Slashdot Mirror
Swedish Authorities Attempt Pirate Bay Shutdown
Several sources are discussing the recent attempted shutdown of The Pirate Bay by Swedish authorities. It seems that following the recent court defeats and the pending civil actions, Swedish authorities threatened TPB's main bandwidth supplier with a hefty fine in order to get them shut down. Not surprisingly TPB has relocated and is back online although the tracker still seems to be down. As a gesture of their "appreciation" TPB plans on sending a mocking t-shirt to the people believed responsible for the takedown attempt.
I know, because we only use TPB for Linux distros, right?
You're a pirate and you steal movies, music, programs, and games.
At least fucking admit to it.
No he's not a pirate and no he doesn't steal yada yada.
He may be a copyright infringer, and he may be infringing on the copyright of movies, music, programs and games. There's a difference, despite what Big Money would say / like you to believe. Maybe that should be admitted, because its closer to the truth than your rhetoric.
--- Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
I live in Norway. Here the movies are in the movie theater months after they are released in the USA, and the ticket is very expensive (twice as much as what I have seen in France).
There is not a single good store to buy music or rent movies online. Amazon music is not available here, and iTunes is basically stealing us with execrable rate of exchange. There is Nokia music store of course, but they don't sell movies. Hulu is not available outside the USA.
So yes, online sharing will remains strong in Europe as long as it remains better than the commercial offer.
Not to mention I'm sure there are quite a few like me that have bought MORE than we would have, thanks to P2P. I'll give an example: I'm staring right now at a complete Joss Whedon Collection in the nice DVD boxes, framed by a pair of collector figures that my late sis bought me for bookends for them. All told probably a $1000 they got out of my pocket for the set, as I bought every. single. box on release. What does that have to do with P2P?
Simple. Where I live there was NO WB station you could receive. Zip zero nada squat. And I had seen the Buffy movie and thought it was shit. So if I wouldn't have heard about the buzz and downloaded the first couple of episodes I would have NEVER bought those shows, as who would have thought some show based on a shitty movie with some soap star could actually be entertaining? I sure as hell didn't. But I watched them, actually enjoyed the story, and when it came out on DVD I bought them. Could I have downloaded them? Sure, but then I wouldn't have gotten all the funny outtakes, the director and actor commentaries, the "behind the scenes" and "making of" documentaries, etc. in other words they provided more VALUE for my dollar, making it well worth the money to me.
And to me that hits the nail on the head, as all the DRM in the newer stuff like BD takes AWAY value instead of giving me more for my money. And games have gotten so bad, with totally shit alpha code pushed out the door with more crashes than Win95 with a bad driver that it just ain't funny anymore. Give folks a good value for a good price and folks buy your stuff- that is as true today as it was 100 years ago. Sadly i think too many of these "entertainment" companies have decided they are "Too big to fail" and are therefor entitled to ever increasing profits, no matter if their product smells like a porta-potty at an all you can eat chili cook-off. Like the whining I read from THQ over the closing of Iron Lore "whaaah pirates whaaaah" but you know what? Their product stunk. I couldn't get Titan Quest to keep from crashing to desktop and their forums were full of "graphics failed to initialize" errors.
So offer a good value and quit trying to shovel shit for big $$$ and watch your company make cash. It really is that simple. Hell EA got me to buy Medal of Honor: Airborne, even though I had already heard it wasn't great. How? By putting it along with MOH:Allied Assault, all the expansion packs, and Pacific Assault in a nice box with a "timeline of WW2" and a "Music of MOH" CD in a nice box and charging a fair $30 for it. But this whole buck a song and...what is it now? $59 for a game at release? In a dead economy? Fuck your customers and treat them like shit and don't be surprised that they try to fuck you back. I just don't buy BD and get my games from the bargain bin, whereas i used to love getting games on release day, but I can see where some might just adopt a "fuck them first" attitude. After all, thanks to their bribery the copyrights are.....what 150+ years now? Yep, that seems fair.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.