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Library.nu and Ifile.it Shut Down
Ralph Spoilsport writes "A coalition of 17 publishing companies has shut down library.nu and ifile.it, charging them with pirating ebooks. This comes less than a month after megaupload was shut down, and SOPA was stopped. If the busting of cyberlockers continues at this pace and online library sharing dismantled, this under-reported story may well be the tip of a very big iceberg — one quite beyond the P&L sheets of publishers and striking at basic human rights as outlined in the contradictions of the UN Charter. Is this a big deal — a grim coalition of corporate power? Or just mopping up some scurvy old pirates? Or somewhere in between?"
Adds new submitter roaryk, "According to the complaint, the sites offered users access to 400,000 e-books and made more than $11 million in revenue in the process. The admins, Fidel Nunez and Irina Ivanova, have been tracked down using their PayPal donation account, which was not anonymous. Despite the claims of the industry the site admins say they were barely able to cover the server costs with the revenue."
If you honestly believe what you are saying and/or are not a troll you need to get off the MegaMediaNewsSteam. I haven't heard anyone I know that still downloads their wares and were actually affected by MegaUpload going bunk. The best thing about the "pirates" is that they are extremely resourceful and have many, many different outlets to get their files. If you ask me, MegaUpload was probably the worst tool to use for this anyway. There are many more ways to get files and are just as effective. Hell, IRC was and still is better that MU.
I borrowed a newspaper today. I didn't pay for it, but I still read it.
Also, I have 3 books at home which aren't mine (borrowed, not stolen).
Basically, that's at least 30 euro of lost revenue for the industry.
Yet I don't feel guilty...
MegaUpload and similar sites were used by general population, and outright made money from copyright theft. It was very similar to selling warez on streets, they just tried to hide it behind "clever" subscription models and affiliate programs. Yes, serious pirates will always be able to get their files, but when the circle is small enough companies don't care. They care about what most of population does, and they can easily make it harder and inconvenient enough for general population.
Think for a moment...if we appoint adjudicators of what content is and isn't free speech, we've already lost it.
Have you heard of the "courts?" They've been doing exactly that for hundreds of years. CP, for example, is not free speech. Saying a politician murdered a prostitute? Not free speech. Saying you think a politician's opinion is wrong and stupid and you would like to see him die? 100% protected free speech (yes, even the "want to see him die" part, so long as you don't encourage someone to kill him or say you are going to do it yourself).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
The flag is so subtle that I hadn't even noticed it...
Wasn't there a big shitstorm over *one* post being deleted a few years back? I think it was due to a court order or something of the like... maybe about the HDCP keys or something? Bah.
I think the fact that posts *cannot* be deleted makes people consider what they are going to post a little more carefully. Aside from the usual spam and idiocy, I generally find the commentary here to be of a higher quality in general than places like Reddit or the comments section in other news sites. I feel that this is going to go into the shitter now.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
There are very few cases of copyright theft: when media cartels deny an artist the right to use their own work, even if there is no contract between the artist and the cartel. The rest which you seem to be talking about is copyright infrigement.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Most of it? It's a temporary dip. The pro-culture-theft crowd was saying the same thing when Napster was shut down, I'm sure the idea of average Joes using something as technically complicated as torrents seemed at least as ridiculous back then as the idea of average Joes running their torrents over untraceable, unstoppable darknets seems now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This
I really don't like copyright infringers. They give the rest of the internet users a bad name. I've downloaded share of illegal content but I've since stopped doing it for the exact reasons you point out. If I don't think something is worth the price the copyright owner is asking, I just simply don't watch/listen/read it. There's enough other media on the internet for free, or with price and terms that I do agree with that I don't need to pirate stuff if I feel it isn't worth the price. Sure I may not get to see all the new movies, but I really don't feel like I'm missing much.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Infringing copyright isn't theft. Copyright theft is when a record company takes the rights to their musicians' work. If I held a gun to your head and made you sign your copyrights over, that too would be copyright theft.
The publishing industries should stop listening to the advertiser's mantra "sell the sizzle, not the steak" and try to understand what the phrase means. You can't sell me a sizzle, but the sizzle might help you sell me a steak.
What's the difference between downloading a CD's worth of songs and checking the CD out from the library? It has dozens of movies, hundreds of CDs and thousands of books -- all free.
Since the invention of moveable type, the content sold the book. The music sold the record. Plays, concerts, and movies were the only exceptions. Study after study shows that music pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates. Attack piracy and you attack your best customers. I can think of little more foolish.
However, I agree that those making money from piracy or counterfeiting are in fact stealing. In that case, something is indeed lost.
Free Martian Whores!
You may not be aware of this, but when a person donates a book, he no longer has the book!
There is only one copy of the book. The internet is the computer, the local disk is only a cache for optimisation purpose. The same way that all your so called 'legit' files have copy all over the disk, ram and cpu. Essentially, the book is multiplexed and no user are accessing the same byte at the same time (not guaranteed but simultaneous access is very unlikely).
Why users sharing a computer system should not be able to access the same data? Why peoples in the same room should not share a book?
Yeah, computer allow to do amazing things that are not possible with paper. It's called progress, and you can't do shit about it.