AND if they downloaded a file that the copyright holder charged for, AND (they liked it, AND they paid for it) OR (they deleted they deleted the file and never used it again) then I think you have a argument. But that is generally not what happens.
If software is worth $20 and I can download an ISO of that software where I would be paying $20 to buy it, it stands to reason that if 300 people download it instead of buying it, that company has lost $6,000 in potential profits. if those 300 people had gone to and bought it, they would have paid $20 a piece. Therefore, the software has value. In another example, copies of famous works of art are worth money. Not as much as the original, but still something. If we follow your logic, the copy is worth nothing, zilch, nadda, $0.00. Does anyone else see a problem here?
To categorize copyright infringement as 'theft' is a categorical claim, and it has nothing to do with "the truth" or "facts". It's simply a matter of what we decide the definition of 'theft'--legal or otherwise--to be and then decide whether sentences containing that term are valid or not based on that definition.
Why? For whose benefit? To what end?
Despite being popular opinion on Slashdot and being modded up, you are wrong (and kind of a jerk). You considering it to not be a crime doesn't make it any less a crime. It either is, or it isn't. You can whine about it being unfair, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a crime (depending on where you live).
Fair use allows for copies to be made as backup for your legally purchased copy. It does not provide for you to copy or distribute things that you have not purchased.
I would not want to live in your world. Many talented people would get out of the arts because there would be no profit to be made. Very few people would write software anymore since they couldn't make a living. It would hurt Linux because the number of people going in to C.S. and C.E. would plummet and there would be no one to work on it. We would have music, video games, etc., but for the most part, the quality would be crap since there is no profit in it.
Listen, I understand that a lot of copyright law is really screwed up. With distribution and copying costs being near nothing, the price of music should have dropped significantly. People abuse copyright to make it something none of us want to be. But your arguments against it are thin at best. You just want to pirate software. It is just unabashed greed. You are showing similar ethics as a CEO that would run his company in the ground and then take his million dollar golden parachute. You want whatever you can get for free and ethics and laws be damned. That's fine for mod points in Slashdot, but if you get outside of the groupthink in this site, you are being immature.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I think public libraries are important because they allow the poor to access information and knowledge and that can help elevate society. I don't really think the poor are missing out on the latest Britney Spears album (actually, I think most music these days probably reduces IQ).
There are plenty of legitimate uses of p2p. But I don't think we should turn a blind eye to the fact that the majority of it is used for copyright infringement.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
If there were someway to magically make illegal torrents go away, the TPB would cease to exist.
Bzztt! Wrong! If the "illegal" torrents were suddenly removed, only a mere 20% of TPB's torrents would go. 80% of the torrents are legal.
Besides, any song can have an infinite number of representations. If I write an audio decoder that takes a Win32 dll and plays it as audio, am I breaking the law if one of the system files in my licensed copy of Vista can be played as a copyrighted song? Is Microsoft?
Better yet - if you translate random.dll and "perform" it, is *Microsoft* now distributing your copywrited song?
Utter nonsense, one would expect more from a Lawyer. The **AA can only sue symbolically because there is no cork big enough to dam the ocean. Sure they could figure out a way to send out 100 million scary threatening letters to most users... but like most spam most people ignore it.
Stupidity is its own reward.
sue the pants off all the hapless Facebook users who fell for it."
1) Very few people out there are clueless to copying, without permission, copyrighted material. Anyone whose watched a movie from video store rental, or service like on-demand, bought a DVD, or bought a cd has seen the labels has seen the copyright warnings (which have been around for at least two decades). Then there is the news. If you have a torrent client I would wager you are aware of the laws. There may be a few people out there, but really let's get serious about "hapless". I'm not buying the "i didn't know", neither does the law.
2) The RIAA said they are not sueing downloaders anymore, they are going to work with ISPs to warn and then punish people by disconnecting their ISP service. BTW, I've seen these letters (downloaded tv shows) and they are accurate. They know exactly when, what tv show, what episode, where it was from and my IP number. It came from my ISP provider.
So cut the villainy crap for once. I just love biased news. Slashdot = Fox news for liberals (btw i am a liberal, but i can't stand stupidity). Fair and balanced should be SLashdots new tag line.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
And by you driving a car to work making it harder for me to cycle you are depriving me of a happy livelihood and therefore owe me $80 Gazillion Dollars.
Lost-potential-profit is the art of lying.
However, I do need to disagree with "registrar." A copy certainly does have some value. That is the backup value which is immeasurable if you have some kind of all to common data disaster. But it seems like the best backup these days is the collective memory of the internet. No storage solution is foolproof. But if something lives on as a healthy torrent pool then it can be available almost indefinately (or until the power runs out) because the more copies you have the more likelyhood that one will survive and as you correctly point out one is enough to propagate as many more copies as you like.
Copy use to be a word meaning wealth and richness: copious bounty of the harvest. Nowadays the **AA liars whose primary value seems to be lost potential profit all have us believing that copy means fake or less than real. Whereas all good geeks know the primary function of a computer is copying data around while changing little bits of it - without the copy function there is no compute function.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Carnegie was a robber baron pirate. He funded so many libraries because of this. Libraries are from the devil, that socialist.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Really? dude - judges are prone to dumb ass mistakes and assinine rulings just as much as legislatures prone to dumb ass mistakes and assinine laws. Judges may also not have the benefit of time like legislatures do and may not have as many people giving input. Remember a judge makes a sole decision, while your congressmen needs to get a consensus. That is why the legislative branch is the most powerful branch (by design) and the executive branch is the weakest branch (by design). Our founders didn't want a king making all the rules. Judges are the referee's. Yes reality muddles things a bit - but for the most part it's a fairly good model. So yea I did agree with the parent post and I am not one of those people who fell into the "probably have never ever read a Supreme..."
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Hell, in many areas of the world copyright law is in the process of being updated. Whether through ACTA in much of the developed world or specifically in the US (with their super DMCA laws), or Canada(C-61) --- it isn't long term at all, the opinions will determine the law, short term.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
"And its still their job to find out how to do that. Back in the 50s, they were able to sell copies of stuff, since copying was hard. In 2009, neither copying nor distribution is hard any more, so people make their copies themselves and distribute them. If the artist completely used to rely on selling copies to make a living, he now has to adapt. IF he refuses to, he'll have to go flip burgers."
so don't complain when companies/artists do figure out how to make a profit by creating DRM like services that make it difficult for you to share it or you have less quality music and movies because it is no longer profitable.
Also, if you agree with this, you also agree to people violating the GNU (after all, source code is out there for free, if a person can't protect it, I should be able to sell it or add it to my proprietary app without giving back to the community).
"Since i do the copying and the distribution myself, i dont have to pay."
That's the keyword "copying". The difficult part is creating it, which you don't have the skills to actually do (otherwise, you wouldn't be copying it).
"But I have the luck that its not you laying out our ethics code."
Oh? It's a criminal offense in the US. So more people believe this than you think.
"Since you have to call for physical violence and violent anal rape of anybody who doesnt agree to your ageing ideology, you lose."
Companies will adapt. Eventually, all software will be services. You will no longer be able to download most commercial packages. Look at thinks like turbo-tax.
There is also a new service being tested that will allow users to play games online without ever having to install it (it's all run over the internet and the video is streamed).
People like you drove companies to this point. Enjoy the future you have created.
If I generate a sequence of random numbers, write it to disk, and it happens to be, say, a copyrighted song when fed into an audio player, am I breaking the law? Who gets to determine if it's the same as the song?
If you randomly generate a series of 1's and 0's which exactly portrays a copyrighted song then you need to go back to church and account for your sins cause god just set you up. The chances of that happening are so freaking small it's not even worth giving any form of consideration. Also, any judge/jury that buys this story should replace the face on this picture with their own.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Well, there are always exceptions, thus why I said "probably."
My point was that the OP really trivializes the work of the judicial branch. Yes, there are bad judges (probably more the lower in the system you go), and yes, there are good judges who make bad decisions. But to say that the entire court system works on feelings, not facts, is kind of absurd.
I don't see how you can read more than a few opinions and not come away with the impression that judges are an analytical bunch. Unless maybe you're reading Clarence Thomas? (ducks!)
A lot of geeks might find that Posner or Easterbrook really resonate with them. I like Breyer and Stevens. But whomever you like, it's pretty much certain that their writing is going to be more analytical and well-thought out than that of almost any Congress critter.
Also, I think it's false to claim that all of the legal battles geeks are facing are due to issues of fact vs. feeling. When it comes to stuff like copyright and patent law, a lot of it has to do with a legal system that hasn't caught up to modernity. That's not "fact vs. feeling" at all.
And while legislators have "people giving input", it seems like most of the time those "people" are industry lobbyists.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
But I don't think it's our place to judge, and there certainly is plenty of music out there that would elevate society.
We need to get over the idea of personal copyright infringement. The idea that people could infringe copyright for personal use was de facto legal up until quite recently. It shouldn't suddenly be actionable now.
If I generate a sequence of random numbers, write it to disk, and it happens to be, say, a copyrighted song when fed into an audio player, am I breaking the law? Who gets to determine if it's the same as the song?
That's a bit like taking a random stream of letters, printing them out and having it be the same as a pre-existing book. It wouldn't actually be breaking the law, but it's not going to happen either.
What happens when the RIAA loses?
the MPAA/RIAA worked very hard on getting the FEDS to back there copyright laws as illegal and criminal. Remember that blue warning you see before or after your DVD or the text file on your CD Audio. Copyright is civil, it is civil in an other matter except when it relates to something the MPAA/RIAA own or represent.
MP3s, P2P, Downloads, Basiclly the internet in general distrupted that and you know what, none of it will change, no matter how many 'little' people win their day in court. The bigger picture is still out there and it's only a matter of time before they squish all 'internet' issues in relation to the control of their content. MPAA/RIAA Lobby so hard on issues of there interests, who do you have lobbying on your behalf? No One. Accept it.
The only people who can change that is Lawyers and ONLY Lawyers. So until someone out there in the world shows up with some lawyers and money that equal or overpowers the MIAA/RIAA, in ever court where they hold presadent, you might as well continue to gamble until you get caught, cause it will happen sooner or later.
And this is no joke, there is only 1 industry big enough to take on the MPAA/RIAA and that is the porn and video game (whats left of it, the MPAA/RIAA have been busy buying up all the game companys) industry. Make no joke about it, those 2 have to unite for the common good of the people.
It assumes that, since exchange of information, learning from each other, passing on of culture, sharing things you like with people you like and P2P-ing have been basic human deeds and activities from the beginning of time, they are moral by nature.
Nonsense. If you did business with someone and they shared your credit card number, you'd quickly decide otherwise. Exchanging ideas is good, but when you get down to the level of detail that you're copying entire works, you're screwing the creator.
The problem is that all your talk about "artificial scarcity" ignores the fact that it costs money to make this stuff. If you keep on with that filesharing, you'll get to really know what it means to have digital content that is scarce - nothing is more scarce than stuff that doesn't get made because you insisted on not paying for it.
Artificial scarcity, like in "you must not use your own copy machine and must pretend you didnt have one in order for someone else's yesterday's copying-based business model can still work like it were still needed"
I have to wonder why you're not copying dollar bills. Oh no - another instance of "artificial scarcity". Clearly, it's your right to make counterfeit money.
"Yes. If you buy 1 computer file, it is the same as buying 2 identical computer files. With computer files, there are two relevant quantities: none (don't have a copy), and one (have a copy). If you have more than one copy, it is no more valuable than having one copy."
to you, no. You can copy it 400 times on your own computer and it is fine. Once you start copying the files to other people, there is a problem with your logic. Each person that gets a copy is also getting value from it..and the original author should be compensated.
"A corollary of this is that computer-copyable creative works are only worth as much as the first copy. I.e. they should be (and will be, and mostly already are) funded by commission, performance, micropayments, or similar means, rather than expecting to make a profit from each copy."
The first copy (the original) is many times worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (an app like photoshop is worth millions). So, companies can either sell it to one person for the full amount or charge a small fee for copies.
"If you are an aspiring musician who wants to make money from CD sales, grow out of it. You should find a patron, charge for performances, or flip burgers---that's reality. Micropayments also work if they (1) guarantee that you get a good copy of what you want, and/or (2) allow people to be micropatrons, to fund the musicians they like."
micropayments work against human nature, so they will fail. If people are not forced to pay for something, most will not pay. This is why almost all charities are hurting for money.
You can share all the music you want. However, don't whine and complain when companies start putting money into DRM like schemes. It's only going to make it more difficult for the consumer.
You also shouldn't complain if your job gets outsourced to India or any other country. After all, under your logic, I could say that it's an outdated business model to hire over-paid americans.
thieves like you will just swipe the music
Will you never stop trolling? By what reasoning do you call me a thief? Because I have a different opinion to you? My stuff is properly licensed. Just because I disagree with current implementations of copyright law doesn't make me a thief, unless we have introduced thought-crime into our justice system.
Even though I don't agree, I can understand your assertion that breaching copyright is theft, but to say that making an argument against you is theft is ridiculous. Nevertheless, if others choose to spend their time working unprofitably that is hardly my fault. Guess what, I like to do things that people won't pay for too. Wah wah wah! Pay me because I'm an artist!
People like you are fucking shameful.
In contrast with people like you, who have no shame.
At least shoplifters admit what they do is wrong.
and yet you can't even tell me what I've done wrong. You've just called me a thief for disagreeing with you. Your false accusation puts you in the position of being the one doing wrong, but I've seen your trolls too many times to think you will admit it.
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