Slashdot Mirror
Belgium Anti-Piracy Group Expands Attack On Access To the Pirate Bay
bs0d3 writes "The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (BAF), has been threatening ISPs into expanding their blockade of thepiratebay. Recently they have been sending threatening letters to various other ISPs which were not involved with the original judgment to block thepiratebay. The letter 'kindly requests' that all ISPs voluntarily block thepiratebay, or BAF will bring legal action against them. The ISP BASE has succumbed to these legal threats. Also, many of the same Belgian ISPs have taken it one step further and also blocked the DNS for depiraatbaai.be. depiraatbaai.be was setup by thepiratebay as an alternative domain which directs users to the piratebay's servers to circumvent DNS censorship. For those who can't wait for The Pirate Bay to set up new alternative domains, a full working mirror of the site still exists at malaysiabay.org, which was originally set up to circumvent the piratebay block in Malaysia."
Slashdot links to Pirate Bay? That is illegal in ProtectIP. But so is linking to Google, Facebook or Twitter which in turn links to PirateBay. And many congressmen link to these sites too! ProtectIp is a case of a law where everyone is a criminal, so let us pick and choose who we want to censor. This puts power into special interest groups, takes free speech away from anyone the special interest group wants. Someone should compile a list of every single Congressman who was in favor of ProtectIp and post them here on Slashdot. It will make it easy to know who to vote out next election. No Congressman should ever get reelection who is against free speech especially while being hypocrite about it.
God spoke to me
Because Pirate Bay has become more than just a torrent site. It has become a symbol of defiance. Flying the pirate flag proudly and giving lawyers the finger.
Slashdot tries to report on Stuff That Matters to its audience.
The Internet matters to its audience.
Tremendous efforts (legal, extralegal and illegal) to impede free use of the Internet are currently being made by Corporations and the governments they own.
The efforts are currently frequently directed at The Pirate Bay.
Slashdot reports on those efforts. Therefore, the name "The Pirate Bay" frequently comes up.
I hope that I've connected enough dots for you.
No it isn't morally ok, you are depriving the creator their choice in where and how their creation is distributed. Using P2P on files you don't have copyright on you are actively distributing someone else's creation without their permission.
It's basically some hand waving that allows people to feel morally innocent. I've no issue with pirates who admit what they are doing is morally unjustifiable - it's the freetards who think it's OK and they're STICKING IT TO THE MAN that get my goat.
Sadly both you and I will get modded down as people "need their free shit".
Since we have the means of copying something that has value, we should do that. For free, we can spread joy, information, knowledge and culture to people. Obviously, we should do that.
We should also find a way for talented people creating the content to be able to keep doing what they do and not having to get a job at McD which would cut into their time of producing their art. A little bit of socialism could help.
A good starting point to build a more sane society, where passionate people could pursue their passion while the rest of us could get jobs to afford luxury items to fill the void of lacking a passion, might be a basic income guarantee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Blah blah.
Your music/movie/game/book can be copied an unlimited number of times for free. Following the law of supply and demand, your media is worth $0 since supply is infinite.
So if you still want to make money from it, change your business model. Sell something that actually has value. Make the music available for free, build a fan base and cash in on that fan base by selling t-shirts, concert tickets and other derived products. I'd pay a hundred bucks for a replica of Dr Who's Sonic Screwdriver. So far I can't find a proper replica. Only cheap plastic stuff. I found one that makes light but no sound. I found another one that makes light and sound but it's also a pen, so not a real replica. I found a perfect replica of the newest screwdriver they use in the show, but I like the previous model better. I never paid to watch a single episode of the show, yet if the people in charge could just make that replica of that screwdriver I'd pay as much money as a few DVD seasons are worth.
Again, music/movies/software by itself is worth $0 today.
Also, I'm an artist myself. I make my art available for free. I still manage to make a good amount of money. People donate money or buy my derived products. "Collector editions" of my products, which feature a nice box and a few items, can not be downloaded and sell pretty well. Last year I made almost a million dollars in profits. Sure, I could fantasize all night about the extra cash I would make if I could force 'pirates' to pay me, but the reality is that my art is worth what people think it's worth. I'm also very happy to make nearly a million a year and so I do not care much about making more money by forcing pirates to pay me. As long as I think I earn as much money as my work is worth I don't see why I should demand that more people pay me. And if one day too few people pay me, well I will stop making art and I'll find a job. Most of my fans know this, so that's why they donate money even though they can access my art for free.
I am also very happy for the Internet and file sharing, it has helped me spread my art to more people. Recently I received a letter from a fan in CAMEROUN. He's from a village where they get water from a well and doesn't have access to electricity except for battery-operated devices. They access the Internet by going to the nearest city. He wrote a letter to thank me for my work and tell me his friends and neighbors all enjoy it a lot. I doubt they all paid me for my work but you know what? I don't care. I'm just glad I could entertain them. That's my first goal. I'm glad that I make money in the process of creating my art but that's far from my main goal.
So as you can see, you are not speaking for myself. You claim to be defending artists but you are not. You are either very ignorant of this issue, or you are a shill working for big publishers. Publishers are leeches, they are not needed anymore, they never were really important, but they still take over 90% of the profits. When you hear a publisher claim piracy hurts artists, you can be sure they are hypocrites. And if you really liked art you would know this, so I think you're working for a label and just shilling on the Internet. Or maybe you are one of those fake artists who don't even write their songs and who only care about money. These fake 'artists', I can see why they don't like piracy even if they make millions anyway. But these 'artists' are the people who turned art into a business. Art wasn't a business, if you create for money more than for the sake of it then it's not even real art.
Piracy removes the incentive to create art, you say? If money is your incentive, then you are not creating art anyway and thus society loses nothing of cultural value if you stop creating! You don't believe me that commercial 'art' is not real art? Well just look at what has happened to culture today.
Many people think reading books is not important and is boring, or that playing farmville is a comparable hobby. There used to be a time when even the guy who loved soccer/foo
Explain to me why a bricklayer shouldn't be allowed to charge for 70+ years after his life ends for every house he ever built and we'll talk.
The problem people have isn't with copyright per se. It's with the insanity copyright has turned into.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.