UK ISPs Hatch Plan To Block the Pirate Bay and Other File Sharing Sites

An anonymous reader writes "UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are already in talks with media rights holders to block around 100 file sharing and cyberlocker websites, it has emerged. The move comes as ISPs BT and TalkTalk won a Judicial review of the Digital Economy Act (DEA) resulting in a 2-year delay on its implementation. The voluntary code is a planned workaround to the delay in the DEA and rights holders attempt to curb file sharing. If passed the code would see rights holders pass evidence of websites that 'facilitate' illegal file sharing to ISPs who would then block access to the sites in question. However, ISPs are reluctant and are pushing for a high court judge to approve any site blocking. ... Amongst the 100 sites is the worlds most resilient Bittorrent site, The Pirate Bay and Usenet's reincarnated NewzBin2."

Comments

Pointless

[funkatron]

Don't really see the point here. Just looks like needless censorship. Never understood what the problem with these sites was supposed to be anyway.

One month

[Manip]

One month, that is how long I give it before this gets used to block sites for non-piracy reasons. Like a site that talks about BitTorrent community activity or a competitor who infringes a patent for two random examples. Make my words, this will be used for political suppression even if it isn't the government doing it.

Re:One month

[1s44c]

One month, that is how long I give it before this gets used to block sites for non-piracy reasons. Like a site that talks about BitTorrent community activity or a competitor who infringes a patent for two random examples. Make my words, this will be used for political suppression even if it isn't the government doing it.

First they come for the pedos and no-one defends them.

Second they come for the movie pirates and few people defend them.

Then they come for anyone who expresses a non-approved opinion and we are all buggered.

Re:One month

[Anonymous Coward]

"Like a site that talks about BitTorrent community activity or a competitor who infringes a patent for two random examples."

Or a linux distro mirror that includes a bittorrent package.

Re:One month

[isorox]

Then they come for anyone who expresses a non-approved opinion and we are all buggered.

Apart from young boys, after all the pedos were dealt with earlier.

First they come for the pedos and no-one defends them.

Re:One month

[ipwndk]

Of course. Take Denmark as a glorious example of this.

Re:One month

[jimicus]

One month, that is how long I give it before this gets used to block sites for non-piracy reasons. Like a site that talks about BitTorrent community activity or a competitor who infringes a patent for two random examples. Make my words, this will be used for political suppression even if it isn't the government doing it.

You're over two years - possibly much more - too late. The UK ISP industry already has the technology in place to block more-or-less any site they like and to administer that blocking from a single, central location which then gets pushed out to most of the big providers. The thing is it mostly went under the radar for two reasons:

1. It wasn't widely publicised.
2. It was mostly centred around blocking of child porn.

Odds on this is about adding another category to the list of things they consider acceptable to block.

(For those who didn't know about this: Citation 1 Citation 2 - and the actual organisation responsible for this list)

The thing that did come up around that time was that not only are ISPs blocking dodgy material, many are doing so in a fashion that ensures the end user is blissfully unaware it's happening - either by resetting TCP connections or intercepting with an HTTP 404. At the time this all happened, one ISP was putting up a message saying "Sorry, I can't let you see that" (so the technology used does make that possible) but that ISP was in a minority.

Re:One month

[dintech]

One month, that is how long I give it before this gets used to block sites for non-piracy reasons.

Wikileaks will no doubt be on it from day 1. After all, it contains copyright documents.

Re:One month

[pinkishpunk]

well we have this system here in denmark, dns based blocking of child pronograf sites, then allofmp3 was added to the list, thepiratbay was next.
Now "illegal" gamling sites, aka we have single monoply for gamling in danmark, Next up sites selling medicin....

all this controlled in a none transpart way, just like the politicians like it.

Fight it, any way you can, onces its inplace its too late, and it WILL expand to block things others than its original purpose.

Re:One month

[Threni]

Technology? I don't think that word means what you think it means. They've had the technology to do it since they became ISPs.

Re:One month

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's make this perfectly clear: When people object to blocking child pornography online, they are NOT defending pedos! They are defending the rights of everyone against a censorship infrastructure. People who abuse kids directly or indirectly are sick. Pedophilia is not just a particularly "non-approved opinion". Sexual exploitation of children is in the same category as murder: A universally condemned crime!

I see a growing number of outspoken pedophiles who see the fight against web censorship as support for their "cause". It is not. These people are despicable, what they do is an abomination and destroys lives. That the fight against censorship can be misinterpreted as helping them is an unfortunate and entirely unwanted side effect. The same people who fight censorship will do everything to shut down the operations of pedophiles. Pedophiles are NOT WELCOME!

Re:One month

[Anonymous Coward]

While nobody might defend pedos - there's certainly some overall defense of not introducing nation-/industry-wide filters, even if that means pedo sites don't get blocked either; see the recent decision by ISPs in The Netherlands.

But you certainly have a point in that, even in NL, there already -are- blocks on some pedo sites, have been for years. By GP's argument, that means that since years minus one month, piracy sites or just simply sites critical of the ISP / government would get blocked under this same regulation.

Yet that hasn't happened. Plenty of sites with complaints about ISPs. Plenty of piracy sites. Plenty of sites detailing how to make bombs. Plenty of everything.

Yes, such filters -could- enable the ISP / government to block those sites more easily, and they -should- be fought. But reality shows that the slippery slope is either not very slippery or not much of a slope.

Re:One month

[Inda]

I give it 24 hours before someone mirrors the content.

I mean, it's not as if us 'pirates' are any good at duplication. We have no experience in it. We do not know how to upload links and files to a message board.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:6170adba9a8c0c5db...

Block /. too

Re:One month

[AmonTheMetalhead]

One month, that is how long I give it before this gets used to block sites for non-piracy reasons. Like a site that talks about BitTorrent community activity or a competitor who infringes a patent for two random examples. Make my words, this will be used for political suppression even if it isn't the government doing it.

No more slashdot in the UK?

Re:One month

[jimicus]

Well of course they have. But if they'd built out their networks without any thought given to routing everything through a central system to block these things, one could reasonably argue that they don't have the technology to do that but could do so given a certain amount of work.

Re:One month

[vegiVamp]

No, they'll still be buggered, just not by pedos. This makes surpisingly little different from the young boys' point of view.

Re:One month

[Anonymous Coward]

The egyptians didn't need guns and the Libyans are getting their asses kicked. Or at least were until the same military that would pound an american rebellion until submission started working on the Libyan military.

Re:One month

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot.

In the US you have the recourse of using a legally held firearm to illegally "eliminate" a CEO. Thus committing a crime, and risking prison time.
In the UK we have the recourse of using an illegally held firearm to illegally "eliminate" a CEO. Thus committing two crimes, and risking prison time.

Either way, there is no legal resource.

I'm a big fan of the 2nd Amendment, but your argument that it can and should be used to murder a CEO whose business plan you dislike is just moronic.

Now please be quiet and let the adults talk in peace.

Re:One month

[Xest]

There seems to be a lot of gaps in your understanding of the IWF:

"You're over two years - possibly much more - too late."

Yes, much, much more. It's been around since the mid 90s so more like 15 years, rather than two. You may think this is irrelevant but I'm not sure it is. Whilst there has been noise over the years, the IWF has never really been extended outside it's remit, and whilst it's stepped outside it's bounds and screwed up a few times it has quickly backtracked. I think it's important to note that the IWF has generally not strayed outside these bounds because there's recognition by politicians and the like that by extending the IWF's remit you also risk increasing the amount of anti-IWF sentiment meaning the IWF as a whole might end up being a target of criticism putting at risk it's existence even for censoring child porn. There hasn't historically been a lot of serious political will to change the IWF's remit for this reason. That may well change of course, but it's a point worth keeping in mind.

"The UK ISP industry already has the technology in place to block more-or-less any site they like and to administer that blocking from a single, central location which then gets pushed out to most of the big providers."

The key term here being of course "most". The IWF block list is optional, to change that would require legislative changes, and even if there was backing in parliament for this to go ahead it would take years to get legislation through and enact it by which time either attitudes will have changed and it'll be scrapped, or the technology community will have long worked around it anyway- just as they have with the Digital Economy Act and it's focus on P2P when most sharing is done via less public methods now (encrypted VPN, physical trading, direct downloads, IM transfers).

It's also worth noting that there was a lot of noise from ISPs about dropping out of the scheme even when it fucked up with the whole Wikipedia debacle.

"1. It wasn't widely publicised."

If you haven't heard of the IWF in the UK then you're obviously not an IT professional. I find it hard to believe anyone in the IT world in the UK can not really have heard of the IWF.

"2. It was mostly centred around blocking of child porn."

Where mostly = only.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the IWF, largely because it costs public money to run and I'm not convinced it solves anything because it does nothing to stop sharing of child porn through encrypted private channels, VPN, or on physical media and so forth, and certainly does nothing to actually stop real world physical child abuse. I'd certainy much rather see the money spent on a couple more specialist officers who have the power to go and deal with that, than I would a bunch of overpaid people who sit adding and removing a few URLs to and from a list each day.

But let's stick to the facts, you make the IWF out to be some secret stealthy organisation that's come onto the scene recently and that blocks arbitrary content. That simply isn't true, it's a well known organisation that has a predefined remit which it has for most of it's existence stuck to with only a few fuckups. I don't like the orgnisation, but I'm not sure complete and utter misinformation about it will allow for helpful and rational debate about the threat of unwarranted censorship.

There's nothing secret or subversive about the IWF in it's 15 year history thus far, and it's blocking methods are neither high tech or particularly centralised or mandatory. It's implementation relies on distributing a list of child porn sites to ISPs who then choose whether or not to implement that blacklist, and how they implement it. Some simply just remove the given domains from their DNS servers and leave it at that.

Again though, the IWF is a pointless waste of space regardless and I agree it has the potential to go to far is stupid politicians get involved, I'll give you that. I don't expect it to be anything to worry about however because it's methods are so primitive and pathetic as to be irrelevant to anyone with an ounce of technical ability anyway.

Re:One month

[SuricouRaven]

Central points are cheaper. It's more cost effective to lay one bundle of the best fiber money can buy to LINX than it is to run ten bundles of slightly cheaper fiber to ten different local ISP peering points.

Re:One month

[SuricouRaven]

The IWF blocks files it considers child porn, but the list of exactly what it blocks is secret. There is no procedure for appeal. Those who are blocked are not informed, and some ISPs fake 404 messages in order to conceal even the fact that something has been blocked. The exact criteria for what it considers child porn are obviously highly subjective. So, though it may have a fifteen year history, there is no doubt that it *is* a highly secretive organisation and quite stealthy in it's methods. The IWF would argue that this is the only way they can perform their function - after all, they can hardly go around publishing a list of child porn to ask for community approval - but it is secretive nontheless.

Re:One month

[Xest]

No it's not, as someone previously involved with a regional schools broadband ISP I can assure you plenty of people at the ISPs see that list. If it was so controversal and had more than child porn on it, someone would leak it.

The list is neither particularly big at anyone time nor is it subversive. It is what it is, a list of sites hosting child porn.

I know it's nice to create conspiracy theories, but thus far, when it comes to the IWF, they prove entirely unsubstantiated and have yet to bear any resemblance to reality.

Re:One month

[SuricouRaven]

I'm not really concerned about the IWF having some conspiracy planned, so much as just being somehow incompetent. Recall the Wikipedia 'Virgin Killer' incident? That only came to light because wikipedia is a major site with competent management to notice it and enough brand recognition for people to care. If they can make a mistake once, it does raise the question of how many other times it's happened and just not been noticed. Either simple mistakes, or (as in the VK incident) an over-eager member of their team blocking something that few would consider worthy of a block. Given that the list is a secret for obvious reasons, that those sites made subject to the block recieve no form of notification, and that many ISPs fake 404 messages or reset connections in order to take a technical problem, it seems quite likely this has happened.

There is an obvious solution. The IWF just needs to require all participating ISPs cease the use of misleading or potentially misleading blocking methods and instead provide a clear notification explaining that the site was blocked by request of the IWF. I don't know why they don't do this, unless it's to try to minimise the chance of their embarassing mistakes being noticed.

Re:One month

[SuricouRaven]

In the UK? Think defamation. I can easily imagine a situation happening in a few years where a party in the UK is able to get a non-UK site blocked on the grounds it constitutes libel. We have one of the loosest standards for legal defamation in the world.

Re:One month

[Xest]

"Recall the Wikipedia 'Virgin Killer' incident? That only came to light because wikipedia is a major site with competent management to notice it and enough brand recognition for people to care."

That's not really true, some ISPs recognised it in the block list and didn't filter it despite being part of the list. Some however did, so it became a public problem full of loud vocal people around the same time a few ISPs who did notice it were also pointing out the problem.

Which is really the point, if it had been a much lesser known site then the ISPs would've still made a noise but because it would be lesser known they would be heard over the masses who also noticed it which they barely were in the Wikipedia case.

Trust me, the list isn't that big a state secret, if it reached a point where it was being abused or used incorrectly then someone at an ISP could easily and would leak it.

People just wont do it generally because there's no real public interest in leaking a list of child porn sites, and if you did get caught you wouldn't have a public interest defence and would also likely get labelled as a supporter of paedophiles. If that list does start getting used for other things maliciously or not then some of the many people with access will gladly leak it.

As I say I don't like the IWF either but I don't think it's particularly worth worrying about as a secretive censorship mechanism, the infrastructure just isn't there to support that kind of thing - you don't sign the official secrets act or any such thing - and too many average joes who are just like you, me and many other Slashdot users work at ISPs have access to the list. Historically it's always just been e-mailed to the relevant people at an ISP because most ISPs don't trust to give the IWF direct access to their systems to update it directly. If there's ever reason to make a noise about it, noise will be made. Again this doesn't mean I'd rather see the IWF removed and the money spent on people who actually stop real physical abuse, but again, I don't think it's worth worrying about as a mechanism for censorship until we start to hear noise to the contrary. If all is quiet when it comes to the IWF, it's because it's just doing it's job and there's nothing worth making noise about.

Re:One month

[SuricouRaven]

True to some extent, but it still doesn't answer the question of why some ISPs deliberatly try to make the blocks look like a technical fault by faking 404 errors. This does not inspire confidence in the system.

Re:One month

[Xest]

Often because the easiest way of implementing such blocks is to simply reroute any requests on the blocklist to an empty webserver and simultaneously avoid having to deal with customers asking why something was blocked or whether they're going to have the police coming and knocking on their door if they were duped into visiting the site or managed to stumble across it accidently.

Technology?

[TiZon]

As far as I know, there aren't any technologies that haven't been cracked or have a work-around... So, why bother?

Re:Technology?

[funkatron]

There's this thing called "bullshit", also known as "politics" if you're not feeling polite. Basically, they're bothering because it makes either the red team or the blue team (or both) happy and helps them avoid other shit.

Re:Technology?

[JavaBear]

As long as they can block the "average" user, there won't be much left for the rest of us.

And about breaking "blocks", I do like the one about it being legal to copy media for our own use, but still illegal as it is illegal to break effective anti-circumvention measures. I'm just saying, if they can be broken, they aren't effective...

Re:Technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they can block the "average" user, there won't be much left for the rest of us.

Meh, there were loads of warez, moviez and mp3z before the Internet got mainstream. A smaller tech-savvy community is still big enough to support itself. Cutting off Joe Sixpack is probably for the best for those who know how to circumvent these blocks: less attention from corrupt corporations and politicians plus advances in anonymity and encrypted services.

Re:Technology?

[vegiVamp]

So geeks will go back to being a minor, and thus mostly-ignored segment that pretty much does whatever it wants on "their" internet? Suits me fine.

Re:Technology?

[SuricouRaven]

There is one - noone has yet found a way to break serial whitelists for online gaming.

Oh, wait. All that did was lead to the invention of the serial-stealing trojan. That rather backfired. Nope, nothing remains uncracked.

Bunch of luddites

[Kethinov]

Oh no! The existence of some internet website undermines my business model! We need to eradicate this technology quickly! Technological progress is bad for business!

Re:Bunch of luddites

[chichilalescu]

they should probably forbid the use of ssh too, as otherwise people could ssh into a foreign machine that does have access to the torrent sites.
in the end, I think their best option is to simply shoot everybody who has a computer. that way, they can't infringe copyright. right? oh, and those with tape recorders too. and the ones with pens and paper. and the ones with good memory.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[1s44c]

they should probably forbid the use of ssh too

Not-viable. Like any TCP traffic it can be tunneled over anything.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Richard_at_work]

And shoplifting undermines a shops business model - should we also make that legal again? This isn't technological progress, so stop hiding behind that rhetoric - this is the wilfull ability of people being able to get things for free, so they do.

No, a copyright holder doesn't have the right to make money, but they do have the right to try.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[L4t3r4lu5]

I lose patience writing this over and over again.

A shoplifter deprives the store of property, which it then is unable to sell. A person who downloads unlicensed media deprives nobody of anything. There is no guarantee that the person would have bought the media had it not been available online. There is no such thing as a potential sale, or potential profit.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Kjella]

A person who downloads unlicensed media deprives nobody of anything. There is no guarantee that the person would have bought the media had it not been available online. There is no such thing as a potential sale, or potential profit.

Back in the real world, if you turned off the tap water the sale of bottled water would increase even if people could drink milk or juice or soda or beer. Maybe if people had to pay for water they'd drink less or drink something else, but trying to argue it would have no effect is burying your head deeply in the sand.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Dunbal]

And shoplifting undermines a shops business model - should we also make that legal again?

Is it shoplifting? Or is it more like someone opened a business right next to yours and is giving away the exact same merchandise as you stock, for free? While you can complain about your new neighbor and wonder how the hell he can finance this - there really is nothing you can do about it. Perhaps you should take a long hard look at your supplier and start wondering exactly why he charges you what he does. Trying to talk your neighbor into charging the same as you do is actually a crime called "price fixing", among other things. So who is in the wrong?

Re:Bunch of luddites

[bug1]

The media industry as it exists today is an _utter_ failure.
  - They refuse to evelove.
  - Its against their nature to compete
  - They treat customers as enemies
  - They discriminate over who it sells to.
  - They limits the products it offers for sale.
  - They have been found planting Trojans in their product (sony).
  - They disrespect other people property rights.
  - They pay their suppliers (Artists) a pittance.
  - They arent willing to negotiate wit htheir customers.
  - They sue tens of thousands of potential customers at the blink of a hat and with minimal evidence.

So cry me a river about this "business model" you think is so worthy of legal protection

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Dodgy G33za]

I live off tank water. If I didn't and they stopped main supply I soon would. Back in the real world, people will find a way to work around it, other people will find a way of making it so that idiots can use, and hey presto, we are back to square one. Just off the top of my head embedding tracker info in jpg's springs to mind. Dump the jpg's on major image sharing sites and write a browser that can find and decode the trackers.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[abigsmurf]

There are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people who bought a Nintendo DS and an R4 (or other type of flash card) and have not bought any games since. Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

A pirated copy does not always mean a lost sale but it is equally wrong to assume that no sales are lost due to piracy. Overall a pirated copy from a statistical POV represents a fraction of a lost sale.

Do you get outraged when people say "I stole a kiss from her"? When people describe something priced cheap as a steal are you overcome with rage? Words have a wide of uses and their meanings are altered by use and context. Not only that, definitions evolve and change over time, the english language is defined by use.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Richard_at_work]

Ooh ooh ooh look, someone jumped on the "copyright infringement isnt stealing!!!" bandwagon, as I well and truly knew they would.

I never said it was, I compared two aspects (the original posters and mine) of how actions can undermine various business models - and yes, copyright violation does indeed undermine a business model just as shoplifting does.

As I said in my original post, a copyright holder has every right to try and make money off their creation - they don't have the right to make money, but they have the right to try. You, The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt or anyone else does not have the right to deny them that attempt to make money OFF OF THEIR PROPERTY.

There is no guarantee they will make any money, there is no guarantee that the people downloading it for free would have bought it, but there is also no guarantee that they wouldn't have - its the opportunity to sell to these people that the copyright holder has a right to, and that is the right that you are violating.

But go ahead, jump on the obvious bandwagon for some mod points, works every time. You can sit up there on your throne content in the knowledge that copyright infringement has no negative effect at all.

By the way, who are you expecting to produce the content when your view wins through and everything is available on torrent sites for free?

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Vectormatic]

we will just make it a criminal offense to use SSH, that way, only criminal use SSH!

(and god, how i wish i was kidding)

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Richard_at_work]

You do realise that you do not have to buy anything of theirs, don't you? You can seek out alternatives that better fit your moral or ethical position, or business model requirement, or were you not aware of that?

Just because your opinion of them is negative does not mean that their business model isn't worthy of protection, there are always alternatives.

But the irony is that you don't want alternatives, you want their products - but you want them on *your* terms. So you are infact the one propagating the current situation, by giving them the opportunity to say "our product is wanted".

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how many times you say it, copying a file isn't stealing, you're not taking away the original product.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Richard_at_work]

Its not like a competing business at all - because the competition isn't distributing their products, its distributing *yours*. Thats the funny thing in all of this - the internet allows for independent creation and distribution, trivial distribution, but rather than take advantage of that to create an alternative to the mainstream media industry, people are using it to distribute that industries products. Why? Because the creation part is hard, so why bother creating at all when you can just have what you want, when you want and screw the creators.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Richard_at_work]

There is significantly more to it than just the "original product". No matter how much you like to tell yourself otherwise, creativity is not easy, and production is not cheap and most of the things you enjoy require significant investment of time and money - but those get conveniently ignored when discussions such as these come up, and apparently copyright infringement is no threat at all to these things.

Because certainly, people will still invest time and money into epics such as the Lord of the Rings movies when the chances of them recouping costs are minimal due to unfettered and legal availability of the easiest part of the process - the distribution of the .avi file...

Re:Bunch of luddites

[L4t3r4lu5]

Absolutely! At no point did I say that copyright infringement doesn't affect the sale of media by artists or their publishers, and the money they make from it.

Oh, wait a minute... Looking at MPAA figures for movie ticket sales, from 1995 to 2010 revenue has steadily increased. http://www.the-numbers.com/market/

It seems that the music industry is doing pretty well too. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/mar/12/demise-music-industry-facts

To address your final sentence, I expect content to be produced the same way it should always have been; By people who create content because they must do it, because it is what drives them and what fulfils their lives. We need distinctly less JLS's, Britney Spears', and other manufactured and bulk produced filler in the music market. We need less re-hashes of good old films with more explosions and CGI effects just to cash in on the brand. Art should be created for passion, not profit. People will pay for what is worthy of payment.

Disclaimer: I haven't downloaded unlicensed copyrighted media for many years, and ended up buying licensed copies of what I downloaded anyway. Last album I downloaded was Master of Puppets; I've since bought the entire back catalogue of Metallica (excluding St Anger. What were they thinking?). That was after they performed the whole album at Download in 2006.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst analogy ever. Water is essential for our survival, digital files are not. If you disable water taps, people will need to get water elsewhere or they will die, the same does not apply to downloads.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Dunbal]

I'm sorry, you are switching analogies mid analogy. That's against the rules. You said:

and shoplifting undermines a shops business model

Anyone standing on the sidewalk in front of your store giving away the same merchandise which you stock is not giving away YOUR merchandise. You do not own that merchandise. You own your inventory, which you (perhaps foolishly) paid for and hoped to sell for a profit - human greed says a "healthy" profit.

people are using it to distribute that industries products.

If you look at the sum total of media available on the internet TODAY, in the post YouTube "bandwidth is cheap and anyone can upload anything" era, you will find that there is an awful lot of creation and an awful lot of original content - moreso than "industry" content. After all the movie "industry" probably puts out what - say 50 movies a year? At an average of 2 hours per movie let's say they create 100 hours per year. While this content gets duplicated endless times on endless websites, there is a far greater volume of absolutely original content being created and shared on the internet. Whether you like it or not is a matter of taste. And maybe one day we'll be able to efficiently sort out the crap from the good stuff.

Because the creation part is hard, so why bother creating at all

No, creation is easy. Getting Charlie Sheen to sign off on it, at $2 million per episode - yeah, that's hard. You probably won't get Charlie Sheen in your video. But you strike me as the kind of person that hasn't actually explored what's out there on the internet. It's absolutely full of creation, and this flies into the face of your argument. Creating is easy. It's DISTRIBUTION that used to be hard. No more.

However you seem to be content to suck at the teat that is offered to you, for a price. You never wonder why Angelina Jolie should have hundreds of millions of dollars while you might be struggling to eat, or why some "artists" with immense and suddenly acquired wealth just can't wait to flaunt it, believing themselves to be 'elite'. These idols are created by the top down business model. However they have absolutely no value in themselves - case in point: they are easily replaced. A show is canceled, an actor is written out, a song is "covered" by a different band. But when it all comes down to it, there has been a limited number of plots since ancient Greece, and there are only 8 basic musical notes. I think it's time we explore peer to peer creativity. And screw those who want cash up front for content that always fails to deliver.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

nope, i wouldn't have even bought my DS if there was nothing like an R4

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

if you turned off the tap water the sale of bottled water would increase even if people could drink milk or juice or soda or beer.

You're ignoring the fact that tapwater is used for needs other than directly drinking it. I'd wager that today MOST of the tapwater goes into showers, bathtubs, dishwashers and washing machines and only a very small fraction of that is used for actual consumption, save directly drinking it.

Now, back to the actually real world, if we didn't have tapwater, but would have to pay for much more costly and much less efficient bottled water, because the Bottling Industry would argue that this was water pirating... Well, imagine it yourself. Take your monthly water consumption amount and see the price of bottled water. Imagine paying the same amount of money per gallon for what your household consumes from tapwater. Of course, people wouldn't consume as much as they do. What does that mean? A sanitary disaster. We would all still be living in farms, industrialization would stop at the level of the 19th century.

So it does have a lot to do with technology. And economics as well, by the way.

Making the information free to consume and copy will create new horizons for the humanity to prosper. Sure, it will make so protective entertainment industries largely obsolete, but so what? If it makes most of the people at least a little bit happier, so be it!

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

Not necessarily, there's a fairly good chance that those people wouldn't have bought the device to begin with. I'm about to do something that you don't get to do very often on Slashdot, quote Bill Gates.

Bill Gates on Piracy: "They'll get addicted, and then we'll collect"

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Richard_at_work]

I'm not switching analogies at all, you just want it to seem that way - competing shops have their own cost structures in that they both have to source stock to sell or give away, but in the scenario we are discussing, only the movie studios or the music companies have the cost structure because they have to actually produce the product while the copyright infringer is just taking their production and giving it away.

The internet allows for easy distibution, but creation is still difficult - yes, there may be amusing 30 second clips on YouTube, but I don't see many independently produced movies, TV shows, music albums etc and certainly not many that are actually any good. If creation is so easy, why isn't The Pirate Bay et al primarily pushing independent, alternative movies, music and shows? Why is it so hard to find an independent production high up on the list of most downloaded?

Anyone can "create" a pile of dogshit, it takes actual talent to create something worth watching - and that talent doesnt mean big name stars, it also means writing, scoring, set design and build, locations, art, makeup, post production, marketing etc etc etc. Unless you are asking people to accept a significant drop in the standard of any of the above for the sake of "independence", and thats a big ask, you have to match what the studios are putting out - because thats what people want.

You can claim all you want that top stars or bands are idols manufactured by the "top down business model", but that business model is not preventing you or I from producing alternatives - as you say, the internet gives us the ultimate in distribution channels, but whats being produced at the moment severely struggles to compete with the mainstream - and that only validates the mainstream.

You can also go on the attack about how I "seem to be content to suck at the teat that is offered to you, for a price" all you want, it doesn't bother me. I also don't wonder why Angelina Jolie has a lot of money while I sit here infront of a dreary desk for an entire day for a pittance - well done Angelina, I don't envy you, the money is out there to be made if I want to work for it, I'm not entitled to it.

Go ahead with your peer-to-peer creativity - thats precisely what I have been saying is missing in all of this, the alternative to the mainstream. Stop the hypocritical approach of expecting the mainstream producers to produce but not to expect to be paid - it doesn't work like that no matter how you try to justify it to yourself.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

What proportion of these individuals are we supposed to believe would have bought the $150 piece of gaming hardware if the R4 had not been available?

Re:Bunch of luddites

[swilver]

We are not denying them anything. I'm fine with them TRYING to make money of something immaterial that has 0 reproduction costs, just don't expect the populous to bend over backwards to have the privilege of paying for it.

I simply refuse to subscribe to a view where something with 0 reproduction costs should for some reason give a return on investment that scales with the population on this planet. A fair compensation sure -- unfortunately, they want it all.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

A person who downloads unlicensed media deprives nobody of anything. There is no guarantee that the person would have bought the media had it not been available online. There is no such thing as a potential sale, or potential profit.

Back in the real world, if you turned off the tap water the sale of bottled water would increase even if people could drink milk or juice or soda or beer. Maybe if people had to pay for water they'd drink less or drink something else, but trying to argue it would have no effect is burying your head deeply in the sand.

What? Nobody has to buy music or films but they have to buy water, so that makes your analogy worthless.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Those people most likely wouldn't have bought the DS in the first place if they couldn't pirate games for it.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[vm146j2]

Do you get outraged when people say "I stole a kiss from her"?

Hey, wait a minute! That's my wife. . .

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Dunbal]

the money is out there to be made if I want to work for it

Eh no, see, that's where the game is closed to you and me. You either have to have extraordinary talent (ie, you know which cock to suck at the movie/record studio) and/or you need to be the son or daughter of someone famous - like Angelina Jolie is. In fact it's amazing how many 2nd and 3rd generation "movie" and "pop" stars there are. Quite disproportionate, really. It gets better when you compare the Jew/Gentile ratio in Hollywood. Equal Opportunity my ass. Don't kid yourself, neither you nor I will EVER see that kind of money. And frankly we're better people for it. The number of individuals who continue to act rationally with vast fortunes is rather small.

Go ahead with your peer-to-peer creativity

Oh I am. I find it quite exciting that I can find so many different flavors of very good operating systems for free. Each one was a "creation", a labor of love. And each one arrived to me via peer-to-peer. Oh I'm sorry, is Apache not mainstream enough? How about Linux? Java? How about the free multi-player games I play? Not pirated, but designed to be free. And the movies I watch - distributed free on the internet? There is content out there. It's not my job to point you to it - you won't have my taste. But if you look, you will find. I am not being hypocritical at all. I pay for some of my games - the ones I want on impulse. The ones I play most often are free. I go to the movies sometimes. Often I watch original movies online - yeah there's no million dollar special effects but so what? I read the classics I want thanks to the Gutenberg project, and I paid for a few thousand books here on my shelves. I downloaded my compiler with Microsoft's blessing and write my programs. My database is free. My office suite is free. Oh wow holy crap, there IS decent peer-to-peer stuff out there at no charge at all. It doesn't take billions to make these things. You don't have to pay $300 per copy. And you can have it within less time than some traffic lights. We're at a crossroads today.

But you refuse to see that tomorrow is going to be different.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

There are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people who bought a Nintendo DS and an R4 (or other type of flash card) and have not bought any games since. Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

If so, I think it's more likely they wouldn't have bought the gaming console in the first place if there were no pirated games available.

A pirated copy does not always mean a lost sale but it is equally wrong to assume that no sales are lost due to piracy. Overall a pirated copy from a statistical POV represents a fraction of a lost sale.

Actually, the studies that have been made say that the persons who pirate stuff also buy more. This actually means that piracy increases sales. What the media industry are raving about is really the loss of control over the market they have had previously.

Do you get outraged when people say "I stole a kiss from her"? When people describe something priced cheap as a steal are you overcome with rage? Words have a wide of uses and their meanings are altered by use and context. Not only that, definitions evolve and change over time, the english language is defined by use.

One of the most effective ways of steering a debate is changing the meaning of what's debated, that's whats he's raving about. If you turn the debate from piracy to stealing, you've basically won already.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

There are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people who bought a Nintendo DS and an R4 (or other type of flash card) and have not bought any games since. Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

Can you back this up or have you just made it up now ? You know, the industry is known for pulling statistics out of their a**es, so I automatically distrust any such claims.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought an xbox 360. It isnt cracked, or hacked in any way.
How many games have I bought? Absolutely 0.
I don't watch DVDs on it, the controller doesn't even have batteries in it.

So yes, I can beleive they would have bought a DS for half the price of my xbox, and then decided that it was surplus to requirements and never bothered with it.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said it was, I compared two aspects (the original posters and mine) of how actions can undermine various business models - and yes, copyright violation does indeed undermine a business model just as shoplifting does.

Yes you did, your entire post is a long rant about how copyright deprives people of their property (i.e. stealing). Back in the real world, we can conclude that piracy leads to a net increase in sales in the developed world, as the ones who are doing the most pirating also are doing the most buyin'.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

production is not cheapM/quote>

Actually it is - a guy with a pc has more power than entire studios of yesteryear. The legacy media companies also hate the fact some guy with a phone can make a more entertaining video than they can, and upload it to youtube, all for free.

epics such as the Lord of the Rings

Who cares? We don't build pyramids anymore either. I'll happily do without any more high-budget films forever if it means my communications aren't censored. Face it, if your law requires a draconian information police state to enforce, the law is wrong.

Copyright monopoly grants destroy the free market and as such are socialist. But they also pull in some of the worst, most retarded features of capitalism. Frankly, if we want to award artists over and above the free market, we'd be better off with an honestly socialist model where artists get paid directly from taxpayer pockets, but simply don't have any power to restrict other people's communications.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[grahamm]

You're ignoring the fact that tapwater is used for needs other than directly drinking it. I'd wager that today MOST of the tapwater goes into showers, bathtubs, dishwashers and washing machines and only a very small fraction of that is used for actual consumption, save directly drinking it.

While I think you are right that most tap water is not consumed, I believe that more 'tap' water is used for flushing toilets than for any other purpose.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as a potential sale, or potential profit.

Hah. You can't seriously believe this; the entire marketing and advertising industry is built around the concept of potential sales.

And while I agree that copyright infringement != theft (and != piracy, too, FWIW... and unlicensed downloading !=(necessarily) copyright infringement), I think you're ignoring the fact that quite a few people ARE downloading things because it's cheaper that way, and that they would otherwise have spent their money on these things and bought them instead. I don't know how many, and it might even be a minority, but to say that copyright infringement has absolutely NO economic effect, which you appear to be doing, is just as absurd as saying that every unlicensed download is LITERALLY a lost sale. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[metacell]

Back in the real world, if you turned off the tap water the sale of bottled water would increase even if people could drink milk or juice or soda or beer. Maybe if people had to pay for water they'd drink less or drink something else, but trying to argue it would have no effect is burying your head deeply in the sand.

True, but then you have to argue that piracy has a substantial damaging effect on the incomes of artists, and that argument is effectively crushed both by the fact that artists' incomes have increased, and by independent academic studies showing that piracy doesn't lead to a net loss in sales.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

This may come as a shock, but some artists actually love creating and aren't out to be millionaires. Not that they mind making money, but it's not why they create.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Pieroxy]

I lose patience writing this over and over again myself.

A shoplifter deprives the store of property, which it then is unable to sell. A person who downloads unlicensed media deprives the copyright holder of his right to distribute his good according to his own terms, which is the right granted by the copyright he holds.

See? Same thing, really. By taking without asking you deprive both.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[metacell]

There are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people who bought a Nintendo DS and an R4 (or other type of flash card) and have not bought any games since. Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

No, but the question is, would those people have bought a Nintendo DS at all if they couldn't use pirate copies on it?

A pirated copy does not always mean a lost sale but it is equally wrong to assume that no sales are lost due to piracy. Overall a pirated copy from a statistical POV represents a fraction of a lost sale.

That's what common sense would lead you to believe, but there are now a number of studies showing that piracy acts as a marketing device and stimulates sales, and that the net effect on sales is roughly zero.

With piracy, people also tend to save the money they buy music for (of which only about 10% reaches the artist), and instead use them on concerts and merchandise (on which a much higher percentage reaches the artist). This could help explain why the average income of music artists have actually increased in the last decade, despite file sharing and the total number of artists also increasing. In Norway, the average income has increased by 66%, and in Sweden, by over 30%, despite the total number of music artists increasing in both countries during the same period.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Pieroxy]

Yes, but who fucking care of your interpretation of the word "stealing" ?

Re:Bunch of luddites

[goose-incarnated]

<snipped everything I agree with> and there are only 8 basic musical notes.

7

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

A shoplifter deprives the store of property, which it then is unable to sell.

which gets reimbursed (including lost wages and other damage) by a insurance company and the shop has something to sell again

A person who downloads unlicensed media deprives nobody of anything. There is no guarantee that the person would have bought the media had it not been available online. There is no such thing as a potential sale, or potential profit.

Just a thought let them get insured for loss through piracy and I'd love to see insurance company calcs on that

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't lose your patience, just point them to this video. It makes it clear for everyone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

And I lose patience reading your response over and over again.

It's true a download is not necessarily a lost sale, but a downloader has no right to receive any utility (e.g. enjoyment) from the media without paying for it.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I have conveniently forgotten the obvious and most common thing to do with water at home. :)

Re:Bunch of luddites

[agentgonzo]

You, The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt or anyone else does not have the right to deny them that attempt to make money OFF OF THEIR PROPERTY.

By your same argument, the UK ISPs do not have the right to deny TPB, ISOHunt or anyone else going about their own practises and not making money for it. They created works (in this case, a compendium of information about where data is in EXACTLY the same way that Google/Yahoo!/Bing generate money from compiling information) and are disseminating it - in this case, for free as they do not make profit (side arguments about ad revenue is a topic I really can't be arsed to care about)

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Ecuador]

For example, I download and watch all movies that interest. Then, I order the DVD for the ones I really liked. So, I have hundreds of dvd's including full sets of many TV series etc. If I did not have an easy way to access movies at home, I would not have found so many that I like enough to purchase.
While I might be in a minority that actually buys more due to piracy, I am sure that most people who don't want to pay for movies and just pirate, would not provide a lot of income to the movie industry anyway.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

A person who downloads unlicensed media deprives nobody of anything. There is no guarantee that the person would have bought the media had it not been available online. There is no such thing as a potential sale, or potential profit.

Back in the real world, if you turned off the tap water the sale of bottled water would increase even if people could drink milk or juice or soda or beer. Maybe if people had to pay for water they'd drink less or drink something else, but trying to argue it would have no effect is burying your head deeply in the sand.

But that's like water sellers complaining about tap water being free. The reality is that people breach copyright to get free music/books/software. Companies have to work with that model of reality and accept the fact that people are doing this. Anything else is simply burying your head in the sand.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[microbox]

Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

Is Nintendo's business model more important than censorship? Surely they can charge the correct amount for the hardware, and provide incentives for buying software, such as group servers.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between a metaphor and a false comparison.

Stealing a kiss = metaphor. The word 'stealing' is obviously not meant literally
Piracy is theft = comparison. The word 'theft' is meant quite literally.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

The post you answered to with your so-called comparison was discussing the benefits of technology for business. I see no reference to that in your post, so clearly you were off-topic.
Then you admit you knew that your post was ambiguous and yet you did not try to clarify your point.

Obviously you were just trolling and tried to put some bait wherever you could.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

There are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people who bought a Nintendo DS and an R4 (or other type of flash card) and have not bought any games since. Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

Actually, I think you are interpreting that statistic wrong. I myself have a nintendo DS only because flash carts exist. If I had been told "youll have to spend $170 on this device AND $30 every xxx days to keep it usable" I never would have bought it. The ability to "pirate" (what a stupid term) games actually sold hardware that wouldn't otherwise have been sold. Which brings up an interesting point about piracy really just shifting how money is disseminated in an economy, but I digress.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

It is possible that those people would otherwise have never bought a DS and deprived Nintendo of the hardware purchase as well.

I for one purchased a Kindle with the intent of only ever using it to read books from Project Gutenburg, so don't say that this sort of thing is impossible, without the free books from PG, I wouldn't have bought a Kindle at all.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no guarantee they will make any money, there is no guarantee that the people downloading it for free would have bought it, but there is also no guarantee that they wouldn't have

Hey, you know that thing call uhm... science? Yeah that. I don't think it can prove non-existence... Just sayin'

Re:Bunch of luddites

[L4t3r4lu5]

Exactly the same here, with three that come to mind immediately. I watched House, Mad Men, and Fringe online from video streaming sites first. For Fringe, I got half way through the first season before I bought the Series 1 box set. For House and Mad Men, it was one episode.

As I don't watch TV at all, I would never have been exposed to these shows, and the companies which produced them would have missed out on upwards of £300 of my money so far. I'll be buying the next series of all of them when they come out, too.

Obviously there are opposite situations to this, but good luck returning a DVD because you think the movie sucked.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said it was, I compared two aspects (the original posters and mine) of how actions can undermine various business models - and yes, copyright violation does indeed undermine a business model just as shoplifting does.

Agreed. Another example is e-mail which has severely hurt the postal businesses. The question is whether or not to make such activities illegal in order to help out existing business.

As I said in my original post, a copyright holder has every right to try and make money off their creation - they don't have the right to make money, but they have the right to try. You, The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt or anyone else does not have the right to deny them that attempt to make money OFF OF THEIR PROPERTY.

The users of The Pirate Bay and ISOHunt are not denying the 'rights holders' from trying to make money off of their 'property'. They are simply making it harder. In my opinion they have every moral right to do so. In some countries they don't have the legal right and that is a great shame.

By the way, who are you expecting to produce the content when your view wins through and everything is available on torrent sites for free?

You would rather live in a world in which you can expect content to be produced than in one with freedom of communication!? By embracing copyright in any form you sacrificing fundamental freedoms in exchange for entertainment. I've heard of people giving up liberty for safety but this is ridiculous.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

Are we supposed to believe that all the people who pirate would have even bought the hardware in the first place if they couldn't get free games?

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we supposed to believe that they bought a $150 piece of gaming hardware and would never have bought any games for it?

Of course not. They never would have bought the $150 piece of hardware if they didn't have full confidence that they'd be able to play pirated games.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

god you are a fucking retard.

explain how you make a movie with the budget of inception, when dumb-ass freeloading cunts like you encourage everyone to download it for free.

I wont hold my breath, fucking tools like you just whine , yet have fuck all ideas. I bet youve never created anything in your whole fucking life.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[SuricouRaven]

Language has power though. If you use words skillfully you have quite an advantage in an argument. Not correctly, just skillfully.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[StikyPad]

you want their products - but you want them on *your* terms

Yeah, and music companies want me to have their products on *their* terms. One of the problems is (was) that there's no market mechanism for the two to meet somewhere in the middle.

But look, you can't make an entire society care about an issue like music sharing. You just can't. People see rock stars rolling around in piles of drugs, women, cars, with houses larger then their block, and they simply don't give a shit whether they're taking $2 out of those people's pockets. Yes, there are more people affected than just the stars, but when you put that lifestyle front and center, when you use it to market your product, then don't complain when that's the connection people make in their minds. The record labels have been spending the better part of the last century trying to seer that image into people's minds, and now they want to say "Hey, don't forget about the little guys!" Sorry, it's too late. Let the people with a Ferrari in every color worry about the little guys.

Music is not, has not traditionally been, and will never again be a product. It *was* a product for about a hundred years, but that was only due to a fluke of technology where recording and distribution were expensive enough that only a select few could afford it. Now it's back to being a service, the same way it's been for 10s of thousands of years, and that's where it will remain. Yes, I agree that people *deserve* to be compensated for their creations, but I don't agree that they should have a legal right to it. People *deserve* a lot of things, but those protections aren't enshrined in law, because it's not practical or efficient. Likewise, it's not practical or efficient to try to prop up an industry that costs more to keep alive than it's worth to society. Music will not disappear without an industry to turn a profit off of it; if anything, it will evolve into something much more personal and, consequently, of greater value.

You're free to continue hemming and hawing about the change in post after post, but no complaining about how things *should* be will prevent or undo the destruction of the music industry. Change is not only inevitable, it's already here.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[SuricouRaven]

Actually, in some parts of the US collecting rainwater for you own use *is* illegal. It isn't called 'water piracy' but the concept isn't dissimilar. The state sells the rights to all the water falling in the catchment area of a river to a private company for processing into treated water for drinking or agriculture. By collecting the water en route from sky to river you are essentially stealing water the state has promised to the company.

Details: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/us/29rain.html

Anyway, back to bottled water. I imagine that if by some quirk of history piped water had never happened, and a government in the US (Be it town, county, state or federal) were to propose introducing a municipal water supply, it would face extremally powerful opposition from the bottled water and drinks industry. In the same way, I couldn't imagine libraries would be permitted if the idea were only invented today - they would be shut down in a very short time for some form of copyright infringment, or else a whole new law passed to criminalise them.

Here in the EU, we've had cases of record labels threatening legal action against the BBC for producing music - on the grounds that it was unfair competition, since the BBC doesn't have to turn a profit. Once there is money to be made in something, there will be pressure to keep making that money - the best lawyers, the best lobbyists, the best PR companies. It makes change very difficult.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[SuricouRaven]

If the price of those epics is the loss of the freedom of the internet then I am more than willing to forgo them. I can live without any more multi-million-dollar movies. I imagine production would adapt anyway, in the form of reduced production costs. There was a time when a movie didn't need superstars, incredible effects or on-location shooting. Some of the most famous movies ever produced were done on budgets that would be seen as a joke today. Perhaps eighty percent of the subjective quality, on a tiny fraction of the price. It can be done.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[SuricouRaven]

The problem here is that the argument extends infinitely. For example,

If I choose to repair my computer when it breaks, am I depriving a computer manufacturer of money?
If I learn to do my own wireing when redecorating a room, am I robbing an electrician I would otherwise have hired?
If I decide to drink tap water rather than Cola, am I stealing from the Coke Cola corporation by depriving them of a sale?

It's exactly the same princible as you are using, just applied in another manner. If you argue that to deprive a company of a sale is an equivilent action to stealing from them (An idea which actually does make sense from an economics perspective), then everything you do that avoids the need to spend money is a form of theft.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Pieroxy]

You really didn't get it do you? If the LAW gave the electrician EXCLUSIVITY to your living room wiring then you deprive him when doing it yourself. Same with Coke which does not have exclusivity for anything, or the computer manufacturer.

What I am asserting is that if society as a whole has given exclusivity to someone to do something, by doing it yourself you "steal" what society has given him - naming the exclusivity on that thing.

You may want to change the law on this, but until then, you are clearly stealing something from the copyright owners when you download on Torrent/Mule/LimeWire, etc.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[alexo]

As I said in my original post, a copyright holder has every right to try and make money off their creation - they don't have the right to make money, but they have the right to try. You, The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt or anyone else does not have the right to deny them that attempt to make money OFF OF THEIR PROPERTY.

Except that it is NOT THEIR PROPERTY.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Kitsune Inari]

In other words, you agree that the model you're trying to protect is immoral, yet you still try to protect it?

Re:Bunch of luddites

[Pieroxy]

I didn't say anything for morality. I didn't protect anything. I am trying to explain that in regard of the law infringing copyright DOES deprive someone of something. Period.

Who decides that by buying an object I own it? The law. Who decides that by writing a song I can choose how to distribute it? The law.

In this regard, shoplifting and copyright infringement are equivalent. They deprive the "victim" of something the law gave them.

Morality is your ground, and it is a shaky ground. Good luck with this.

This alone wont stop people in the UK

[Drake_Casanova]

People will proxy and tunnel around this easily. The mega website torrent scene is getting a beating with the final blow being the US legislation which hosts most of these sites. A new distribution system for torrent files will come along, but maybe it not being so mainstream will be a good thing.

It's quite simple

[l2718]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Note that this isn't a silly argument -- we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid. This tradeoff is called "copyright laws".

Now the current system is so terrible (because the incentives of the people who write the laws are very different from what average citizens want to get out of copyright law) that I don't think blocking these sites is a good trade-off, but when you discuss copyright it's important to do so in these terms.

Re:It's quite simple

[funkatron]

Hang on, hang on. On the one hand we have censorship infrastructure going on our internet connection on the other we have:

might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Guess which one of those isn't scary?

Re:It's quite simple

[cheekyjohnson]

I don't know. I'm extremely worried about potential profit!

Re:It's quite simple

[cheekyjohnson]

Trading in illegally copied material is not protected speech, in America or anywhere else.

Where does it say that in the first amendment? These additions and exclusions appear to be complete fabrications.

Re:It's quite simple

[Errol backfiring]

... , thus reducing the ability of publishers to profit from the books they did not write

There, fixed that for you. Off course, blocking those sites also blocks the authors who want their work copied because they want to reach an audience. But as there is no money involved in that it is not important. Because it isn't culture if it isn't paid for. Did it ever occurred to you that the free authors, the real bringers of culture, could stop as well if they are bluntly censored by the hollywood pulp industry?

Re:It's quite simple

[funkatron]

In what way is blocking access to certain information NOT censorship. Censorship is a restriction on any speech. Establishing categories of "protected" and "non-protected" speech is merely the management process behind censorship; it's choosing what you want to censor.

Re:It's quite simple

[Kulfaangaren!]

I can list a few "artists" that I actually would prefer if they reduced the amount of works they create for "my enjoyment".
* Christina Augilera
* Britney Spears
* All rap artists
* All country & western artists
* Justin Beiber
etc. etc.

Re:It's quite simple

[isorox]

How is it censorship? Trading in illegally copied material is not protected speech, in America or anywhere else.

I see, so these sites will be shut down after the legal system duly decides that their availability
1) enables a crime
2) doesn't have a legitimate use

And it certainly won't be on the whim of an ISP to block sites it doesn't consider appropriate or profitable (piratebay, wikipedia, youtube)

Re:It's quite simple

[L4t3r4lu5]

I see your "artists are losing money" and raise you an "artists were never making money in the first place, media conglomerates were".

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html

Re:It's quite simple

[rolfc]

It is a silly system because the copyright laws are made for the 19th century. What happens when people copy is that business is hit, which is fine for me. It is not to support a media industry that is the goal of the copyright laws.

We have now a system for cheap and rapid distribution of digital media, and the problem is that the media industry want to take all the profit from that. The obvious answer to that would be that the market forced them to lower the prices, but it doesnt work. The industry is using their monopoly to raise their margins instead of lowering the prices. As long as they do that, they will need laws and police to hunt those that try to escape the monopoly.

The politicians need to rework the copyright laws or deal with the media industry abuse of their monopoly. Lobbying has so far prevented our representatives do represent us.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

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*ascii art filter*

Re:It's quite simple

[MaskedSlacker]

Where does it say that in the first amendment?

It doesn't. It says that in Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

which gives Congress exactly that authority. Seeing as the 1st Amendment has never been understood (including by the people who wrote it) as altering that clause, well.....turns out the constitution is pretty clear that

Trading in illegally copied material is not protected speech, in America

Granted, I think current copyright law is insane, and I'm to the left of Cory Doctorow on this point, but you're still a moron.

Re:It's quite simple

[Kjella]

You do know there's a copyright clause in the original consitituion right? Among the enumerated powers of government is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.â

These are the very same founding fathers who are writing both the consitution and the bill of rights. If they didn't see a crash here, they probably didn't think there was one. Even if they made the first amendment as simple as possible, I assume they had some sort of (* except libel, slander, yelling fire in a crowded theater, false advertising, death threats etc etc etc). They can't possibly have missed that "the exclusive Right to their respective Writings" would mean others can't freely repeat their writings.

Re:It's quite simple

[Dunbal]

and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Bullshit. People create for the joy of creation, not for profit. It's the publishers that have turned the argument on its head to make you think that creativity is something "rare". Here we go again back to the same old argument of artificial scarcity that has been pushed by monopolies since the dawn of time.

Please tell me, sir, how many billions of net profit have been made by the "entertainment" industries in say, the past 10 years - DESPITE the existence of "free sharing of information". As far as I can tell actors are earning more every year, movies are making more every year, and singers are certainly not short of cash even if they ran out of decent songs a long time ago.

Re:It's quite simple

[h-xman]

we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid.

This argument is based on assumption that the artificial scarcity is the only way to make profit out of creative work. This assumption is false - there are numerous success stories and studies proving that it is possible to make profit without the need to make your work artificially scarce using copyright, DRM etc. (if you are interested, check out techdirt.com regularly writing about this stuff). Attempts to restrict copying are more about inability/unwillingness of legacy business to adapt. Actually, if your assumption were right we would be all doomed and creative work would cease to exist because technological progress made it impossible to stop copying and sharing - artificial scarcity is a history.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information

and that is why they must be stopped!
Yours, Oliver

Re:It's quite simple

[Dunbal]

You know they've perverted the meaning of "limited times" to essentially make an end run around the original intent of the Constitution, right? I mean, 99999 years is a limited time, if you consider geological time. Eventually I'm sure Mickey Mouse's copyright will be stretched to this definition.

Re:It's quite simple

[cheekyjohnson]

It doesn't. It says that in Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8:

I figured that someone would mention this. I'd say they're in direct conflict with one another, especially in this case. It is supposed to protect the flow of speech (or information in this case).

Re:It's quite simple

[cheekyjohnson]

You do know there's a copyright clause in the original consitituion right?

Yes.

If they didn't see a crash here, they probably didn't think there was one.

There certainly is. The wording that states otherwise in the constitution is nonexistent.

Even if they made the first amendment as simple as possible, I assume they had some sort of (* except libel, slander, yelling fire in a crowded theater, false advertising, death threats etc etc etc).

You can't assume that. There is no evidence for it in the constitution. All that is there is the text present in the constitution. It doesn't mention any of those things as not being "protected speech" (which is a term that doesn't make sense if you actually want free speech).

Re:It's quite simple

[1u3hr]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment....Note that this isn't a silly argument

It isn't a "silly" argument, it's a frightening one. That the desire of some people to make greater profits should allow them to dictate what websites are accessible to the community as a whole is incredibly anti-democratic, basically it's fascist. If laws have been broken they need to prove it and take legal action.Not just send a list of sites they disapprove of to the ISP and have a website blocked, without any due process. .

Re:It's quite simple

[1u3hr]

... founding fathers... Five posts and and already the context, the UK, has been forgotten.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Note that this isn't a silly argument -- we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid. This tradeoff is called "copyright laws".

Now the current system is so terrible (because the incentives of the people who write the laws are very different from what average citizens want to get out of copyright law) that I don't think blocking these sites is a good trade-off, but when you discuss copyright it's important to do so in these terms.

Oh boy. Someone isn't getting paid. Let's censor the internet. Better yet, how about an approved list of sites we are allowed to visit. Pile up all the "bad" sites in the center of town and set them on fire like the Germans did in the 30's. If it wasn't for file sharing sites i would never be aware that some of these artists existed. I guess i won't now unless i'm TOLD to listen to said artists. And WHO is it that decides what i can and can't view on my computer?? Government? Ya that's a great idea....

"Reduces motivation" ??? Clearly not written by an artist of any kind.

Re:It's quite simple

[Hogwash McFly]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

I'm curious. At what point does this breakdown in cultural output appear?

Your argument, if I understand it correctly, is that when piracy becomes widespread, nobody will make any real money from writing, film or music, so any professional output in these areas will die off. Well, piracy is already quite widespread, yet the film-makers, music artists and popular novelists appear to be making as much, if not more, money as they were 5/10/15 years ago. How many more Pirate Bays are required until cultural output declines to a statistically significant level?

Re:It's quite simple

[TubeSteak]

Corporate censorship of speech is arguably worse than government censorship.
At least you can petition your government or vote the bums out.

Good luck driving a cartel of ISPs out of business.

Re:It's quite simple

[Dan541]

How is it censorship? Trading in illegally copied material is not protected speech, in America or anywhere else.

I just copied your post without permission. I guess slashdot should no be censored.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is a UK?

Re:It's quite simple

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Blaming piracy for decreased sales is bullshit. The problem isn't piracy, it's the lack of good material being released.

Re:It's quite simple

[somersault]

First off, this is in the UK, so why bring American law into it?

Secondly, the government isn't involved in this censorship, so how would the First Amendment apply even if this was in the US?

Re:It's quite simple

[tchernobog]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Piracy helps these people stay alive, even if they don't realize it. It allows authors for a nice route to make themselves known, and many "pirates" then buy their work. I've bought more than one album I downloaded, and the same with movies, but I would have never done so if I could not have evaluated it beforehand. Also, I don't buy "shitty" content anymore: blockbuster movies and the likes stay on the shelves as far as I'm concerned. I buy things that I can pass down to my children. Perhaps the industry is scared they can't push heavily-marketed, utterly-hollow movies/books/music on us anymore?

Also, you are forgetting that 95% of the revenue from sells go to labels, publishers, and the likes; not to the authors. If they really want to cut on the piracy, they should jump over the middle man and start selling eBooks or digital content themselves at low prices (3-4 € for a book, for example). Many are doing that and profiting from it.

And yes, the main point is not "quite simple", man. You said it: These sites support the rapid free sharing of information.. Try going into a shop and asking for a copy of Metropolis with the '80s restoration, of an album by Gianluigi Trovesi, a live from Area, or "The Year of the Angry Rabbit". And explain to me why Jamendo, Free Software and many other free as in speech and as in beer community work and produce a huge amount of material without any hinder on creativity.

I don't want to live in a Fahranheit 451-like world, where DRM and power drunk people can decide what I can read and what not. *All* information should be free. I wish we could educate children from elementary school that the right way to support authors is through donations.

Btw, my advice is to read some books from Lawrence Lessig. It may prove interesting.

Re:It's quite simple

[cpu6502]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create

Bullshit.

Numerous studies from COLLEGES show the exact opposite. People buy things they DL and enjoy.

Re:It's quite simple

[Cederic]

Do be fair, I do get the sense that the ISPs are doing their absolute best to get judicial oversight of any blocking.

That's because although implementing kiddie porn blocking is a no brainer that nobody's going to publicly complain about, this proposed blocking would be very detrimental to ISPs.

Blocking websites with legitimate uses that customers want to (and do) use, because someone else has claimed without any proof that it's potentially damaging their business model will lead to public complaints. I'll write to my ISP and complain, which will cost them money. I'll write to my MP and complain, which costs him money. So will thousands of others.

I don't even download warez, I have 30 games on Steam that I've bought on their cheap weekends and haven't had time to play yet, I have a DVD rental service for films and I have the radio, TV and Youtube for all my music listening needs.

I still want uncensored access to the Internet.

Re:It's quite simple

[cpu6502]

P.S.

i.e. Downloading helps advertise, and advertising helps make more sales..... Also let's consider this so-called "right" to copy. Nature certainly doesn't protect your ideas, and on the contrary PROMOTES the sharing of ideas, such that you can share your new invention/book with others, without diminishing the usefulness of it for yourself.

So it's a Monopoly PRIVILEGE not a right.

Also this privilege currently extends ~150 years into the future, and benefits children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren who didn't do an ounce of work, and yet profit. Copy monopoly should never extend beyond the original laborer's lifetime. It should be restored to its original length of term - 14 years, wit possibility for renewal by the *original* author if he is still alive.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very short sighted. I have downloaded an album.. which I have never heard before, of an artist which I liked. I liked the album. Out of respect and because I wanted to own the actual album I bought the album in a shop. Now, am I a pirate? Does anyone include people like me in the "piracy" statistics? How much direct revenue does "piracy" generate?

Re:It's quite simple

[LordNacho]

I've never bought anything from any of these "artists", yet they foul the air "for my enjoyment" constantly.

Re:It's quite simple

[Kjella]

Of course. I was just responding to the argument that the first amendment makes copyright unconstitutional or invalid or whatever. There's no doubt "limited times" has become seriously perverted, on the other hand there's little evidence to suggest that reducing copyright back to 14 years would stop people from pirating the latest hit music and blockbusters. You might argue that's just because people see the copyright deal as broken anyway, but I doubt that would mend things.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorant twat

Re:It's quite simple

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

It is a silly system because the copyright laws are made for the 19th century.

"Made for the 19th century" is different from "made in the 19th century". Copyright was created in the 19 century, in order to combat the foreseen side-effects of duplication technologies becoming cheaper and more accessible. Now, we have the internet, and those side-effects are worse than ever. Copyright is more relevant today now than it ever has been, and probably as it ever will be until we get matter duplicators.

The industry is using their monopoly to raise their margins instead of lowering the prices.

Yeah, are we exactly sure that the industry is doing better? From the first result of a Google search, it seems that the US music industry has had a bit of a decline, adjusted to inflation and population. Again, it's only the first result pulled from a Google search, but then again, it demonstrates the sheer flexibility of truth when faced with the possibility that what brings you so much joy can actually be wrong.

Re:It's quite simple

[metacell]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

I think your reasoning is perfectly sound, but that it may be based on an erroneous assumption. Surprisingly enough, piracy doesn't seem to have much of an effect on the revenues generated from songs, films and other media, and may even increase the percentage of the revenue which reaches the author.

There are now a number of studies showing that 1) the people who pirate the most music are also the ones who attend the most concerts and spend the most money overall on music, 2) the total revenues generated by music have steadily increased during the decade in which file sharing has exploded (1999 and onwards), 3) the vast majority of music artists never got most of their income from CD sales, but instead from sources like concerts and merchandise, 4) the average income per music artist has increased substantially during the last decade, *even though* the number of artists have also increased substantially, and 5) the number of music albums produced and published has exploded during the last decade.

(Please note that these studies are from all over the world; not all of them are based on the US-American market, even though they should tell us something about how music markets in general work.)

The case is not as clear-cut for other media, since there is less data and less studies, but the total revenues generated by films and computer games have also increased steadily during the last decade, despite the explosion in file sharing.

This has lead me to believe that the world may actually be better off with no copyright at all, although it would be a good idea to decrease the strength of copyright gradually and look at the effects.

Re:It's quite simple

[DarkOx]

Trading in illegally copied material is not protected speech, in America

We are talking about the UK here so the first amendment to the US Constitution could not be less germane but since parent posters brought it up. I would agree that trading illegally copied material is not protected speech based on my reading of it. I think it can be argued that discussing how to trade illegally copied material is likely protected and certainly advocating for it is protected speech.

Re:It's quite simple

[rolfc]

I do not say that copyright in not relevant. I say that it is made for the 19th century when we didn't have digital culture.

I am not saying that it is doing better, I say that they try to take all the profit from the new technique.

Re:It's quite simple

[metacell]

So what? It's a fact. In the case of music published by record companies, most artists only see about 10% of the retail price of their music (a little more for CDs, a little less for online sales). A large number of music artists have discovered they can earn more money by publishing the music themselves, or giving the music away for free and getting their income from concerts and merchandised, since that enables them to keep a much larger percentage of the revenues.

Re:It's quite simple

[fishthegeek]

If it isn't any good then why is it being pirated, and downloaded FOO times? I'm certainly not a fan of (insert copyright holding monopoly here) but seriously? Poop is free, you don't see people desperately trying to cross a fence to collect your dogs turds do you? Obviously the content is good enough that people want to see it, and there is at least some percentage of pirates that have the ability to pay. I agree that the price is entirely too high, and that most piracy is related to the price / ability to pay ratio but let's not pretend that the average pirate doesn't have a wildly over developed sense of entitlement either.

Re:It's quite simple

[PopeRatzo]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create.

Yet strangely, authors are still profiting from the books they write, singers are still profiting from the songs they sing, and directors are still profiting from the films they create despite the ongoing existence of these bittorrent sites.

What really has happened is that it has affected the extent to which a bunch of rather antiquated corporate structures can profit from authors writing books, singers singing songs and directors creating films.

You cannot make the argument that singers will not sing songs, authors will not write books or directors will not create films because of filesharing. There will even be an industry around all three of those endeavors that will profit (if that's your main concern). The only difference is that the old men who are at the top slice of the long-standing corporate structures will have to finally retire and allow the world to continue turning. They will all be well cared-for in their retirement, you need not worry.

Re:It's quite simple

[pstils]

I think that's because the people who aren't clever enough to: a)work a computer to download their music, or at worst stream from grooveshark/spotify b)not allow advertising to control their wants and desires are the kinds of people who are still buying music en masse and thereby controlling the charts and indirectly what gets played on mainstream radio stations. When you think about it, there's actually only one reason to base a chart solely on what people are buying: financial gain. Surely a better reflection of "what's popular" would be a chart based on grooveshark/spotify numbers...and a radio station based upon such a chart would probably be more popular(???)

Re:It's quite simple

[PopeRatzo]

might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

I'm pretty sure artists were creating works "for our enjoyment" before the existence of copyright.

What evidence do you have that they will suddenly stop because of filesharing. There has been digital filesharing for some years now. Do you think that has reduced the number of works artists have created "for our enjoyment"? In fact, the amount of music released, books published and movies made has exploded.

I think your "might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment" would become a rather hard opinion to which to cling at some point.

Maybe it's time to let that old chestnut go by the wayside, what do you say?

Re:It's quite simple

[RogerWilco]

The big problem with today's media, is that they don't allow the consumers to choose when, where and how to read/listen/watch it. Consumers want this choice.

I'm willing to pay for a lot of media content. It's just often not offered at the time, place and format I want, if at all. When a new TV episode of a series airs in the US, I want to watch it the next evening on my laptop or iPhone. I'm willing to pay for that, but nobody is selling because they're afraid and don't understand what people want. So instead I have to wait for 2 years, buy the DVD, illegally rip it to the right format, and then watch it. And even then I'm not entirely legal because I ripped it to watch it on my iPhone in the train to work. Or I just download it of some illegal site the day after it aired, where the company who created it then has just lost a sale.

The article from the topic yesterday described the process very well in the printed book business, but at the moment it's happening in all corners of the media landscape: Books, newspapers, movies, TV shows, music.

I have no problem paying for writers, acters, artists, editors, directors and such. They need to make a living. I can even see marketing, sales and such, although they should basically earn their pay though increased sales/revenue, not a higher price per product. I don't have the feeling that they would be really hurt by going digital.
It's the legacy production and distribution business who are on the line, even though we'll still need some of it. But it's because they think they're in the business of selling books/DVD/CDs/paper, instead of the content, that they don't jump at the new opportunities, and instead it's companies like Apple, Google and Amazon. Currently the NYT, WarnerBros, Disney and EMI of the 21th century are being built, and none of the old media companies seem to want to be a part of it.

Re:It's quite simple

[queBurro]

I give you permission to copy this post, I'm going to put it in a text file first though and then share it via a torrent

Re:It's quite simple

[morgauxo]

It's too bad nobody seems to be reading that "limited time" part anymore

Re:It's quite simple

[GooberToo]

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Unfortunately, vast numbers of idiots on slashdot have no fucking clue what that means. I've literally had endless "debate" with these idiots who seemingly, sincerely believe that means society has the right to benefit and the creator can go fuck themselves. Basically stating the author has no right to benefit.

I'm constantly amazed at how many people with serious reading comprehension issues insist on asserting their dimwitted and distorted view of reality on the rest of the world.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

we really need to make a tradeoff

No we don't. People find ways to compensate those whose creative work they like. Sure, less money exchanges hands, but all that means is that ultimately those who are in it for the money alone (lawyers, executives, and a bunch of so-called artists) will go do something else, like drug-dealing perhaps. In the end it will be only the artists that do it out of love for their craft the ones who keep putting out new works for people to enjoy. In other words, win/win.

Re:It's quite simple

[JasterBobaMereel]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information..., which as a side effect, amoungst other things alows the sharing of copyrighted information .. ....thus reducing the ability of publishers to profit from the books authors write, of record companies to profit from the songs singers sing and songwriters write, of film companies to profit from the films they directors, producers, writers, and film stars make

The problem is that rather than finding a solution to copywirte infringement they fight it by blocking everything that helps it ... What is next : Websites with clips, pictures, unfavourable reviews ....

Blocking sites because a private company does not want you to use it is never a good idea ....

Re:It's quite simple

[betterunixthanunix]

Funny, I thought authors did it for the love of the art form, and musicians, and every other type of artist. When last I checked, the majority of authors made very little from the books they write.

Really though, where are the people complaining about how the mass availability of cameras has reduced the monetary incentive to paint images of the world? Where is the call to ban cameras, or to restrict how cameras may be used?

As a final note, copyright is a fairly recent development in humanity's legal history. For millennia, we got on just fine without it, and in fact some of history's most important works were created before any copyright systems existed. It was copying that led to the preservation of some of those works.

Now, am I a fan of throwing out copyrights all together? Not really, to be honest; copyright has its place, and can be used to protect the free flow of information (copyleft). What we need to do is scale back copyright terms, all the way back to the original length of 14 years.

Re:It's quite simple

[blahplusplus]

"Note that this isn't a silly argument"

Yes in fact it is, when people lose their jobs because of technological advancement they have no means of protecting themselves, they don't have 'job copyrights' to protect their position. Copyright has always just been an attempt at monopoly and it stifles the search for alternative business models. Americans are just greedy pigs lets just face this fact. Games despite being able to be pirated since the beginning of the computer became a billion dollar industry. Music and movies despite the advancements of the VCR, beta max, CD recorders, cassette tapes, still became a billion dollar industry. You have your facts backwards - people know that good product deserves to be paid for. The internet now allows digital socialism (i.e. we get to try your product and then decide to pay for it or not depending on it's quality) For too long companies have been able to absolute push garbage, the internet gives these companies competition.

Valve has the right idea - even though I'm not particularly a fan of their DRM - make sure what you are offering is better then the alternative.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! We need something new! How about we introduce a copyright law for the new century? What should we call it? How about Digital Millennium Copyright Act? Whee, problem solved....

Re:It's quite simple

[Requiem18th]

* Uwe Boll
* Michael Bay
* James Wong
And no more adaptation of Japanese comics or cartoons please.

Re:It's quite simple

[jonfr]

Authors don't get the profits. The middle man however does. The authors, how do the actual work normally only get whatever is left when everyone else has been paid. As has been seen, that is often less then nothing.

This is however no excuse for allowing the big corporations to censor the internet as it is suggested there. This law should and needs to be sued into oblivion in the UK.

Re:It's quite simple

[misexistentialist]

It's more like doughnuts. You aren't hungry, you are trying to lose weight: but if they are sitting there in a box for free you will take them every time even if they are obviously stale.

Re:It's quite simple

[cats-paw]

The politicians need to rework the copyright laws

They are reworking them. They are granting perpetual copyright and making it a felony to violate that
perpetual copyright.

Probably not the rework you had in mind...

Re:It's quite simple

[microbox]

might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

If only there were some evidence of this. The copyright cartel worked out how to get the vast majority of authors/musicians to work for free. All that will be reduced is middle-man's balance sheet. Maybe.

Granted, we cannot have $200 million budget films with endorsed copyright infringement. Perhaps these studios should not release to DVD. That's how the business model worked pre-VHS.

Re:It's quite simple

[Gripp]

during the napster days there were a numbers of artists whom i would have never heard or bothered with otherwise. it is a double edged sword. even when it comes to software, most of the pirating is items that those same users would have never purchased in the first place - just want to play around with it. like professional grade video editing software. an individual user just isn't very likely to pay for that - they would instead just use one of the cheap/free versions. but instead these professional softs become better known by larger audiences and if.when that individual decides to take his talents into a career thy will be more likely to use/suggest that software (autocad anyone). again, double edge sword.

i personally don;t the losses are anywhere near what they think they are - they are typically a simple matter of (cost * number times pirated) ... but take out the number of "thefts" from users who would have never bought in the first place and add in sales that wouldn't have happened otherwise. i would imagine there are a number of cases that this ends up actually being a positive number.

Re:It's quite simple

[GooberToo]

It's too bad nobody seems to be reading that "limited time" part anymore

Please point me to a reference where copyright is held infinitely long.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd say 10% is a bit off, perhaps maybe for older, established artists, but most probably receive 10 cents/cd.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

They almost exclusively call themselves "pirates." Explains a lot about pirates doesn't it?

Re:It's quite simple

[GooberToo]

It's too bad nobody seems to be reading that "limited time" part anymore

Please show me where infinite copyright exists. I'm not aware of any place where perpetual copyright exists.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your "artists are losing money" and raise you an "artists were never making money in the first place, media conglomerates were".

  http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html

Fuck that, I'm ALL IN: No one loses profits from piracy because pirates were never going to make those purchases in the first place. I thought this was proven already, by multiple independent studies around the world.

Piracy is the best defense against the deluge of pure shit being poured on us. I pirate every movie BEFORE I buy the DVD/Blu-Ray specifically because I will never pay ~$25 to test the waters.

Funny thing is, since the mid 90's almost every single PC game comes with a playable demo so I can test those waters free of charge.

When will the entertainment folks realize that in order for them to procure the rights to our cash, they must produce something worthy of making us part with said cash?

Re:It's quite simple

[GooberToo]

Bullshit. People create for the joy of creation, not for profit.

Yes and no and is so disingenuous such that you're clearly attempting to distort reality if not a complete lie.

All too often, people may enjoy creating but simply can't because they can't earn a living doing so. Its a cliche that, "I used to ______, but then I had to grow up and earn a living." That's the real world. The simple fact is, the "joy of creation" is all too often stiffed BECAUSE there is no money to be had. Sure, a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, fraction of creation would still occur in spare time as a hobby, but it would almost completely gut creation in of itself. It would pale in comparison to what is possible when economics support it.

You're also ignorantly forgetting that in years past, almost all creation took place because of a rich financier existed to fund the work. Without this funding, almost everything we treasure from yesterday would simple not exist.

So factually, one need only look at history to say you're delusional and full of shit.

Re:It's quite simple

[fishthegeek]

That's a better way of saying it!

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Walt Disney, is that you?

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that this isn't a silly argument -- we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid.

It's absolutely a silly argument. Two obvious facts show your argument is completely wrong.
1) People still created works in eras where there was no protection whatsoever. Bards and minstrels often made a living performing creative works completely stolen from another, with a few minor enhancements.
2) A specific example. The overprotection of certain properties (Mickey Mouse, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, etc.) has made ONE company very, very rich. Were all those properties NOT protected, they would allow many more people an opportunity to use those materials in their own creative works. And thus instead of one immensely rich company, we'd have hundreds of individuals able to make a living with creative works... Obviously those hundreds of individuals would create far more works than the one monolith company could provide.

I can't believe you're defending copyright laws on the basis that without them, their would be less works created. All evidence points to the contrary.

Re:It's quite simple

[GameboyRMH]

You're just playing math games. Copyright lengths aren't limited in a way that is relevant to human lifespans, never mind anybody's career.

Re:It's quite simple

[dougisfunny]

Yar! It does.

Re:It's quite simple

[GameboyRMH]

Hold on, I'll help, I know American.

You know those tea-sucking red coat guys who used to own your country? That's the place where they live now. It's right across from the cheese-eating surrender-monkeys who saved your asses from them. You know where I mean? It's like half way between The World and the place where the terrorists live, but closer to Santa.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really that naive? Let me fix that for you:

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of big media corporations to continue collecting their insane profit margins, for which they do essentially nothing (owing to an obsolete business model; content creators don't need them for distribution anymore), and their ability to fuck content creators out of every single penny they possibly can in the process (because they know that content providers are an endless wellspring of material and will continue creating it regardless of how screwed over financially they are).

Get with the program, son -- or are you just a shameless whore for the media companies? Perhaps Slashdot needs a new abbreviation; we already have "AC" for Anonymous Cowards, perhaps we also need "SW" for Shameless Whores, too,

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and soda dispensing machines reduce my ability to sell soda in front of my house. And so on, ad infinitum. Big fucking deal. Once again, people expressed themselves artistically MILLENIA before there was any profit involved. And they still do. I pirate like a motherfucker. So do millions of other folks. And yet, each year there is a plethora of new books, music, films, and video games. Wow. Whoda thunk it?

Re:It's quite simple

[wagnerrp]

Why would you want to base a chart on popularity? If it doesn't result in financial gain, who cares how many people listen to it? If the people who like that kind of media are not the type to spend money or otherwise use ad-supported services, who cares what they think?

Re:It's quite simple

[diversiform]

Having worked in the music industry for over 20 years, I know a huge number of musicians. The vast majority lose money on their art. They'd be happy to make money, and might hope to do so, but they don't expect to. Most know very little about copyright law. They write and perform because they enjoy it.

I'm not saying it's good that there are starving artists. Some of the people I know are incredibly talented and should be making good money for their music, which would enable them to spend time making more music instead of working odd jobs. But don't think the current copyright laws are somehow necessary or even relevant to artists, especially future artists. For the most part, the laws were created by and for the owners of existing famous works, which are almost entirely large companies that do not create art themselves.

Re:It's quite simple

[vakuona]

might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

I'm pretty sure artists were creating works "for our enjoyment" before the existence of copyright.

What evidence do you have that they will suddenly stop because of filesharing. There has been digital filesharing for some years now. Do you think that has reduced the number of works artists have created "for our enjoyment"? In fact, the amount of music released, books published and movies made has exploded.

I think your "might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment" would become a rather hard opinion to which to cling at some point.

Maybe it's time to let that old chestnut go by the wayside, what do you say?

Yes they did, when patrons paid for it. Do you really want to live in a world where most of the art that is created is driven by the tastes of the wealthy and privileged?

Re:It's quite simple

[idontgno]

People create for the joy of creation, not for profit.

Somebody said to me, "But the Beatles were anti-materialistic." That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, "Now, let's write a swimming pool."

--Paul McCartney

Re:It's quite simple

[future assassin]

And then you have these artists http://www.ektoplazm.com/ I'll take these guys and send them more donations anytime over some has been who gave away his/her right to the their music so that the record companies can tell us "Won't someone think about the artists, they're starving"

Re:It's quite simple

[shutdown -p now]

This argument is based on assumption that the artificial scarcity is the only way to make profit out of creative work. This assumption is false - there are numerous success stories and studies proving that it is possible to make profit without the need to make your work artificially scarce using copyright, DRM etc.

There are numerous ways to walk around with your legs tied together, but it is not the most efficient form of locomotion.

The question at hand is not whether it is possible for some authors to earn some amount of money in a world with no copyright. The question is: how many works would be produced in such an environment and of what quality - and how does it compare to the amount that we (as a society) want to be produced?

Re:It's quite simple

[PopeRatzo]

Yes they did, when patrons paid for it. Do you really want to live in a world where most of the art that is created is driven by the tastes of the wealthy and privileged?

That's not even remotely true about the majority of art and music.

Yes, there were very successful artists and composers that worked on commissions from wealthy patrons, but they only made up a small fraction of the total art and music that was created. Throughout Europe and the rest of the world there were "popular" musicians who made their living from regular people.

Regarding literature, commissioned work is very rare. Most writers wrote to write.

And you don't even address my main point: There has been digital filesharing for more than a decade. The amount of music, literature and movies has increased enormously despite that digital filesharing. So not only has digital filesharing not reduced the amount of creative work, it seems to have enhanced it. For example, last year there were more books published, and more ebooks published, than ever before in the history of mankind.

So tell us, vakuona, if a decade of prolific filesharing has not reduced the amount of creative work available for our enjoyment, why do you continue to assume that it will? And how long will it take? Two decades? Fifty years? A century? And what data do you have to support your assertion that it will ever reduce the amount of creative work?

Re:It's quite simple

[SuricouRaven]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0

This video is currently one of the most popular on youtube.

To answer your question, it doesn't look so bad now.

Re:It's quite simple

[oliverthered]

Maybe if you did something you enjoyed instead of working to get paid to do something you enjoyed then you wouldn't mind so much.

What happened to doing it for the love of art? where has all the love gone?

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians aren't going to do jack shit.

We're the ones who have to show that we don't consent to the RIAA's petty bullshit, because I know damn well no politicians is gonna do that for us.

Re:It's quite simple

[vakuona]

For example, last year there were more books published, and more ebooks published, than ever before in the history of mankind.

So tell us, vakuona, if a decade of prolific filesharing has not reduced the amount of creative work available for our enjoyment, why do you continue to assume that it will? And how long will it take? Two decades? Fifty years? A century? And what data do you have to support your assertion that it will ever reduce the amount of creative work?

Copyright laws are still being vigorously enforced, not completely successfully, but still nonetheless. If copyright was completely abolished, then Warner Brothers would simply not spend $180m making and marketing Inception, because as soon as they released it, competitors would copy it and sell it legally to the public at a price that reflected their costs, which don't include making the damn film. Now, maybe you like the kind of stuff you find on obscure websites like Jamendo, but the majority of the public do like their big budget blockbusters and their pop entertainment, and are willing to pay for it. The majority of the public would also pay the going rate if it was legal to copy, so they would miss out on these works (whether you like them or not) if copyright was abolished because they simply wouldn't be made. The reason copyright came about in the first place was because it became easier to copy. I am sure these arguments were had in the day too. It is very disingenuous to claim that what we really need is to abolish copyright because copying has become too easy. If anything, that is an argument for strengthening copyright, rather than weakening it. The music and movie industry does need to get with the program and create ways for people to enjoy works without needing to resort to illegal acts, but that is not supposed to be an excuse for anyone to just infringe on their copyrights.

Re:It's quite simple

[h-xman]

No, I don't think that is the question. No matter how hard they try, so called piracy cannot be stopped unless we go back to pre-digital age... and unles there is a nuclear holocaust this is not very likely. Either adapt your business model to new reality or go bankrupt - simple as that. And BTW - it was never so easy to copy things and at the same time creative industry never made so much money (and to make it clear, music industry and industry of selling plastic disc are not the same - I know that CD sales are going down). So much for that 'piracy killing music' BS.

Re:It's quite simple

[GooberToo]

So how is a statement of fact "playing math games." Its well known the number was purposely designed to vary based on societal needs; which are fully expected to change and evolve over time. That's entirely its point. We're talking about the classic, "living document."

Now if the terms were measured in hundreds or thousands of years, I'd agree they need to be adjusted. But to date, ignoring unreasoned and extremely irrational rants, I've NEVER heard a reason why the current terms are so horrible. Not one. Not one even close to reasonable. They all seem to boil down to...but *I* want to take it/use - just because *I* want to take and use it. Or even worse, I'm a loser scumbag and *I* deserve to be able to take anything *I* want without any regard for anyone else.

So seriously, given that you're own acknowledgement implies its as Constitutionally intended; what's broken here?

Re:It's quite simple

[GameboyRMH]

Well then I guess it's just a matter of "*I* want to take it and use it" for the public vs the creator('s descendants) or right holder. Extremely long copyright terms rob the public of their culture, that's the downside. Copyrights are not the natural state of things, never were. A copyright is only there to grant a temporary, artificial monopoly to allow the creator to make some money. If the creator's long retired, dead and buried then why aren't their works in the public domain?

On the other hand, if you don't see a problem with keeping people's culture locked up under copyright, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Re:It's quite simple

[cheekyjohnson]

Because someone said something about it not being protected speech in America.

Re:It's quite simple

[Kitsune Inari]

Because, even if they don't buy canned music, a sizable part of the people who listen to it are the type to buy merchandise and go to concerts, which does result in financial gain.

Re:It's quite simple

[Kitsune Inari]

You forgot to add Uwe Boll to that list.

Re:It's quite simple

[wagnerrp]

Merchandise and concert proceeds go primarily to the band and crew. While its great information for them, it is of little worth to the studios and 'music industry'.

Re:It's quite simple

[l2718]

Actually, it wasn't my argument. The paragraph I wrote was a paraphrase of the arguments made by publisher associations (RIAA, MPAA etc). An argument with which I disagree. I thought writing it this way would make it clear how tenuous the supposed link is between the cost to the public (loss of freedom) and the possible benefit (more creative work). My only argument is that since copyright is a creation intended to balance costs and benefits, our rejection of the **AA arguments must be on cost-benefit grounds -- "we will actually get more entertainment if copyright rules were weakened ...".

Re:It's quite simple

[AmonTheMetalhead]

1) I don't believe their numbers
2) People who pirate wouldn't pay for the stuff if they couldn't pirate, they'd just skip it

Look, i have access to the internet, and the knowledge & means to pirate just about everything, yet, both my dvd as my cd racks are overflowing with (paid for!) stuff. If something is worth the money asked, people *WILL* pay, and those who don't will never pay.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

And no more niggers or jews in the entertainment industry, because they just foul MY air all the time with their bullshit. And niggers literally stink.

Re:It's quite simple

[fishthegeek]

I don't know that it's always that black and white. There's ample evidence that piracy, in some examples, does promote sales, concert attendance and other related items. People sometimes can and do pay. Admittedly I've done the All-of-MP3 thing in the past, and for a nickel a piece downloaded a few albums that are (still btw) not distributed online through normal channels. I've even grabbed an album from the interwebs when I already owned the vinyl, or cassette.

Re:It's quite simple

[PopeRatzo]

If copyright was completely abolished, then Warner Brothers would simply not spend $180m making and marketing Inception, because as soon as they released it, competitors would copy it and sell it legally to the public at a price that reflected their costs, which don't include making the damn film.

Now you have just changed the argument from blocking filesharing websites to completely abolishing copyright. It's like saying that if you don't like ubiquitous closed-circuit camera surveillance that means you are in favor of crime. There are differences and the differences are important.

Today, the status quo is that people who are determined to share digital files are doing so, and they face malware, civil prosecution, etc. Most people just say "I prefer just paying for it" the way you and I do. Blocking The Pirate Bay will not deter the determined filesharers, nor will making the penalties more and more dire. When you distribute work digitally and online, there's going to be some people who will get it for free. History tells us those dedicated miscreants will always be a step ahead of the RIAA/MPAA/GNAA or whatever alphabet soup is trying to start shutting down websites that have operated for years, and arguably provide a valuable service, not only to their users, but to the people whose work is shared and whose work is publicized therein.

I make my living being what you call a "content creator". I know people share my work via filesharing because I've met them. They've contacted me to tell me they liked it. A few went on to tell me that they intended to buy the work, but I've got no way of knowing whether they have done so or not. It does't bother me because I'm making a decent living and I would rather people get it through filesharing rather than not getting it at all. I'm a small business (my wife calls it a "micro business") but because I am something of a DIY shop, and don't have the layers of overhead that people in traditional publishing or recording or movies have, I am able to pay the professionals who work with me, to distribute a product that I'm proud of and still make a good living (I've got a kid in college and buy a new car every ten years or so. We own our house. I don't have to work hard and life is great.) Not only has "illegal" filesharing not hurt me, it's actually helped me considerably. I've started giving away work licensed Creative Commons because it promotes my for-profit work. I'm whatcha call a "long tail" artist and it doesn't take that many paying customers to keep me ahead and it gets a little better every year.

You're the one who believes the threat is so dire that we must have this anti-filesharing arms race and ruin the lives of people who download the latest music by Burial and maybe a rip of The Mechanic. And the threat you believe to be so dire is that people will stop making art, movies, music, literature. History tells us otherwise.

Re:It's quite simple

[cheekyjohnson]

Your opinion is wrong, and mine is absolute! But, that was quite a hasty generalization. Most of these "idiots" that you speak of don't actually believe that "society has the right to benefit and the creator can go fuck themselves." Many of them promote something else entirely in addition to copyright reform.

I'd also suggest being careful about stating absolutes. You may view their view as a "distorted view of reality," but just because you don't like the idea, that does not make it so (nor does that imply that they are correct).

Re:It's quite simple

[vakuona]

It's called reductio ad absurdum. I am taking your argument to the logical extreme. If you stop trying to restrict file sharing, or enforce copyrights, then you might as well abolish copyrights. The amount of illegal filesharing going on is a red herring. What I was trying to show is that in the extreme, non-enforcement can lead to individuals ceasing investment in art. And you really shouldn't advocate that laws should change to suit your one use case. Your use case is not affected by strengthening enforcement, but you shouldn't expect others to be forced into your way of doing business.

Re:It's quite simple

[cavebison]

Now the current system is so terrible (because the incentives of the people who write the laws are very different from what average citizens want to get out of copyright law) [...] when you discuss copyright it's important to do so in these terms.

That's the only part that matters in the argument. Nobody, not even artists, have shown that artists are losing money (ie. missing out on real sales) because of file sharing.

The equivalent argument here in Australia is the hoo-ha about "boat people" (refugees invading our shores by boat). They're insignificant in number, don't do any harm to the economy or anything else, but it's a political hot potato nonetheless.

This is because the motivations of legislators are not the same as those of the people for whom they are legislating. Those days are long gone.

Re:It's quite simple

[AmonTheMetalhead]

What I'll do sometimes is 'download to sample' an album of a band someone suggests to me, because for instance Sony doesn't want the video's to be played in Europe. In those cases they practically are forcing me to pirate the stuff because i can not sample the songs otherwise (no, 15 or 30 seconds on amazon doesn't cut it). If the album turns out to be good, I'll buy it (if it ever gets released on this side of the globe, that's another thing. Sometimes a movie or CD will only see a release in the States, if I can't buy it, I'll pirate it), otherwise I'll just thrash the files & move on.

Re:It's quite simple

[PopeRatzo]

It's called reductio ad absurdum.

Do you understand that the reductio ad absurdum is considered one of the logical fallacies because it sets up a false dichotomy?

What I was trying to show is...

But by having to resort to a fallacious argument, you completely failed to show anything.

...that in the extreme...

But we're not "in the extreme" as is shown by the increase in the amount of creative work over the history of file sharing.

...non-enforcement can lead to individuals ceasing investment in art.

But we've already gone over that. There was plenty of art before copyright. And nobody is talking about "non-enforcement". We're talking about not taking the rather extreme case of a nation forcing ISPs to block websites.

You're going to have to polish your argument a bit. I understand that you're clinging to this strongly-held belief, but I've learned over the years that when logic fails me (see "logical fallacy") to look at my assumptions to see if they're wrong. Your assumptions are wrong.

Re:It's quite simple

[GooberToo]

Extremely long copyright terms rob the public of their culture

How? In what way? The likes of the LotR is very much protected by copyright but it most definitely is part of our culture. I honestly don't see how they are the least bit related or how there's even a hint of truth to that statement.

Copyrights are not the natural state of things, never were

And neither is artistic creation for the sake of artistic creation. You basically have two choices. One, the copyright model. Two, are you willing to pay a couple million for the creation of new music? And then have extremely limited audiences where it can be heard in concert only? Realistically, two isn't a viable option for the masses in this day and age. Which means if artistic creation is really important to you, you absolutely must support copyright protection.

A copyright is only there to grant a temporary, artificial monopoly to allow the creator to make some money.

I completely agree.

If the creator's long retired, dead and buried then why aren't their works in the public domain?

I don't have a complete answer but in part, it stems from the fact creators take a significant reduction in upfront earnings. This in turn means both them and their family earns less than what would otherwise be possible without copyright schemes. As such, it allows for that incremental money to realized of a reasonably long term, which is likely to be beyond the life span of the creator.

Most people, when they speak of striking down the terms, offer up ridiculously short terms, all too frequently because it benefits the individual's selfishness, which are insanely non-viable. So what's a reasonable term if the current are too long?

Re:It's quite simple

[K10W]

admittedly it's a double edged sword on profits front though as quite a few music releases I would not buy if I couldn't trial it and many who steal it would never had bought it to start with. My taste never gets radio play etc and I'm often the first to buy it before friends. I do actually buy it if it is any good and like to encode stuff myself anyway as have particular size/quality/format consideration and higher end headphones. I used to buy CDs from stores and return them if they were notto my liking and the stores had no problem but these days the "piracy measures" prevent this as most stores stopped this returns policy over piracy paranoia thereby meaning piracy first and buying after evaluating is more attractive than chancing buying a "duffer". It was actually easier to sit at home and download than go to a store and buy physical cd, rip, take back etc so imagined pirates never followed that route often. Reviews are often unreliable, plenty of reviews for some Sonic Youth releases for one were good but turned out to be expensive aural turds "NYC ghosts and flowers" I'm glaring menacingly at you! I don't chance many sales now especially on lesser known stuff I find in independent stores from artists I'd never find a download of (man some of Daevid Allens projects (not gong who are very well known) are awful but some gems such as UoE2) so now I just dont chance buying them so it's a lost sale.

Re:It's quite simple

[GameboyRMH]

How? In what way? The likes of the LotR is very much protected by copyright but it most definitely is part of our culture. I honestly don't see how they are the least bit related or how there's even a hint of truth to that statement.

Try selling some LoTR fanfiction, that will help you figure it out.

And neither is artistic creation for the sake of artistic creation. You basically have two choices. One, the copyright model. Two, are you willing to pay a couple million for the creation of new music? And then have extremely limited audiences where it can be heard in concert only? Realistically, two isn't a viable option for the masses in this day and age. Which means if artistic creation is really important to you, you absolutely must support copyright protection.

LOL yes all art was made for cash, from Ugg the cave wall painter, to Da Vinci who had a business plan for each of his works, to today's copyright-rejecting artists who freely distribute their music and/or sell it DRM-free, while still managing to live in mansions.

I don't have a complete answer but in part, it stems from the fact creators take a significant reduction in upfront earnings. This in turn means both them and their family earns less than what would otherwise be possible without copyright schemes. As such, it allows for that incremental money to realized of a reasonably long term, which is likely to be beyond the life span of the creator.

They can't find a way to make enough cash before they die? Well either they have a very odd, diamond-encrusted definition of "enough" or you can cry me a freakin' river for the panda bears of capitalism.*

*Sorry that was mean to pandas.

Re:It's quite simple

[GameboyRMH]

Oh I just remembered, I never mentioned my opinions on what fair copyright terms would be (the hilarity of your 2nd point made me forget). I'd say 10 years, maybe 20 tops, if that's not enough for an artist to make money, well tough luck, they'll have to make themselves as cute and cuddly as possible and compete with the pandas.

I'd also support a system where copyrights have to me renewed after certain periods with a steeply increasing renewal fee, and a mandatory cap.

Re:It's quite simple

[GooberToo]

Pure delusion. Do you honestly believe the idiocy in your post or are you just trolling?

Try selling some LoTR fanfiction, that will help you figure it out.

And how does preventing someone from ripping off their works harm society? Seriously, what was the harm? You insisted culture suffered. How does second rate literature, which no one would have read, harm society?

I'm so tired of the pixie dust fantasies people like you project. Its pathetically sad.

Ugg the cave wall painter

Typically these were made as a record of historical events. Art for art is exceedingly rare in cave paintings. Not surprised in the lease you were completely clueless here.

to Da Vinci who had a business plan for each of his works

Thank you for proving you are a complete fucking idiot. So by your own example, you're willing to personally pay for artistic creations, likely in the millions each? Of course not, because that would mean you're not a lair and/or a hypocrite.

They can't find a way to make enough cash before they die? Well either they have a very odd, diamond-encrusted definition of "enough" or you can cry me a freakin' river for the panda bears of capitalism.*

So you're willing to take a massive pay cut. Awesome. But wait, we both know you're a lair and a delusional hypocrite, so you have absolutely no intention of doing what you insist others must do. What a selfish, delusional, idiot you are.

Re:It's quite simple

[GooberToo]

So you're saying you're willing to take a massive pay cut to support your position? If you're not, well tough luck. Surely you're not hypocritical.

Sadly, that's generally what happens, people don't have a problem stealing from someone else, but as soon as its their money, suddenly its a travesty. We both know you're of this type in spades. This is exactly why pirates come off sounding like complete idiots. They absolutely do not want to practice what they preach. Its really all about your need to steal and the artist can go fuck themselves.

People like you are really total pieces of shit.

Re:It's quite simple

[GameboyRMH]

And how does preventing someone from ripping off their works harm society? Seriously, what was the harm? You insisted culture suffered. How does second rate literature, which no one would have read, harm society?

Who said it's second-rate? It could be brilliant, better than the original for all we know.

Typically these were made as a record of historical events. Art for art is exceedingly rare in cave paintings. Not surprised in the lease you were completely clueless here.

You could say that many works of art are records of historical events, does that mean it's not art or put it in some separate category?

Thank you for proving you are a complete fucking idiot. So by your own example, you're willing to personally pay for artistic creations, likely in the millions each? Of course not, because that would mean you're not a lair and/or a hypocrite.

Why would I have to pay personally? An artist makes a song, gets a copyright on it for a decade or two, people buy it, he makes money, then after a while he doesn't make money on it any more and his song goes into the public domain. I'd pay for his song if I liked it.

So you're willing to take a massive pay cut. Awesome. But wait, we both know you're a lair and a delusional hypocrite, so you have absolutely no intention of doing what you insist others must do. What a selfish, delusional, idiot you are.

What does me taking a massive pay cut have to do with anything? I don't rely on copyright at all for anything. I just get paid for making things, either a lump sum for the final product or for the time that went into making it. If I was paid royalties every time someone visited one of the websites or used one of the applications I made or servers I set up I'd be filthy stinking rich. So maybe I already have taken a pay cut in a way, and I'm fine with that. I'm not putting any more effort into those old works anymore, why should I make more money on them?

Re:It's quite simple

[GameboyRMH]

Again the pay cut thing. Where does this come from? I get paid a 1-time fee for making things based on the amount of time and effort that went into making it, regardless of how many people use or copy it afterwards or for how long.

Re:It's quite simple

[MikeBabcock]

And your opinion of what makes for enjoyable music is valid why?

Art is art. Lots of people don't like lots of it. None of that changes its nature.

If you don't like it, don't buy it. Based on sales for each of the above, you're not the majority voice.

Re:It's quite simple

[alexo]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

I understand that this is the "common wisdom" that is being heavily promoted to be accepted as an indisputable fact. However, the truth is that the assertion has never been put to a test. I would expect slashdotters, being scientifically minded (on the aggregate), not to be content with parroting the rights holders' line but to challenge it and demand rigorous proof.

Now, I agree that it will reduce the total amount of works (since some people only create "works" for material gain) but will it reduce the amount of worthwhile works? And if so, how much?

I propose to put a moratorium on copyrights for at least50 years (guesstimate: the approximate length of a creator's productive period), preferably a 100, and see how society copes with that.

Note that this isn't a silly argument -- we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid. This tradeoff is called "copyright laws".

And more and more people begin to realize that this is a bad tradeoff or, at the least, bad implementation of it. If the duration of the copyright was 14 years I would be inclined to agree with you, but as it stands now, the public is being deprived of free access to its culture.

Re:It's quite simple

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS

Authors who make cruft for money will have less incentive, makers who make things for the love of it will not be bothered at all. And poof we have a better world. There's something to say for giving preference to neccesity in creation over pampering unimaginative mass-production.

Virgin Media

[SpooForBrains]

Anyone know if Virgin Media are joining in this game? They're usually head of the line when it comes to doing evil stuff, just behind BT ...

Re:Virgin Media

[android.dreamer]

It isn't like Billionaire Playboy Richard Branson needs more money. I guess riding on the ocean with supermodels on your back has become more expensive.

Re:Virgin Media

[SpooForBrains]

Branson has nothing to do with Virgin Media in any practical sense.

All the separate cable companies in the UK slowly merged into each other until there was only Telewest Broadband and NTL left. Telewest had a vaguely decent reputation, NTL had an awful one. They merged into NTL:Telewest (with NTL being the effective parent company), then they bought Virgin Mobile and rebranded themselves as Virgin Media. Ergo, Virgin Media is basically NTL with a shiny new image.

Re:Virgin Media

[Anonymous Coward]

There was phorm, which they eventually backed out of. But what other evil stuff have they been involved in (and I don't consider any throttling or bandwidth shaping they do to be evil, since it is somewhat necessary and they are open about it.)

Expensive and ineffective.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who cares enough to actually want to access the sites will find a very simple way around them (A proxy would probably do it).

Why waste everyone's time going through a bunch of paperwork and time to block something that will not have any effect.

Other sites?

[KClaisse]

Anyone have a link to the full list of sites proposed to be blocked? I couldn't find it in the source link.

Re:Other sites?

[JavaBear]

That is a sate secret, and I'd be surprised if the ISP's or rights holders doesn't sue the first person leaking the list.

Re:Other sites?

[KClaisse]

Dunno if your kidding or not but if you're serious then I wonder how 2 of the possible sites were let out.

Re:Other sites?

[JavaBear]

I was being sarcastic. Though considering the secrecy that seem to be surrounding all the "negotiations" for controlling rights and maintaining status quo in the media industry, I would not be surprised if these people would try to keep the full list confidential.

Re:Other sites?

[ciderbrew]

Data protection act should help I hope. Also if you have a big list of sites you'll be able to test for the ones you cannot access. If lots of people have lots of lists then we'll find them.

evile attacks babys, & other life/loving stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

we almost knew the queen might be involved? & just before the pageant? as was previously stated; god may not save the queen (or anybody) this time. the truth will. guaranteed. see you at the play-dates, photon gatherings etc...

Blocking is a barrier, surmountable but annoying

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a fairly technology avid user to use work-around most of the time. Also, this makes using these sites more inconvenient, discouraging many people for using them. These technology blocks don't need to be fool-proof, even if they stop 50% of the people, the companies would be ecstatic.

And ISPs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have a list of the ISPs that are signing up to the voluntary block lists?

First they came after...

[JavaBear]

First they blocked child porn.
    And I didn't listen when people complained, because I really don't like child porn.
Then they blocked porn and "violent" games.
    And no one would listen when I complained, because they really didn't like porn or "violent" games.
Then they blocked information sharing sites.
    And no one could listen when I complained, because there were nowhere to complain.

Re:First they came after...

[shutdown -p now]

First they came for murderers,
and I didn't speak out because I was not a murderer.

Then they came for rapists,
and I didn't speak out because I was not a rapist.

Then they came for people who do bullshit pseudo slippery slope comparisons using Niemoller's "first they came",
and I di~~~NO CARRIER

Common Carrier?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Does this make them liable for content which crosses their network?

Re:Common Carrier?

[funkatron]

no.

UK ISPs

Re:Common Carrier?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this make them liable for content which crosses their network?

The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, which implements the eCommerce directive, sets out the liability of service providers in respect of information carriage (termed "mere conduit"), in s.17 (art. 12 of the directive):

Where an information society service is provided which consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service or the provision of access to a communication network, the service provider (if he otherwise would) shall not be liable for damages or for any other pecuniary remedy or for any criminal sanction as a result of that transmission where the service provider—

(a)did not initiate the transmission;

(b)did not select the receiver of the transmission; and

(c)did not select or modify the information contained in the transmission.

Here, the service provider does not initiate the transmission, and so (a) falls away. It is, perhaps, questionable, whether it selects the receiver - in one sense, it is the user which selects the destination, and the service provider merely drops the traffic, but, it is possible that that act of dropping the traffic could be considered "selection" of the destination, since the end point may be something other than that requested by the user. (c) would not seem to be triggered, since the *content* of the transmission remains the same - it is simply routed differently to the expectations of the user.

Re:Common Carrier?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt (c) would hold if the ISP is injecting adverts into delivered webpages.

Welcome to the machine ..

[Randy_Leatherbelly]

Yes .. yet more proof, if it were needed, that the UK and its ' total control vortex ' is creeping into operation, good old Orwell style. sure, big business and media interests are dictating policy, but thats nothing new here in the UK, but likely far more sinister, is the fact that this is likely another tool in the arsenal of many, which could potentially be re-interpreted and then used to quell freedoms.. i know Hollywood and 'music' companies want to protect their cash cow, but this seems like thin end of (another) nasty wedge heading our way. the 'glory days' of the internet have passed folks, make hay while the sun shines, the web will just ultimately become a corporate outlet and information gathering excersize .. some cynics may well say its well underway already ..

Bittorrent clients already have internal search

[android.dreamer]

If bittorrent clients (uTorrent, Vuze, etc.) have internal search capabilities for torrents, then websites scraping trackers aren't really that necessary. Add some encryption and a proxy and I don't think it can be stopped. Creating a government warranted virus to send your bittorrent information to the MPAA I believe is the next tactic they will take. I still pay to go to the movies and for Netflix, on top of getting a torrent of Ubuntu or something from Creative Commons. Is illegal file sharing really eating up all their profits? The MPAA really shouldn't have this much influence; especially of government.

what will it take

[Anonymous Coward]

so what does it take to get the biggest facilitators like Google and Yahoo on the list?

why does the queen have dragons & gargoyles...

[Anonymous Coward]

on her house & carriage? maybe to show that god loves even the most murderously unattractive amongst us? that's nothing to be disgusted here.

Re:Blocking is a barrier, surmountable but annoyin

[cheekyjohnson]

It takes one person to bypass it. Someone will make something that makes it easier for everyone else (presuming it isn't so simple that any idiot can do it). Also, most file sharers don't appear to be completely computer illiterate (far less so than the average user, anyway). They want free things for whatever reason. Even if it were slightly annoying to bypass, I don't believe that it would stop them from trying to save themselves money.

'facilitate' file sharing

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, "facilitation" of copyright infringement is not prohibited. Secondary infringements, in ss.22-26, cover a number of actions, including "providing means of making infringing copies", but "facilitation" is not referenced.

As such, evidence of "facilitation" is simply evidence of a site which a rightsholder does not like, irrespective of whether the site's activity are not, as a matter of law, prohibited.

Similarly, providing evidence to an ISP has the effect of making it the judge, jury and executioner - the ISP has the burden of deciding whether or not sufficient evidence (of what?) has been provided to justify the imposition of site blocking. It is entirely right that, in such a situation, a judge should make a pronouncement that the site's activities are prohibited.

Perhaps, even then, it just means that the ISP is "following orders", particularly since the process is voluntary?

Perhaps the closest anology is that of the Internet Watch Foundation's blocking list, which many ISPs in the UK implement. In this case, an independent body compiles a list of URL which it considers to refer to material which depicts indecent images of children / images of child abuse. The differences, however, are substantial:

• * the list of URLs, and not domains; it is not intended to take entire sites offline, but rather prevent access to individual images.
• * similarly, the IWF is in a very different position to the copyright industry - as great as the distinction between distribution of illegal images of child abuse and distribution of content without appropriate licensing in place - lacking the vested commercial interest of rightsholder, but, even then, the IWF mechanism has been criticised (as well as highly-publicised issues, such as that of Wikipedia).

Half assed

[spectrokid]

Hope they do it like in Denmark, by forging DNS records. Switch your home router to another DNS server, done.

Re:Half assed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah or just use a proxy to hit the site if worst comes to worst. Once you have the torrent file, many torrents can survive with decentralized tracking.

This law will allow censorship without managing to remedy the issue at hand.

Re:Half assed

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I'm in the UK, my ISP seems to be intercepting DNS traffic as well, I get bogus DNS results even when I try to use other DNS servers.

At least, that's what happened for one site I was trying to access (which didn't have any child porn), but accessing the same DNS servers from websites or via a proxy gave different DNS addresses...

Really, really annoying.

In the end I hardwired that one site in my hosts file, and it worked fine. So that's always a workaround for this lying-in-the-DNS bollocks. OTOH if you really are looking at illegal stuff like child porn they would be able to packet trace you- so you'd still be screwed.

Re:Half assed

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell does that work with DNSSEC?
All you need is to sign down the branch to the node and it will show up as a fat error about record tampering.

Big deal

[atomicbutterfly]

Torrent/file sharing sites are kinda like terrorists - Kill one, two more appear.

Re:Big deal

[zwei2stein]

Sure, but...

One of them will be malware infestation stuff that responds to every search querry with "[fullhd] whateversearchtemryouused.torrent" link to paysite. Unlikely to appear at kill list, ever and forever polluting search results.

Other one will be unknown to general population and by time word spreads, it can easily be added to kill list.

Adding address of known site to blacklist is easy. Much easier than setting up decent site, maintaining it and attracting critical mass. Five seconds of work versus days/weeks.

Re:Big deal

[Vectormatic]

or, to quote the late Sir Alec Guinness: "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine. "

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

I find them more like freedom fighters, but perhaps we perceive different threats.

Commercial censure

[Tei]

After religion censure, political censure we get... commercial censure!. Not nice.

And this will not work.

Pirates are just underserved customers. These people want the products, but don't have a agrement about the price, and the pirates provide that and convenience, a channel to download the games. Often the pirate version of a game are better, since It remove online checks, disable DRM that slow the game, etc.

Also, there are something called "HACKER", and I am not talking about crackers. Hackers will *NOT* tolerate any censorship on the internet.

Both terrible headlines and summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't doing a damn thing, they are TALKING, AKA, STALLING, as long as possible.
They just got a delay on DEA for 2 years. They are also fighting this bullshit too.

Seriously, start linking to the actual sources, /., not someone with an obvious agenda against the big, bad evil ISPs.
THE ARTICLE

Bye Bye Google.

[idji]

I really enjoyed using a website called Google.com to find stuff on the internet, but it seems that it will be blocked in the UK. Now I will have to find another website to find things.

Re:Bye Bye Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize you're joking, but I use startpage.com instead of google.

First off, you don't have to mess around when you live in other countries to access the ssl encrypted google page... Mine would automatically redirect to google.ca.

Second, it has a built-in proxy system, which even disables javascript/etc.

Third, they say they don't record your ip address. Now I realize this is a lot of trust to give to a third party, but its better than any other search engine which just says "Yah, we record everything for 36 years... You know no biggie..."

Finally the search results are actually quite good. I very rarely have to move to google to find something. I think they might be just proxying the search through google or something like that...

Re:Bye Bye Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument, I never get it.

Without getting on either side of the torrent hosting argument: "But, but Google finds torrents as well! They should ban Google then." makes no sense. Where does Google get those torrent references from? Oh yeah, from the sites the industry is trying to block. Should there be no torrent sites for Google to crawl, Google wouldn't find you any torrents.

Re:Bye Bye Google.

[SuricouRaven]

Only websites that can't afford lawyers to defend themselves will be blocked. The ISPs are intelligent enough not to pick a fight they might lose.

Re:Blocking is a barrier, surmountable but annoyin

[Anonymous Coward]

translate.google.com is not so hard to use

Yet another...

[Jaysyn]

Yet another poorly thought out plan by our corpro-fascist friends in the UK.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess if I can rely on my ISP to block the bad stuff on the Internets, I don't need to buy content filtering software anymore! What an excellent service--certainly it won't be limited to only piracy sites, just think of the children!

Now if only they could figure out how to block those darn magnet links...

All quite pointless

[DrXym]

So they block the websites... people will just use a proxy, vpn or something like Opera's mini / turbo mode and bypass it. Mirrors will also popup to facilitate searches. Longer term, a distributed p2p search function will appear which means there is no one IP to block.

What I'd love to know why any ISP thinks doing this is a good idea. Once they admit they can block IPs, what is their defence when other pressure groups / government starts leaning on them to block porn sites, or d-notice sites, or terrorist sites, or trademark infringing sites, or libellous sites or whatever? Caving in like this almost makes the concept of a national firewall an inevitability and puts the ISP on the line for everything they act as a conduit for.

Won't IPV6 make blocklists ineffective?

[Peter (Professor) Fo]

When IP addresses are abundant block lists are going to be huge and still ineffective. A naughty downloader (or uploader) can have the server allocate an IP address just for them, and change it in a few minutes time.

Re:Won't IPV6 make blocklists ineffective?

[omglolbah]

They'll just block ranges of addresses.

https://www.ipredator.se/ ...

[acidfast7]

the best 149 SEK (50 SEK/mo) I've spent in a long time.

Re:https://www.ipredator.se/ ...

[anamin]

Remember the first rule.

Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[ConfusedVorlon]

Their DNS server fails to resolve the address.

Their new 'superhub' router doesn't let you change the DNS server on the router.

You can work around this by setting DNS for each device, but you have to know what you are doing.

For most people - they'll see that piratebay.org works, but that the actual torrent fails.

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[Anonymous Coward]

I just downloaded "How to build your own solar panel" from PirateBay as a test on my home Virgin connection, worked fine. I now have a handy PDF enabling me to provide some of my own electricity with the right materials should I wish it in the future, thanks PirateBay. I do have an older Virgin box (3years old or so) and my own router and I am cable not ADSL, not sure how that would make a difference but then I am not a TV tech.

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[Jon Stone]

How long will it be until they start intercepting all traffic on port 53 and sending it to their own DNS servers?

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[Cap'nPedro]

It's torrents.thepiratebay.org and it resolves just fine for me on VM Cable (M) in NE England.

Does it really matter if they provide a crippled router? It's probably a piece of shit anyway; get something you can flash DD-WRT or Tomato onto.

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[Cederic]

Comically my Virgin connection returns a page from http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/ with the text

"yeah"

So it's working fine, but not particularly useful :)

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[grahamm]

How long will it be until they start intercepting all traffic on port 53 and sending it to their own DNS servers?

Is that not one the things which DNSSEC is designed to prevent?

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Their DNS server fails to resolve the address.

Their new 'superhub' router doesn't let you change the DNS server on the router.

You can work around this by setting DNS for each device, but you have to know what you are doing.

For most people - they'll see that piratebay.org works, but that the actual torrent fails.

Doesn't the pirate bay use a distributed hash table so this has no effect

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[metacell]

Eh... it matters for most users. We want everyone to contribute to pirating, not just the tech experts, don't we?

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[ConfusedVorlon]

more details for the doubters in later replies:

====using openDNS====

$ nslookup torrents.piratebay.org
Server: 208.67.222.222
Address: 208.67.222.222#53

Non-authoritative answer:

$ nslookup torrent.piratebay.org
Server: 208.67.222.222
Address: 208.67.222.222#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: torrent.piratebay.org
Address: 67.215.65.132

====switched to virgin router default DNS====

$ nslookup torrents.piratebay.org
Server: 194.168.4.100
Address: 194.168.4.100#53

** server can't find torrents.piratebay.org: NXDOMAIN

$ nslookup torrent.piratebay.org
Server: 194.168.4.100
Address: 194.168.4.100#53

** server can't find torrent.piratebay.org: NXDOMAIN

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[ConfusedVorlon]

it seems that they are not doing this for everyone.

possibly just the people who upgraded to their 50meg service and got the new 'superhub' with the non-editable DNS settings.

as to the crippled router; it is integrated with the modem, so you can't really get away from it.

I could plug another router in to the superhub and connect everything to that - but that's another device plugged in 24/7

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[ConfusedVorlon]

not if you are downloading a torrent file.

try to download this torrent from piratebay
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/6249208/Linux_Mint_10_KDE_%5B64-Bit%5D_%5BISO%5D_%5Bgeno7744%5D.6249208.TPB.torrent

on a virgin superhub, it will just fail.

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[SuricouRaven]

Do you mean tracker.thepiratebay.org? Actually, that resolves to 127.0.0.1 no matter which ISP you use. It's disused.

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[SuricouRaven]

I think I still have mine sitting on a shelf. I refuse to install it until they release the long-promised-and-still-undelivered firmware update that lets it function as a plain modem.

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[SuricouRaven]

Reports are contradictory. Maybe it's only in some regions, or some service plans?

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[ConfusedVorlon]

so how do you connect?

do you just happen to own a modem that will connect to the cable?

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[SuricouRaven]

I still have my old modem, that the superhub was supposed to replace.

It's not enough to own a modem that will connect. Cable internet requires all devices be whitelisted at the ISP end - they authenticate using some form of cryptography. If the ISP havn't granted an individual device specific permission to be on that network, the network will refuse to allow it. It's a measure to prevent theft of service, but it also means there is no choice at all of which modem (/modem-router) you get to use. It has to be the one the ISP sells you. Thus the upset over the superhub.

Re:Virgin already block torrent.piratebay.org

[Jon Stone]

If the answer returned doesn't have a valid signature, DNSSEC would return SERVFAIL rather than the IP address. DNSSEC can only verify you got the right answer - it turns faked responses into a denial of service. If this case, a denial of service is exactly what the attacker (i.e. the ISP) wants.

censorship infrastructure

[Weezul]

It creates a censorship infrastructure that is inherently much more damaging that authors not being paid.

In particular, they ain't just blocking sites like thepiratebay.org that openly facilitate piracy. Instead, they're going after sites like megaupload that offer valuable legitimate services for small business, namely inexpensive hosting and user friendly file transfer, and actively discourage piracy.

You ever noticed how all the books you download from bit locker sites are encrypted? All those sites ban a file's name, hash, etc. when they get reports of abuse.

Re:censorship infrastructure

[ConfusedVorlon]

the sites don't generally go out of their way to stop piracy.

yes - most of them will block a file when you inform them about it.
no - they definitely don't stop the same file being uploaded again under a different name (or even the same name)

moreover, they make it hard for content owners to check for infringing content by not providing any kind of search facility over publicly shared files.

There are other sites that will search, but they're pretty painful to use.

now I'm not saying they are breaking the (US) law here. They are generally pretty careful to stay within the bounds of the DMCA.

However - they do seem to do the minimum required by the DMCA to stop piracy. They could very easily do a lot more. It isn't in their interests to do this though. If the pirated files stay up for a few days and encourage some people to pay for the premium download service then that's all grist to the bottom line.

I certainly don't think they should be blocked, but they are a long way from squeaky clean.

Re:censorship infrastructure

[Weezul]

Any files that are removed are added to a file filter (based on md5 hashing of the file) to prevent the exact same file from being uploaded again.

Yes obviously the video streaming sites like megavideo either aren't blocking reuploading or else reuploaders are altering the file's contents slightly.

We obviously need these bit locker sites for many reasons like emergency bandwidth for resisting traffic spikes, pseudo-anonymous publication, and simply avoiding the email file size limit. An sha or md5 based file filter sounds like the best overall compromise because it complicates the process by forcing pirates to encrypt or alter the file.

Re:censorship infrastructure

[1u3hr]

moreover, they make it hard for content owners to check for infringing content by not providing any kind of search facility over publicly shared files.

They are not "publicly shared files". It's up to the uploaders who to give the download links to. They may only send it to one person. They may post it on a forum. But by default, all links are private. And "content owners" have no right to search through anyone else's files. In any case, files that are movies, say, are often in encrypted archives and you can't search them without knowing the password.

I certainly don't think they should be blocked, but they are a long way from squeaky clean.

Of course not, they're assholes who don't give a shit about anyone. It's not about protecting their business. But if they have broken any laws, they should be prosecuted for that, not just blocked because someone says they're "not squeaky clean".

Re:censorship infrastructure

[SuricouRaven]

If they did provide some search facility, wouldn't you just claim they are providing it to aid pirates? It would doubtless be a hugely useful feature to them.

In other news...

[the_raptor]

In other news UK ISP's have noticed a sudden drop in subscription to high bandwidth/high download limit plans. They fear piracy may be to blame for this phenomenon.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the scare is over, they'll notice they can charge you the same amount for less download quota.

Re:In other news...

[cdrudge]

In other news UK ISP's have noticed a sudden drop in subscription to high bandwidth/high download limit plans. They fear piracy may be to blame for this phenomenon.

They also now realize that without pirating, people really weren't downloading all that many Netflix movies and usage based billing might not have been the best idea after all.

What about google

[Dodgy G33za]

Google have scanned 15 million books without the approval of the copyright owner. They gonna block Google?

Re:Blocking is a barrier, surmountable but annoyin

[Vectormatic]

a fairly good counterexample for your point just happened here in holland.

Brein (the local RIAA/MPAA surogate) won a court case against FTD (a large usenet community with its own spot database etc..), forcing them to close their central infrastructure. Promptly Spotnet gained massive popularity as the replacement. Where FTD required you to first search in the database, then look up the corresponding NZB on binsearch (or equivalent), and input the NZB into grabit/newsleecher, spotnet is a 3-in-1 type program, you search spots in your local database (which is built from data sourced from usenet itself) and can click 'download', next thing you know the files are on your hard drive.

Brein actually made usenet easier to use for the common lay-person, spotnet is (vastly) easier then kazaa/etc.. were, so joe sixpack should have no trouble with usenet anymore

the Linux crowd will love this

[FudRucker]

if they just outright ban all bittorrent (legal or not) that will include the way many people get Linux ISOs, bittorrent sure is handy when it comes to getting large DVD ISOs that are usually close to 4 gigs, i seen one double layer DVD iso @ 7.+ gigs

Does anyone bother to read TFA?

[igb]

ISPs aren't seeking the power to disconnect or block; precisely the opposite. They are seeking judicial review of legislation that forces them to do it. They are not asking judges to block sites; they are demanding that in the event they are asked to block sites, each block must be done by a judge. Given that UK courts have recently handed the copyright holders the bill for the ACS:Law debacle and kicked the issue of whether or not an IP number identifies a downloader into the legal long grass (ie, anyone who wants to argue that it does is going to have to litigate it from scratch) I'd say the ISPs were on the customers side on this. The Labour government, in a horrible rush without proper scrutiny, passed bad and dangerous legislation. The courts are being asked to deem it unenforcible and effectively send it back for reconsideration in parliament (unlike the US, courts can't strike down legislation: they can, however, render the implementation impossible). How are the ISPs possibly the bad guys in this?

Re:Does anyone bother to read TFA?

[SpooForBrains]

Mod parent up, thank you.

Re:Does anyone bother to read TFA?

[ray_mccrae]

The Labour government passed bad and dangerous legislation.

Fixed it for you. Now you can apply it to the whole disastrous 13 years.

Re:Does anyone bother to read TFA?

[SuricouRaven]

"The government passed bad and dangerous legislation."
Even better. There are some issues on which the parties differ, but this isn't really one of them. We're in much the same issue as the Americans in that regard - it just isn't an issue with enough public concern to matter in elections.

Where there is a demand there is a supply

[Anonymous Coward]

Like anything that is in demand, it will be supplied. Drugs, they damage your health, everyone knows this, it's proven, yet people buy them. They are illegal, people will go to prison for selling them or posessing them in certain quantities. However, if there is a demand for them, they will be sold, they will be bought.

This is true for everything else.

As it was mentioned many times before, if I copy my friends Porsche, he does not lose his car & Porsche does not lose a sale as I would not have bought one if I could not copy.

There is a demand for content, quickly available & preferably very cheap if not free. MPAA-RIAA wish to control the market, that's great for them...but can they deliver what we want? it's not about not paying, it's about getting what you want. What people demand they find ways to get.

I want to play my movie without need of region codes, I want to back it up should the physical media fail and IF I pay for it I want it very clear I own it flat out, period. I'm not interested in leasing out media temporarily, or being limited by some nonsense DRM that requires approved hardware.

I download games first & IF I like them, I pay for them, if not I delte them. You cannot cheat me with a fancy trailer & a half finished game. You cannot bopther me to walk to the store & haggle with the retailer because I want to give them game back because it sucks.

Look at movies, if you went to the cinema & the movie sucks, can you ask for your money back? have you ever tried that? the cinema, with all the kids throwing popcorn, stomping their feet & flashing their laser lights, what advantage does it hold over home cinema? I want to pause my movie and use the toilet or have a cigarette at my leisure. Only IMAX ciname has anything superior to offer.

I could go on, about ebooks, programs etc...all torrented content in fact.

You could call me a thief, ask how can I justify etc etc. The fact is, I do not have to justify anything, I just do as I please & there is nothing that can be done to stop people like me. We are millions.

ISP blockade? rubbish. Just proxy around, encrypt your downloads, get a torrent box on the cheap in soime eastern european country & tunnel.

Look at the facts. There was Lycos MP3 search, it was stopped. Then there was napster, it was stopped. then there was Kazaa, it was stopped. Then there was eDonkey,eMule, DC++ etc. they are still running mostly. Now we have bittorrent.

All this time, demand has INCREASED, supply has INCREASED. There is not a damn thing you can do to stop it unless you give people what they want & how they want it.

All these anti-piracy consortiums are a waste of time. You could throw thousands of people in jail & you'd still have tens of millions to process.

My argument? It's time for a change, a new system. People will pay if they want to, they won't if they do not. Make your content cheap enough so people will not care to take the hit.

Would anyone bother spending time to get a refund on a £1 ebook? a 10p song? if you sell millions, it's feasible.

Why should I pay for all the middlemen? if I am impressed with an author enough to make a purchase, I'd rather give him all the money so his life is a bit better so he/she can make a product, program, book that is better so I can enjoy it. /rant over

Pointless

[antivoid]

Perspective:
Here's a different way to think about the entire debacle. Some people say piracy deprives others of profit. Others say it doesn't. The end result is always the same. Some greedy megacorporation (record labels, motion picture creators, the government) etc will try to "block" the site[s] in question...

Argument:
My argument is, what is the point? Block it all you like, someone will just find a way around it, create a new site, in an endless cycle. The "problem", if there even is one, is in the minds of the people... Why buy when I can get it for free? -or- I won't watch/listen to this avi/mp3 unless it is free.

Determination:
There are always going to be pirates, there is always going to be piracy. The problem is greed and money. As long as there is money, people with low amounts of money are going to attempt to find ways of obtaining materials with less money or no money.

Solution:
Tor? Host megaupload on a .onion? Decentralize the entire web? Why not?! Put powerful webservers on the tor network. Make Tor the defacto standard. Make companies host their sites on onions. Make companies depend on Tor. Then, Tor will expand. And it won't be taken down because companies use it too for their sites. Then we can squash the pesky net neutrality problem at the same time. ISPs can't block Tor, or they'd block the whole Tor, and all the companies using it. "It won't work!" you say. "There's not enough support, other than a few geeks and nerds!". Well now... Firefox was the product of a few geeks and nerds... look where Firefox is today. The time is coming to oppose these governments and companies who think they can control us. To hell with them. It is our right to do what we want online!

Next

[Anonymous Coward]

Block wikileaks ?

Re:Blocking is a barrier, surmountable but annoyin

[vegiVamp]

Umm... Tor. Even if the ISPs block the sites, that doesn't mean that hosters will, and I would guess a large number of Tor exit nodes are on hosted machines, not home lines.

TPB is also only used to download the actual torrentfile - the tracker can be somewhere else, and the data is on individual computers. Similarly, newsbin is used to download an NZB file, the data isn't actually there - you can get that from most any NNTP provider.

The Internet will simpy route around damage, even MAFIAA braindamage.

I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[master_p]

I'd love to see copyright abolished, for the simple reason that it will then be proved how much copyright is needed.

All the people saying that copyright must be abolished, where will you hide when there are no more works of art to enjoy? no new movies to download for free? no new games to play?

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[ledow]

Yeah, because NOBODY would put things into the public domain, do them for the love of the thing, or just to make a statement, or to provide a voice for themselves, work thousands of man-hours to build a free operating system that they then give away (and I mean BSD, not Linux, which relies on copyright), create a commercial-quality computer-rendered animated movie and give it away, create an encyclopaedia on every subject, etc.etc.etc.

Copyright isn't "needed". It is helpful. But it's also incredibly overreaching at present.

And, to be honest, in many countries in the world copyright exists only on paper. You can just walk up to a market trader and get a piece of software that costs thousands for next to nothing and entire industries are run on that software later on without bothering to legitimise it.

I'd love to see the same. For the opposite reason. I think the world would tick along perfectly, with slightly less mega-rich popstars and movie moguls (not to mention middle-men), and a lot more stuff that people can read, view and access without worrying about the licensing. It would be like giving everyone access to the British Library and telling them to read whatever they wanted. There might be less multi-million dollar heaps of shit in the cinema and a few more educated and enlightened people about.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[Anonymous Coward]

All the people saying that copyright must be abolished, where will you hide when there are no more works of art to enjoy? no new movies to download for free? no new games to play?

That would probably be the greatest moment of creation in history: instead of consuming corporate-made crap, tens of millions more people would begin collaborating and sharing their own efforts with the public.

It's extremely hard to pull people out of this consume! consume! consume! habit, but when they are it's amazing what they unselfishly create.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[unity100]

There was no copyright at the time when greatest works of art were produced. this includes late 14th century to early 15th century.

you dont know anything about art history, yet, you are talking out of your ass.

please dont talk bullshit next time.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[Marcus Green]

"to build a free operating system that they then give away (and I mean BSD, not Linux, which relies on copyright)"

And despite this most people use an operating system with a charged for commercial licence and most installations of free operating systems is the one that relies on copyright.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[metacell]

I will hide here: http://www.jamendo.com/
Or here: http://listen.grooveshark.com/
And here: http://www.fsf.org/
And definitely here: http://creativecommons.org/
And why not here: http://www.fanfiction.net/
Or here: http://www.openculture.com/free_ebooks
... and a myriad of other places on the Internet, including those where I publish my own works.

That being said, I don't think abolishing copyright will mean the end of commercial media, since there are many other ways to make money from them. For example, most blockbuster movies make most of their profit in the first one or two weeks, and people are willing to pay a premium to see the film early, with high quality, and added value features like 3D and advanced sound systems. TV productions are almost entirely financed by advertisements, not future DVD sales. Most artists already earn most of their income from concerts, not from CD/downloadable music sales. And so on.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[fotbr]

That doesn't invalidate the point about people being willing to give away stuff they create.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[BJ_Covert_Action]

All the people saying that copyright must be abolished, where will you hide when there are no more works of art to enjoy?

I'll probably just walk down the street and listen to the guy that plays the violin on the corner there for fun. He seems to produce better music than most of the Hollywood firms anyways, and I like going on walks. For books, I'll probably get to know my local authors. For movies and T.V. well, that's all just a waste of my time anyways. I tend to find YouTube more entertaining 90% of the time after all.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[master_p]

Yeah, because NOBODY would put things into the public domain, do them for the love of the thing, or just to make a statement, or to provide a voice for themselves, work thousands of man-hours to build a free operating system that they then give away (and I mean BSD, not Linux, which relies on copyright), create a commercial-quality computer-rendered animated movie and give it away, create an encyclopaedia on every subject, etc.etc.etc.

All the free things you mention are a tiny fraction of all the non-free things.

You should also have in mind that those that work on free stuff earn their living by working on non-free stuff.

I'd love to see the same. For the opposite reason. I think the world would tick along perfectly, with slightly less mega-rich popstars and movie moguls (not to mention middle-men), and a lot more stuff that people can read, view and access without worrying about the licensing. It would be like giving everyone access to the British Library and telling them to read whatever they wanted. There might be less multi-million dollar heaps of shit in the cinema and a few more educated and enlightened people about.

You are so deluded. People just don't create stuff if they don't have a motive, and profit is one of the strongest motives out there.

For every free thing we have today, there are tens or even hundred other things that we had to buy. Imagine a world, for example, without IBM, Microsoft, Apple and Sun: who would create all that magnificent hardware and software for free? no one, is the answer. We we still be stuck with ancient Unix and green screen terminals.

Even this medium we are using (the web) evolved due to economics.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[master_p]

Copyright does not stop a person in any way to produce the greatest works of art ever.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[master_p]

I will hide here... and a myriad of other places on the Internet, including those where I publish my own works.

Publishing your own works is made possible by people working for profit.

For example, most blockbuster movies make most of their profit in the first one or two weeks, and people are willing to pay a premium to see the film early, with high quality, and added value features like 3D and advanced sound systems.

Given that home entertainment systems have extremely high quality these days, if there was no copyright, no one would go to the cinemas. Instead, they would view the movie at home, in 60" hires TVs, with dolby surround sound, and even with 3d glasses.

TV productions are almost entirely financed by advertisements, not future DVD sales.

Not on cable or satellite systems.

Most artists already earn most of their income from concerts, not from CD/downloadable music sales

They would have earned their income from sales if it wasn't for piracy.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[master_p]

But you don't do these things right now, do you? why? could it be, perhaps, that commercial offerings offer you more?

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[master_p]

That would probably be the greatest moment of creation in history: instead of consuming corporate-made crap, tens of millions more people would begin collaborating and sharing their own efforts with the public.

Nothing stops people from doing this now. But it is not done, is it? probably because people want to profit from their works.

Let's stop deluding ourselves for a moment: if people were kind enough to share their works with the public all the time, it would have already happened. But it has not happened, due to human nature, and it will probably never happen.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[unity100]

the argument you have been making was, if copyright was not there, great works of art wouldnt be produced. as you see from 14th century dutch painters, this is not correct.

moreover, if we go back to hellenistic and roman age, it becomes even more pointless. the sculpture industry and art that was there by then, puts today's into shame in all respects. yet, there was no copyright, or even the idea of it.

Re:I'd love to see copyright abolished...

[metacell]

Publishing your own works is made possible by people working for profit.

Yes, I offer my work for free to a website, and the people who run it profit from the advertisments on the site. I win, they win, the readers win.

Given that home entertainment systems have extremely high quality these days, if there was no copyright, no one would go to the cinemas. Instead, they would view the movie at home, in 60" hires TVs, with dolby surround sound, and even with 3d glasses.

Then how do you explain that the film industry's revenues have continued to increase during the 2000's, despite rampant piracy?

Cinemas have always have an edge over home entertainment systems. When TV came, cinemas had colour. When TV got colour, cinemas had stereo sound. When TVs got stereo sound, cinemas got surround sound. When people got home entertainment systems with large, flat screens and surround sound, cinemas got colour 3D. When Joe Average has a 60" hires 3D TV with surround sound in his home, I'm willing to bet the cinemas will come up with something new to compete.

Cinemas also have a social function; they provide a place to meet your friends or your date outside either person's home.

But for the sake of argument, let's say they fail, everyone watches TV instead, and every last movie theatre has to close. What's the worst that could happen? That the film companies would have to produce directly for TV instead? That they would have to insert unobtrusive advertising and put their productions up on BitTorrent themselves?

TV productions are almost entirely financed by advertisements, not future DVD sales.

Not on cable or satellite systems.

It's the same type of films and TV productions on satellite/cable systems as on ad-financed TV. They're just two different ways of getting revenue from them.

Most artists already earn most of their income from concerts, not from CD/downloadable music sales

They would have earned their income from sales if it wasn't for piracy.

Not true. This Norwegian Master's thesis demonstrates that music artists never got more than 20% of their income from CD sales. The rest has always come from other sources, like concerts and merchandise. The figures are based on the Norwegian music market, but they shouldn't be dramatically different in other Western countries.

The same study also shows that during the last decade, the average income of Norwegian music artists has increased by 66%, even though the number of artists has also increased. It's the same period during which music filesharing took off and exploded.

There are many other studies from different countries showing that piracy has a net effect on sales that is roughly zero - sometimes the effect is even positive, since piracy works as free advertising. This is often the case for japanese animation, according to a Japanese government study.

Re: Why bring American Law

[TaoPhoenix]

Because we're starting to get the effect where X country enacts something, and the multinational corps go "Oh cool! We can block sites now. Now let's do it in more countries." Then the legislatures of countries y and Z go "$ure! Y(en)"

Anon the bittorrent protocol

[h00manist]

Bittorrent needs an extension to the protocol to always do something that makes it impossible to know from exactly which IP numbers the content actually comes from. It has to be something done in every client by default, otherwise it won't be too effective.

Re:Anon the bittorrent protocol

[SuricouRaven]

It's been tried in a few ways. Unfortunatly this is technologically difficult. It can be done, but the overhead is 100% at minimum. There are anonymous p2p networks (Freenet being one of the best known) but this comes at the cost of performance. Forget about getting a movie in an hour, or even overnight.

Re:professional output

[TaoPhoenix]

I think there's a big delay, as much as 15 years.

I keep getting modded down for this next bit, but to all the people who keep talking creativity, no one is answering about the middle production side. For books, they just lost one of their two flagship outlets (Borders), and hang on tight if movie cinemas start to close.

Sounds great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you pay by using a disguise and put cash in a dropbox? Otherwise they'll just subpoena your credit card records.

Comprehensive Annual Financial Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake the fuck up, supposedly smart slashdot crowd.

forget piracy for a moment, there are worse problems
There's no budget deficit, no retirement deficit (calpers), no school funding problems (all schools), no police, fire or other deficit.
These deficits are all complete ponzi game. The media is complicit.

SEARCH YOUR LOCAL TV STATIONS for the KEYWORDS
"Comprehensive Annual Financial Report"
or
"CAFR"

It won't be there, because they won't talk about it.

judges, attorneys, big station/network tv editors, city, state, and federal all have a

"Comprehensive Annual Financial Report" which is where all the money is.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6703413885850200097

American customers are only a liability now
read up stupid Sheeple 6th grade math

Of course this post will be trashed by the sock puppets.
MOD IT UP or START A NEW
Forget the Radiation .Your continued life might depend on this alone!!!

Re: Why bring American Law

[somersault]

Nobody has actually mentioned any relevant legislature so far though.

I don't think it's actually illegal for a company to censor such things. If they were censoring things for more political reasons (ie blocking all sites run by Muslims or something silly like that) then there would be recourse against it, but I doubt anyone will actually be willing to put together and fund a cogent case for them not censoring websites involved in illegal activity, in the same way that I doubt many people have tried to convince Google to allow child porn in their search results..

Useless

[hesaigo999ca]

What they do not understand is people's absolution.
If they want to share, they will, they are going to throttle torrent, because it is an open protocol , until the next protocol that replaces it, because of what they are trying to do now....then you'll get another one, then another one, until finally they give up, so might as well just give up now, and embrace it for the great tool it is, the only reason it is open source, is to allow a) people to see the code so as to trust what it does, and b) to get more feedback quicker once bugs are found and solve it sooner....they never HAD to make it public....next one might be private and encrypted, and pass through port 80 to really screw things up....

Re:professional output

[1u3hr]

, no one is answering about the middle production side. For books, they just lost one of their two flagship outlets (Borders), and hang on tight if movie cinemas start to close.

You might blame Amazon for Borders closing, both their mailorder and recently ebook sales. But very few (proportionally) are reading "warezed" books. It's just not pleasant, and books are cheap to buy and a lot more convenient to read for most people, despite some authors getting very angry about downloads. And reading is just facing more -- legitimate -- competition now.

Seriously?

[g0bshiTe]

Back in the day we had Napster, then Kazzaa took it's place, anyone remember HotLine? We had LimeWire, Morpheus and every other P2P app under the sun, one would shut down and others would spring up. Since PirateBay and other torrent sites only host torrents not actual files how is blocking them going to stop others from reposting, or passing around these torrents?

Seriously these people that want to block illegal file sharing should at least take a night class or something so they actually know what technology or sharing methods are used by those they wish to stop.

Re:Seriously?

[MickyTheIdiot]

You're asking these people to think about technical facts in a reasonable way. These days this always fails.

babies

[mrbojangles_dcfc]

I have noticed a number of people on Facebook have been adding profiles for their new born babies. I used to think this was just bad parenting and a betrayal of their child's right to privacy. I didn't realise that users had to be over 13 so these pages most likely also disregard Facebook's own rules?

WoW

[DarthVain]

The UK sucks.

That said. Whats to stop everyone from using proxies and every other way to circumvent said censorship like every other country that has ever done it. I mean its not like this is a terribly new concept, and there are established ways around it. I mean this will maybe start a whole new glut of website proxy businesses. Then the ISP and media goons and look at suing and banning those as well. Sue and Ban everyone and everything I say.

They simply can't stop the progress

[Anonymous Coward]

If progress could be so simply stopped just by stamped silence order, nobody never ever could talk loudly. By physical means.

Re:They simply can't stop the progress

[JockTroll]

Try to talk aloud against the king in Thailand. It works. It can be done. It has been done and will be done again. Thoughtcrime does exist.

bad idea...

[MickyTheIdiot]

What happens when Microsoft starts to claim that linux.org infringes on their "intellectual property." Do they just block it?

Way to go... give big companies another way to hit small companies and people over the head with their club of "IP".

Re:professional output

[tsm_sf]

And reading is just facing more -- legitimate -- competition now.

Pirating ebooks should be funded by the government. Anything, anything at all to get people reading more.

P2P over Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

.. please let someone develop file sharing over smtp and let them kill that too.

Re:I pirate every movie BEFORE I buy

[DocSavage64109]

Why even bother? Just get a Netflix sub and do it the legal way. There's no need to own hundreds of movies, unless you like to watch the same thing over and over.

Re: Why bring American Law

[zeroshade]

It's funny if you do consider it in terms of American Law though, if the companies themselves start to block the sites, they would lose their Safe Harbor privileges under the DMCA and thus become liable for all the infringement across their networks.

Re:Bye Bye Google, hello Bing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear there is a wonderful company out there that will help you transition away from Google.com. Those sweet folks at Microsloth, no ... Microsoft, yeah, thats it. They put together a replacement for Google.com and called it "bing.com"

Your searches will never be the same after switching.

Re:I pirate every movie BEFORE I buy

[Grishnakh]

That's not going to be an option in the future, because Netflix competes with the ISPs for VoD (video on demand). So they're going to block Netflix, or at least restrict its bandwidth so it's too slow to play for you without constantly pausing, so that you'll go with the ISP's VoD service instead. Some less corrupt countries might enact Net Neutrality to avoid this, but America is firmly against NN so Netflix's days here are numbered.

Re:I pirate every movie BEFORE I buy

[Shemmie]

Because there is no Netflix in my 'market'.

Re:I pirate every movie BEFORE I buy

[Anonymous Coward]

So fucking sick of that argument, you know that place that isn't America? Guess what! We're locked out of such services due to region restrictions. I wish to god you people would stop saying "Use Huli/Netflix other-fucking-crap-+90%-of-us-cant-access"

Re: Why bring American Law

[TaoPhoenix]

Very roughly, the relevant legislatures are US, UK, France, China, and Australia and your choice of Pick-Two others. They each have their own spin on things, but over and over of the huge number of countries out there, it's some seven countries constantly in the YRO news.

Legal Technicality Get out Clause

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pay for a service, then that service has to be provided. You have a contract with your ISP and there are those little words called Terms & Conditions that not many people read but I do. Therefore when you signed up to your ISP, those were the Terms & Conditions which your ISP is now breaking.

Now the only way these people can get away with this is actually down to a little know law and the Official Secrets Act and Anti-Terror laws which is a double edge sword. That exact phrase is "If it is deemed within the publics' best interest" law can be past without any consultation whatsoever. Now as I said it is a double edged sword and there is a phrase which says "If it is NOT within the publics' best interest" then you can appeal it.

I hope that helps bring some more sanity to this issue.

Re: Why bring American Law

[somersault]

Okay, well nobody has mentioned any relevant legislation that applies to this situation. Rules such as the first amendment are to restrict government censorship, not censorship that a company chooses to do itself.