Google Boots Transdroid From Android Market

fysdt writes with a TorrentFreak story that starts: "Google has pulled one of the most popular torrent download managers from the Android Market because of policy violations. Before Google booted the application, Transdroid had been available for two years and amassed 400,000 users during that time. Thus far Google hasn't specified what the exact nature of Transdoid's violations are, but it's not unlikely that they relate to copyright infringement."

Comments

The grey line of theft

[SuperKendall]

You know, I have always held out like many others that torrenting was not theft, that purely virtual copies harmed no one.

But I have to admit feeling some kind of line is crossed with a system that can (as the article stated) scan a physical barcode of something in front of you and start fetching it in moments.

It's still not really theft but frankly, from a moral standpoint it's so close to theft I have trouble distinguishing the difference.

My own take on the matter has always been if I cannot buy something in some other way, I have no problems acquiring it; so the ability to do exactly the opposite, acquiring something when the physical presence of it exists right in front of you, just seems very wrong.

It's obviously that anyone with technical knowledge could easily set up something similar but I have to say I don't really have a problem with any company saying they do not wish to implicitly support something like this and thus banning an application from a store. I doubt this app will be appearing in an Android store either.

The really bad things about apps like this is that it appears rather like theft not just to me, but to the people that make laws, who will over time seek to make illegal that which should not be, using this as a basis.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Weezul]

I never knew this existed, but frankly this sounds like an anti-consumerist political statement, not a serious piracy tool.

I'd never enter a physical store with the intention of selecting my torrents, just like I'd never buy physical media, that's just weird, man. If this prevents a couple teenagers who hang out at the mall from buying CDs, well that's great, but the actual economic impact sound wholly secondary to the anti-consumerist moral message.

I would otoh use an android app that listens to the song playing in the club, identifies it, and pirates the mp3. I currently type the author & song into the notepad and pirate the song later.

Re:The grey line of theft

[LordLucless]

Well, if it then vaporized the item in front of it, it might be analogous to theft I guess. Theft is really more about depriving something from someone else than gaining it for yourself; in this case, the outlet still has the physical item.

The problem is people seem to think that if it's not theft, it's not "bad". The accurate description for this activity is "copyright infringement". It opens you to civil liability. It can in some circumstances be a criminal offense. Saying something is copyright infringement isn't saying "this is good, go do it", it's an accurate description of the action.

Re:The grey line of theft

[maxdread]

here = her motherfucka = motherfucker. Things to consider before you call others stupid.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

You got your morality issues ass-backwards. Imaginary property rights are immoral. Furthermore the world would be a better, wealthier, and more equitable place if immaginary property rights were completely abolished.

Imaginary property takes real time and money to create.

It baffles me how *GEEKS* of all people are so antagonistic against their own beliefs out of small scale greed.

Geeks are the kings of intellectual property. We don't weld things together. We don't tend to work in assembly lines. We don't forge steel or mine for ore. We Think. The geek creed is that intellect and creativity are at least as valuable as physical might.

But when it comes time to being payed for the products of our minds we dismiss its value as just "imaginary property".

The product of my mind is as valuable as the product of someone's hand. If you don't want to pay for it then you can't have it. If you don't want it, then you don't have to have it.

People *WANT* movies, television, software, books etc... they *VALUE* movies, television, software and books. But unlike other things of value which were created from the industry of the hand you want to destroy any economy from industry of the mind.

Well, Fuck You. I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have. If imaginary property has no value and requires no input of resources go fucking do it yourself. But no, you won't (and you probably can't even if you wanted to).

I'm not saying that I think piracy is equivalent to stealing. I would say it's more akin to not putting a few cents in the parking meter and hoping you don't get caught. And I think the fines should be comparable. Get caught for downloading a $1.00 show then pay a $30 fine. And I'm certainly guilty just this week of failing to pay for parking and downloading torrents. But I also do buy a lot of media and I also do usually pay for parking and I think that tenuous balance between respecting the law but also ignoring it when practical is a fair and workable solution.

There were plenty of parking spaces on the street open but I certainly denied the city a little revenue by not paying and running into grab a smoothie. So by your standards a parking space is "imaginary property". After all, it didn't cost the city anything directly for me to be parking there.

Re:The grey line of theft

[sqrt(2)]

I agree, but you then have to accept that there is an entire separate conversation society should be having; is copyright in its current form an ethical social contract? We're seeing three or four different bodies of laws rolled into one nebulous and overreaching concept called "intellectual property" which is in reality a power-play by big business to handcuff culture and make sure nothing ever enters public domain again.

The current copyright system is broken, it's ethically bankrupt, so we no longer have an obligation to hold up our end of the social contract.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Quietlife2k]

With the exorbitant cost of physical media, the relative ease with which it can be damaged, and whatever DRM is embedded, I cannot blame people for wanting a cheap no hassle backup.

Anyone blaming the tools is nuts. We have had similarly disruptive tools before and should know that banning or making them illegal does nothing to stop their use.

Think if you will about lock picks. Legal in most of the world to own, to use on your own locks, to carry around in you car, but illegal to use to commit a crime.

What's so different with the digital equivalent ?

Why do governments and people world wide seem so scared of digital lock picks, but are content to have legally available physical ones ?

Re:The grey line of theft

[LordLucless]

I totally agree - the fact that the government has unilaterally "altered the agreement" so that copyright extends to such ludicrous lengths does amount to theft. By my reckoning, they've stolen about a hundred years worth of art from the public domain, and hence, from the public.

But that's totally aside from the point, which is that copyright infringement and theft are two different things, and need to be discussed separately.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

While I agree with you on principle, in practice this probably is inducing less copyright infringement than an RSS reader built in.

I can't imagine someone actually scanning a bar-code for something they don't own. Most likely this is for scanning DVDs you already own. Who would go to the store to search for torrents? :D

Now an RSS feed though that just automatically downloads new TV episodes as they come out. That is probably for the sake of piracy (or theoretically podcasts, but let's be honest, most likely piracy).

Re:The grey line of theft

[hedwards]

Indeed, I'd wager that most folks here would rather see copyright terms cut down to something more reasonable along with trademarks and patents. I see far more interest in reforming the system than in abolishing it.

True, there are a lot of libertarians here that would like to see the whole system burn, but as a whole, I don't think that most folks here really want the entire system demolished rather than reformed.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Quietlife2k]

Costs - a random selection :

Source : Toys R Us uk website.
Xbox 360 Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 £42.89
Xbox 360 Disney Pixar Cars 2 £34.89

Amazon uk website:
Case Histories - Series 1 [DVD] £14.99
The Shadow Line [DVD] £14.99
I Am Number Four [DVD] £11.99

You may be rich enough for this to be loose change to you, but I can assure you this not not cheap. Particularly given the actual dvd media costs less than £1.

Breaking DRM and stripping CSS may be easy for you but it is not so much for mere mortal USERS.

I care about the difference between right and wrong, I just don't see how it is right to ban a digital lock pick but not a physical one.

Re:The grey line of theft

[hedwards]

I was in BestBuy a couple weeks back for the first time in years, and I noticed that some of their pricetags had 3D codes on them, had I thought about it I should have scanned one to see what they were referring me to.

There's nothing unethical about scanning a bar code to see reviews or better prices, but scanning a code to begin torrenting it is definitely wrong by any objective standard. If you're going to pirate the materials, at least have the decency to manually look up the torrent you're looking for.

Re:The grey line of theft

[hedwards]

That's the thing, I'd be surprised if there was much impact at all, apart from the extremely lazy, I doubt very much that there are a lot of people suddenly pirating because they can get their phone to scan and download the whatever.

Re:The grey line of theft

[sqrt(2)]

You don't know the economic situation of everyone. There are plenty of people for whom physical media IS prohibitively expensive, even legal downloadable versions are often not significantly cheaper. When one region of the world is sold a downloadable copy for X amount and the US is sold the same downloadable copy for 10*X, that's exploitation. Downloading a free copy is no worse than downloading a cheaper foreign version in the eyes of the content-cartels who have tried to convince us that EULAs and terms of use constitute law or are legally valid forms of contract. They shouldn't expect us to play nice when they don't.

One thing is certain, no matter what downloading a torrent of a commercial work is, it is NOT theft. Use of the term theft or piracy is an Orwellian manipulation and you are playing right into their hands every time you repeat it when you actually mean copyright infringement.

Re:The grey line of theft

[LordLucless]

Yeah. The store would also be annoyed if I tracked gum all over their carpet. Tracking gum all over their carpet isn't theft. Store annoyance has absolutely no relevance to the definition of theft.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Runaway1956]

"It baffles me how *GEEKS* of all people are so antagonistic against their own beliefs out of small scale greed."

[sarcasm] Of course geeks should control their small scale greed, in deference to corporate macro greed! [/sarcasm]

Come on, imaginary property is imaginary property. Who should know better than the geeks? They have plenty of it!

Re:The grey line of theft

[PCM2]

Well, if it then vaporized the item in front of it, it might be analogous to theft I guess. Theft is really more about depriving something from someone else than gaining it for yourself; in this case, the outlet still has the physical item.

Nonetheless, I think almost everybody understands on a gut level that this sort of thing is ethically wrong.

A lot of people, if they found an envelope full of money, would keep the money. At the same time, if the envelope had someone's name written on it, I think a great many people would try to think of a way to get that money back to the named person before they just walked off with it.

Similarly, I think a great many people make a distinction between downloading something using BitTorrent from their computer at home and actually walking into a CD store, spending a half hour browsing the new releases, and then using a magic wand to download all of the ones they like without paying the store a dime. For the first one, I think a lot of people might not think they're doing anything wrong at all. But I think most of us recognize that doing the second one just kind of makes you a dick.

When I first heard about this app, I, like a lot of people I'm sure, said, "Wow awesome! I totally want to try this out!" But when I imagined this scenario in my mind, I was imagining walking into someplace like a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart and fucking them over, while at the same time snickering about how high-tech and clever I was. I wasn't imagining walking into Aquarius Records or some other independent record store and using it to save myself some money.

To give another example, if you go to sci-fi conventions or other places where celebrities make appearances, often times they will charge you some money to pose for a photograph. Often it's actually more money than the cost of a typical CD, which on the face of it sounds crazy. And hell, you could easily stand in front of their table with your thumb up and have your friend shoot the picture and walk away. (You'd even own the copyright on that photo!) But most of us understand that this kind of thing makes you a dick. You can walk away thinking, "I can't believe that has-been so-and-so charges so much for a photo," but you don't just screw them over while they're sitting right there -- even though you're not technically "stealing" anything.

It all comes down to what makes your own moral Geiger counter start clicking. I think most of us know when we're straying into the darker areas, in general. So I don't really think it's necessary to draw this hard-line distinction between "theft" and "copyright infringement." Maybe it's more honest to talk about right and wrong, and then think about the best way to define laws around that.

Re:The grey line of theft

[cynyr]

I'll pay for content/services that I like. I pay for both cable and netflix, but I still download some stuff. Mainly BBC sports coverage, as it doesn't have have commercials, and it has commentators that either were in that sport or a very similar one. I actually found some of the motorcycle racing I normally download on SPEED and decided to watch it. The problem was after lap 3 they went to commercial, had no recap of the qualifying, and simply didn't seem to know what is going on, or who the racer were.

Short answer, let me pay for good content and I would. Could I pay BBC for the ability to watch a time-shifted live coverage that I can pause so that I can get up to get pizza, tend to my children, take the dog out, etc., I'd probably be willing to pay $200 or so for it.

As for copyrights, GPL is a copyright license, so is CC, I have some programming out there under GPLv3. Granted I'm an HVAC engineer so it's not at a level that would make it into the kernel(if it was at all kernel related, or even in C), so that does tarnish it some. There is not much of an open community for HVAC stuff.

Re:The grey line of theft

[LordLucless]

So I don't really think it's necessary to draw this hard-line distinction between "theft" and "copyright infringement."

No, it definitely is necessary. What is wrong, and totally harmful to the discussion, is to equate "theft" to "bad", and "copyright infringement" to "not so bad". They are simply two distinct actions. The morality of each isn't tied up in which label is applied to it; the morality is what we're discussing. The problem in the scenario you outline is that two instances of copyright infringement provoke different feelings of guilt to you. So you label one as "theft" to mean "worse than the other one". What it actually shows is a dissonance in our current laws, in that they're not actually matched to what the populace (wildly extrapolating from a sample size of one) considers moral actions.

Re:The grey line of theft

[t2t10]

Well, Fuck You. I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have. If imaginary property has no value and requires no input of resources go fucking do it yourself. But no, you won't (and you probably can't even if you wanted to).

(1) Many geeks don't get more than a salary from their intellectual creations. They'd likely get the same salary if copyright didn't exist. In fact, copyright and patents often make work harder and less pleasant for geeks.

(2) Just because something takes work to create doesn't mean there should be laws that ensure you get paid for it. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff. If copyrights and patents didn't exist, some content might not get created, and other content that doesn't get created now would get created. It's far from obvious that we'd be worse off.

From the way you describe your work and your attitudes towards it, I have my doubts that we'd be worse off without your creations.

And I'm certainly guilty just this week of failing to pay for parking and downloading torrents.

Well, I'm not. Sounds like you really have a problem with moral behavior, which is probably why you complain so loudly about other people's torrents and then insist on immoral intellectual property laws.

Re:The grey line of theft

[artor3]

Someone for whom physical media is prohibitively expensive does not, or at least should not, own a smart phone. Especially if they're using that phone to pirate things they could have bought with the cost of the phone. That's like saying you can't afford groceries, so you're gonna buy a gun and rob a store (though obviously piracy is non-violent and thus not on the same level).

And by the way, before you go accusing "them" of using Orwellian terms, what exactly do you think "imaginary property" is?

Re:The grey line of theft

[cynyr]

Give your physical media to my 3 and 5 year old, and let me know how long it lasts. Every dvd in my house has been ripped. I'm resistant to blu-ray, although i own around 6, half of which are the dual bly-ray/dvd combo pack things.

I have no ability to back up a blu-ray disk, my only blu-ray drive is in my PS3(running current software as i like watching netflix on it). In fact most of the combo pack i have also include a ipod, android, etc copy, but you need a windows computer to access it and move it to your device.

Re:The grey line of theft

[PCM2]

The problem in the scenario you outline is that two instances of copyright infringement provoke different feelings of guilt to you.

My point is that most everybody makes such distinctions. If I asked you whether thieves should go to prison for their first offense, you might say yes. If I then told you that we had captured such a person, and it was your fourteen-year-old niece, you might just as quickly come up with a rationalization why she deserved a second chance.

The distinction made in each of my examples is not the difference between copyright infringement and theft and whether one crime is worse than another. The distinction in each case is as simple as an action that seems to take place in a vacuum and one that seems to have specific effects to a specific person or organization.

That's why using Transdroid seems "wrong" to people. It's the difference between the idea that you're going to commit copyright infringement and some store, somewhere, could potentially lose a sale, versus the idea that you're standing right here in this particular store and this is the store that you've decided not to pay for the thing that you're going to gain through copyright infringement, a crime.

That's why Transdroid seems like it's "crossing a line" to the earlier poster and to myself; it's simply a matter of putting a human face on the crime. It's the same reason why stealing a physical object from Wal-Mart doesn't seem as bad as stealing the same object from a neighborhood shop, even though the law makes no distinction between the two.

So if using Transdroid to get things from BitTorrent feels wrong when you do it to an independent record store, there's a good case to be made that it's wrong all the time, and it's the human tendency to rationalize that's out of whack.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Quietlife2k]

I think you were close with "own moral Geiger counter" but went wayward with "Maybe it's more honest to talk about right and wrong, and then think about the best way to define laws around that."

We already have.

Can you define the difference between a digital lock pick and a physical one ?

I can't so I can see no reason why they should be treated differently.

Re:The grey line of theft

[DalDei]

I am just jaw-slacked-wordless-amazed at where this thread is going. Is it really a common meme to say "stealing from walmart doesnt seem as bad as stealing from a local store" ??? To whom ? Who thinks like this ? When did this happen ? When did the particular particular owner of property make a difference in peoples mind as to if stealing it 'seems so bad' ? wow. If you don't like Walmart for whatever reason, fine, don't shop there. Deprive them of income by not being a customer. Picket them. Start your own store. Write complaints in the newspaper or post on the internet. Diss them until hell breaks loose. Or just ignore them. But its OK to just STEAL from them ? huh ? 'it doesn't seem as bad' to STEAL tangible goods from one company if you don't like them but not another if you do ? WTF. ??? So now the morality of crime is dependent on if you like someone or not ... wow. blows my mind. Maybe I'm just an old-fart but this is just way too weird for me to handle. What the hell is happening to society where this is even contemplated as if it were a normal thought and tossed out as if everyone is thinking this way. seriously mind-blowing.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

(1) Many geeks don't get more than a salary from their intellectual creations. They'd likely get the same salary if copyright didn't exist. In fact, copyright and patents often make work harder and less pleasant for geeks.

Many geeks work for companies who sell intellectual property. If there was no protection for intellectual property then there would be no employer to provide them a salary.

It's a cost/benefit tradeoff. If copyrights and patents didn't exist, some content might not get created, and other content that doesn't get created now would get created.

In the case of TV and Film you would probably have none of the films or TV shows you've seen in the last few years. Even the "low budget" films are almost always made on the backs and labor of those who pay their bills off of the financed studio work.

Without the studio financed blockbuster economy you wouldn't see the software, training and let's be honest well payed talent that can take off a month to help someone with a low budget indie film.

Almost every no-budget indie flick of note is written, directed, financed and crewed by professionals who are donating their free time. Without intellectual property none of them would have had the time and training to bring that talent to independent works.

And that's ignoring just the morality of it. If you're an author and some factory owner can just scan a copy of your manuscript and start printing like crazy you have a case where someone will make millions or billions (in the case of something like harry potter) without contributing anything. The people who would most benefit from an end to intellectual property are those with the power and the resources to distribute creative works. Aka Record Companies and Distributors. You think artists get screwed today, imagine if a theater didn't have to pay anything for a movie. With their screens and seats they would have something protected by law that they could charge money for but the person who is bringing them business would be in the lurch.

From the way you describe your work and your attitudes towards it, I have my doubts that we'd be worse off without your creations.

Well, my creations and one of my employers have contributed to hundreds of major feature films released in the last 8 years so... maybe you hate movies. I don't know. Personally I enjoyed many of them.

ALL PROPERTY IS IMAGINARY PROPERTY. Your house is wood. Who says you get to own that wood and brick and concrete? A piece of paper, if that. There is no special property to material goods which imbues it with moral worth.

Re:The grey line of theft

[PCM2]

Can you define the difference between a digital lock pick and a physical one ? I can't so I can see no reason why they should be treated differently.

I actually kind of lean this way myself, so...

I think you were close with "own moral Geiger counter" but went wayward with "Maybe it's more honest to talk about right and wrong, and then think about the best way to define laws around that." We already have.

We do have the laws, but they seem to be laws that a lot of people disagree with. They either disagree with them the way a lot of Slashdotters do, using a number of arguments about the validity of intellectual property or the lack thereof. Or they simply disagree with them in the sense that they still use BitTorrent to download CDs and movies; they don't think of themselves as criminals and yet they consistently break the law. A while back the MPAA ran ads saying something to the effect of, "You wouldn't steal a DVD from a store, so why do you think it's OK to download them?" To me it sounds like a very sound argument, and yet a lot of people just shrugged it off. "Why do I? I don't know. Whatever."

I think one reason why is that while we have the laws defined, we've failed to define the shape of the justice to go along with those laws. The MPAA's tactic of prosecuting BitTorrent users and suing them for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars based on specious-sounding calculations is completely off-base, and on a gut level, I think a lot of Americans think that what the MPAA is doing should itself be illegal. On the other hand, if there was a way to "catch" me downloading a movie and issue me a ticket for a fine of $50 or $100, I think a lot of people would just say, "Damn, I got busted!" And a lot of them wouldn't try it again.

How many of us have been caught shoplifting at some point in our lives? How long did we keep shoplifting after that? That's where the "You wouldn't steal a DVD from a store" argument falls apart -- not only does downloading feel nothing like shoplifting, but the law enforcement surrounding the act of illegal downloading resembles nothing like how law enforcement deals with shoplifting.

None of this changes whether the act of copyright infringement is right or wrong, though. A lot of Slashdotters seem to want to argue that copyright infringement defensible on the basis that the laws are unfair, or because copyright lasts too long, or because DRM makes it OK, or that intellectual property isn't "real." I don't think any of these arguments really stands up to scrutiny. But even if we determine that copyright infringement is just as wrong as shoplifting the same item, the industry seems to want to act as though it's actually many thousands of times worse than shoplifting -- and that doesn't make sense to anyone.

Re:The grey line of theft

[PCM2]

When did the particular particular owner of property make a difference in peoples mind as to if stealing it 'seems so bad' ?

In a nutshell, it's the old "big, faceless corporation" argument. Don't try to pretend you haven't heard it a million times before.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Overzeetop]

No, most geeks trade fractions of their lives for money. A very, very small set of geeks actually benefit from the IP system, and most of that benefit is a relatively small fraction of the benefit which is gained by early investors with actual cash.

Geeks are pissed because other people are making money off of the stuff they - or those like them - do without actually putting in much of the actual brain power to pull it off. It's not surprising at all, actually.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

Well, if it then vaporized the item in front of it, it might be analogous to theft I guess. Theft is really more about depriving something from someone else than gaining it for yourself; in this case, the outlet still has the physical item.

I don't think copyright infringement is the same as theft and I agree with you on that point... BUT philosophically speaking let's look at it from a wider angle.

Creator Creates Product.
Creator sells 100x products to Vendor for 1Currency
100 buyers enter the store and instead of paying 1.5C for item scans the item and leaves with their desires satisfied.

As far as that vendor is concerned they had 150C worth of product that is now worthless and they're out 100C in inventory which while not physically vaporized has had the demand vaporized and is essentially worth $0.

A DVD has $0.01 of material value and $10 of intellectual value. They didn't vaporize the $0.01c but they did vaporize the other 99.9% of the item's worth.

If I walk into an art gallery and splash a bucket of paint on a limited edition print I'm actually adding value (in material worth) to the item, but I'm destroying intellectual value.

Once you get into the notion that vaporizing intangible value isn't actually harming the vendor then graffiti isn't really damage since the only thing damaged is the subjective intellectual opinion of the owner on what color their property's wall should be.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Hal_Porter]

You may be rich enough for this to be loose change to you, but I can assure you this not not cheap. Particularly given the actual dvd media costs less than £1.

Economics 101.

I spend x million making a video game. I sell y copies each making a profit of z dollars. If y*z is more than x I make a profit on the whole deal and do it again. If not I put the money somewhere else. People that play the game but don't pay make the people that make the game less likely to make a profit and therefore less likely to make games.

If I want to play a game I buy it. If I can't afford it I don't. Just like if I want to eat at a restaurant I pay, I don't eat and then refuse to pay. People that do that reduce the profitability of the restaurant and make it likely to close.

Re:The grey line of theft

[aztracker1]

In the case of "Digital Theft" vs "Physical Theft" many distictions can be made.. physical theft deprives someone of property, usually a business with a storefront that carried he merchandise, not even the media cartels many of us dislike so much. Where digital theft (ie. copyright infrindement) is generally done in instances where no sale would have occured, had the infringing material not been available. This isn't making a moral judgement that one is okay, only that they are different.

Copyright itself was meant to allow the useful arts and sciences a means to make a living while creating works by providing a limited exclusivity "for a limited time" ... Where in any place outside of IP would anyone consider life + 75 years a "limited time" by anyone.

Re:The grey line of theft

[artor3]

"Should not" because it's a poor decision. Just like you should not stand in traffic. No skin off my back if you do, but it's a dumb idea. Smart phones are expensive. Downloading a song from Amazon is cheap. If you can't afford an 80 cent song, then you sure as hell shouldn't be paying the monthly fees for data service to your phone.

And stop pretending this is about backing up legally owned media. The topic at hand has literally nothing to do with that.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

I will say that there is cost in the original production of intellectual property, but reproduction is free so there should be much more leeway for fair use. I wouldn't mind giving software we produce free for non profits for example, as their aim is to provide a public service, not earn money. But in Capitalist America, money rules you.

That's what's so great though about IP. You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something and then millions of people get to enjoy it.

I don't disagree that there should be more lee-way and I actually think that piracy to some degree has the potential to boost revenue if limited. I for instance think that used games cost the games industry more than piracy every year. If people just pirated games they would have more money to spend on new games (which would actually go into developer's products). And there are those who don't have enough money to afford it in which case it gets them 'hooked' on media which they can later translate into sales. And there are people like me who have Netflix but will download a torrent of the show just because my internet connection is kind of unreliable and I don't want to wait for it to buffer half way through.

In an ideal world there would be no copy protection on anything and people would 'see to it' that those who deserve compensation get what they deserve. But that is predicated on the belief that we do actually assign value to intellectual property.

I think the studios and record labels have done more damage to promoting that than good by criminalizing copyright infringement but I'm not opposed to the fundamental belief that intellectual property has value. It's often the encapsulation of millions of hours of labor and exceptional creativity.

Re:The grey line of theft

[node 3]

Come on, imaginary property is imaginary property.

What's the difference between "imaginary property" and real property that isn't physically in one's control (like your car on the street or you computer in your home if you forgot to lock the door)?

And what did you buy all that stuff with, if not the granddaddy of all imaginary property: money!

Re:The grey line of theft

[penguinchris]

That argument sounds nice but doesn't work in this case, because smartphones are vastly more useful than DVDs or whatever. I - and many other younger people I know - feel fully justified in paying for a smartphone because of everything it can do for us, even though it's exorbitantly expensive unless you're really careful. Yet we would balk at paying full price for a DVD or a CD (even Amazon's prices) because though we may feel the entertainment value is high, we realize that as a practical matter it is essentially without value (unlike groceries, which is necessary for survival).

I *do* actually buy physical media for things that I really love, especially music. I even often buy the vinyl LP of albums I really like instead of the CD, directly from the bands when feasible. I'm going to be listening to the digital copy that I already have anyway. But I also paid Google nearly $600 for an unlocked Nexus One, so I am not a typical young consumer by any stretch :)

Re:The grey line of theft

[t2t10]

Many geeks work for companies who sell intellectual property. If there was no protection for intellectual property then there would be no employer to provide them a salary.

Many people get paid to create without intellectual property protection. I'm not just talking open source developers and academics, but also really big industries like fashion:

http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

The movie and TV industries are insignificant in comparison, both in the degree of creativity (barely existent) and in their economic significance (small).

In the case of TV and Film you would probably have none of the films or TV shows you've seen in the last few years.

Maybe we'd get some decent content again instead of that low-quality, derivative commercial crap. Maybe people would enter the industry again who do it because they care about the product instead of fame and fortune. Maybe live theater would start doing better again. Altogether, there's a good chance that performing arts would greatly improve if we got rid of the legal basis under which Hollywood and the TV studios have gotten big and usurped our culture.

If you're an author

Nobody is forcing you to be an author now, and nobody would be forcing you to be an author if we curtail or abolish copyright.

And that's ignoring just the morality of it.

What morality? Copyrights and patents are a utilitarian deal: we give you this opportunity for profit in order to encourage you to create something. And as a society, we can change the deal, and if you don't like it, just don't create anything and become a plumber instead. The world doesn't owe you a job as a writer or movie maker.

ALL PROPERTY IS IMAGINARY PROPERTY. Your house is wood. Who says you get to own that wood and brick and concrete? A piece of paper, if that. There is no special property to material goods which imbues it with moral worth.

Wow, are you really that dim that you don't understand the difference between something physical and something non-physical?

Furthermore, copyrights and patents are temporary, artificial grants of monopolies, something that is legally and practically quite distinct from property.

Re:The grey line of theft

[LordLucless]

Alternate scenario:

Creator Creates Product.
Creator sells 100x products each to VendorA and VendorB for 1Currency per item
VendorA marks product to 1.5C. VendorB sets up shop next door and marks product to 1.25C
100 buyer purchase products from VendorB
As far as that vendor is concerned they had 150C worth of product that is now worthless and they're out 100C in inventory which while not physically vaporized has had the demand vaporized and is essentially worth $0.

Again, not theft. Devaluing something isn't stealing. It's devaluing. Use the right word for the right thing. Just the same as splashing a bucket of paint on a picture isn't stealing - it's destruction of property. And yes, graffiti is damage. No it's not theft. I never said the copyright infringement didn't do any damage, I said it wasn't theft.

Re:The grey line of theft

[mkiwi]

I will take the time at this moment to say that Bitcoins are imaginary property. Should we just void all Bitcoins because they "don't really exist?"

Re:The grey line of theft

[smash]

It baffles me how *GEEKS* of all people are so antagonistic against their own beliefs out of small scale greed.

They are until they: 1. start earning real money. 2. create something themselves, and the "shoe is on the other foot", and they'd like to try and protect their own IP.

The problem is, that many geeks are young, not yet making a real living for themselves and also fairly naive with regards to the way the real world works.

Those who move into gainful employment actually making money from their own IP "get it".

I'm not saying that DRM or everything that studios do is justified, but blatantly ripping off other people's work if you have the means to pay for it, ESPECIALLY if you use it and like it, is crap.

I warezed a lot of games and stuff when i was younger - my disposable income was not enough to pay for it. I'll still download stuff occasionally as a "try before you buy" now. I'll still download sports coverage from the internet because local coverage in my country sucks. But if something is available to buy and I have downloaded it and liked it, I'll make an effort to buy it.

Re:The grey line of theft

[smash]

Its not just the ones who work for companies who sell IP. ANY company who has geeks on the payroll is using them (and by extension, their IP) to gain a competitive advantage. No competitive advantage = no employer = no salary.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Quietlife2k]

What monthly fees ? I am on pay as you go and *only* use free wifi for data thank you very much !

Cost of handset to me : FREE BIRTHDAY GIFT

I do not and will not purchase online, so your crack about 80 "cents" for a song is irrelevant.

I have over 150+ cd's and 40+ DVD's which were purchased at retail in my personal collection. I add one or two each quarter sometimes more if the bargain bin has something interesting.

Like I want to spend a weekend or two ripping that lot myself ?

Again it is NOT the tool, just the uses *some* put them to, no different from lock picks.

Re:The grey line of theft

[NotAGoodNickname]

Um fashion is based on "imaginary property". Copyrights, patents, they have it too. Just try to go copy that Gucci and see how far you get selling it.

Re:The grey line of theft

[AlamedaStone]

I will take the time at this moment to say that Bitcoins are imaginary property. Should we just void all Bitcoins because they "don't really exist?"

Uhm... yes? Was that meant to be a rhetorical question?

Re:The grey line of theft

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

What's the difference between "imaginary property" and real property that isn't physically in one's control (like your car on the street or you computer in your home if you forgot to lock the door)?

The former I can use and the later I can't?

Re:The grey line of theft

[NeutronCowboy]

I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have.

Fair enough. Let's make one assumption clear though: you think you create something from nothing. Not true. You create something by taking what you have learned so far, and apply it to a problem and (hopefully) generate something new.
Let's take software, for example. A very, very large number of technologies that go into creating software are available for free. HTML is just one example. C/C++ is another. Furthermore, every single piece of software out there builds on the software that came before it.

This line of thinking works for every type of intellectual work. From books to movies, everything has been done before. You're just adding a small twist to it. Disney is the single biggest example of it: nearly their entire catalog of classics is a near-exact rip-off of existing stories. If you think you're creating something from scratch, you're deluding yourself. You're taking advantage of a whole set of knowledge that you are free to use as you wish. If you couldn't, your creative endeavors would amount to nothing, as you'd have to pay so much to other creators that there wouldn't be anything left for you.

I work in the software industry. I know exactly how much I profit from the fact that I can leverage what I know without having to pay everyone every time I use that knowledge that they gave me.As a matter of fact, I know that I basically would not be able to make a living if I would have to pay everyone.

That is the problem with the concept of intellectual property: if applied consequently in all instances, innovation would basically stop.

Re:The grey line of theft

[tsm_sf]

It's called Moral Relativism, and it's about as old as history. It's certainly older than you, so your slack-jawed, gaping old man schtick certainly seems a little disingenuous.

Re:The grey line of theft

[MacGyver2210]

We don't weld things together. We don't tend to work in assembly lines. We don't forge steel or mine for ore.

I weld, solder, smelt, and forge routinely for my geeky projects. Does being good with a computer somehow preclude me from labor-intensive tasks? Metallurgy is seriously fun. Of course I do it.

I give away all of my code for free. Part of that is I don't see any inherent value in some snippets I have made, but if someone wants to steal my code when I make a game or utility or something useful, go right ahead. I'm not going to be out the 1's and 0's of that file. I still have a copy. Nothing was stolen. The transfer of property is purely imaginary, and is a way corporations and the government try to wean cash income from something they're bad at on a management level, and which they don't understand well.

Re:The grey line of theft

[MacGyver2210]

If there was no protection for intellectual property then there would be no employer to provide them a salary.

In the case of TV and Film you would probably have none of the films or TV shows you've seen in the last few years.

First, this is so misguided it made me laugh 'til my sides hurt. The companies who make software aren't going under or shutting down as a result of piracy or torrenting. If you need a perfect example, check out Adobe. They have some of the most pirated software on the Internet, and they're still raking in huge profits. Without these BS IP laws, you would likely see about the exact same percent of purchases vs pirate copies. As a heavy torrenter, I can say without a doubt that I could give less of a shit about IP laws, and I'm going to keep going whether they get strict or not. Until they can make the un-crackable, un-patchable, un-free-able software that their greedy investors are hoping for, there might as well be no legal protection for the software. Summary: Criminals gonna crim, and buyers gonna buy.

Second, I think I would be better off without the IP laws for television. The shit that has been coming out lately is so watered down and pseudo-copied from some other story, while trying to tiptoe around and not be seen as pure plagiarism, that they just plain suck. I think if SciFi could make it's low-budget original films as direct copies of successful movies, people might actually watch them. I think if they could come out with that awesome new drama series, which is all ready to go except the lawyers say it is 2% too similar to another work for IP laws, we could have some new content that I wouldn't shut off right away. The television industry is a joke, and garners most of its money from advertising and very little from 'sales' or 'subscription' services. This is starting to change as the companies responsible for the content try to milk more and more and more and more from the viewer in terms of longer commercial breaks, more commercial breaks, and more product placement in the shows themselves. It's getting fucking ridiculous, and it should all just be made fucking illegal. PBS style with no commercials during the program, 5 minute max between shows. None of this 7 minute breaks every 5 minutes horseshit.

Re:The grey line of theft

[demonlapin]

lot of libertarians here that would like to see the whole system burn

Libertarianism and anarchism aren't the same thing. Especially when it comes to property rights.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Mr. Slippery]

But when I imagined this scenario in my mind, I was imagining walking into someplace like a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart and fucking them over

How is this "fucking them over"? It seems no more so than seeing an item in a brick-and-mortar store, than going home and searching on-line for a better deal. Or indeed, seeing an item in a brick-and-mortar store and then buying it at another brick-and-mortar store that you know has better prices. You are not ethically or legally obligated to purchase something at Store X just because you first see it at Store X.

And hell, you could easily stand in front of their table with your thumb up and have your friend shoot the picture and walk away. (You'd even own the copyright on that photo!)

You'd have violated the ethical subjectright of the author, and possibly (depending on jurisdiction) their legal right of publicity or right of privacy. Not really comparable.

Re:The grey line of theft

[artor3]

Oh, so you do buy your music? Because back when you first started attacking me, it was because I dared to suggest that those too poor to buy music shouldn't be spending money on a phone. So you're not in that set of people. You're just moving the goalposts and inventing some fictional minority of people to "disprove" my argument. Find me a substantial number of people who are:

A) Too poor to afford to buy music
B) Own a smart phone
C) Use that smart phone to pirate music, because there's no other way for them to obtain it

Unless that group of people forms a significant portion of pirates, my point stands, and you're just blowing smoke.

Re:The grey line of theft

[kylemonger]

It baffles me how *GEEKS* of all people are so antagonistic against their own beliefs out of small scale greed. Geeks are the kings of intellectual property. We don't weld things together. We don't tend to work in assembly lines. We don't forge steel or mine for ore. We Think. The geek creed is that intellect and creativity are at least as valuable as physical might.

Geeks are kings of intellectual labor, not property. Most of us take a salary to do a job, just like a welder or a miner. We rent out our capabilities, but others own the product of our labors. So it is unsurprising that geeks think like others who sell their skills rather than the products that result from those skills.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Quietlife2k]

Completely beside the point. The point, like lock picks, is that there are legitimate uses for these technologies.

Your view that since there are illegal uses that the technologies should be banned.

BUT with lock picks, where there are significant illegal uses, we still acknowledge the individuals right to own and use them responsibly.

There in lies the key if you will pardon the pun.

Individual responsibility.
You advocate for a course of repressive action that is completely unwarranted as has already been proven.

Re:The grey line of theft

[1u3hr]

It all comes down to what makes your own moral Geiger counter start clicking. I think most of us know when we're straying into the darker areas, in general. So I don't really think it's necessary to draw this hard-line distinction between "theft" and "copyright infringement." Maybe it's more honest to talk about right and wrong, and then think about the best way to define laws around that.

Should you prosecute people for not following your moral code? Or for just "being a dick"? Seems you want to use the force of the law to make everyone follow what your moral precepts. Which is a natural feeling, but not consistent with democratic rights.

Re:The grey line of theft

[garaged]

You could also imagine someone giving money to some hitmans to kill some enemies and immediately say "that is bad" and then pay for a full tank of gasoline that sponsors a war against the terrorism and say exactly the opposite, but you are being hipocrite just as with your example

Even if you go with the "if you dont like their prices just dont buy it" do you reailize that even the most poor person is payin taxes tha help "prevent copyright theft"? why would someone that will never afford to buy a record from those lables have to pay to defend them? Do you see all the record companies defending the universal access to medecine ?

Re:The grey line of theft

[Quietlife2k]

Just how poor does one have to be not to benefit from the rich peoples technology?

That £40 - £60 per year is my entire entertainment budget for the year! If truth be told I can't really afford that much, a good 50% is gifts of vouchers at christmas and my birthday.

Re:The grey line of theft

[grcumb]

There's nothing unethical about scanning a bar code to see reviews or better prices, but scanning a code to begin torrenting it is definitely wrong by any objective standard.

Why do you say that? I'm not trolling here; I'm legitimately interested in the particular reasons why you see this as unconditionally unethical and immoral.

And by way of playing the devil's advocate, let me ask you this: If you could scan the barcode, pay a nominal fee and begin downloading immediately, directly from the author - instead of buying it at a significant markup in the store from the distributor, would that still be wrong by any objective standard?

Again, I'm not trolling here. I really am trying to tease out what particularly makes this more reprehensible than a dozen or so related behaviours that are largely considered acceptable - or at least inconsequential enough to cause only passing concern.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Raenex]

If you need a perfect example, check out Adobe. They have some of the most pirated software on the Internet, and they're still raking in huge profits. Without these BS IP laws, you would likely see about the exact same percent of purchases vs pirate copies.

Who's going to pay for Adobe if they can legally copy it for free? This is especially true of commercial companies.

Summary: Criminals gonna crim, and buyers gonna buy.

But you're talking about completely removing the criminal element.

This is starting to change as the companies responsible for the content try to milk more and more and more and more from the viewer in terms of longer commercial breaks, more commercial breaks, and more product placement in the shows themselves. It's getting fucking ridiculous, and it should all just be made fucking illegal.

That's quite the entitlement complex you've got. First you want to toss out copyrights and trademarks, then you want to enact laws telling people how many commercials they can have. You seem to think the world should revolve around entertaining you for minimum value.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Raenex]

Grow the fuck up.

Take your own advice.

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

The difference is that imaginary property costs nothing to reproduce (copy a CD, movie, etc.) whereas physical property costs raw materials to create. Acquiring imaginary property does not deprive someone else of it's use, acquiring physical property by definition means you have exclusive control over it.

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

"Fashion patents" are a relatively new phenomenon. As for copyright, if you copy that Gucci design, but you don't call it Gucci and don't use the Gucci logo, and don't pretend at all that it's actually a Gucci product, then you're perfectly fine.

Re:The grey line of theft

[bartoku]

It is less about greed and more about control. Property, imaginary or not, we all want to collect and control it all. When it is our creation we get very protective, hypocritically protective, when it is not our creation we loosen the rules so we can gain a tighter grip.

I am curious about your parking meter analogy. What are parking meters for? You will generally only see them in areas with a limited amount of parking, where parking is scarce and therefore much more valuable. Does the city put meters in place to capitalize on this situation or to regulate the situation? If there were no parking meters in place then all those spots in front of the smoothie joint may have been occupied by squatters who grabbed a good spot and are holding on to it. But because the city charges a relatively high minutely rate for the spots have high turn over. A quarter would have been worth your trouble had the alternative for free parking meant you had to walk a few blocks. I am not sure how parking is "imaginary property", I can touch the parking spot, hell even taste if I wanted. The city rents that spot out with a parking meter. Now if the parking meters where in place purely for revenue, then they would run 24/7, most parking meters have an enforcement time on them, generally during busy periods; only the most extremely trafficked spots have 24/7 metering. When you parked for free you used that parking space and no one else could. Did you deny the city revenue? Perhaps, someone else may have paid for that spot, but if there were other spots open around it probably not. You did not seem to violate the spirit of the parking meter which is in place to regulate the best use of the parking spot.

Intellectual property law is in place to promote the release of intellectual creations, the state grants a limited monopoly to the creator to reward them for releasing the creation. Problems arise in two ways: when creation ceases because the incentive is not large enough to create and alternatively when the spread of creative works is inhibited by the monopoly which is intended solely to promote the distribution not gain the creator profit. The term starving artist is a testament to amount of motivation that is needed to promote creation, along with the argument that truly greatest intellectual creations will come out of necessity and/or love for the art. On the other hand distribution of intellectual property is being crippled by the "property" owners, wide spread access, which is the ultimate goal, is being unnecessarily restricted and opposing the spirit of intellectual property law.

Value is found in scarcity, copyright creates an artificial scarcity. Your parking space analogy falls short when we cannot replicate parking spaces at little cost. That simple parking space on the side of the road could be expanded with parking garages and what not, but it comes at a material and an even greater spatial expense. The replication, distribution, and storage of movies, television, software, and books is astoundingly cheap these days and has decreased the value of such commodities to near nothing.

The most interesting area of intellectual property is in pharmaceuticals. Something like the cure to a disease seems near priceless until it is discovered, then it is only as expensive as replicating it once the formula is known. Yet the expense in researching the drug or vaccine may have been very high. If we attempt to distribute the cost of the research across the sale of the cure then there may be some who are denied access. This is easily resolved with up front funding. Those who find the cure valuable will raise money for its research and fund the research. The research only has investors interested in the end cure not the monetary gain from the cure. The same approach should be taken towards all intellectual property. If you enjoy an artist and wish to promote more creation from that artist, then fund the artist. Eventually we will see more movements like kickstarter.com for the creative arts. An established art

Re:The grey line of theft

[grcumb]

Creator Creates Product.
Creator sells 100x products to Vendor for 1Currency
100 buyers enter the store and instead of paying 1.5C for item scans the item and leaves with their desires satisfied.

As far as that vendor is concerned they had 150C worth of product that is now worthless and they're out 100C in inventory which while not physically vaporized has had the demand vaporized and is essentially worth $0.

Sounds to me like Vendor needs a new business model:

Creator Creates Product.
Creator sells distribution rights to Vendor for 1Currency/Unit
A virtually unlimited number of buyers peruse the contents of the Vendor's online store and pay 1.1C for item by scanning the item and leave with their desires satisfied.

Vendor never gets hurt by inventory overhead, sells a larger volume of Product to a (potentially) larger market. The profit ratio (in terms of value provided) is more equitable, with the majority of the profit going to the party that did the majority of the work.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

I give away 90% of my code as well. I don't want to support most of it. I don't see any commercial value. I want to build an ecosystem of tools.

But there is other stuff that I only develop because other people want it. I'm not going to make stuff that I don't want for free.

The world is mostly made of stuff people making it don't want for themselves.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

The companies who make software aren't going under or shutting down as a result of piracy or torrenting. If you need a perfect example, check out Adobe. They have some of the most pirated software on the Internet, and they're still raking in huge profits.

Huge profits from people who actually pay for the software. We buy all of our Adobe products. If it was free and there was no law requiring you to pay why would you? "So and So will take care of it."

I've used Paint.NET, Gimp etc. They all work off of donations and they all suck. I'm glad myself and all the other companies are required to pay. It results in usable software.

I think if SciFi could make it's low-budget original films as direct copies of successful movies, people might actually watch them. I

Syfy does make low budget rip-offs. And they're almost unwatchable. They also are "low budget" at about $3 million dollars each.

Movies are really fucking expensive. And why would Syfy make anything if nobody subscribes to their channel anymore? You could either watch it on SyFy or watch it 1 hour later. They would get $0 in revenue from DVD sales later. They would get $0 in subscription. They would get $0 in advertising. Where is Syfy going to get this money oh wise one?

The shit that has been coming out lately is so watered down and pseudo-copied from some other story, while trying to tiptoe around and not be seen as pure plagiarism, that they just plain suck.

So what you're saying is that IP law is the only thing keeping TV shows from completely ripping off other works. But somehow if they were able to COMPLETELY rip off other shows word for word, shot for shot... they would be more original? WTF?

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

Actually, most Sci-Fi conventions where celebrities are making appearances, taking a photo with the celebrity is free. It's getting an autograph taht they charge for. It's rare that they will charge for a photograph and in fact, I would call the celebrity a dick for charging for a photograph. I understand the charging for an autograph, especially for older celebrities who aren't active anymore. This is how they make a living and they are providing something that is unique and special, a personalized autograph.

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

Hmm.....a group of people who would own a smart phone, too poor to afford to buy music and would use the smart phone to pirate music...how about a lot of college students?

Most college students that have smart phones did not purchase them themselves and with the expense of college, books, etc. would be too poor to afford to buy music. And a college student with a smart phone that can be used to assist in pirating music, is going to use it to do so. Well, whaddya know, college students actually DO form a very significant portion of pirates.....I guess you're point doesn't stand anymore.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

Many people get paid to create without intellectual property protection. I'm not just talking open source developers and academics, but also really big industries like fashion:

There is still a barrier to entry for fashion. If you want to duplicate a dress you love you have to spin up a factory in China or spend hours at a sewing machine, sourcing materials etc.

And if a customer wants to buy Chinese reproductions then they have to take the gamble that the stitching is sub-par and that they probably don't have a retail outlet to sell it to them or let them try on different sizes.

A movie copied is a perfect duplicate. Whether that's a Chinese DVD or an 'official' DVD it'll be identical bit for bit.

Maybe we'd get some decent content again instead of that low-quality, derivative commercial crap. Maybe people would enter the industry again who do it because they care about the product instead of fame and fortune.

I would highly disagree that True Grit, Jaws, Star Wars, Munich, Blood Diamond, 2001, Battlestar Galactica, Good Night and Good Luck, The Assassination of Jesse James etc etc etc... are all just commercial crap.

And like I said, that commercial crap pays for the indie films that you love so much (which I would point out are almost all 1) Made with the intent to profit. 2) Crewed by crews who work on "commercial Crap" 3) Borrowing equipment from rental houses which bought it from studios renting their gear for "Commercial Crap".

The entire industry is funded by "commercial crap". And I've never heard of a feature film which wasn't financed with on the assumption that it could pay itself off from a distribution deal.

Without the ability to sign a distribution deal (and IP law to protect the distributor's exclusivity) then almost none of those "micro budget" indie films in the $200k range would get funded.

Not to mention that 95% of a film crew has no creative input. Why would an electrician work on a film when he isn't going to get payed? "For the love the art." What art? He's an electrician.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

Reductio ad absurdum

- Because something isn't 100% original doesn't mean it isn't an original creative work. Duplication != Recreation.

- Advocating protection of specific categories of work for a limited period doesn't mean it has to be applied to "All instances" for "all time". The OP was arguing for the abolishment of all intellectual property. The only alternative isn't "All instances" for all time.

- Intellectual protection of people's creativity doesn't preclude people from collaborating on public works e.g. C++, HTML, OpenGL etc... as proven by the fact that with IP law we've managed to create all these things just fine thank you very much.

Obviously IP law doesn't cause an apocalypse of creativity considering the fact that it seems to be carrying on just fine. I'm not hearing a lot of complaining from artists that they can't work anymore.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

Vendor never gets hurt by inventory overhead, sells a larger volume of Product to a (potentially) larger market. The profit ratio (in terms of value provided) is more equitable, with the majority of the profit going to the party that did the majority of the work.

Sure. But the only way to sell more product for less is to still be the exclusive owner of said product.

If the Vendor payed 0C for distribution rights then he could sell it for 0.5C! Even less, even more potential customers!

Businesses aren't altruistic. If you eliminated IP law (what I'm arguing against) then the creator would get $0 and the distributor would pocket 100% of the profit.

The distributors aren't the ones who get fucked when you eliminate IP law. If Netflix didn't have to pay anything for streaming rights they would dramatically increase their portfolio and customer base. They would still probably survive on the convenience factor. People would still pay for Netflix... until someone else came along and bought up more servers and better apps. Meanwhile the content creators would get $0.

Maybe the distributors would protect their source of income by creating a "Fund" for content creation. But it would inevitably be destroyed by one rogue distributor popping up and taking advantage of the situation.

You need *some* protection from IP law for the content creators to make any money from their creations. You need money to create quality content.

There is certainly a place for the extent of IP protections. There is certainly a place for a discussion on enforcement. But ultimately you need *something* as a minimum or else it simply wouldn't work.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

Kickstarter is great. But some of us actually do like Game of Thrones or Fringe. And those cost >$1m PER EPISODE. Good luck getting a kickstarter project for a $40m-$100m project.

And even then, you'll still probably get the same product. After all, Lost kept getting made because people kept watching it. No business model is going to change the fact that lowest common denominator products will be the most successful and get the most funding.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Quietlife2k]

Significant illegal use makes no negative difference to my argument. In fact it bolsters my comparison with lock picks.

As with almost all of our tools there are multiple uses.

If you are going to ban digital tools, why not start with physical ones first like lock picks?

Ohh wait we've been there and done that already and we know how that turned out.

Why should the law abiding suffer through the loss of useful tools thanks to the those breaking the law ?

Quit blaming the tools when it's the USERS who are at fault *if* they abuse them.

Re:The grey line of theft

[im_thatoneguy]

Acquiring imaginary property does not deprive someone else of it's use, acquiring physical property by definition means you have exclusive control over it.

Removing intellectual property rights by definition strips the creator of their 'exclusive control' over it.

Physical property - Exclusive control over how it is used.
Intellectual property - Exclusive control over how it is used.

They're exactly the same. If you strip me of my IP for my creation then I no longer have control over how it's used.

Property is only worth the value of what someone is willing to pay. By stripping IP of its exclusive control you've stripped it of all value. You're destroying its value by eliminating IP.

If I have a DVD it has $9 of IP value and $1 of physical value. Eliminate IP and you just stripped the DVD of all value (except for recycling).

Eliminating IP deprives the creator the opportunity to profit from their labor.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Kilrah_il]

Although I completely agree with your opinion, I think you could have articulated it with less profanities. This usually assures better responses and not something along the line of "No, you fuck off!"

Re:The grey line of theft

[vux984]

The current copyright system is broken, it's ethically bankrupt, so we no longer have an obligation to hold up our end of the social contract.

Sorry. No. We still have a moral obligation to hold up our end of the original social contract.

You want to argue that its morally ok to pirate abandoned software, out of print music from 30 years ago, and 1940s disney movies... I can see the argument.

But how do you justify stealing new releases? Unless your argument is that them doing something morally wrong gives you the moral high ground to do something even worse? But I don't buy that.

If some asshat keys my car, he deserves to be caught and penalized, and restitution made... but I can't say "well he violated the social contract... so now I can gouge his eyes out with a spoon, and feed them to rats, before dousing him with gasoline and setting him on fire. Cuz... you see.. he did 'bad' first... so now I can do whatever i want. I call BS.

Re:The grey line of theft

[NeutronCowboy]

- Because something isn't 100% original doesn't mean it isn't an original creative work. Duplication != Recreation.

You're correct. However, the law doesn't distinguish between duplication and recreation. Intellectual property means that you cannot use whatever is covered by copyright. If a one-click purchase or upgrade button is patented, you can't use it without paying the owner of the patent. If someone owns the copyright on a work, you cannot use it without their permission - even if that work is a silence of time N.

Advocating protection of specific categories of work for a limited period doesn't mean it has to be applied to "All instances" for "all time". The OP was arguing for the abolishment of all intellectual property.

Great. Now we're getting into the details of copyright law. Define limited. Is life of the author + 120 years limited? Is 10000 years limited? Is 30 minutes limited? Why? Why not? Note the Supreme Court decision that holds current copyright duration is "limited". Is that fair? Why/Why not? Be detailed.

Intellectual protection of people's creativity doesn't preclude people from collaborating on public works e.g. C++, HTML, OpenGL etc... as proven by the fact that with IP law we've managed to create all these things just fine thank you very much.

Copyright is a construct of law. Putting an intellectual work into the public work is only possible because the current law allows for it. Why should it? After all, people who put their sweat and blood into creating something abstract should be rewarded. Right? Alternatively, if they can put their work into the public domain for the greater good, why don't you? You wouldn't want to be caught mooching off of the hard work of others?

Obviously IP law doesn't cause an apocalypse of creativity considering the fact that it seems to be carrying on just fine. I'm not hearing a lot of complaining from artists that they can't work anymore.

Then you aren't paying attention. Do you know what the advice is that is given to first-year art students? Create a movie in a white room with one chair and 2 of your closest friends. With no music. Otherwise, you open yourself up to litigation. Have you seen the hullaballoo around the upgrade button?
The current system only barely works because it is enforced only when people feel like enforcing it. It'd come crashing down like a house cards if people would go after every copyright infringement.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Bert64]

It's not about not being paid for the "products of our minds"...
It's about the immorality of coming up with one such product, and receiving a never ending stream of payment for it which is entirely disproportional to the work involved.

What ever happened to "an honest day's work for an honest day's pay".

Also most of this content created by geeks, is done by geeks who are paid a fixed salary, while some fat cat creams the huge profit margins. If the first thousand copies pay off the cost of development, any subsequent sales are pure profit... You couldn't get away with profit margins like that with anything else... Imagine if Intel priced all their processors in the same category as their "extreme edition" models and never let the prices fall once the initial development was recovered.

The parking analogy is not a very good one, by not paying for the parking space you did not directly deny the city anything assuming there wasn't another paying customer ready to fill that parking space... But you did fill the space, such that it wasn't available to anyone else for the time you were in it. Downloading data does not deny other people who have copies of that data anything at all.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Bert64]

You have control of your imaginary property so long as you keep anyone else from seeing it... Same as with physical property.

Once you let someone else get access to a copy of your property, be it physical or imaginary they can try to copy it without depriving you of the original. The only difference is that physical goods are often impractical to copy while digital data is trivially easy.

If you lent me your car, and i looked it over thoroughly, produced a copy of it and then returned the original to you, would you care?

Re:The grey line of theft

[Bert64]

Many geeks work for companies who provide services or sell physical products too... When one market becomes inviable, a new one typically opens up.

Record companies and distributors would be able to screw the original source of the media, but they would also be forced to compete against each other... They would make far less profit because they would have to sell with a very thin margin, unlike today where a cd that costs a couple of cents to produce sells for $10.

Physical property can be physically held, and physically protected from other people taking it...

Imaginary property is the same, you can keep it in your head or on physical media and stop anyone from taking it away.

What you can't do with either, is stop someone who has sufficient access to it from making a copy.
If someone sees your wooden house, and decides they want to build an identical wooden house for themselves somewhere else... Would you have a problem with that?

Re:The grey line of theft

[Macthorpe]

Speaking for me, you'd have to pay for materials, and you'd be doing all the labour yourself, so no, I wouldn't mind. The car manufacturer might because it's their design you've taken.

If I coded something, and you copied that, I'd expect you to pay for materials and labour that went into creating it, i.e. the time and effort that I put in. You haven't done anything other than a couple of mouse clicks. If you don't pay me for the work I've done when it's been made clear there's a charge, you're damn right I'd have a problem with it.

Re:The grey line of theft

[91degrees]

If IP rights are immoral, you should have nothing to do with it. Don't buy non-free software, don't watch commercial movies, don't download them, don't download non-free music.

By pirating you are making it clear that you want this particular media - the media that the producers insist only gets created because of IP protection. Stop supporting them and stop endorsing them.

Re:The grey line of theft

[LS]

Your post makes NO sense. You believe that copying things is OK, but linking to a copy online using a bar-code is not? I think you've got your priorities mixed up dude. It's like saying that killing someone with golf club is ok, but killing with a gun is not, because it's too easy.

Re:The grey line of theft

[91degrees]

If you could scan the barcode, pay a nominal fee and begin downloading immediately, directly from the author - instead of buying it at a significant markup in the store from the distributor, would that still be wrong by any objective standard?

Not the OP but in my case, if it scanned the barcode and then ordered from Amazon I'd have a bit of an issue and that's all perfectly legal. The store exists (from a shopper's point of view) because it's convenient for the shopper. The store exists from the owners point of view because it makes money. By not giving the store an opportunity to make money, it feels like I'm taking unfair advantage of the service they provide.

Re:The grey line of theft

[arose]

Nope, geeks get paid to develop software that doesn't exist, since people still need software, they'd still pay someone to make it. Even with the current copyright laws most software developed is not for public distribution.

Re:The grey line of theft

[91degrees]

Really? My 4 year old nephew seems to know how to treat a DVD properly.

I'm sure if you let them destroy a couple and not replace them, they'll learn pretty quickly.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Runaway1956]

That auto manufacturer might care - but it's none of their business. It ONLY becomes their business IF I begin producing the look-alike product, and marketing the thing. If I happen to market exact replicas, complete with name plates, THEN I would have infringed on patent law as well as trademark law. But, so long as I limit myself to building a few copies for personal use, Chevrolet, Toyota, or Volkswagen have no business doing more than looking at it.

Re:The grey line of theft

[biodata]

It sounds like the vendor overvalued the merchandise.

Re:The grey line of theft

[ShakaUVM]

>>The current copyright system is broken, it's ethically bankrupt, so we no longer have an obligation to hold up our end of the social contract.

So if you were to take a year off from work, like a friend of mine did, to write a book, you'd be fine with people stealing copies of it? What if you never made a cent off of it, even though it was a best seller on the Kindle store (Amazon, let's say, decided to rip you off and not pay you any royalties)?

I know this doesn't make sense to you as a socialist, but most people would choose to NOT write the book if all their profits would be stolen. So we end up with a society where the only people writing books are people that are already wealthy or state-supported. In either case, the literary output of our society would decrease tremendously. The free market has positive benefits, believe it or not.

There ARE certainly issues with our copyright law (especially the perpetual copyright we have now) and software patents, but the fundamental concept of copyright is sound.

(Though I expect as a die-hard socialist, you probably don't believe in private property at all, eh?)

Re:The grey line of theft

[Xest]

"Nonetheless, I think almost everybody understands on a gut level that this sort of thing is ethically wrong."

It really depends, 10 years ago I'd have fully agreed with this viewpoint, but when the music and movie industry have tried, through corporate lobbying, excessive DRM, illegal price fixing and so forth to have my freedoms and rights reduced over the years I'm not convinced it is anymore- these are people I'm not convinced there is anything wrong in taking what you want from and giving nothing back.

Even 5 years ago, probably 3 years ago I'd have agreed with you, but the constant barrage of attacks on consumer rights and personal freedoms from them has chipped away at me more and more, made me more and more apathetic to the idea that they're even deserving of any kind of recompense.

Of course it depends on the product, and the company- there are still far more ethical companies out there whom I don't hold this view and whom I'd agree with you deserve recompense for their product, but I certainly don't hold that view universally anymore- honestly, the more people that pirate from the music and movie industry the better, I'll enjoy their product with no detriment to me whilst it's here, but I wont miss it when it's gone.

It's one of those issues where there's far too many variables, and what your own personal experiences with a company are- someone whose had good service from Best Buy may well be less inclined to use this kind of app in their store than say, someone who has been fucked over by them because they sold them a warranty on a false premise and refused to honour it when their $2k TV or whatever bust well before it should have. The latter person may well in fact believe they're perfectly in the right if they have a firm belief that morally, Best Buy owes them, even if they don't legally because of anti-consumer practices or the like.

Fundamentally though whatever the app does, I'm not sure it's a decision Google should be making for people. In fact, this sort of app is precisely the sort of thing that could open up new business models- say you're in a pub that is playing music and you think "Hey, I like this song, but I don't know what it is", there's no reason we couldn't have vending machines where you enter your card, are charged say £1, and it displays the barcode of the current playing track so you can download it. In fact, there's no reason with NFC you couldn't skip the card phase and just do it all on your phone. It's precisely this sort of tech that should be allowed to go mainstream so that it kicks the lazy ass music industry into producing it's own solution. Simply censoring against such applications just stifles innovation and reinforces the false view that the likes of the music industry can win by just bunkering down and try to protect it's dying business model with litigation.

Re:The grey line of theft

[teh kurisu]

It depends on what the markup actually is, though. The last time I was in HMV, I considered buying a few DVDs, but I scanned them with Amazon's smartphone app in order to compare prices. It wasn't that HMV's prices were more expensive (which I had expected), it was that they were significantly more expensive.

As far as I'm concerned, HMV had the opportunity to make money from me. They had me in their shop, and they gave me the opportunity to walk away with my purchase rather than waiting for a delivery. And they blew it.

Re:The grey line of theft

[AmiMoJo]

This is why we need to limit copyright terms to 10 years maximum, although arguably even that is excessive. The fashion industry is rife with copycat clothing from cheaper brands that infringe the copyright on the more expensive ones, and yet it is thriving. Software is the same, as soon as one person thinks of a good idea for improving a UI all the other developers start to copy it.

Re:The grey line of theft

[xaxa]

I'd never enter a physical store with the intention of selecting my torrents, just like I'd never buy physical media, that's just weird, man.

I would otoh use an android app that listens to the song playing in the club, identifies it, and pirates the mp3. I currently type the author & song into the notepad and pirate the song later.

How is that any different?

(FYI, after identifying a song the Shazam app provides a button to "Buy the MP3 on Amazon".)

Re:The grey line of theft

[AmiMoJo]

Nonetheless, I think almost everybody understands on a gut level that this sort of thing is ethically wrong.

Maybe for the first, say, 10 years. After that, no.

Similarly, I think a great many people make a distinction between downloading something using BitTorrent from their computer at home and actually walking into a CD store, spending a half hour browsing the new releases, and then using a magic wand to download all of the ones they like without paying the store a dime. For the first one, I think a lot of people might not think they're doing anything wrong at all. But I think most of us recognize that doing the second one just kind of makes you a dick.

Depends. I can't afford to buy lots of random albums on the off chance they are good, I need to listen to them first. Record shops have listening stations for that, Amazon has clips and free tracks. There is also the radio and TV of course. The biggest problem for bands is not copyright infringement, it is being herd in the first place. If no-one hears your music no-one is going to buy it on a whim either. Even more troublesome is the fact that the big labels pretty much control what gets played on the radio and what gets promoted in shops and on web sites, so unless you have a rip-off contract with them you are going to find it very hard to get noticed.

The internet has gone a long way to democratising music by allowing musicians to promote themselves for free and without the need for major advertising. Word of mouth spreads fast on social networking sites where a single "I like this" post on your profile can then be read by all of your friends.

So from the point of view of most artists it is better for them if people download their album and at least listen to it, and then maybe go on to buy tickets to a gig or some merchandise, or even a physical CD. Record shops are just a part of the problem, and by supporting them you are denying artists the chance to make a living.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Weezul]

A physical store or physical media have no relevance to the actual data. I don't see how one would even mentally connect CD or store with new music, that's the weird part. I don't remember if Frys even has CDs, but, if so, then I'd never even glance at them as I walk past.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Ash Vince]

Well, if it then vaporized the item in front of it, it might be analogous to theft I guess. Theft is really more about depriving something from someone else than gaining it for yourself; in this case, the outlet still has the physical item.

The problem is people seem to think that if it's not theft, it's not "bad". The accurate description for this activity is "copyright infringement". It opens you to civil liability. It can in some circumstances be a criminal offense. Saying something is copyright infringement isn't saying "this is good, go do it", it's an accurate description of the action.

The argument for saying it is theft is because you have "stolen" the money from the copyright holder that they set as being the price to obtain a copy of their work. Not sure if I agree with the strict definition of it being "theft" but like everyone else says, it is certainly immoral.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Ash Vince]

The current copyright system is broken, it's ethically bankrupt, so we no longer have an obligation to hold up our end of the social contract.

So am I free to grab an open source program, make a few usability improvements to help it appeal to the masses then flog it for a massive profit without distributing my changes back to the community? The only thing stopping me from doing this at the moment is copyright law. This is one example where copyright is actually a good thing so we need to be a bit careful before we just strike down all IP laws without anything to replace them.

I actually agree with your sig when you say "The free market has failed. Copyright is theft." as I am a socialist at heart. I do no think the solution is to just change the copyright laws, I think we need to re-examine capitalism as a whole but when I say this to most people I know who download large amounts of content from bit torrent sites and such they are usually fairly pro-capitalist except when it comes to music or dvd's they download from the internet.

Re:The grey line of theft

[t2t10]

And like I said, that commercial crap pays for the indie films that you love so much (which I would point out are almost all 1) Made with the intent to profit. 2) Crewed by crews who work on "commercial Crap" 3) Borrowing equipment from rental houses which bought it from studios renting their gear for "Commercial Crap". ... The entire industry is funded by "commercial crap". And I've never heard of a feature film which wasn't financed with on the assumption that it could pay itself off from a distribution deal.

It is the commercial movie industry that is responsible for making films so expensive and for perpetuating this model. By feeding audiences a constant diet of over-the-top visuals, stunts, etc., all films need to conform to that model. It's just like when fast food restaurants get customers accustomed to lots of fat, sugar, and salt. Good drama and storytelling doesn't require more than actors, a stage, and some cheap props.

Not to mention that 95% of a film crew has no creative input. Why would an electrician work on a film when he isn't going to get payed? "For the love the art." What art? He's an electrician.

See above: first, most of the crew is only there to create an expensive visual style that has little to do with the drama itself. Second, yes, people donate their time and skill just to be part of an artistic endeavor. Third, from many industries, we know that professionals and artists actually share tools voluntarily when intellectual property laws don't prevent them from doing it.

Without the ability to sign a distribution deal (and IP law to protect the distributor's exclusivity) then almost none of those "micro budget" indie films in the $200k range would get funded.

And the problem with that would be... what?

My grandfather was conductor of a local symphony, all volunteers and non-professionals, and they were good. That's all gone thanks to the commercial music industry. It's the same with the movie industry, killing off theater and drama.

And the problem is getting worse: the movie industry, just like newspapers, sees its oligopoly erode as production is getting cheaper and cheaper. In a few years, telling a story as a movie will cost next to nothing. That's why the studios are getting ever more aggressive about asserting rights to stories, names, and ideas--things they themselves usually didn't even come up with in the first place.

I would highly disagree that True Grit, Jaws, Star Wars, Munich, Blood Diamond, 2001, Battlestar Galactica, Good Night and Good Luck, The Assassination of Jesse James etc etc etc... are all just commercial crap.

Well, I think you have not taste.

Re:The grey line of theft

[t2t10]

You're barking up the wrong tree. I did not argue for the complete abolition of patents or copyrights, I pointed out the fallacy in someone's arguments. Actually, I am for a restoration of the copyright terms as they were originally envisioned: 14 years, plus another 14 years, with a registration requirement. And patents should be easier to defeat in court.

The world revolves around IP. If it didn't exist, millions in the US alone would be unemployed and the global economy would be much smaller.

Your argument is like saying that we should spill oil into the ocean because cleaning it up creates jobs and economic growth. It does, but the collateral damage is too high and the work is not productive or beneficial. That's why we penalize companies for oil spills instead of rewarding them. Your argument is for the kind of approach that was popular in the Soviet Union: creating fake jobs just to give people work.

In fact, if copyrights and patents didn't exist, people would have different kinds of jobs--arguably jobs that would be a lot more beneficial to society. But, as I was saying: I wasn't even arguing for a complete abolition of copyrights or patents, I was pointing out errors in someone's arguments.

Re:The grey line of theft

[t2t10]

There is still a barrier to entry for fashion. If you want to duplicate a dress you love you have to spin up a factory in China or spend hours at a sewing machine, sourcing materials etc.

The overhead of that is insignificant compared to the profit. And it doesn't really matter how difficult it is, the fact is that tens of thousands of companies do just that, yet name-brand fashion houses have no problem selling their creations.

A movie copied is a perfect duplicate. Whether that's a Chinese DVD or an 'official' DVD it'll be identical bit for bit.

That's a false analogy, since DVDs themselves are really just low quality knock-offs of the original movies. The equivalent of a name-brand designer dress is the projection in a good movie theater. That's how the movie industry measures its success, and that doesn't require copyrights or draconian enforcement against home viewers to protect.

Re:The grey line of theft

[pandrijeczko]

Well, Fuck You. I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have. If imaginary property has no value and requires no input of resources go fucking do it yourself. But no, you won't (and you probably can't even if you wanted to).

You know something? I fully defend your right to make a living from what you do.

But if you're working 14 hour days to make it then it's clearly not only making you exceedingly angry but please don't bullshit the rest of us that you do long hours for our benefit.

It could well be you're not actually very good at doing it in the first place and if you were good at doing it then you could do it in an 8 hour day - just saying, that's all.

Re:The grey line of theft

[spidr_mnky]

But I have to admit feeling some kind of line is crossed with a system that can (as the article stated) scan a physical barcode of something in front of you and start fetching it in moments.

Really? *whips out phone* Wow, cool! I had no idea Transdroid had a built in bar code scanner. Thanks!

Re:The grey line of theft

[SteveFoerster]

Although, one might say that libertarians believe that property rights would be more easily protected by the marketplace than the state, so even anarchist libertarians are covered. (In the sense that whether they're right or wrong, at least they're consistent.)

Re:The grey line of theft

[sqrt(2)]

You underestimate me. I'm a social democrat, I accept that capitalism and profit-seeking will have a part to play in any economy we could realistically imagine for the time being. The goal is to reduce exploitation and top-down abuse; and I see a lot of that in our current copyright system.

Re:The grey line of theft

[LanMan04]

Nonetheless, I think almost everybody understands on a gut level that this sort of thing is ethically wrong.

I think that's only because modern copyright law has conditioned you to think that way.

If copyright was a grand total of, say, 15 years, and you were conditioned to know that from a young age, would you feel bad downloading that Nirvana album? Of course not!!! It would be legal, and since it would be accepted by society as THE NORM, no one would think it's wrong.

Gut level = conditioned by culture.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Flammon]

People have scruples but corporations do not. As technology progresses, things are supposed to get cheaper because of automation but corporations don't spread the wealth, they keep everything for themselves in a very selfish manner. Their only goal is to maximize profits and they will rip us off every chance they get. Corporations have no interest in sharing their wealth whatsoever that is why we have this kind of problem. A song shouldn't cost more than a few pennies to download but we're being charged 50 times that, for what? They're not charging a fair price. If they did, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Re:The grey line of theft

[tycoex]

This analogy seems to fall apart to me. In the car scenario you have to actually copy the car. In the case of software the computer copies it for you.

It seems a better analogy would be you using someone's software, and then programming an identical piece of software yourself, compiling it, and then using the program you wrote.

Re:The grey line of theft

[marcosdumay]

You still haven't heard about that idea of making punishment greater than the earnings from the missbehaviour, did you? You know, if punishment is smaller than the eranings, why would the offender stop the missbehaviour?

Re:The grey line of theft

[marcosdumay]

"So if you were to take a year off from work, like a friend of mine did, to write a book, you'd be fine with people stealing copies of it?"

Way to miss the point. The current system is so flawed that we'd be better without it, even if nobody takes a year off anymore to write a book. I have some doubts if no copyright would be the best possible system, but the point is that it is way better than the current situation.

Re:The grey line of theft

[bluefoxlucid]

LOGICAL FALLACY: Equivocation.

"Reproduce" is not "Create." It costs very little to "Reproduce" a high-end Porsche; but the engineering that went into the car originally was an extremely difficult expense. Porsche created some novel motor concepts, just like Benz sunk tons of research money into airbags.

Here's the blueprint, spend $10M putting this together; we already spent $1.3Bn creating it.

GIllette Mach 3 razor took $830M or so to engineer. Ergonomics in the handle right down to the exact angle of the blades, the bevel angle, the thickness, everything. By the way, some people still have original stock Mach3 blade heads. Tests done between available blade heads and original stock ones show that the original stock ones perform much better; new stock is crippled. Thanks, Proctor & Gamble (they bought Gillette after the Mach 3... maybe right after the Fusion, I don't recall; I use a straight razor).

You like music? Put together a band and go release 7 albums. GOOD albums. Do the sound engineering yourself, too; I expect properly mastered tracks.

No? Why not?

Oh, you want Windows 7? Well, why don't you go help the guys at ReactOS reimplement it? That version's free.

What do you mean, you can't do that? They've got tons of people to help. It should be easy to whip together. Won't cost you anything.

See, to create music or software, you need "talent" and "Knowledge" and "skill" and "time." All of this costs money. To distribute it, you need to pay for distribution. To recover those costs, you must charge for distribution and production. After that, it's all profit.

Re:The grey line of theft

[bluefoxlucid]

The most useful software package in the making of Shrek ... was GIMP.

Re:The grey line of theft

[DMFNR]

That, and he didn't actually have a gun.

Re:The grey line of theft

[vux984]

You still haven't heard about that idea of making punishment greater than the earnings from the missbehaviour, did you?

What you are doing isn't punishment. its vigilantism at best, and just rationalizing being a criminal at worst.

If Ferrari makes a car with a defect that kills a bunch of people, and then tries to cover it up.

Do you...

a) Sue them for negligence causing loss of life, for millions of dollars including punitive damages.

b) Lobby to have relevant law and regulations passed to ensure the vehicles are safe, and that the company meets its obligations.

c) Hit the CEO with a baseball bat and steal his wallet.

d) File a class action lawsuit on behalf of all ferrari owners. Only the lawyers wins in a class action... but Ferrari at least loses.

e) Walk into a dealership and steal a Ferrari.

f) Hack their bank account, and transfer millions of dollars into yours.

Can you spot the one's that aren't the appropriate responses?

Re:The grey line of theft

[suutar]

Out of curiosity, did you consider trying to haggle with the manager? They may not be able to cut you a deal, but then again they may, and even if they don't they can tell corporate that they lost a sale because the price was too high. (Now, depending how much of that price is markup, there may be nothing to be done at all except shut down the store...)

In all fairness I should admit I would probably not think to try haggling either, but it happened to occur to me while reading your post and it seems like it might be good to try.

Re:The grey line of theft

[marcosdumay]

That depends, do I live in a civilized society, where The People are the ones choosing what goes into The Law, and The Justice withold such law with homogeinity? Or do I live in a society where The Corporations are the ones choosing what goes into The Law, and The Justice has two standards depending if the accused is rich or not, and refuses to act to withold laws as long as possible?

It is a necessary condition for the first scenario to be true that the CEO gets a pretty harsh penalty from his actions (probably jaitime), if just the company loses a few milions, or just the regulation changes, you are not at a just society anymore. Now, tell me, what do you expect to happen if you sue Ferrari for negligence at your society? (And why do you have to sue, it is a crime, what is the police doing?)

Re:The grey line of theft

[node 3]

I think you interpreted my post in the exact opposite of what I am saying.

Re:The grey line of theft

[node 3]

The difference is that imaginary property costs nothing to reproduce (copy a CD, movie, etc.)

That's absolutely incorrect.

whereas physical property costs raw materials to create.

And songs (for example) cost real money to create as well.

Acquiring imaginary property does not deprive someone else of it's use, acquiring physical property by definition means you have exclusive control over it.

But unless you have physical control over something, any "exclusive control" you may have (for example, a car you have parked in the street, but left unlocked with the keys in the ignition) is also "imaginary". The title you have locked away somewhere is just as imaginary in terms of ownership as holding a copyright for a song.

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

That's absolutely incorrect

I copy a digital file copy of a song, movie, etc. It costs me nothing, It in fact, costs nothing other than the electricity to run the computer.

But unless you have physical control over something, any "exclusive control" you may have (for example, a car you have parked in the street, but left unlocked with the keys in the ignition) is also "imaginary".

Perhaps, however someone else taking use of that car deprives you of having use of it. Someone else having use of a song, movie, etc. does not deprive you of having use of the same thing. That is the difference.

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

Philosophical question: If you could copy a car identically and perfectly without expending any resources nor depriving the owner of its use, would you do it?

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

Exactly. It costs you electricity, plus the fact that you have a computer. Are you *REALLY* trying to say this costs you nothing? You are a fucking liar. Shame on you.

If you divide the cost of my computer over ALL of the uses I have for it and that I have used it for, then each individual use become infinitesimal. As such the "cost" of having a computer that is contributed to copying a song is essentially zero. Same thing for the electricity that is used "solely" for the creation of that digital copy. From a philosophical standpoint all it costs me is time.

So, if someone steals your car, but returns it before you need it, no big deal?

Of course not, during the time they stole my car, I have no use of it. Not only that, but they could get into an accident that I would be liable for, take other belongings of mine (deprive me of their use) that are in the car, etc.

That's just a rationalization on your part for benefitting off of the work of others.

Believe what you like, but it's a logical explanation, not just a rationalization. Not only that, but everyone benefit's off the work of others without paying. Do you pay the man who invented the microprocessor EVERY time you turn on or use a computer? Do you pay the man who invented traffic lights every time you drive and manage to survive because traffic laws use traffic lights to keep order? Give me a break. In my case, I make a point in my life to support the artists that I enjoy with my money by either buying merchandise or just donating directly to the artist. This is a very common occurrence and how a lot of artists make their living and it works.

The only reason you keep possession of your car, when it's in the street completely out of your physical control, is because an artificial law says it belongs to you. That's completely imaginary. It's not real.

Really? I thought it was because of the locking mechanisms that I have the key to? That's imaginary? Huh...I thought locks were real. Do you know how often a car that is stolen is actually recovered? Most stolen cars end up either chopped up for parts, or modified so as to be unidentifiable. It is physical property that if someone else "takes" I would be without the use of. That is called theft, taking property and depriving its owner of its use.

This is exactly the same as copyright. It's not real. It's not inherent to reality.

The car is real, the car is inherent to reality. The copyrighted material is not. It's a conceptual idea that exists as a series of 1's and 0's that can be infinitely copied for free. The car is a physical entity that has raw materials and creating a new one would cost more raw materials.

But enough people have decided it makes sense that men with guns will make this imaginary thing real.

And enough people have decided that piracy does not harm artists or moviemakers. Yet some people still insist it does. Lots of people deciding something is not the basis of an argument.

You are swine. You are a parasite. You believe you have the inherent right to live off of the work of others.

I give money to give an incentive for the creation of that which I enjoy, and I do not give money to that which I do not enjoy. It's an actual free market solution where only the content that is good is rewarded. The result of widespread piracy will eventually be less content that is true. However, the result will be that the content that survives will be better quality! It will be the better products and better content that will be given money by pirates and non-pirates alike because they enjoy it.

It's pathetic

oh wait....i think I know you......Kristopelt? Is that you?

Re:The grey line of theft

[node 3]

Sorry about being overly brash. The basic idea still applies, but I didn't need to go overboard.

The problem, however, is the discussion you butted in on was about whether "imaginary property" is something that should exist, not whether there are differences. You've completely missed my point. It's not that cars are physical, while IP isn't generally. It's that the very idea that you *OWN* a car is artificial, except when it's under your direct control.

If you physically possess something, that's reality. It's inherent to the laws of the universe, and not just the laws of man. But if you claim ownership over something that is *not* under your direct, physical control, that's imaginary. There's nothing inherent to the physical properties of the universe that makes this so, but the laws of man do. The reason someone can't legally supersede your ownership of a car that's wholly outside of your physical control is because of an imaginary idea that the car is still yours, even when you don't directly control it. This is done via property laws and instantiated in the form of a title (in the US).

Re:The grey line of theft

[zeroshade]

I agree with you philosophically regarding property laws and the "imaginary idea" that the car is yours implying ownership. Yet physical property is not the same as intellectual "property" which is the point I'm trying to get across.

You can argue that copyright is the same thing, but it's not. Copyright is a set of laws that are governing a non-physical property. Something that essentially has zero cost for reproduction and that is non-mutually-exclusive, as one person's usage of the property does not deprive someone else's ability to use it. By its very nature these two things are not the same. Even though conceptually the idea of property is the same, as it is a law created by people upholding a claim of ownership rather than some inherent property of the universe, there is no comparison to be made regarding copyright and physical property laws. That is the point that I am trying to make.

Re:The grey line of theft

[Bert64]

You'd be paying for materials and labour for making a copy in either case... The only difference is that software, being a "virtual" item has trivially low reproduction costs while a car requires a considerable quantity of physical materials to build.

Why should someone pay for the initial creation, when that has already been done? Your auto manufacturer also spent a lot of time designing your car, and yet copying it can be done cheaply compared to the cost of design and testing etc.
Would you be willing to buy a car, if the manufacturer said that each car he sells comes for the price of materials and initial development costs?

And there are a lot of clone cars out there, so long as you don't try to sell your clones under someone else's branding its not a problem, and the auto manufacturer cant really do anything.

Try again..

[nurb432]

It was removed from the MARKET, not your device.

Re:Try again..

[PopeRatzo]

It was removed from the MARKET, not your device.

Until the next OS upgrade perhaps?

Or when you replace your phone?

I don't really see the difference when the manufacturer of a device can tell you what you can and cannot do with that device.

I'm trying to think of other products where the manufacturer can make such decisions without your permission. Any ideas?

Re:Try again..

[_Sprocket_]

Until the next OS upgrade perhaps?

When we get to that point, then sound the alarm. As it is, we're not there yet.

Re:Try again..

[hedwards]

At that point, you just side load the application. Honestly, this is hardly the kind of big deal that it could be. Sure it sucks and I'd like to see an explanation, but it's not like the Appstore where removing an app pretty much kills it. People looking for torrent programs are probably savvy enough to download the app from elsewhere.

Re:Try again..

[DaScribbler]

It's not like they're banning it from your device. Got a new phone or wiped the device on an upgrade? Just download get it from a different source. Google isn't saying you can't have it on your device. They're simply not allowing it on their market. Whoop-de-do. There are other markets and sources (and in this case directly from the developer).

Re:Try again..

[_Sprocket_]

Sure we are. OS upgrades occasionally break compatibility with apps. If no further updates are going to be made available for the app because it's been blocked from the Market, and an OS upgrade makes the app start crashing, then that's that.

Most Android environments do not require the Market to install apps (I say most because inevitably someone's customized Android environment will force you to use their market).

Re:Try again..

[DaScribbler]

Are you under the impression the Android Market is the only source available for installing apps to your Android device?

Re:Try again..

[cynyr]

or when you stop side loading it on your android device. Remember this is android, and sideloading exists. Well a phone maker maybe could remove it, but the device will get hacked, and then CyanogenMod will be available and will have side loading.

Re:Try again..

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the next OS upgrade perhaps?

Nothing to worry about. Good chance the upgrade won't work on your device anyway.

Re:Try again..

[WrongSizeGlass]

Side load? Is that what kids are calling "installing" these days?

Did this come about because Apple doesn't let people install arbitrary software, so they needed a new term to distinguish it?

The term sideload was coined in the late 1990s.

Re:Try again..

[PCM2]

Are you under the impression the Android Market is the only source available for installing apps to your Android device?

For a lot of people it is, because that checkbox is clicked in their preferences, or it's the only one they want to use (for fear of viruses or whatever).

Furthermore, I think it wouldn't be off-base to characterize the kind of people who use this particular app as the kind of people who like to get things the easy way.

Re:Try again..

[sortius_nod]

This is why I laugh my arse off every time I read people talking about Android being more open than iOS.

You need to root/jailbreak BOTH OSs, the difference is that if you don't want to root/JB your device (you know, you bought a phone and want it to just work), iOS kicks the crap out of Android.

Having recently gone from an iPhone 4 to an HTC Desire S... well, I'm really thinking about going back to iOS due to how terrible HTC Android is. Tethering problems, network stack crashes, and general failures all over the place. If this is what "one of the best Android devices" (according to many reviews) is like, well, I don't want any of that horrible shit.

I know it's just the HTC Desire S rom, but I don't want to root the device, I don't want to fuck around with it. If I want to fuck around with an Android device, I'll buy one for that. My phone is my phone, if I screw it, I lose money.

Re:Try again..

[edumacator]

Won't people still be able to sideload it? They just removed it from the Market.

Re:Try again..

[Samantha Wright]

Ignoring your paranoid flamebait, someone should point out that there's plenty of other products like that, so I guess I will. Apple's iOS has a kill switch and Amazon removed 1984 and Animal Farm from all Kindles following a licensing dispute with the rights holders. And let's not forget the PS3 Other OS fiasco. Also, any DRM system that has to contact the master server to determine if a game is properly licensed (Steam, Spore's DRM, Games for Windows Live...) can have the same effect.

If it bothers you so much, jailbreak and pirate everything. No regulatory body has ever succeeded in stamping out a black market for which there was sufficient financial incentive; in this era of information, notoriety and ego will suffice instead, and have sufficed for the past thirty years, since the invention of the first copy prevention mechanism. Yar-har, fiddle dee-tee.

Eventually, the people who commission these systems will get the clue that a free culture is the best solution. Until then, just work around their silly unenlightened nonsense. But remember to pay them. They need to survive too.

Re:Try again..

[Anonymous Coward]

no you don't to install software from a 3rd party (not the market, but some other webpage, or downloaded on the pc and transfered to the card), all you have to do, is check one "allow" setting in the settings menu. No jailbraking, no rooting, no losing your warranty!

Re:Try again..

[PopeRatzo]

someone should point out that there's plenty of other products like that

Well that makes it OK then.

If it bothers you so much, jailbreak and pirate everything.

OK.

Re:Try again..

[PopeRatzo]

I don't know a lot of consumers who prefer the hard way to the easy way.

But "easy" isn't really what you mean, is it?

Re:Try again..

[EyelessFade]

And they don't. Unlike Apple you can actually install whatever you want from wherever you want. Download it from SourceForge and copy it onto your phone, and it'll run. But google can and will pull something they don't like away from *their own* store.

Re:Try again..

[similar_name]

With the exact same meaning of course.

Re:Try again..

[Anonymous Coward]

True, nobody has stomped out a black market, but I can picture government starting to do a "war on piracy". It would mean more people ending up with criminal records.

Lets be realistic folks. Want to deal with IP infringement? Canada has the system done right. A tax on media, and no pogroms against low hanging fruit.

If that isn't suitable, then we need a download clearinghouse paid for by taxes. The clearinghouse pays content owners per validated download.

There are ways to make IP infringement not an issue. However, what the real reason in the US for all this piracy/DRM/yanking books BS is pure control.

There are many well-heeled people who want the Internet to be like Prodigy back in the day. Want to post something? A drone must approve it, and if it doesn't suit the sanitized corporate PR department, it gets rejected. Do something they don't like? No internets for joo. Websites? They will become passive like TV channels and only what Fox News approves.

The IP crap is just to create the publishers/consumers divide again which the Internet took away.

Re:Try again..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're full of shit. You're going to go back to the iPhone because you're having issues with tethering? Really? Your other examples are pretty generic. Please tell me what you did on iPhone that worked fine that cause network stack crashes and 'general failures all over the place' on Android. Geez fanboi..

Re:Try again..

[_Sprocket_]

Amazing. We've gone from general purpose computing with hundreds of thousands of stores all providing software to if it's not in one location, it doesn't exist. All within a generation.

I suspect those who know what a torrent is and how to use it will have no problem changing a setting and checking a bookmark.

Re:Try again..

[bluegreen997]

While I think your point is valid we do need to recognize its scope.

Now when home PCs are looking like this, and not in the way OSS distros do with repositories, then we can start to freak out a bit.

Re:Try again..

[blahbooboo]

You're full of shit. You're going to go back to the iPhone because you're having issues with tethering? Really? Your other examples are pretty generic. Please tell me what you did on iPhone that worked fine that cause network stack crashes and 'general failures all over the place' on Android. Geez fanboi..

Pot calling the kettle black....

Re:Try again..

[MacGyver2210]

will force you to use their market

It took me about 3 minutes to root my Droid...no more proprietary shit. Free wifi/wired tethers. Remove 'system' apps I didn't want. Done.

Re:Try again..

[Hylandr]

It was removed from the MARKET, not your device.

Until the next OS upgrade perhaps?

Or when you replace your phone?

I don't really see the difference when the manufacturer of a device can tell you what you can and cannot do with that device.

I'm trying to think of other products where the manufacturer can make such decisions without your permission. Any ideas?

In Soviet... Wait, those guys are looking better and better these days...

- Dan.

Re:Try again..

[zeroshade]

the point is that unlike on Android phones, if an app is removed from the store, then no one can install it anymore. If you get a new iOS device or perform a reset, that's it. You lose the application and cannot get it back. At least on Android you can download the Application from somewhere else and install it yourself. (Not counting jailbreaking the iPhone)

Re:Try again..

[_Sprocket_]

Well - to be fair I don't think we've really progressed to that point. I think there's a perception issue. My point being that Android is closer to general purpose computing than other smartphone environments and within that context, there's a lot of options.

Re:Try again..

[Duradin]

If you've got the app backed up on your computer you can just reload that. So you can do a reset and still have all the apps you had before. Same with new devices.

Re:Try again..

[Bert64]

A tax on media is a terrible idea...
It punishes anyone who needs blank media, regardless of what they use that media for... Even if those people never consume any copyrighted content at all, or purchase if legitimately.
Also with a guaranteed income from tax, what incentive do content producers have to actually produce decent content? They can instead pump out endless streams of complete crap and still collect their cash, and doing so would be far more profitable.

It's akin to taxing motor vehicles in order to pay blacksmiths... Poor blacksmiths not getting any business anymore because the evil cars have come along to take it all away. The real problem is your business model is obsolete, so either get with the times or go bankrupt.

Re:Try again..

[FatLittleMonkey]

For a lot of people it is, because that checkbox is clicked in their preferences, or it's the only one they want to use (for fear of viruses or whatever).

FTFS: "Google has pulled one of the most popular torrent download managers..."

Do you really think people who won't download an app from anywhere but the google approved app store are the people downloading torrents?

Re:Try again..

[Divebus]

You owe me a keyboard.

Re:Try again..

[SanityInAnarchy]

Until the next OS upgrade perhaps?

Most of the major Android manufacturers have committed themselves to selling devices with unlocked bootloaders. This means it's not terribly difficult for you to install the OS upgrade yourself, and there's also nothing stopping you from downloading the latest source, compiling that, and installing it.

So there's also nothing stopping you from installing a version which doesn't wipe software without your permission.

All of this also means it's fairly unlikely Google will start trying to wipe software without your permission, since it's clear that this would piss people off, and anyone really determined would be able to get it back anyway.

Or when you replace your phone?

This is the part I'm not sure about. I would assume the app purchase is tied to your Google account, so you'd normally transfer apps that way. However, if you've rooted your device -- which, reading the above again, is no longer equivalent to jailbreaking an iPhone, it's actually a fairly standard feature -- I would expect you have some options.

I can't guarantee it, though, which is why I'd be wary of buying any app that cost any amount of money I couldn't afford to spend on that one phone. There are enough free and open source apps, and I'm a programmer, so I'd be more than happy to scratch my own itches here.

I don't really see the difference when the manufacturer of a device can tell you what you can and cannot do with that device.

They aren't -- see above.

That said, be careful. When you buy a new Android device, get one with an unlocked bootloader. Bonus points: Ask for it in the store, to make carriers more aware that people do want this. (Of course, do your research -- it's entirely possible the salesperson will lie to you without having any idea what "unlocked" means.)

I'm trying to think of other products where the manufacturer can make such decisions without your permission. Any ideas?

It takes a computing device of some sort to actually enforce this, but oddly enough, there do exist devices which are similarly locked down. Newer BMWs can only be serviced at a BMW dealer, because BMW actively locks them down, while other cars can be serviced at any local dealer, and much more cheaply.

It's also extremely rare that any device actually makes a decision like this. The only time I can remember it happening in recent history is when it's actually malware, or with Amazon pulling 1984 from Kindles -- but Kindles aren't smartphones.

I definitely agree with your motivation, but you can actually own your phone and the software in it, you just have to put a bit of care into the choice of both. It is possible to buy an Android device locked-down enough that there will be software you don't want on it, and software you want will either not be there or could be removed later -- but this isn't true of all Android devices.

Re:Try again..

[John Betonschaar]

So what's the big difference between side-loading on Android and side-loading on a jailbroken iPhone, that you would want to 'not count jailbreaking the iPhone'?

Both involve messing with the device and software in ways that are outside the comfort zone of typical smartphone users, but neither are difficult or invasive enough to scare off people who don't mind doing it. I don't see the difference here, but I guess it's fair game to use a sliding scale for comparisons that involve Apple these days.

Re:Try again..

[funfail]

Actually the almost exact counterpart of jailbreaking for Android phones would be rooting. You don't have to "root" your phone to install 3rd party (ie. not coming from Market) APK's. With iPhone, you need to jailbreak it.

Hell, there is a checkbox in Android settings that allows one to install 3rd party application packages.

Re:Try again..

[Phoghat]

So it might still be available from Amazon's Android App Market ? I don't think so !

Re:Try again..

[Fuzi719]

You need to root/jailbreak BOTH OSs, the difference is that if you don't want to root/JB your device (you know, you bought a phone and want it to just work), iOS kicks the crap out of Android.

You don't have to root an Android phone in order to sideload applications (unless you bought it from AT&T, but that's your carrier's fault, not Android)

Having recently gone from an iPhone 4 to an HTC Desire S... well, I'm really thinking about going back to iOS due to how terrible HTC Android is. Tethering problems, network stack crashes, and general failures all over the place. If this is what "one of the best Android devices" (according to many reviews) is like, well, I don't want any of that horrible shit.

If you're having those kinds of problems, you've either done something really stupid to the hardware or OS, or it is just your bad luck to get a defective piece of hardware. Those kinds of issues are not common. I suspect USER ERROR.

I know it's just the HTC Desire S rom, but I don't want to root the device, I don't want to fuck around with it. If I want to fuck around with an Android device, I'll buy one for that. My phone is my phone, if I screw it, I lose money.

My Android phone (also HTC) is my only phone. I've had no issues, it works for me every time, night and day, home or away. I have no tethering problems (wired or Wi-Fi), no network stack crashes, no general failures. And it is more than just a screen full of app icons, I have very useful widgets that give me valuable info at a glance of the screen. Can't do that on IOS.

Re:Try again..

[morgauxo]

Then you just donwload it and install it. Android doesn't lock you into only installing apps through the marketplace like iPhone does.

Re:Try again..

[PopeRatzo]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply to my hysterical comment.

This is why I like Slashdot. Most people are calmer and more sane than me. All of them are smarter.

Is it true that newer BMW's can only be serviced at a BMW dealer? That's insane. What if I'm on a road trip in my brand new Series 6 Gran Coupe and something goes wrong with the 4.4-liter twin-turbocharged V8 and I'm 400 miles from the nearest BMW dealer?

I'm sticking with my '95 Mazda with the broken windshield washer pump. I can pop the trunk on that baby myself and 4 times out of 10 I won't make things worse.

Re:Try again..

[PopeRatzo]

I can pop the trunk on that baby myself and 4 times out of 10 I won't make things worse.

I meant pop the hood. That's in the front where the motor thing goes, right?

Ah, but my screwdriver and locking pliers are in the trunk, so I'd have to go there first. OK.

Re:Try again..

[SanityInAnarchy]

What if I'm on a road trip in my brand new Series 6 Gran Coupe and something goes wrong with the 4.4-liter twin-turbocharged V8 and I'm 400 miles from the nearest BMW dealer?

I imagine there are solutions for that, but they wouldn't exactly be cheap. But then, that's the point -- the BMW dealer is going to be much more expensive. They can be, because if you've got a shiny new BMW, you have no choice.

This is why my father recently traded in his BMW convertible for a newer Nissan Maxima. He's no longer interested in servicing it himself, but he can take it down to Bob's Automotive and have them service it for a fraction of what the BMW would cost, and it seems to need less servicing overall -- though that probably has more to do with the new car not being a convertible than with it not being a BMW.

I only learned about this because I was trying to use a car analogy to explain to him why he shouldn't buy iStuff, and should prefer platforms at least as open as Windows, if not actually open source platforms. "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut? Would anyone consider buying a car anywhere near as locked-down as Apple products are?" Yes, apparently, but talking about it and thinking about it, he's changed his mind -- he's much more likely to get Android if he gets a smartphone, and he doesn't have the BMW anymore.

Re:Try again..

[tehcyder]

You don't have to install Android apps from the Market, if you're that fucking bothered.

Re:Try again..

[The Archon V2.0]

Canada has the system done right. A tax on media, and no pogroms against low hanging fruit.

Celine Dion got money because I needed to slipstream Service Pack 3 into XP.

Roch Voisine got money because a neighbor needed something to burn his garage band music on for sale.

Gordon Lightfoot got money because someone burned a pirated CD of Swedish metal.

Re:Try again..

[zeroshade]

Actually, side-loading on Android does not require messing with the software at all in any way. It requires checking a single box in a settings menu. So where's the sliding scale?

Re:Try again..

[cynyr]

no need to root it, most allow it. A vendor could provide a custom build that disabled it though. I would hope that that info made the rounds, like motrola locking down the bootloader to signed images only. Anyways, HTC provides a heavily customized version of android on their phones, "SenseUI". There are some nice things in it, the dial-er for example, but in general Sense is bloated slow, and a battery hog. I own an HTC Glacier ( t-Mobile Mytouch 4G) I ran the stock rom for about a month, before the lack of battery life drove me to CyanogenMod and I haven't looked back. I'll be moving up to android 2.3.4 here shortly.

Re:Try again..

[wkcole]

will force you to use their market

It took me about 3 minutes to root my Droid...no more proprietary shit. Free wifi/wired tethers. Remove 'system' apps I didn't want. Done.

That is very much a variable between devices. To "root" my Samsung Moment I would need to set up a local Windows-on-bare-metal machine because they do something very wrong with USB. Some Moto devices have reportedly had ROM code to reverse unofficial mods.

The device makers and carriers are working hard to strangle Android's "openness" and succeeding.

Cue rant about the tool and its uses

[axx]

We all know bit torrent can be used for downloading Game of Thrones, pr0n, Microsoft COFEE or GNU/Linux distros... why would Google remove what is considered a "neutral" app all of a sudden?

The "it encourages to download copyrighted material through screenshots" argument does sound pretty week to me.

And anyway, what about the whole "it's pretty clear by now given the studies that downloading is not responsible for the downfall of civilisation as we know it and modern culture and is in fact quite beneficial for everyone involved considering the big picture" part?
A cue for someone else's rant?

By the way, you know which market still has Transdroid and plenty other nice FOSSÂapps? http://f-droid.org/repository

Re:Cue rant about the tool and its uses

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article you'll see that the app seems to advertise itself as a tool for copyright infringement, not a method of distributing free software. Also it apparently has a feature which allows you to scan the barcode on a video or music album, and search for a matching torrent. That is not exactly a feature that has any real non-infringing use I can think off (where do you find a CD of a linux distribution with a barcode on it)?

Re:Cue rant about the tool and its uses

[Osgeld]

best buy sells boxed linux with a upc on the back

I agree with you but linux in a store is not all that uncommon, though it may only be one flavour and have 2 in stock its there on occasion

Re:Cue rant about the tool and its uses

[zeroshade]

I buy a blu-ray dvd. I scan it and find a torrent to download it. That is a non-infringing use. I have a CD album and i've lost the disk, i scan the barcode and download it. That is non-infringing. It has substantial non-infringing uses.

Re:Cue rant about the tool and its uses

[axx]

Actually, the whole barcode thing is a red herring IMHO, it's an add-on to the main app.

It's an exagaration to state that Transdroid was designed with the purpose of downloading copyrighted material without the right-owners' consent in mind. It was designed to manage torrents on several torrent clients.

Extra functionality (as well as clients) was added down the road.

Why isn't anybody screaming about the RSS function that enables to subscribe to feeds to automatically download then?

Pulling Transdroid is abusive, IMHO.

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[neokushan]

The key is in the summary: "Thus far Google hasn’t specified what the exact nature of Transdoid’s violations are".

Anything beyond this is pure speculation. there are plenty of torrent apps on the market, why was this singled out? There's probably a completely separate issue with the program, but because it's "torrents", people assume it's copyright infringement. I'm not saying it isn't, I'm not saying it is, what I'm saying is only Google knows why.

Pressure from the Telcos

[sqrt(2)]

More likely than the copyright angle (or maybe in addition to it) is the explanation that they got rid of it after receiving pressure from the wireless service providers. Verizon and AT&T hate when people use bandwidth they actually pay for, and someone running torrents on their phone will probably end up using it in 3G mode at least some of the time. They want you paying as much as possible, and then they do everything they can to dissuade you from actually making use of what you buy. I see this as probably another manifestation of their entitlement mentality. I wish it were the most egregious and aggravating, but the sad fact is this is just one in a long line of abuses.

Re:Pressure from the Telcos

[WRX SKy]

Transdroid wasn't a BT client for phones, it allowed you to remotely manage a BT client.

e.g. My home machine is d/l'ing torrents, and my phone can connect to my home machine (via Transdroid) to check status, start/stop torrents, etc.

I would insert an obligatory RTFA comment... but it was in the summary ("the most popular torrent download manager") - so it's obvious you didn't even get past the subject.

Re:Pressure from the Telcos

[sqrt(2)]

I see now. I understood "torrent download manager" to mean a program that manages your torrent downloads on the phone. Honest mistake.

Re:Pressure from the Telcos

[sqrt(2)]

I was confused by the wording in the article and I understood it to mean that Transdroid was a program to download torrents on your phone. This makes more sense, and obviously wouldn't bring up the issues of bandwidth that I mentioned.

Re:Pressure from the Telcos

[TarMil]

Transdroid wasn't a BT client for phones, it allowed you to remotely manage a BT client.

Why use the past tense? An Android application booted from the official store is not dead, you can still install it from somewhere else. This is not iOS.

Re:Pressure from the Telcos

[Custard Horse]

I've been using transdroid for a while and didn't even realise their was a barcode scanner function. I just tried it on the nearest code but the 'Kellogg's Special K red berry cereal bar' was not found in the database.

I've got to say that transdroid is excellent. I was talking about an old film from 1992 "Man Bites Dog" - a grisly French serial killer faux-documentary film. I have it in storage on VHS and thought to search on transdroid. I added one of the results and it was ready to watch when I returned from work. Had the VHS been to hand I could have sanned the bar code I guess.

I completely understand how such functionality can be used for copyright infringment and, on balance, it should be removed if it threatens the continuance of support/availability of the main app.

Perhaps vendors can display their own QR codes which re-directs to the distributor for a fee-paid digital download . The vendor could get a referral fee as you would with 'pay per click*'?

As least with that method the vendor would get the old-school physical media market and obtain tracking details on digital downloads which is a valuable tool for future business planning.

*(note: other referral methods are available).

Screenshot infringes

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:
Although Transdroid itself isn’t infringing any copyrights, the screenshots on the app’s website do feature some copyrighted downloads which Google may see as a violation of the Android developer policy. As we highlighted previously, this is not a particularly wise thing to do.

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[hedwards]

Indeed, it could be any sort of other thing, such as it could itself be infringing on somebody's code or it could have malware installed. Without more information it's really hard to know whether this was a justified move or not.

how is that theft?

[t2t10]

It's still not really theft but frankly, from a moral standpoint it's so close to theft I have trouble distinguishing the difference.

Really? How is picking up my DVD off my shelf and then downloading a lower quality torrent on my phone so that I can take it with me "theft"?

Re:how is that theft?

[wagnerrp]

Technically, there is nothing wrong with downloading copyrighted content. The closest you could come would be receipt of stolen goods, but that doesn't work since they're infringed, not stolen. The problem is from unlicensed distribution of said content, or uploading, and if you look at all the cases the RIAA and independent movie studios have opened, they're all against uploaders. The problem with torrents are that you have no choice but to be an uploader. The trackers enforce it. Even though you own the DVD, you do not have the rights to distribute that DVD.

Now be honest, do you actually think even 1% of their user base ever scanned their own purchased DVDs?

Re:how is that theft?

[t2t10]

Now be honest, do you actually think even 1% of their user base ever scanned their own purchased DVDs?

I think it's a lot more; the idea of people going to the store in order to scan barcodes to rip off movies they don't own is ridiculous.

But who cares anyway? The software has substantial non-infringing uses.

The issue ends at production

[SuperKendall]

You have problems differentiating between theft of real goods and the non-commercial personal use of copyrighted items

No, I have problems understanding how a physical means of acquiring something that lets me enjoy a project someone worked hard on and should be paid for without giving them anything, is any different than leaving the physical copy there but still enjoying the product without providing any revenue to the content producers.

Like I said, I only torrent things I cannot find a means to buy. I honestly don't even really care about the middle men at all like Best Buy, I just want to get money to the people who make the things I enjoy so they can make more things I enjoy.

Anyone torrenting to get a backup copy of something they own, I have no issue with. But I still think it's wrong to torrent something like a movie that you do not own and will realistically only watch once.

Do you really find there is no case where using a torrent is morally wrong?

Re:Nah

[jrumney]

And I've feel extremely guilty even paying for a theater.

Free healthcare is a good thing, but isn't this a bit off topic with the rest of your post?

so

[smash]

Just how is this different to the Apple app store again?

Re:so

[artor3]

Because with Android, if an app gets pulled from the market, you can just download from the web and install it anyway.

For example, there used to be a Netflix app that let you stream video on your phone. They pulled it from the market for all but a few phones, because the copyright holders want them to add more DRM or something. I just downloaded the old copy from Megaupload, clicked OK on the little warning message that the app wasn't coming from a trusted source, and now I can watch Netflix as much as I want.

Re:so

[im_thatoneguy]

You don't have to void your warranty to side-load an app. And you can install alternative marketplaces. The 'tyranny' of the Apple store is that it's the only legitimate way to get applications onto the device.

Re:so

[Miseph]

And they let you use alternative marketplaces, or simply sideload apps. That's sort of a big deal, actually.

Re:so

[Grey Ninja]

A ban from the Apple store means that you cannot install the application on your phone. Period, end of story. (Unless you choose to root your phone)

A ban from the Google store means that you must download the application elsewhere.

Re:so

[rrohbeck]

There's also Amazon and other app stores and you can download the app manually and install it.

Re:so

[nedlohs]

Because I point my un-rooted stock standard android phone at http://transdroid.org/latest and it will install just fine (well it'll probably prompt me with a scary dialog or require me to check "allow installation of non-Market applications" settings checkbox).

In fact I just stuck that url in the default web browser on my shitty motorola droid and up popped the normal install screen - it wants access to the SD card and full internet access.

So how do you install an app on your stock standard iphone that Apple just removed from their app store?

Re:Nah

[Weezul]

I discussed both convenient & pleasant, whatever.

Ain't no free healthcare, just countries that (a) actually collectively negotiate with providers and/or (b) pay for the medical school so that medicine becomes a calling rather than an investment. It's just waaay cheaper to pay for the healthcare on the "front end", i.e. give doctors free med school but pay them much less over their lifetimes.

You also get way better doctors when graduation is determined by medical school professors rather than the admissions bureaucrats. Yes, that's actually true : European med schools fail out the dumb ones, American med schools mostly graduate them. lol

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[wagnerrp]

This wasn't a torrent application, but rather a torrent frontend. It would let you start and manage a remote torrent client from your phone. Its big draw was that it interfaced with your camera, and could process bar codes, allowing you to take a picture of a product on the shelf and automatically start a download. Such behavior could only be used to download illegal content. There is no legitimate reason for it.

decency and morality has to be two-way

[t2t10]

It all comes down to what makes your own moral Geiger counter start clicking.

That "moral Geiger counter" seems to be broken at the other end, however, when content creators use political muscle to extend copyright terms again and again; when they prevent content from getting into the public domain through legal tricks; when they force consumers to buy the same content again and again through technological obsolescence; when TV and movie studios raid the literary classics for ideas and then try to claim copyrights on the resulting stories; when they demand fees and taxes in order to compensate them for private copying and then still go out and prevent that copying.

Morality and decency has to be a two-way street, but right now, consumers are by-and-large treating the studios and publishers morally, while they are screwing consumers over again and again.

Re:decency and morality has to be two-way

[Miseph]

And we all know that two wrongs make a right. Right?

Re:decency and morality has to be two-way

[paulo.casanova]

No, it doesn't. But sometimes it is the only weapon you have at your disposal.

If no one ever broke the law when they disagreed with it then US would still be the UK and France would still be an absolutist monarchy. Sometimes we have to do wrong to get things right because they are wrong in the first place. So yes, sometimes two wrongs make one right. Or three. Or four. Depends. The real world(tm) is not boolean logic...

Of course, if our countries were real democracies, if the people had real power, then you would be right because we could fight the copyright industry at the same level. But since most western countries are companycracies there is no way the people can fight its way legally.

You must also distinguish law and justice. While the former should -- theoretically -- aim at the latter, this is not always the case. Mostly everyone is fond of justice and law when it is enforcing justice. But when the law is unjust, people just disregard it. They feel they can download a movie because paying $20 for a DVD you will see once is unfair. This is also justified on an economics perspective. If items were sold at the price they're worth, then I'm sure CDs and DVDs would be much cheaper then they are now. But we don't live in a really free market, competition is limited and most limitations are imposed by the companies holding the copyrights themselves.

Re:decency and morality has to be two-way

[t2t10]

Did I say that anywhere? I'm actually not for a complete abolition of patents or copyrights. But companies have manipulated the political process so that patents and copyrights work mostly in their favor and against the interests of society as a whole, and even against the interests of artists and engineers, and that needs to be addressed.

I think copyrights should require registration and be limited to 28 years, and for patents, we should drop the presumption of validity in court and have the patent owner actually prove novelty and non-obviousness in court when there is a dispute.

Re:Nah

[smash]

It's immoral to pay the assholes who sell physical CDs, major labels, etc. To me, the moral question is more : How much more convenient & pleasant do they need to make it before I buy the product?

I know apple is "the enemy" but to me they are convenient enough. For movies, for example, i have a few choices. I torrent it, watch it once, and store it on my hard drive for years taking up space just in case i want to watch it again and cbf finding a decent torrent. I get in my car, go to the local video library and rent it (and suffer late fees if i forget to return it on time). I stream it to my AppleTV where i can watch as many times as I like for 48 hrs.

For me, its a no brainer. If you have the bandwidth, AppleTV works pretty well. I'm totally willing to pay the few dollars for a rental to save me wasting time and energy to find a torrent, wait for the download, only to find its badly encoded

If you don't think content is worth the asking price, then don't consume it.

ban hammers from one hardware store

[justhatched]

If I owned a hardware store and advertised hammers by displaying the use of the hammer in breaking into a house/safe whatever, then maybe there would be some not unexpected bad blood from people who experienced some damage from hammer wielding thieves, or were even just worried about the possibility.

Whether the recipient seemed like they deserved such treatment because they did bad things to kittens is moot, being seen to promote illegal activities as a positive use of your product is just a bit silly, even if you vehemently disagree with said law.

Arguing about the pros and cons of banning hammers in a particular store because in some cases the use is wrong but seems justified seems even sillier to me.

Re:ban hammers from one hardware store

[mdm-adph]

If I owned a hardware store and advertised hammers by displaying the use of the hammer in breaking into a house/safe whatever

I know you're trying to make a serious point, but that is one hilarious mental image.

Re:Ownership

[MacGyver2210]

I'm sorry you're butthurt that your iPhone lets them remove stuff or brick your phone remotely. My droid doesn't have that issue.

I'm sorry you can't actually own your software or have a choice of app stores. My droid doesn't have that issue.

I'm sorry your iPhone has to install software from an app store, and there's no real package format for manual installation. My droid doesn't have that issue.

I'm sorry they took this particular torrent client off the market, though I don't see how it affects your iPhone. My droid doesn't have that issue.

I use aDownloader, which is pretty damn slick. Load and start the torrents I want when I leave the house in the morning, and sync the files back to my computer when I get home at night. If I need more than the 32GB of SD card, I should be doing it at home from the desktop anyhow(even though I routinely torrent ~6-8GB over 3G)..

Re:Nah

[korean.ian]

Then the people who actually write quality books would stop writing them - what incentive is there for them to produce material - the joy of spreading knowledge? That's all well and good but the landlord or bank doesn't usually accept hugs in lieu of currency.
I also have to assume that you're talking right out of your ass since you refer to PJ Harvey as a truly independent artist. Barring her first release, every album she's put out has been on Island Records, who are a subsidiary of Universal.

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[zeroshade]

Once again: What about if you have purchased a DVD or CD and the disk has gotten scratched/lost/otherwise unreadable? Then this is a very useful tool to reacquire something you have already purchased. Or what if you have a blu-ray dvd and you do not have the capability to rip it and would like to have a backup? This is a useful legitimate reason for that functionality.

Still available, from Google

[amrs]

I find it a delicious irony that Google has no problem hosting Transdroid source at Google code.

Re:Still available, from Google

[Superken7]

Yes, and its funny that they will remove Transroid - which does NOT download anything, its just a remote control - but they keep the YouTube app and the Google Music app, which surely enables one to view pirated content, especially music.

It is very clear through actions like these that Google prefers to please companies like MPAA and RIAA rather than the user. Just like with the instant search that got disabled when searching for certain keywords related to warez. Subtle censorship against users, trying to benefit big cos.

Re:Still available, from Google

[heathen_01]

Just type +torrent at the end of your query not the start.

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[wagnerrp]

If you have purchased a DVD or CD, and the disk has gotten scratched, lost, or is otherwise unreadable, well too bad. You should have backed it up or insured it. Hard drives are cheap. Optical drives are cheap. Software is available that can handle every AACS key and BD+ implementation yet released. If people cared to backup their content, it's not difficult to accomplish. While you may have a case for applications protected by potentially damaging DRM such as StarForce, there is no useful legitimate reason to illegally download multimedia that you own.

Re:So, torrent == warez now? Get a clue, troll.

[91degrees]

When something appears to exist for the sole purpose of illegal activities, then a handful of legitimate activities don't really mitigate that.

"not unlikely"

[Rennt]

Considering there are nearly a dozen other torrent managers still on the market - some with over a quarter of a million downloads - I'd say that it is not unlikely the submitter is talking out of their ass.

No trial, no evidence

[dugeen]

Yes, I remember the trial where it was proved that the tool was being used to infringe copyright. Oh no hold on, I don't because there wasn't one. Thank god our freedoms are being preserved by allowing private companies to decide whether or not the law is being broken.

Re:Nah

[xaxa]

It's immoral to pay the assholes who sell physical CDs, major labels, etc. To me, the moral question is more : How much more convenient & pleasant do they need to make it before I buy the product?

If your morals are purely based on convenience and pleasure I think you need to re-evaluate them.

I would never purchase music or movies except from a truly independent artist, like PJ Harvey.

According to Wikipedia, her music is released on Island Records, which is owned by UMG.

There are other torrent apps

[DrXym]

If this was a clampdown on torrent clients, then they'd all be toast. As it's one particular client, it is likely an issue specific to that client.

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[axx]

Excuse me, are you a lawyer to state so explicitely that downloading content you have purchased a copy of is illegal?

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[wagnerrp]

When you use bittorrent, you upload. There is no way that you can argue uploading copyrighted content is not illegal.

What makes value?

[br00tus]

The bedrock argument of the modern economic system is contained within a famous sentence by economist Baron Lionel Robbins in his 1932 essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science - "Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." Scarcity is what is supposed to give a commodity value, and is a bedrock reason for most of the structures of our economic system and against the socialist ideas which were prevalent at the time - a commodity either belonged to me or you, it couldn't belong to both of us. Only one of us could have it, and who would use it to greater utility?

Of course, in our modern world, our system of economic production is changing. Mechanization and biotechnology has caused the percentage of people working on farms to drop from over 70% of the population 150 years ago, to less than 3% nowadays. And the actual farm workers average less than $9 an hour pay - the money in agriculture moved away from the farm a long time ago, but it has since moved from mechanization and manufacturing like John Deere, to biotech like Monsanto. Yet the US grows more food than ever before, and is even a net exporter in agriculture. Again scarcity falls away - once the research is done, duplication of the end product costs next to nothing.

With how economics has been discussed in our institutions for over a century, there is really no economic argument for why books, DVDs and other media should not be copied once the initial commodity containing them is sold. It is only by going back to the older economic arguments of the labor theory of value, the idea of Adam Smith, and David Ricardo, and the classical economists, that this makes any sense. If a commodity is valuable due to the labor embedded in it, and not due to its inherent scarceness, then yes, your idea that it there is some problem with it, a "moral" one you say, makes sense. That commodities have value due to the labor used to make them is the bedrock of Marx's analysis of capitalism - he took the analysis of Benjamin Franklin, Ricardo, Say, Malthus, Adam Smith and so forth and added his own interpretation to their work. In many ways the modern hegemonic discarding of all of their ideas of the labor theory of value is a reaction to Marx.

Our modern economic arrangements, where it is said it is best that almost all capital be in the hand of a few capitalists, and that government's role in the economy be small, and that social programs be discouraged and so forth is all built on a bedrock of economic arguments of scarcity. You can not just say you have some funny feeling there is a moral problem with sharing a commodity since the arguments for all of these things is built on the concept that commodities are scarce - that is a bedrock economic argument of a capitalist economic system. If you accept the arguments for our economic system, then sharing a commodity you bought with millions of others is not "wrong". if you feel that there is some moral issue with it, or that there is some economic unfairness to it, then you are saying commodities are worth something not due to scarcity but due to the labor embedded within them. But then this knocks out the pillars of argument of justification for our modern economic system. Such things as policemen forcibly ejecting families from their homes, due to lack of money to pay rent, because the person lost their job in a Michigan factory, because the profit rate of the factory owner had gone down due to a world overproduction of commodities - this would be unforgivably cruel and have lost whatever piece of justification it had if we were had elements of a post-scarcity economy where value from what used to be called commodities had value in them due to the labor embedded within them.

I wish I better at explaining these economic issues to layman. But the arguments the RIAA/MPAA MAFIAA make against file sharing are truly anti-capitalist arguments. They are trying to have their cake and eat it to. I wi

but isn't it a logical conclusion of augmented rea

[gl4ss]

but isn't this just a logical conclusion from having barcode scanner sw in the phone and the ability to have scans from that as input? what would be okay then, having two different pieces of software , this utorrent clone and then as a different sw something called barcode-search-to-text-field? are we doing intentionally shitty apps now? yes.

Commodity Vs. Labor

[SuperKendall]

I can follow your argument quite easily. However, I totally disagree with your assessment that imparting some value because of embedded labor is wrong. In fact your entire argument seems backwards in fundamental ways.

To start with, a family being ejected from a home has nothing to do with this argument really. It might be the case the family has put some work into a home, but if so then you are still measuring the marketable value of that labor vs. the remaining amount of money owed on a home. If a family cannot make mortgage payments then they can sell a home for more than the loan if they have added enough value; otherwise it will be repossessed and it's not "cruel" but understandable since they still owe more than the labor they have put into a home.

Indeed thinking about a product of thought as commodity is what is cruel, you treat the person producing it as no more than someone who glued a cog onto a watch. But the reality is that intellectual work has a much higher value than mere labor or a physical artifact produced. If you claim something that takes 30 million dollars to put together is free to all once you have produced a single DVD, then that in fact is what would cause the economy we have to collapse because many things of value that take many resources and people to produce, would never happen - and our entire society would be intellectually poorer as a result.

But there's another flaw in your thinking on the other side. The other possible side of value you claim is work put into it; but that too ignores the only side of the equation that really matters - the value to someone interested in AQUIRING.

I think in the end the issue of value begin a matter of the physical resources taken to produce a commodity, or labor put into something is wrong going and coming. The true value of anything is how much people value it, so if millions like something enough to pay $10/each for it, that is the true value. It doesn't matter how much labor is put into something; a 30 million dollar production might bomb and only make $10 million. A house that someone left as ramshackle might be found to be in a highly desirable area over time, increasing value through no effort on the owners part and not being inherent to the commodity that exists so much as the context.

Value then is something that can only be truly measured by desire. And that in the end is what renders the free download of something you could pay for un-ethnical and a kind of thief; because you yourself placed value upon the object that you are acquiring without transfer of anything to the one that produced it.

I still do not find sharing something to be an issue, because there was to start with some transfer of value from a purchaser to producer. But the issue there is that traditionally it was a one-to-one transfer of sharing, not sharing en masse. There needs to be some factor that keeps sharing from being an exponential instead of linear loss of returned value.

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[zeroshade]

Sure I can. If it is copyrighted under the GPL or the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license, it is perfectly legal to upload such copyrighted content. Not only that, but while software does exist that can copy a Blu-Ray disk, in most cases ripping a blu-ray disk is beyond the average user.

Re:Copyright infringment? ORLY?

[wagnerrp]

Not only that, but while software does exist that can copy a Blu-Ray disk, in most cases ripping a blu-ray disk is beyond the average user.

Install AnyDVD HD. Insert Bluray disk. Open Explorer. Copy largest file you find on the disk to your hard drive. Ripping seems pretty trivial to me.

Oh! You actually meant transcoding for use on a device with limited playback capability. Well then there are also applications out there that spit out compliant content just a few clicks and several hours later, and plenty of step-by-step guides available on the internet for anyone who cares to go looking.