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The Pirate Bay On Track To Be Banned In the UK?
redletterdave writes with this excerpt from the International Business Times about the fate of the Pirate Bay in the UK: "Swedish filesharing website The Pirate Bay may soon be blocked in the UK after a London judge ruled that the site breaches copyright laws on a large scale, and that both the platform and its users illegally share copyrighted material like movies and music. In addition to finding legal fault with The Pirate Bay and its users, the British Phonographic Industry also wants all British ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay in the UK."
Let's ban child phonography.... cut off their customer base, and drive the bastards out of business.
that the UK is exerting this kind of power over their local internet lines and providers.
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Global information exchange The Internet may soon be blocked in the UK after a London judge ruled that the system breaches copyright laws on a large scale, and that the platform's routers and end users illegally share copyrighted material like movies and music. In addition to finding legal fault with The Internet and its users, the British Phonographic Industry also wants all British ISPs to block access to The Internet in the UK.
Honestly, we need a "Streisand Effect" term for what happens when legislation merely prompts sites to use the encrypted areas of the internet.
Nobody, they only do the democracy thing for show.
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Watch This!
Whack-a-mole.
"The more your tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
1984. Thank you.
Tribler is the future of these things, and isn't really blockable.
The problem with the suit of armor - invented (yes, partly) as a response to the broadsword - is that it spurred the development of the rapier and epee.
Defense... offense... meet developers.
You know what's funny about the prevailing systems of government in this era? They're all about writing new laws, making new things illegal, regulating more and more of their citizen's lives and centralizing more and more power in the hands of a VERY few.
It never goes the other way. Ever.
How often do over reaching laws get repealed? How often does government say "hey we don't need to regulate this realm anymore because circumstances have changed"?
How often have you seen governments de-centralize things in order to make them more responsive to the needs of the citizens they serve?
How often does government shrink or even stop growing at exponential rates? How often have they become less involved when it was needed?
In fact, most governments call decreases in projected increases as "cuts".
If next year something happens that causes the government to no longer need (by their justification) to control the internet, you think they will cede control?
If you're not with Ron Paul and the Freedom movement, you're part of the problem.
Liberty.
I don't think you understand how bittorrent works...
--
True. Here in the US, you realize quickly that democracy has never graced the halls of the elected or appointed officials.
Democracy is a powerful lie, which lets people think they have power, right up until the point where they actually need to use it. Then they realize that they have no power, the laws were written by career bureaucrats who have no interest in whether or not they should be making laws, let alone good ones, for the simple reason that they themselves will never be affected by them. We had a judge, up here in Lancaster, PA, who was dismissing her own summons for various traffic violations: she just logged into the system, and altered the records. These are the very judges, mind you, who do not allow you a jury (sorry, it's just misdemeanor!) when you got to fight them, and who lovingly (he said sarcastically) click their tongues and berate you over the 'danger to society' your reckless driving could have caused, while the trooper (who arranged the date for his day off (time and a half, right guys?) and on the day you need to be elsewhere) smiles his knowing smile (he's a professional witness, your word against his...sure it's a racket, but fuck you).
I've realize why they have the Bible in the courtroom -> because by the time you get there, only God can save you.
I am John Hurt.
Because, of course, culture didn't exist prior to the development of copyright...
Commercialized culture didn't. Great art was done almost exclusively by commission for wealthy patrons or religions. All those great Greek statues and buildings? Religious temples and art. All of the famous Byzantine and Medeival art? For churches. The explosion of the new masters in the Renaissance? Paid for by the Catholic Church and the Medici's and other rich Italian families. Great art paid for by the masses by popular demand? It didn't exist. If you made a good living, it's because you found a rich patron. Otherwise, you didn't eat unless you could really wow 'em on the street corner. Even then, most times, artists of all stripes were poor. Patronage made our best art happen.
Good luck getting that system to work now. There's a reason why the "free music" model bands have failed: all of the really talented acts want to, you know, get rich. The copyright system allows them (and authors and filmmakers and playrights, etc) to make a good living. Take copyright away, and the vast majority of the El Cheapo public wouldn't put forth a dime. Bye bye Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. Bye bye, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Jackson. Bye bye, Stephen King, Herman Wouk, Ernest Hemingway.
People want to make money. And the "give it for free and hope good things happen" model doesn't work. If you want to convince Bill Gates or Warren Buffett to pay promising new bands to make records that are available to the public gratis, go for it. I bet they laugh at you, though.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
He doesn't post anything substantial because he can't. His own rant proofs copyright is not needed to ensure art survives. The post DesScorp below is also a snob, ignoring folk art, such as song and story telling which survived and thrived perfectly fine without patronage or copyright. The dutch "Smartlap" (tearjerker song) was a type of troubadour, those songs are still sung, they were not high art with patrons but simple performers making their living from live concerts.
Ah, but good living... of course, just because you sing a song, you and 5 generations of your kids (see yesterday story about perputual copyright) should be millionaires. Forget nurses doing stuff nobody else wants to do and saving human lives day in, day out for minimum wage. The true social injustice of our time is artists not being able to afford another Ferrari.
Technology has changed art and will continue to do so regardless of what some dinosaurs might desire. It isn't just recent stuff like the cassette tape but far older stuff like cheap musical instruments, printed sheet music, mechanical instruments. Even things like the movies going from silent to talkies. Once each movie theather had a pit for the band to play music to accompany the silent movie. Then, long before talkies were introduced, record players took over to save costs and put an artist out of work. Movies themselves killed Vaudeville.
Tech changed and the world adapted. Copyright was a result of tech changes so why shouldn't new tech changes not change copyright?
Trolls like brit74 are living under a bridge trying to pretend the world is unchanging and that laws which were once valid should remain valid indefinitely. He can't cope with a changing world, his kind would have kept slavery going just because that is the way things are.
Copyright is doomed in a world where digital media can be perfectly reproduced by anyone at trivial costs. It isn't even a case anymore about whether copyright is just or not. It ain't just either that 1% of the world lives with more money then they could ever possibly spent while millions starve.
The invention of the gun forever changed murder. Shooting someone is easy, far easier then choking them to death, feeling them struggle as you choke the life out of them. Shoot them and they just fall over and that is it. We haven't been able to outlaw the idea of the gun and even gun control has been impossible.
So what change do we have of putting digital copying back in the bag?
I have a proposal, every piece of recorded music must be taxed and the tax sent to live performers and instrument makers. And every printed music sheet needs a tax to compensate the monks who used to copy these works by hand. And the monks need to pay those who passed music on through teach and oral tradition. All the way back so the first caveman can live comfortable on his original art.
The content industry needs to adapt or it will go the way of other industries before that have been made obsolete or un-economical by the march of progress. If this means that commercial art dies... then so be it. Humanity will survive without and whatever comes in its place might even be greater. Or not but trying to stop the future is futile.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've never come across these "natural" rights. Who created them? How do we know what is and is not a "natural right"? All I've seen is rights granted by law.
The Swedish authorities already raided The Pirate Bay and found nothing, zip, zitch, zero infringing files on their servers. So how can it breach any copyright laws?
Sure, it facilitates file sharing and those files shared may be copyrighted... but it plays no larger role than for instance roads do in various other crimes. I mean, a road is used to facilitate almost all crimes, either as the crime scene itself or as a means of getting there or escaping afterwards. Sure, roads have legitimate uses but given that almost all crimes involve them, they do play an instrumental role.
So... if roads are not put on trial for their involvement in all those other crimes (they're just passive means, but they're there), why persecute The Pirate Bay for copyright infringement as they're also just passive means. The Pirate Bay is simply a portal, nothing more. There's no content, no hashes, no trackers. All content resides elsewhere. They have no access to hashes of the complete files shared and also have no reference hashes to verify against in order to eliminate copyrighted content, so in essence they want to ban the principle of file sharing just because you may be sharing something copyrighted.
The conclusion for the courts: Censorship for no other purpose than to quench the concept of file sharing. Possibly infringing files are not transferred through The Pirate Bay in any way and yet it must be banned?
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Janet, the Joint Academic Network, that connects all the UK universities, colleges, schools etc. has a strict policy against content-filtering - partly because it's against the ethos of an academic network and partly because they're bright enough to realise that it wouldn't work:
there is no centrally imposed filtering of web, e-mail or other content provided by the network; indeed, such filtering would be ineffective as the network provides many possible routes to bypass any solution implemented at a single point.
http://www.ja.net/documents/publications/factsheets/072-janet-and-internet-filtering.pdf
Bearing in-mind that most academic institutions use Janet for their student's Internet access, and most file-sharers are in the 18-25 age group, and something like 45% of 18-25 year olds go to university...
Very insightful. This is natural. As part of their internal optimizer, most people want the most with the minimum amount of effort. If possible, everything for free. Now. I'm so tired of kids thinking they are somehow entitled to everything, for just being born.
But this is not something new, most people are shortsighted, and that include most of Slashdot's audience. Those few who actually take the effort to think a bit into the future will always be in advantage, and those who are used to receive everything for free will be paralyzed when they hit a real problem.
On the other hand, we have to keep in mind this is media, and media is not about cold, absolute and truthful information. Its about entertainment. People come here to be entertained, to have fun, not to listen to uncomfortable truths. Lies and misinformation are ok, fun must prevail at all costs.
These kind of comments will always be unpopular, thus modded down into oblivion, even if they are in fact insightful. This is where democracy fails. I'll join you in -1 hell. Fuck stupidity!
On second thought, maybe "Jamiroquai Effect" might sound hipper.
Maybe in the 90's.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Why the hell do authorities have such a boner for the Pirate Bay?
The pirate bay is on the news every other day, while all the other trackers get completely ignored.
Better trackers, which are way, way better than TPB in most cases.
What's the story?
At 90MB for the whole site what are the authorities going to do when thousands of us are mirroring TPB on a dedicated Raspberry Pi each?
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
If you go back that far, there were plenty forms of entertainment but no way to record them. I'm sure there were plenty taverns with entertainment to draw people that operated a very much so commercial operation, but there was nobody there with a microphone. A painting could only hang on one person's wall unless someone carefully repainted it and a sculpture is even harder to copy. I'm sure people paid to see Shakespeare's plays but there was nobody with a video camera present. Scribes were required to copy books, a luxury only the rich could afford. Even after the invention of the printing press you'd need not only the press but also some form of distribution and retail outlets if you wanted to sell on more than your own street corner.
In short, there was no way you could directly reach the masses and there was no way the masses could directly pay you back. Taking on ten patrons each paying 10% of the cost meant they expected ten pictures to hang on the wall not one, which is far more work than one. Today you can put up a server on the Internet and a Paypal account and reach billions of people. Whether one patron pays you $10,000 or a thousand patrons pay you $10 is almost irrelevant. Okay so maybe you wouldn't be able to pay tens of millions of dollars to headline actors, directors and such. But what else would they do? Like the market is now such that you can make $1 million instead of $30 million per movie, you want to take it or go down to McDonalds and try looking good?
I don't blame people for following the money, I'd do the same too. But people don't leave and find other work until the money is so little it's worth a career change. Your star quarterback, if you halved his pay he'd go to another team. If every team halved his pay, he'd still be there playing a quarterback. How much does a writer need to earn to make more money than they do doing anything else? You don't need to be J. K. Rowling and make $800 million. I'm sure she'd do it for $8 million if there was no way to make more. The works don't go away until the creators behind them do, and I'm confident we'd throw in enough money to do just that.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Rule by an apathetic populace would be considered a possible downfall of this system.
I am John Hurt.