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Interview With Suren Ter From 'You Have Downloaded'
An anonymous reader writes "Suren Ter discusses privacy, piracy, and the future of filesharing. Suren produced the virally popular YouHaveDownloaded.com, which displays all downloads on the public BitTorrent network associated with an IP address."
When asked about his views on piracy: "Just like I told a French journalist and to the lady at the Washington Post, pirates are thieves and they do steal. Yeah yeah, 'when I steal your DVD, you have no DVD, but when I copy a file, you still have a file' — I get that BS. We all know that it’s BS too. However, SOPAs and PIPAs create tyranny. If given the choice between thieves and tyranny, I’d rather stay with the thieves."
Oh well I used to believe there was a difference between theft and copyright infringement; but now that someone's called the distinction BS I'm changing my views. Heh, my captcha is "proofs"
I'm just surprised this service hasn't been acquired by the MAFIAA. It could easily lead to the largest John / Jane Doe lawsuit ever filed; just make a little script to generate a legal document for every IP address matching one that downloaded something they think they own.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
When I copy your DVD, you still have a copy that you can try to sell to someone else. When I can't copy your DVD for free, I won't pay for it, I won't bother acquiring it, I don't end up having it, and I haven't wasted my time watching it. You still have a copy. You still don't have my money. That's the difference.
The idea that you can sell your product and retain control over what people do with it. That's BS.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
My result, dozens of recent and hundreds of historical "infringing" torrents later:
Hi. We have no records on you.
This means you are using a private torrent tracker or, of course, you may not be a torrent user at all! It happens. Please, entertain yourself. Feel free to see what other people have downloaded. The search box is on the top. If you have any friends who use torrents, use it to scare them off. We also have a widget that you can install in your website, blog or Facebook page. Or you can just send them a link to this site. They will see a table similar to what you see below. The only difference — they will see their downloads.
Its been proven before and is still true. IP doesnt mean anything. I just put in my printers IP and it downloaded Twilight... I never knew my printer likes crap vampire movies
Are you trying to convince us you're BadAnalogyGuy?
I don't want my DNA sequence being shared, therefore I won't sell it. People who don't want their content being distributed can do the same.
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a) NAT
b) dynamic IP ranges
But authors are so full of themselves it hurts :). Good luck for them and maybe-buyers, once they try to litigate with mostly false data.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
For anyone who knows math, logic, or who is rational, can you please answer this question as to whether stealing becomes right if everything is owned?
You can argue semantics all you want, but the base argument is very simple and straight forward: Should you be allowed to take another person's efforts and do whatever you want with them?
If you answer Yes, nothing else needs to be discussed, people "own" nothing.
If you say No, then you need to start breaking down things to qualify what belongs to a person and what is effort. Since this simple question is overlooked to quibble about false analogies and traditional word meanings, very little useful dialogue tends to pop up in these conversations.
Not even the author of the work. It is a government-created *privilege* not a right, and it is revocable and limited in scope.
Someone who copies your work has not stolen anything..... they've merely infringed upon your government-granted monopoly. That's life and part of the cost of doing business (like when 80s-era Microsoft, Commodore, and others copied Apple OS's look-and-feel).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I expect to get flamed and modded down for this. But if I had any mod points right now, I'd mod Suren +5 insightful.
Well except, I could only mod him +1 insightful.
And except for the fact that making copies of music/movies you own and sharing with others isn't really piracy, but sharing with unlimited strangers is simply wrong, and y'all know it is. Whether you will admit it or not.
And except for the fact that breaking DRM to make legitimate copies of your stuff is totally not piracy and should by all accounts be a fair use right. Oh wait it is, except for that vile DMCA.
So, perhaps the Movie and Music industry brought some of this "piracy" on themselves. Still doesn't make filesharing of others copyrighted work right. I too prefer the "piracy" over tyranny. Until such time as media companies figure this out, they won't see one penny from me.
The idea that you can sell your product and retain control over what people do with it. That's BS.
I would like for anyone on Slashdot to logically and mathematically answer this from a consequence based risk analysis perspective.
Why is it wrong to download music if no one is hurt by your consumption of it? Is artificial scarcity worth it and why do we have to maintain artificial scarcity? Is it a religion or tradition to maintain artificial scarcity in certain industries?
I don't see how it's unethical. I do the math and I don't see the fans of music/movies/art losing, I don't see the artists/actors/ losing, as people will always go to concerts, movie theaters, or buy copies to see them before everyone else.
So what is the point? Can they squeeze a few percent more profits by artificial scarcity? Probably, but these profits aren't enough to justify putting the entire file sharing industry out of business and totally changing the face of the internet.
Nobody "took" anything. The content was bought and then shared.
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What good is tracking IP addresses when every computer on the internet can become a proxy so that it's impossible to know who downloaded what?
The proxy service could be built into file sharing apps themselves or created as a chrome plugin which uses onion routing to hide file sharers behind other file sharers and then download the file in bits and pieces and reconstruct it. This could even be done in a way so it looks like ordinary port 80 traffic.
Technically true but you could call it a network in the same sense as the "tor network" or "i2p network."
So they could download a bunch of .torrent files off of popular sites that are using popular trackers and snoop into those, but there's no way they can see everything.
Yep that's what they do. Not hard to write a scraper to download all torrents from a tracker index site.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sure, why not. It's not like my DNA is full of proprietary code or is some kind of artistic expression.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
"Should you be allowed to" is virtually never a valid question. We should be allowed to do everything except what we AREN'T allowed to do. Most reasonable rationales for why something should not be allowed are based off of harm caused or intended to be caused. If I stab you, that harms your body, so that is something we should not permit. There is no such harm with copying, so it shouldn't inherently be stopped like actual theft should.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Should fingerprint scanners be used to allow someone to download and listen to a particular song or watch a particular movie or unlock a particular game?
You can argue semantics all you want, but the base argument is very simple and straight forward: Should you be allowed to take another person's efforts and do whatever you want with them?
If you answer Yes, nothing else needs to be discussed, people "own" nothing.
If you say No, then you need to start breaking down things to qualify what belongs to a person and what is effort. Since this simple question is overlooked to quibble about false analogies and traditional word meanings, very little useful dialogue tends to pop up in these conversations.
Except that information != physical property. You can't compare the two because they behave in totally different methods. For instance I can't simply copy a chair by right clicking o it, the same is not true for information. All there person's effort went into making the first copy. Once it's made there is no additional effort expended in the copying of said idea.
This is the problem though, people want to treat information as physical property with defined rights of ownership. Well unfortunately you physically can't. The best you can do is lock down every information channel and force everything into a DRM mandated system. The damage to the free flow of general ideas (i.e. ones that people may not even be trying to own) is obvious and catastrophic.
We need to find a way to reward the initial creation of an idea, not it's distribution.
Actually, there is a "bittorrent network": Mainline DHT. uTorrent, BitComet, Transmission, etc all use the same network (although apparently Vuze has its own).
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You jumped ahead of the question. You are already defining bought, shared, ownership, content and implicitly effort. The point is the base definitions do not work any more, the technology and methods of distribution have moved beyond the scope of our general legal understanding. Copyright has been used to try and combat that, but it is flawed in many ways. Start from the beginning, define everything with your logic and see what you get.
As it currently stand the purchase once and give away free to everyone is not sustainable. What do you propose those industries do then? I'm not saying it's gonna happen tomorrow, but outline to me how "sharing" would not eventually kill these intangibles based industries we all love so much?
Well, the key is that if you spend all your time debating whether or not copyright infringement is theft, you never actually have to discuss whether copyright infringement is wrong. Arguing definitions lets you avoid addressing the real issues!
Check out my world simulator thingy.
You can argue semantics all you want, but the base argument is very simple and straight forward: Should you be allowed to take another person's efforts and do whatever you want with them?
If you answer Yes, nothing else needs to be discussed, people "own" nothing.
If you say No, then you need to start breaking down things to qualify what belongs to a person and what is effort. Since this simple question is overlooked to quibble about false analogies and traditional word meanings, very little useful dialogue tends to pop up in these conversations.
Except that information != physical property. You can't compare the two because they behave in totally different methods. For instance I can't simply copy a chair by right clicking o it, the same is not true for information. All there person's effort went into making the first copy. Once it's made there is no additional effort expended in the copying of said idea.
This is the problem though, people want to treat information as physical property with defined rights of ownership. Well unfortunately you physically can't. The best you can do is lock down every information channel and force everything into a DRM mandated system. The damage to the free flow of general ideas (i.e. ones that people may not even be trying to own) is obvious and catastrophic.
We need to find a way to reward the initial creation of an idea, not it's distribution.
Why not pay them to create ideas?
Others said torrents throw in a few sprinkles of fake IP addresses. They should throw in a lot more! Maybe when we have a few more grannies 'downloading' The Hangover 3 and Eminem people will start to realize this IP address thing is garbage. I only hope the government isn't too dumb to figure out this list is worthless.
Their website says my home IP address downloaded two files I've never heard of: ... p.BRRip.Xvid.AC3-SiNiSTER (2.08 GB)
Mobb Deep Black Cocaine - EP (45.02 MB)
30 Minutes or Less.2011.7
Mobb Deep Black Cocaine? Lol. I'm a fricking skinny white guy. I'd much rather listen to Pink Floyd or Foo Fighters than some heavy rap. But I just bought the CDs instead of downloading them. Maybe I'm actually funding the real root problem by giving the **IAA groups my money.
Sharing and buying are not incompatible:
As it currently stand the purchase once and give away free to everyone is not sustainable.
You're falling for the mental trap they've set up. That situation simply won't happen. People who share also pay: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music
Hell, they buy it even before it's made: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure/
The "copyright or bankruptcy" dichotomy is simply false. Maybe there will be less money to go around, but that's all.
You know who will really suffer? People who sell shit and don't take refunds, because pirates try before they pay. But should we really give a crap about them?
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From the site:
"Don't take it seriously The privacy policy, the contact us page — it’s all a joke. We came up with the idea of building a crawler like this and keeping the maintenance price under $300 a month. There was only one way to prove our theory worked — to implement it in practice. So we did. Now, we find ourselves with a big crawler. We knew what it did but we didn’t know how to use it. So we decided to make a joke out of it. That’s the beauty of jokes — you can make them out of anything."
Who will pay them, who will decide how much, who will decide which ideas are worthy of payment at all, who will decide what kind of ideas are wanted...?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's the problem. If you can't agree on a common definition for things, you can't move forward in the discussion. Problem is, both sides know this, so the situation never gets resolved. "It's stealing!" "No, it's infringement!" "Same thing!" "No it isn't!" ad nauseum.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
"A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation."
-- Howard Scott
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It breaks the notion of the market as a level playing field. All investors should have access to the same information. Therefore, all investors except those with the inside information, are disadvantaged and thus opened to potential financial harm.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Read that as Saren at first. Too much Mass Effect for me. :3
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/31/scotland-gets-first-file-sharing-conviction
and the article also alludes to "This is the fifth conviction in the UK for filesharing. Four of the five man team behind the BitTorrent tracker OiNK pleaded guilty to filesharing in early 2010. "
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Who said I was interested in buying it? I got all I needed from the free hair samples you left in my car last week. By the way, I was sorry to hear about the robbery at your home. It's unfortunate that the robber uploaded all of your private data to a file sharing site, but at least they caught him and made him compensate you for the cost of the media. On the plus side someone got a hold of that novel you were working on and even fixed the downer ending you were in the middle of writing. It was a real hit and the guy is already getting donations to write a sequel. I'm not sure I'll read that one though, he says it's going to contain a lot of crossover elements from his favorite anime.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
Not only that, but after a decade or so of seeing this war out in the open, all DRM and similar systems do is to create an arms race that only ultimately disadvantages non-technical consumers. Look at eBooks. It is trivial to break the locks for anyone with even as a modicum of technical knowledge so that they can view eBooks from one source to another, thus enabling technically-capable consumers, but also, ironically, opening it up to actual pirates.
Nothing is accomplished other than that consumers who can't figure out how to break the locks to do what they want with the data being screwed over.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
For me, some copyright violations are ethical and most aren't. My ethics probably also disagree with the law on finer details of what constitutes Fair Use. In general I try to follow the though.
Ethics and Laws are fundamentally different though. Law simply implies somebody with authority made a rule for others to follow. Ethics implies a value judgment and will vary somewhat from person to person. The ethics here aren't a simple black and white case of right or wrong. If it were, our discussions on the topic would be short. But right or wrong, it's illegal to violate copyright, so long as the copyright laws are applicable to you. And that's the issue to both those who support and those who are against copyright as it stands today. Legal Ethical and Illegal Unethical unless the world is ideal.
It's a scam; the insider is selling something, knowing that it will lose its value. It's akin to selling a broken product, or better, one which will break soon after the customer bought it.
People that want it. I want a some songs to party to. I call up DJ Bob and say, "Hey man, I'm having a party. Here's $N1. Can you provide me with N2 hours of entertainment for that?"
Kickstarter is another method. A developer says, "I'd like to make this game. Do you want it?" "Yeah, I want it. Here's what I'll pay." If it's funded, it happens. They cover the costs of development. Any lost sales to sharing don't matter. They got paid what it cost to make the product. Maybe a little more.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Yes if it was willingly offered. No if it was taken from his server, secure accounts or other forum where he had the reasonable expectation of privacy.
If you display your work for free or for hire...you don't own it anymore. You're free to make as much money as you can from it, but morally I don't feel concerned if people are using your material for other purposes. What the law says is another matter, but these laws aren't for my people.
We need to find a way to reward the initial creation of an idea, not it's distribution
Your right, but there is slightly more since that reward has to come from somewhere.
We also need to find a way to share the rewarding for the initial creation of an idea amongst the people who find the idea useful fairly. Maybe not everyone should have to contribute something to the reward but someone has to, how do you choose who contributes and who does not?
Do you just allow people to contribute whatever they feel like? Surely that relies on everyone being honest wanting to give something back and unfortunately this is not currently the case in the world we live.
I dont read
Civilization is based on the principle that you take somebody else's effort and use it, improve it and teach your children about it. If humans wouldn't copy each others behavior and products, we'd still be "sitting in trees eating bananas". Copyright was "invented" to protect the small man against big corporations getting off with the brink of the money of what their effort was. It took less than 100 years for corporations to find a way to bend that concept to their benefit and essentially screw the small man out of almost all of the money. For every millionaire music artist, there are thousands that ended up paying more to the record company than making their record cost in the first place. For every millionaire music artist, there are at least three millionaire music industry executives. Try finding funding for a movie that won't make the movie industries millions for certain. It's not about how much it will make the actors or the people making the movie, or if there might be a profit in it at all, or even the artistic value of the movie. It's about profit for big record companies, that will all go to people that won't need to work a day of their life anymore and still not be hungry, needy or poor.
Maybe, just maybe, there is virtue in copyrighting medication, but that industry tends to be mostly focused on erection pills and symptom suppression, not on curing important diseases.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I think a lot of people miss the point here. The authors of the site call it "a joke", but that's only because the extent of the monitoring is small, and the ability to trace to a dynamic IP (which is most of us) is largely nonexistent. An organization with a bit more presence could grab MUCH more information, and/or find a way to sync with you in real time.
This site is really a warning about how much personal data is leaked- assuming you consider your IP personal- when you use torrenting. There are ways around this (discussed in this thread), but I really think the folks who check and say "well, it thinks I downloaded this video about making wine, but I never did, so the site is useless" are missing what the site implies is actually possible.
More bad analogies. There's no inconsistency between supporting laws condemning people who distributed data obtained by illegal means and not support copyright. Your argument is absolutely flawed.
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> You can argue semantics all you want, but the base argument
> is very simple and straight forward: Should you be allowed to
> take another person's efforts and do whatever you want with
> them?
Sure. The progress of all of human history would not exist otherwise. Even much celebrated "innovators" and "inventors" stood on the shoulders of others.
Copyright exists to serve the public good. It was never meant to be a form of property.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why should I give a damn thing about the industries? Do the industries care about me? Do they care about the workers they fire when they move manufacturing to overseas sweatshops? Do they care about how they make their own country poorer when they move their capitals into tax havens? Did we care when cars destroyed the economy of the horse? A failed business model must be failed for a reason, and therefore it's best to let it die.
If people love the industry so much, then those who do can pay for it by themselves. It's absurd that the Government must pass laws, spend money to uphold them, and limit the freedom of all its citizens, to create an imaginary property for those industries to sell.
All property, tangible or not, exists only because the Government defines and protects it. Tangible property needs to be protected because it can't be duplicated. Intellectual property hasn't that problem.
Except there is harm done to one or more party. The buyer(s) that ends up buying the stock ends up paying a higher price than they would have if they had known the same information as the seller. We can pretty accurately nail down a specific victim(s) and a specific amount of harm inflicted.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Yeah yeah, 'when I steal your DVD, you have no DVD, but when I copy a file, you still have a file'
The real issue here is not that copying is stealing or otherwise a lost sale, the real deal is that the world has changed and the business model for media creation and distribution is DEAD. FULL STOP. No ammount of lobbying, no matter how many laws Hollywood can get of their payed puppets will change that. It's like the railroad owners of 19th century were sen't on destroying that new "invention" called automoviles and trucks that let anybody achieve transportation without giving them their share. Let's face it, I can go to the west coast without needing you, train company. Let's face it, I can get content without needing you, big media company. BUT!!!!! Big media produces the media I want, and the actors, directors producers etc. etc. needs their food too, so... What is needed is a new way to monetize content CREATION, note the word creation, not DISTRIBUTION. Nowadays distribution is FREE, as the roads are "FREE"... you owned the railroads, but you don't own the roads anymore, so for everybody's sake, stop trying to charge me for using the road and go invent some new way to get my money (Sell gas, sell insurance for my car, and so on). Because, like it or not, being fair or not, being legal or not, charging for distributing media is NO LONGER POSIBLE, and trying to "regulate" this is like trying to pass a law that abolishes gravity... it will not work.
As a software engineer and a musician, I disagree with your assessment that "no one is hurt by your consumption". It's the tragedy of the commons. If just you download my software, or download my song for free, Your right, I'm not really hurt. But the problem comes when that behavior becomes widespread. Software is hard work, and so is music. I need someway to be paid for those efforts. With software in particular, There isn't always one person that is willing to pay 500,000 dollars for a piece of software without that kind of return. Something like Photoshop: no one person wants to fund that, and just let everyone else copy it. But it still a useful piece of software that is worth something to a lot of people. So how else do you do it? You make it so everyone that wants it pays a piece of it. And when you download it for free, that 1) is not fair to the people that do pay, and 2) is not fair to the people who developed that software. You're saying that their hard work is worth nothing to you, but you still want the work. The "It's not stealing" argument is BS. You can argue it all you want, and it is actually an easy point to argue, but that doesn't mean you're not just trying to explain away why people like me should give you our work for free.
You can engage in copyright infringement as an act of civil disobedience because you disagree with the specifics of copyright law while still believing copyright infringement is wrong.
No you dont you liar! You make a playlist of mp3s and play them in your favourite player completely without paying a cent.
Football Odds
Seeing as you're an AC I doubt that this is even useful, but you should answer the question asked, not the question you wish you were asked.
The truth is that the best way to reward the creators of content is to have the consumers pay for the content they consume. There is no other method that even comes close to being as good.
You use the Kickstarter model.
It's really not that difficult to figure out.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Suren Ter (me) I’m a producer of the site. Like a movie producer, I made the site. Ruslan is a visionary. He did the necessary research and invented the technical tricks. Ilia is a programmer. He does the code. You see those tables, html and widgets? He did it. Me? I don’t do code, I don’t do research, I don’t do design — I do sites. Drop me a message if you’d like.
This guy's attitude is right in line with any "producer." They market other people's work to earn fame and/or money for themselves. Now, the two programmers, they actually MADE something and I don't see them complaining about "IP theft." A producer makes money from selling the product, the more money the product makes, the more successful they are. Actual creative minds (the programmers in this case), might make a bit of money, might get a job offer, but most importantly they have pride for having created something! Suren has nothing without being the gatekeeper.
Sensi fucks Kerry Louise in the Jacuzzi.mp4 (280.26 MB) Nov, 2011
Ahahaha, looks like someone wasn't quite working that day.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Don't forget that the mythos around Robin Hood was stealing from the rich to give to the poor.
When you cause your storage hardware to take on a unique information pattern that I brought into being, and you have copied this pattern against my will and consent, you now have an actual physical instance of my pattern, one that can do real work and/or really entertain you, that I am 100% justified in erasing from your storage hardware -- by force. After all, by your own reasoning, you don't own the pattern, so you have no right to retain or maintain it, and consequently you have no right to protect the physical instantiation you have caused to come into being.
If you don't like the terms I offer in exchange for providing that pattern to you, then you can legitimately refuse the terms and the pattern. If you take the pattern anyway, you have now qualified for a visit from the police, who operate -- quite correctly -- under the guidance of the constitution, which specifically provides for legislative mechanisms to protect those who generate new value for society in the form of art or invention.
Society will always benefit from invention; society will always be harmed by discouraging inventors. This means that your simplistic so-called philosophy that "information patterns cannot be owned" will always be at odds with society. Legally speaking, the behavior you champion here should result in fine, and/or imprisonment when detected -- and that is just how things should be.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Is he a monkey and does he eat cheese?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Exactly. "We all know that it’s BS too." Fuck that guy.
What's the difference between me downloading a movie or going over to a friend's house to watch his copy? Either way, I wasn't going to pay $14.95 for it. I've never bought a movie. And the few times I go to the movie theater it's the dollar theater, or $1.20 redbox. If I could watch any VCD quality movie I wanted for $1, I would pay it, because that's what it's worth to me. And I do, when possible. I pay for netflix.
Point is, watching a movie is not a crime. Neither lending a book, nor humming a tune. Civil disobedience I say! You can pry my eyes and ears from my cold dead hands.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
The value of a good idea is directly related to how widely it is used.
This system prevents the value of an idea from being maximized. The food, shelter, power and material goods that the creator of intellectual works receives is not created by restricting it's dissemination. Those materials exist, regardless of how far the idea spreads. The purpose of the system is to determine who gets support and who does not. Anyone with a brain could think of a half a dozen different ways to make that determination without requiring the good idea to be restricted in its use.
This system is STUPID. It is WASTEFUL. It DESTROYS VALUE. And, with the onward march of technology, the percentage of the population with idle time to create goes up, and the amount of idle time goes up. So, the rarity of the producers of IP continuously decreases, and that rarity would decrease even faster if good ideas were spread wider and faster.
This system is indefensible. Period. It has to go.
I'm a creator of intellectual works. My creations have dramatically improved the quality of life for all mankind. And I've sat in many round table discussions where I was forced to come up with ways to artificially destroy the value of my own creations. It makes me FUCKING ANGRY that I'm forced to do that for such stupid and unnecessary reasons.
So, take your BS about protecting the rights of creators and SHOVE IT UP YOUR FUCKING ASS. Find a way to determine that I deserve to be fed and clothed and sheltered and I'll weave magic that makes everyones life better till the day I die. Because THAT'S JUST WHAT I DO.
Fucking scumbag.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
My IP address is copyrighted. Prepare to be hit with thousands of DMCA notices, my friend.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
As it currently stand the purchase once and give away free to everyone is not sustainable. What do you propose those industries do then?
Don't try to sell music, sell CDs and use the MP3s as advertising. Don't try to sell novels, sell books. Copyright used to only apply if a work was "fixed in a tangible medium" and I posit that bits over a wire are not tangible.
Read Cory Doctorow's thoughts on the matter, it's in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom iinm (either the preface or afterword). You can read it for FREE, just visit your local public library or download it from boingboing. Doctorow credits his success and status as a NYT best seller to the fact that he puts his work on the internet for free. It works for him, it could work for music or movies, too.
The problem is that the publishers' own greed is killing them. The RIAA would have embraced Napster if they didn't already have radio. Most indies love to have their stuff shared.
As Doctorow points out, nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity.
You can't make piracy go away, but you can use it to sell goods.
Free Martian Whores!
Personally, I'd flip on satellite radio... because I don't keep many MP3s. I have Last.FM (through RhythmBox... no ads, and if I really want to hear a song from my selection on there, I can skip forward a bit and usually get it), and a Sirius subscription. Really though, there are places that pay people to play music for their customers. Bands can usually book gigs and if they get popular enough, venues. There are ways for "artists" to make money. They just don't want to work for it... who blames them. If you could do something one time and profit off it the rest of your life, wouldn't you?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Under the assumption that few will buy but all will share
Flawed assumption. File sharers buy, a lot: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music
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As a software engineer and a musician, I disagree with your assessment that "no one is hurt by your consumption". It's the tragedy of the commons. If just you download my software, or download my song for free, Your right, I'm not really hurt. But the problem comes when that behavior becomes widespread. Software is hard work, and so is music. I need someway to be paid for those efforts. With software in particular, There isn't always one person that is willing to pay 500,000 dollars for a piece of software without that kind of return. Something like Photoshop: no one person wants to fund that, and just let everyone else copy it. But it still a useful piece of software that is worth something to a lot of people. So how else do you do it? You make it so everyone that wants it pays a piece of it. And when you download it for free, that 1) is not fair to the people that do pay, and 2) is not fair to the people who developed that software. You're saying that their hard work is worth nothing to you, but you still want the work. The "It's not stealing" argument is BS. You can argue it all you want, and it is actually an easy point to argue, but that doesn't mean you're not just trying to explain away why people like me should give you our work for free.
I'm a software engineer and musician too. Nice try.
As a musician I know most money isn't made from digital sales. In fact every musician knows this. And software patents don't actually make it easier for software developers.
And also the problem is that Photoshop costs so much that everyone I know has to take out a loan to buy it. If we simply don't have the money to buy every single song we listen to then it's not our fault it's your fault and the markets fault.
I'm all for spreading the wealth but when the wealth doesn't exist what is there to spread?
He called it "BS."
Surely his opponents have all changed their minds now? They know in their hearts that they're 100% wrong.
If someone else called "stealing" "murder," I would try to correct them on that, too. If you don't like that, then stop using words that I feel are incorrect.
Then pay them, as you would pay a farmer to grow crops, which too have value.
Don't you think you're being a bit elitist by assuming that intelligence isn't equally distributed among mankind? Intellectual jobs are jobs like all the others. Remember that we're not talking about designing a nuclear power plant here, we're talking about IP in general. My grandfather didn't finish elementary school, and was a carpenter. In his spare time, he made paintings and acted in the local theatre.
That's why I never said that IP producers shouldn't be paid by those who need their services. At the same time, if those services are already available at no cost, then their customers should be able to get them for free, and pay IP producers to solve other problems instead. That's how mankind progresses. If governments want to contribute to the scientific or artistic development, then they can fund public education, research and entertainment.
Well, I am a part of society, I'm all for paying IP producers for their work, but not for them living on the profits of their past work without producing new one. Therefore, I see sharing of already existing IP not only as a non-criminal behaviour, but as a positive one, to be encouraged in the interest of the progress of mankind. Instead, I see defrauding people of the right to use their intellect to solve their problems, for the sole reason that someone else had reserved the rights for that procedure, as unethical behaviour, even unhuman in certain cases.
That's a desire IP producers share with bricklayers, gardeners, doctors. The latter manage to get a living without governmental protection, perhaps IP producers could do the same. By defending the status quo as "the best possible world", we'd be still living in the ancien régime.
Except, of course, it isn't, the implications are completely different, and even the law thinks they're completely separate issues. Just like with copyright infringement. The only difference is that people take "rape" already seriously as is, so it doesn't have to try to _co-opt_ the term for another, separate crime. 'cause that's what the whole business with conflating copyright infringement with theft is _all about_. Nobody gives a shit about copyright infringement, so they try to leech off the badwill for the word "theft". Hell, maybe they should just say that copyright infringement is raping the artist. It's just as true, and there's even more badwill to be gathered.
Only reason they don't is that it'd take an even bigger moron to buy it.
So fuck this douche with his support for the copyright newspeak.
Intellectual property has value
Actually, much IP is worth nothing or less than nothing. For instance this post is IP, are you going to pay me for writing it?
Therefore, we want people to produce it
Not really. We want people to produce quality scientific advancements and entertainment. Most IP is neither and much only becomes valuable when a government granted monopoly restricts other people from using similar material or methods.
Compared to the population at large, producers of IP are rare
Nope. Pretty much anyone who can write, talk, or operate a camera is an IP producer.
Also, IP can be expensive and/or time-consuming to produce
Some IP can be expensive, most is created automatically via copyright and costs nothing. Creating the work the IP is derived from may be expensive or time-consuming but the work is not the IP.
If the producers are not repaid in a manner that sufficiently encourages them they will be less inclined to produce
And if the producers are paid too much they will also be less inclined to produce. Why continue working when your one hit can guarantee that your great-grandchildren never have to?
So we should make sure that said production is rewarded, not shared without recompense
Says who? Most media companies will give away free copies to garner interest in their product. It seems like they know the value of sharing when they want to.
Hence, society rightfully sees "sharing" as criminal behavior
Actually, society does not see "sharing" as criminal behaviour. Certain people with a commercial interest in preventing sharing have been running a propaganda campaign to convince the easily swayed that it is so. Most of the people who believe sharing should be criminal belong in one of two categories: fools or profiteers.
Information may want to be free, but IP producers want to pay the mortgage.
"I did it to pay my mortgage" is likely to be the 21st century's "I was only following orders". It's not a justification for sending people to prison for the crime of "sharing". The current copyright regime is unsustainable.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Hence, society rightfully sees "sharing" as criminal behavior
Law sees "sharing" as criminal behavior. Society is much more divided: 34% are opposed to any kind of punishment, and even in the 52% who think punishment is due, 75% only support relatively small fines (less than $100) and most don't support disconnections or throttling.
And that's now: in younger people (18-29), 70% have committed copyright infringement, so we'll see in a few years how large is that support.
http://piracy.ssrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/AA-Research-Note-Infringement-and-Enforcement-November-2011.pdf
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Well, what would happen is this (applies to both music and software):
- Those in it for the money get out of it
- Those in it for the love stay in it
- The world will find balance, because
- Either everyone is fine with the new situation
- Or there becomes a renewed demand for engineers/musicians.
Now, the days of middle men and a lifetime of royalties, selling one piece of software a million times, may be be coming to an end. There will however always be people paying for an engineer to solve their problems, or a musician to perform at their venue.
But even this is exaggerated, since we're far from there yet. Do you think the average Joe would not prefer to spend a dollar and instantly watch the new episode of House at 1080p on his big screen TV ? Or pay 4,95 for iPhoto on his iPad ?
The BS is that the content is not available, we still have prehistoric models of region-based releases and 'this item is not available in your country' BS, and deal with stupid DRM schemes that only hurt the paying customers (so why become one?)
Apple has already shown there is a market for software and media content, the fact that it is easier to torrent something than pay a reasonable amount for it is what the problem is.
Digital sales and licensing structures can change. People can be paid. We might even get paid more when all is said and done, it depends on how we structure it.
But the way the record industry is currently set up, even most big time stars aren't getting paid.
Well, the key is that if you spend all your time debating whether or not copyright infringement is theft, you never actually have to discuss whether copyright infringement is wrong.
Why can't you do both?
Aside from when you're arguing with people who say things like, "Copyright infringement is theft. Theft is bad. Therefore, copyright infringement is bad." of course.
File sharing is not inherently illegal in its own right. It has both legal and illegal applications. How does this site distinguish between copyrighted and non-copyrighted materials, if at all?
The site is littered with phrases along the lines of "You used bitTorrent, therefore you are bad" -- presupposing that BitTorrent use is always illegal.
Since the web site's rhetoric presupposes that all BitTorrent use is illegal, I find it hard to immagine that its data gathering is any more selective. Anybody know?
the moment we have full-scale mass replicators, every tangible goods industry will be changed forever.
...
there's no wildcard mechanism to ask the tracker for a list which torrents it serves.
Actually.. It is. Not all trackers support it. But on one that did, I got over 30mb of hashes back... :)
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
fine, but they must add these little stipends:
1. reasonable copyright limits. no one should be able to milk a work for their entire life. 10-15 years, maximum.
2. to be protected, the product must be available for purchase. fuck that out of print (or worse, back in the vault) bullshit in this digital age.
3. get rid of all regions. this is the internet age and old school barriers have no place in it. play globally or gtfo.
4. make the purchased media easier to use than the pirated goods. this includes format shifting. digital is digital, double and triple dipping can diaf.
5. make the recording and archiving of television as easy as vcrs were. i can timeshift into the next decade if i so choose.
6. cutting out the middle men (pressing, packaging, shipping, retail logistics) should cut the prices of digital distribution in at least half, if not more.
once these are met, the playing field becomes more even. they don't get to have their cake and eat it too. i buy plenty, but i also download every tv show i watch, as i come from a generation that is used to being able to record and keep anything i am subscribed to. just because they found a new revenue stream (tv on dvd) and put up many roadblocks to record the stuff (disabling firewire on dvrs and such), doesn't mean i'm going to stop hoarding my media. broadcast quality, lack of generational degradation, and ease of reproduction have no place in this discussion, btw.
...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Insider trading is fraud. Most of the time, when insiders trade, is that somebody on the 'outside' gets skinned and cleaned of their hard earned savings. It's a way to scam the market, just like those 'pump and dump' emails we get spammed with, just another way to find more suckers to finance your 3rd yacht and 5th vacation house. It's illegal for a reason, and if 'nobody gets hurt', it wouldn't be, not with the kind of money they're talking about.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Except it's really not a problem, because there IS a common definition.
Fact: copyright is entirely a legal construct
Fact: the legal term for illegally copying something that is copyrighted is "infringement". It is not and never has been "theft".
If you're going to accept the legal construct of copyright, you must also accept how that law defines it.
There is no argument. There is only what is correct, and what is not.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
There are two "values" here. One is the value to the inventor; we want that to be high so they will continue to invent for the benefit of society. The other is the value to society. If we take without recompense, we may very well have done ourselves out of the next idea, which might very well be even better. So we don't do that (well, some of us don't.) And the laws are designed around this idea. They also, by seeing to it that patents and copyrights expire, see to it that the ideas with value that transcend the moment eventually become available to all at no cost, having been given some amount of time to provide compensation to the inventor. The idea is laid out in the constitution, and implemented by legislation.
On the contrary. The system ensures that the best ideas are maximized quite well. In some cases, the system sees to it that the ideas are actualized in the first place (drug development is the poster child for this.) When creating an idea is very expensive in terms of consuming something the inventor had to put into the task that said inventor valued highly, if we take it from the inventor, we can be quite sure that the inventor will find something else to do -- like work at McDonalds -- instead of working on the next idea in line. I can tell you authoritatively that it is quite frustrating to create an expensive commercial product and find binaries, program keys and the like on the net shortly after release.
Aha. Well, when we get to 100% idle time, free robots do all the work we would prefer not to do, we all have personally satisfactory shelter and exquisite medical care, no one needs income to support themselves and their family, materials and time are available freely to all, and invention is therefore actually costless, I'll be happy to revisit this idea with you. However, until those conditions obtain, you're quite wrong.
Fascinating. How have your inventions improved my life? Perhaps I owe you a donation. Please elaborate.
lol... Sounds to me that what you do is push poorly thought-out, childish philosophy somewhat incoherently on the Intertubez... but ok, fella, whatever. You go on with your bad self, a legend in your own lunchtime.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
> Don't you think you're being a bit elitist by assuming that intelligence isn't equally distributed among mankind? Intellectual jobs are jobs like all the others. Remember that we're not talking about designing a nuclear power plant here, we're talking about IP in general. My grandfather didn't finish elementary school, and was a carpenter. In his spare time, he made paintings and acted in the local theatre.
Intelligence in known to be unequally distributed. Perhaps you meant to say 'creativity'?
I do pay them. Without fail. Movies, commercial software, music, shareware, etc.
No. Because intelligence isn't equally distributed among all mankind, and neither is creativity. Fact. We have to deal with it until we get a whole lot better at genetic manipulation. Einstein's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by Elton John. Elton John's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by Marie Curie. Marie Curie's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by George Bush 2. And George Bush 2... well, I guess he only screwed us royally and is dumber than a bag of hammers as well so my "contribution" chain breaks there; but my demonstration that intelligence, creativity and skillsets land here -- but not there -- is only made more solid.
So how long do they get? A day? A week? 1 microsecond after one copy gets out in the wild? How long should an inventor be allowed to "live on the profits" of an invention? Say someone invents a cure for cancer. What's that worth? A week of lunches at Denny's? Just a note in the newspaper? What about Photoshop? All those tools, all that capability... what's it really worth? And how come you get to decide? C'mon, tell us.
Hold on now... this isn't the same issue at all -- you've moved the goalposts. I agree completely: If indeed one uses one's own intellect to solve a problem, one should have the absolute right to use the fruits of that solution. This is not constitutionally prohibited, or even mentioned, nor is it readily defensible. It's just really bad law, like a lot of law. Photoshop exists; this has no bearing on your right to use, or invent, the Gimp, or Paintshop Pro, or Aperture. Ibuprofin exists; this should have no bearing on your right to invent, or use, bufferin or aspirin (similar drugs with similar ingredients.)
But we're back to scarcity -- the playing fields are not even slightly comparable. I can find a bricklayer easily. In fact, with just a little bit of training and a willingness to sweat, I can do my own (and I have.) I can also do my own gardening, and have, in a similar fashion. But when I need software that does X, where X is very difficult to do and may be also very difficult to understand, and may take a great deal of time, and may cost me a lot of money... I will have to get this software either by expending a lot of treasure, which imbues the process with debt that I will want to compensate for somehow, or by expending enough time of my own in order to solve it -- and if that problem isn't in my domain (or even if it is), it may take quite some time to solve. Again, I will want that time to be compensated for at a rate equal, at least, to other uses of my time, or -- obviously -- when next I'm faced with such a thing, I will not likely be willing to attempt a solution. None of this is even slightly compatible with the idea of "it's on teh Intertubez, I can have it for free!"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
perhaps we need another word. i agree that "theft" as legally defined for centuries does not really work in an "economy of abandunce" (there's another term that needs rethinking - the word economy implies scarcity).
that said, harm doesn't just disappear in an economy of abundance - the scarcity then becomes the market itself. a product can be duplicated infinitely, but there's only so many people out there who can buy or download it. it's interesting what this guy says about initial copies being watermarked and traceable to the original leaker. that is a good idea IMHO.
i'm a digital liberal to be sure, but i work for a small(ish) film/TV distributor, and let me tell you, when "The Hunter" appeared online, we wanted to kick whoever leaked it right in the tits. it's a shitty thing to do. we send out review copies to people for PR purposes, and one of the scumbags goes and uploads it to some torrent site. there's no reason not to sue that person for any manner of things, though i agree that "theft" is not a satisfying thing to nail the dickhead(s) with. also, chasing regular Joes that further shared the file is futile - that's attacking our market. it's the fuckhead in the press who got the review copy that should be accountable, and a unique watermark is a great way to prove who it was.
Ah, so your solution is, if people are creative enough to be able to make a living in selling their creative works, don't? Go get a job doing something else, like flipping burgers in McDs or greeting people at WM. Don't go and write that music, or novel or book or movie or computer game, because people would rather take their hard work and give it away for free than pay them, or their overlords who pay them.
Among other things, my code co-ordinates distributed translations teams that make medicine and medical equipment accessible to the world. The largest drug company on earth uses them exclusively. I wrote the code that handles every step of the process, and integrated everything into their internal infrastructure, and when it needs maintenance, they call me. So, chances are pretty fucking good that someone you know enjoys good health because of work I did sitting in my living room.
What you owe me is to show some respect for the gift I've given you and give some regard for the fact that it's people like me these laws are designed to support.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The marketplace -- ie, me -- deems it worthy of handing you a post in return.
But the IP we're actually talking about does fit into that category. To say that something has no worth, while you connive to take it from someone who did not offer it to you freely, seems to be only evidence of cognitive discord. If IP has no worth, there's no need to take it, is there? And if IP *does* have worth, then the right thing to do is pay for it, yes? And if the IP has worth, but not enough for you to pay... then it seems to me that you should (a) keep your money and (b) not use it, and all will be well, because the invention thus discouraged is so affected by the fact that the IP isn't of great note..
Um. Well, yes, but again, individually valuable IP isn't typically produced by someone without a clue, as youtube and most blogs amply demonstrate. The IP under discussion is that which is taken from someone who is attempting to exchange some rights to it for recompense. Other IP isn't at issue here. Fair enough?
Certainly not. But the work is the cost of the IP creation to the producer; and if that work is not adequately compensated, that most likely will signal the end of your ability to mine that source for more IP.
Actually, society does. Those who have been habitually stealing movies and music and are either desperate to excuse their bad behavior, or simply do not grasp the ideas laid out in the constitution (if they've even read it yet) typically do not -- but you will find that among real businesses and real law and well educated citizens and within the constitution itself, the idea isn't even in question. There has not been one single post on slashdot, ever, that has laid out a socially persuasive case for creation/invention having no value -- and every argument for copyright infringement of even moderately recent vintage material rests upon such a rationalization.
Seriously? You would compare an inventors hope of compensation for the act of inventing, with a Nazi's ducking of responsibility for torture and murder? I guess we've come to the end of your even moderately sane points, then.
Well, perhaps that is so. In which case, legislation will have to change. You can write congress (pretty much useless) or lobby them (better, odds of success are strictly a matter of how much funding you can apply, and how widely) for change, or, you can engage in civil disobedience -- lawbreaking on principle -- at which point you need to be prepared for fines, or jail, or both, while not being assured in any way of success.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Not just law. Also, the constitution. Also, the senate. Also, the house. Also, the executive. Also, the judiciary. Also, business. Also, pretty much anyone who is well educated, formally or otherwise. Also, pretty much anyone who has created significant IP.
Yes, we will. And if they manage to defeat the ideas of copyright and patent without a suitable replacement, we'll see how many great new movies and songs they get to enjoy as well. Because the relationship there is very solid. Unless the demographic you speak of elects to tax themselves in order to support all technological development and all art, the day they emasculate copyright and patent law is the day they begin a long slope downwards towards a much lesser state type of IP beneficiary. We had star wars and avatar and the IPad and the PC.... they'll likely end up with IP comparable to "artistic" shaky camera work in the woods, chasing badly portrayed "witches", and a very inexpensive bottle of "colloidal silver" for that cancer that's ailing them.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I believe you probably meant "stipulations." I'll proceed on that assumption.
First of all, there's no "must." You want these things, you will have to fight for them. If you want the fight to be successful, you'll have to lobby. Civil disobedience doesn't work in a society that has monetized incarceration. They want to arrest you.
Yep, I like that. Might argue for longer for really expensive undertakings... do you understand it takes a good portion of that 15 years just to get a drug through the government hoops? Kinda of makes it a bad idea to undertake anything long term, you see. But WRT movies, books, etc... yes, I agree, 15 years seems like more than enough to me.
No, don't think so. I'd give 'em the same 15 years. I don't see any reasonable basis for obtaining rights based on what *I* think someone else should be doing with them.
Um. Well, countries, borders, sovereignty? You want to be subject to Sharia law? You think the Arabs want to be subject to US law? You think the French want to be forced to allow the sale of Nazi memorabilia, or materials, solidly protected in the US, that support racist views? You want the Taliban to come in here and wrap your sister or sweetheart in a Burka? No, again, I don't think so. Different regions have different laws, different rules, different ideas... and I'm ok with that. If you live in one of those regions where you don't like the laws, either work against them, or move somewhere more palatable, or don't expect anything but the status quo.
I think at least in the US, this is actually the result of misinterpretation or actual oath-breaking on the part of lawmakers. You do have the right to copy a work for your own use, as long as it isn't for profit and as long as it doesn't impact the financial space of the rights-holder(s.) Unless they can show that you redistributed the work, or showed the work to an audience that extends beyond the terms of the right(s) you purchased, it would be correct for you to prevail in court.
Well, again, there are several ways to go here. You can just not buy, encourage everyone you can to do the same, and hope there will be a drop the price in response. You can lobby congress for legal change (regulation), but this is extremely expensive, and since your compatriots are people who are trying quite hard, even to the point of some rather insane rationalizations, to avoid paying anyone anything, perhaps not really a great choice for you, or you can engage in civil disobedience, hoping that your fine and/or arrest will draw enough attention to your cause that the laws will change. Of course, that won't reverse your conviction (in the USA), and do keep in mind that the US has monetized its prison system and will welcome you with open arms into your very own mattress equipped involuntary anal sex paradise.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Don't try to sell music, sell CDs and use the MP3s as advertising.
Who would buy CDs? Why spend money on a less convenient medium? Sales of CDs hasn't necessarily dropped because of piracy, it's that people use services like iTunes and Zune to buy music because it's way more convenient. If you don't have to pay for mp3s then that's even more of a reason not to buy CDs.
First off, - PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS make money off their works, find a way to - even overcoming problems. Second, when in fuck's name is that scenario EVER happened? Somebody creating a work, nobody buying it -> failure -> starving? [Not to mention, if it DID happen, how do you know the guy wasn't working on other projects to keep him from starving, or that it was 100% due to piracy in the first place given all the other variables]? Most importantly, that does jack shit to actually address his point.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
However, the right of ownership is a intrinsic right recognized by most thinkers who brought us the Enlightenment.
The right to restrict the communication of third parties is not.
So, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Theft of a purchase? What a crock of shit. I'm not sorry, but you don't own a sale before you get it, and not making a sale is not the same as somehow having one taken from you that you already had - that defies reasonability on all levels.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Not just law. Also, the constitution. Also, the senate. Also, the house. Also, the executive. Also, the judiciary.
All of each represent a very small part of the society.
Also, pretty much anyone who is well educated, formally or otherwise.
Oh, I couldn't find data that showed the acceptance of copyright by level of education, is it online?
Also, pretty much anyone who has created significant IP.
Well, that's called "biased people". I'm sure horse breeders disliked the car as well.
Yes, we will. And if they manage to defeat the ideas of copyright and patent without a suitable replacement, we'll see how many great new movies and songs they get to enjoy as well. Because the relationship there is very solid.
But is it really? It's kinda hard to believe when e.g. film piracy has been rising and at the same time the MPAA was having record profits, year after year, when studies like this appear or when people pay millions for a product that doesn't even exist yet.
I don't doubt that getting money is sine qua non for the development of new content, but I find the claims that copyright is necessary for that money to flow to be far from proven.
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No, people will pay even if they share. The idea that you need copyright to make a living from creative works is flawed.
Dilbert RSS feed
Just for the heck of it, I tried searching for downloads of known 100% legal content -- Linux distributions, kernels etc.
Sure enough, there are people (well ok, IP addresses actually) accused of being thieves because they downloaded perfectly legal materials. Nowhere on Ter's web site did I see a single mention of the distinction between merely using file sharing (which is legal) and using it to violate copyright laws (which is not).
This distinction is apparently unknown to Suren Ter, or more likely deliberately ignored. His rhetoric clearly states that if you ever use file sharing, under any circumstances, you are a thief!
What a bozo!
That's the beauty of jokes -- you can make them out of anything.
Or claim anything is a joke when it isn't.
Well, perhaps that is so. In which case, legislation will have to change. You can write congress (pretty much useless) or lobby them (better, odds of success are strictly a matter of how much funding you can apply, and how widely) for change, or, you can engage in civil disobedience -- lawbreaking on principle -- at which point you need to be prepared for fines, or jail, or both, while not being assured in any way of success.
You're not quite there yet. If I want to share data with someone over the internet (say, a friend, family, etc..) I can. I just send an email, a SMS, I set up an FTP server at home, etc.
From there, using encryption to hide myself is trivial. And then, nobody will ever be able to say what I sent to my friend.
So: In the internet days, sharing data is secure and easy. The IP you're talking about is also just a bunch of bits. Therefore, I can "pirate" with my friends all I want.
That's one to one sharing. The process can be declined in n to n sharing very easily.
Conclusion: No amount of legislation or technology is ever going to change piracy. Actually, it's not quite true, but the only change will be that more and more pirates will press the 'encrypt' button. At that point, noone will be able to see what amount of the data that transit over the internet is piracy anymore.
That will suit Hollywood which will be able to claim that 1234 petabytes of pirated media are being shared every day (a guesstimate) representing 1254785214587 quadrillion dollars of lost revenue hence levying for more taxes to be redistributed to Hollywood.
But the bottom line is: Piracy is here to stay.
Now, is it the end of content creation? No. Because most people that pirate are not looking for something cheaper than the legal alternatives, they are looking for something simpler. So there is still a way out of this that will be a win-win.
They will get it, don't worry. It'll take the time that it'll take, but they'll get it. The question is: How much damage will they have done to society with their crappy laws in the meantime.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Someone who wanted an instant backup, who wanted high quality cover art and liner notes. Someone who like to display his or her music collection on shelves. If they quadrupled the sampling rate and doubled the bit depth, audiophiles would buy them because they would truly be high fidelity if played through audiohphile quality equipment (especially speakers).
How is a download "more convinient" than unwrapping a CD, putting it in the drive, and clicking?
I can legally get as good a quality rip as an iTunes download by simply sampling the radio. The music is already free. Selling music is like selling air -- it's free and nobody needs to buy it... except scuba divers and welders and people with COPD.
Free Martian Whores!
Perfect. And do you do it because you are forced to, or because you want to reward the authors? That's the difference.
I'm not advocating for piracy. I'm advocating for reform.
I don't think so. You're outlining a caste of self-defined special beings who must receive a special treatment because they're the only ones able to perform a certain task. It's not that different from what the powerful believed in the past, for example in France before the french revolution. Certainly to them the idea of putting the government into the hands of ignorant, head-cutting mobs must have appeared foolish.
I can't accept that. Rules must be equal for everyone and the world usually gets better when they are.
This should be decided by the people who pay them. If an inventor does not agree with the kind of payment that his customers are willing to withstand, then he's perfectly free to keep his invention for himself. But then he can't cry foul if another inventor makes the same idea available for a lesser price.
I think the government should award such a breaktrough with taxpayers' money, and the discovery should be put in the public domain as soon as possible. If the discovery was done by a researcher working for a pharmaceutical firm, then he already would have a monthly/project-based wage, and its employer could take advantage for being the first to market. Apple for example made a ton of money by starting to sell a copiable product in a certain market before others.
Indeed, I see software developers having a hard time selling generic software that can be freely copied. They should focus on solving problems tailored to specific situations, which can't be duplicated. For example, selling support packages. Or installing the software where it needs to run. How come RedHat are able to make tens of millions, even though everybody can copy the software they sell?
In fact, if you think about it, coding Photoshop would probably have been much easier if its authors were free to re-use other people's work to finish it. A great optimization in the use of resources.
I'm refering to patents here, aren't those the worst form of IP? What does Photoshop display when it starts, in its splash screen? Dozens and dozens of patents prohibiting people from implementing *by themselves* the same stuff that Photoshop does. Even without looking at Photoshop's code. Even if they live on the other side of the planet and aren't even aware that Photoshop exists. And what about patented drugs? Why should a poor country renounce to protect their citizens' health if they can't af
Personally, I'd flip on satellite radio... because I don't keep many MP3s. I have Last.FM (through RhythmBox... no ads, and if I really want to hear a song from my selection on there, I can skip forward a bit and usually get it), and a Sirius subscription. Really though, there are places that pay people to play music for their customers. Bands can usually book gigs and if they get popular enough, venues. There are ways for "artists" to make money. They just don't want to work for it... who blames them. If you could do something one time and profit off it the rest of your life, wouldn't you?
Speaking as an artist, artists don't profit from digital sales. This is why you don't see artists coming out supporting the RIAA except for the superstars who sell millions of Albums and who have no business sense.
Someone who wanted an instant backup, who wanted high quality cover art and liner notes. Someone who like to display his or her music collection on shelves. If they quadrupled the sampling rate and doubled the bit depth, audiophiles would buy them because they would truly be high fidelity if played through audiohphile quality equipment (especially speakers).
Audiophiles certainly would, i reckon you're definitely right there, there's a market for that, the question is whether it's big enough to support the industry.
How is a download "more convinient" than unwrapping a CD, putting it in the drive, and clicking?
Obviously because I don't have to go out to a shop and buy it or buy it online and wait for it to be delivered. If i want it i can just download it straight away.
I can legally get as good a quality rip as an iTunes download by simply sampling the radio.
Well again, it's convenience, if it's on digital radio and the song you want happens to come on when you want it and you're recording it, then yes, but that's hardly convenient.
and give some regard for the fact that it's people like me these laws are designed to support.
Uh, sir, I've got a Michael Eisner on line three who would like to talk to you about that...
(i.e., it's people like you that these laws should be designed to support, but it's people like Eisner that these laws are designed to support -- designed by the best lobbyists money can buy.)
Bananas are not seedless. Slice a banana down the length in the center, and you'll see the seeds. They're very small.
Those aren't real seeds, though -- they're where the seeds would be, if the banana had any seeds. No modern cultivated food-grade banana has real, viable seeds, precisely because they're so big and hard that you really wouldn't want to try eating a banana that did. See this image for an example of a wild variety with real seeds.
Have a look at the book Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World for more fruity fun.
What does it mean to distribute data obtained illegally? It's just data isn't it? They caught the theif and he gave you back all of your ones and zeros even, what everyone else has is just a copy and all copyright law was abolished, remember? Even with an "all-or-nothing" copyright law where obtaining data illegally is protected you'll need to prove that you have NEVER sold or given any of that information to ANYONE because I could argue that the copy I have was given to me by someone else who you sold or gave that data to legally, and not from the theif.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
as far as the regions thing goes i was strictly talking about entertainment media. no more region coding. no more staggered releases to maximize profit.
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Oh, but I wasn't saying we should go out against people who got the data from the thief, just against the thief himself. Sorry if I wasn't clear. No, if I got my private data copied by a burglar or cracker, I wouldn't demand that third-parties to stop its distribution.
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Most highly rated comments are repeating the tired old mantra of "zOMG piracy isnt thef!!" Wouldn't it be great to see more comments that actually address the other issues with piracy?
Sure there are real differences between theft and piracy. There's also real differences in the marriage of two different genders and the same gender, but spending all your time focusing on that is pretty pedantic when the bigger issues are sitting next to the elephant in the room.