Pirate Bay Founder Fined For 'Continued Involvement'

tekgoblin writes with an excerpt from TekGoblin: "The founders of The Pirate Bay have been hit with a bunch of punishments and other measures to prevent them from continuing. However Fredrik Neij was just fined by the Stockholm District court another 500,000 Swedish kronor ($70,690 US). Fredrik Neij and Gorrfrid Scatholm both had been banned from operating the site but Neij had been recently found still involved with the site. Neij already owes around 10.6 million."

Comments

if you already owe 10mil

[james_van]

what's another 70k?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mixing units.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

The music industry ownes Swedish courts. The 500,000 SEK damages (and the 10 million SEK damages prior) can be compared to the damages typically awarded to rape victums: 100,000 SEK. What the music industry is doing to Swedish courts is anal rape.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, i just shat myself. Or "sharted" as the fat bloke in that movie said.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary should have specified instead of just saying "Neij already owes around 10.6 million" after referencing Swedish kronor and US dollars. Everybody knows nobody will ever RTFA anyway.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[KingSkippus]

True, it's "only" around $1.5 million that he owes right now. Still, it's a valid point, and the problem with levying such exorbitant fines. If I were fined $1.5 million for something, at that point, no amount of additional fines would ever make a difference in my activities. Whether it's $1.5 million or $1.5 billion, I know I'm never going to pay it off, so what difference does it make? If I were fined $1.5 million for something, I would pretty much take it as free license to do whatever I want from that point forward with no concern whatsoever for monetary penalties.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[h4rr4r]

Yeah, might as well quit working at that point. They will garnish your wages anyway, so welfare or living with family is a better choice.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[james_van]

my bad

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[ohnocitizen]

Exactly, its a slap on the wrist. Especially considering the 10s of billions of dollars he costs the entertainment industry daily. The pirate bay has taken to promoting indie (non-industry-approved) artists, further cutting into socially guaranteed profits. Someone needs to be held responsible for this costly outrage!

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[geoskd]

Exactly, its a slap on the wrist. Especially considering the 10s of billions of dollars he costs the entertainment industry daily. The pirate bay has taken to promoting indie (non-industry-approved) artists, further cutting into socially guaranteed profits. Someone needs to be held responsible for this costly outrage!

Sarcasm may seem funny, but under the circumstances, it is counter productive, as it gives the (socially deficient and sarcasm impaired) politicians the impression that some part of the population agrees with the content usurpers, and thus they should side with the plaintiffs.

-=Geoskd

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[MarkvW]

Very many people agree that the Pirate Bay is an organized copyright thief. That's a simple fact.

Now, that's not true on Slashdot, but Slashdot is not a fair representation of the general population.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[X0563511]

Yea, at that point if i wasn't a "real" criminal, I'd soon become one.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Ironhandx]

If you mean many people, absolute numbers wise, you would be correct.

If you mean many people, percentage wise, you couldn't be more wrong. Less than 25% of the public view downloading music as illegal, and to be fair NONE should. The recording industry is entirely fabricated. Artists get next to nothing out of it and have to tour to make money.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

After having entertained this sort of scenario, I've come to 2 realistic options. The 3rd is a bit extreme...

Option 1) Yyou live life like you normally would. Having a job, paying some 'amount', still living life as though nothing had happened. The question here is that 'amount'. If it was exorbitant, with every spare penny going to the fine, no money for extras/vacations/retirement/FUN .... then option 2 enters this equation.

Option 2) You become homeless, living on the streets and off of other peoples good charity. Or, fall off the grid and live off the land hunting and foraging for food (possibly gardening to some degree), while avoiding law enforcement and any scenarios which might get you arrested (not sure if a commune would accept you, or how that works exactly....?!?)

Extreme Option 3) You leave the country, legally if possible, or illegally and never return. I'm not sure of how extradition back to the US works, if the crime is 'not paying your fines', but a non-extradition country, as well as no bounty-hunting country, would be optimal.

ALL of this, of course, depends on that fine amount. If it was up to say, 2 Million, something that could realistically be paid off, I'd opt for Option 2 or 3 (3 depending on what the fine was for; copyright infringement, patent infringement, or something equivalenty ludicrous). If it was outlandishly high, say 5 Million or more, I'd stay and work a low low paying job, enough to get medical benefits, pay rent and eat. Everything else in life would be on the good graces of others, for which I would trade in skill for. Have me over, or buy me dinner, I'll fix your PC problem, mow the lawn, etc....

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[cheekyjohnson]

Very many people agree that the Pirate Bay is an organized copyright thief. That's a simple fact.

Really? I don't know whether or not that's true, but is that simply something you hope is true, or do you have some sort of evidence to back up that statement?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mooingyak]

If you mean many people, absolute numbers wise, you would be correct.

If you mean many people, percentage wise, you couldn't be more wrong. Less than 25% of the public view downloading music as illegal, and to be fair NONE should. The recording industry is entirely fabricated. Artists get next to nothing out of it and have to tour to make money.

If you feel like the penalties for infringement are too steep, I could back you up.
If you feel like the tactics the RIAA and others have used to pursue infringers are deplorable, I could back you up.
If you feel like the actual revenue loss due to piracy is grossly overstated, I could back you up.

But the feeling of entitlement, that you should be able to grab whatever is produced at no cost to yourself, regardless of what justification you use.... that one I can't go with you on.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[gl4ss]

If you mean many people, absolute numbers wise, you would be correct.

If you mean many people, percentage wise, you couldn't be more wrong. Less than 25% of the public view downloading music as illegal, and to be fair NONE should. The recording industry is entirely fabricated. Artists get next to nothing out of it and have to tour to make money.

the way popularity works, is that most artists could never get enough money from records to live on - if they did there would be more recording artists and that would destroy being so profitable for everyone. so touring is the way to go for those who can bring in the crowds - and because the crowds aren't endless there's a limit to how many artists that can support too and right now there's as many artists touring as there are venues and people to pay for the shows. if another must see act hits the scene then that is audience "stolen" from other artists - it's not like people would have more money and more time to visit the shows to infinity.

now, if you had to have an artist license to record music then it could be true that all of them could get paid enough to live with - but regulating recording is more fucked up than the catholic church in 1400's.

if you want to live with music, by numbers, you pretty much have to go into teaching piano, guitar etc.

the current state is a glamorous lie invented quite recently by the content industry - how many rock stars can we really have and still call them stars??

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[cheekyjohnson]

But the feeling of entitlement, that you should be able to grab whatever is produced at no cost to yourself, regardless of what justification you use.... that one I can't go with you on.

But the feeling of entitlement, that some believe copyright law should exist...

Yeah, you can create feelings of "entitlement" anywhere and out of just about any situation. Invoking that word means absolutely nothing.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of *piracy* costs the industries absolutely zilch, nada, zippo - in fact, it fairly well helps them to make money - people who download a copy of a movie, if they like it (and are the types who would purchase movies to begin with) will shell out a few bucks to buy it used or in a bargain bin somewhere - either way, they make a few pennies or bucks on the sale.

The folks who normally use these kinds of sites either weren't going to purchase the product to begin with, or can't get it legally (yet) in their area. Some of the later will purchase it after it is released.

Next thing you know, they'll be after closing down the used dvd/cd market (just like the gaming industry).

True piracy - or bootlegging as it's called in the states is where they do loose out - if someone is willing to shell out a few bucks for a badly copied dvd, they are certainly willing to pay 5 to 10 bucks for a good one.

So let's get the industry working on the true problem, not this make believe one.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[cpu6502]

I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright). I guess ye have no objections if I lay you off, and send the job to poor people in China/India. After all it is for the "good of society" that jobs go to those who need them the most. Those citizens need the jobs more than us rich Americans.

Like the authors, you can go earn your money some other way. (Enjoy!) BTW I notice almost none of ye suggested an alternate method for authors to get paid for their books, songs, movies. MY proposal is that we treat them the same way we do other creative types: Programmers, engineers. Give the authors an hourly wage upfront.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Eponymous Hero]

wrong. if you'd followed the link you'd know the 10.6 million is in dollars, not kronor.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[nomadic]

"I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright)." So you don't accept the clearly logical slashdot argument that because artists make too little money from selling what they make, that we should take steps to insure that "too little" amount plummets to zero?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Sir_Sri]

1.5 million you could pay back if you had a decent enough job. 100k a year minus 50k for 30 years. And you'd still collect pension benefits as though you had 100k.

That's manageable for a normal person. 1.5 billion... not so much.

Also, living with family is risky, because any assets you get in inheritance will still be claimed, and any needs you have as you get older will not be covered if your siblings/relatives can't, and you won't have any pension except government security.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[geoskd]

Very many people agree that the Pirate Bay is an organized copyright thief. That's a simple fact.

Now, that's not true on Slashdot, but Slashdot is not a fair representation of the general population.

I know I will get lots of hate mail for this, but only people who fail to understand the epic fail that is copyright, and all of the issues surrounding it, think that copyright is a good idea. Copyright is bad for society. It hurts our economy. It hurts our standard of living, and unjustly puts large amounts of money into the pockets of middlemen who are barely more than thieves themselves. Perhaps I need to run for congress myself to get at least one voice of reason into the discussion because for some reason, those in office go a long way to listen only to those very same middlemen who are making their society worse any time they can make a buck doing it.

Artists don't need monetary incentive to create great works, they need food and shelter and the tools of the trade. The rest they do themselves. Shakespeare didn't create his great works because he was trying to become rich and famous, he did it because he loved his work. Van Gogh was a lunatic. History is littered with very talented artists who never made much money, But created vast cultural wealth for society, for no other reason than "They could". Many of today's modern music artists create compelling works, but they would have done it anyway, with or without the fortune. Most artists have a job that pays their bills and they create art on the side as a hobby. There is a vast and varied pool of independent artists, some of whom are as talented as today's top artists. The only reason you don't know who they are is because those very same middlemen spend most of the artists money to advertise the few works they choose, and ignore the rest. That advertising is designed to put your focus on the advertised works, and take the focos away from the independent works. They do this, not because its good for the artist (It ensures most artists never see a dime from album sales). They do it to maximize their own revenues (Which are largely driven by income on their advertising subsidiaries).

-=Geoskd

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[h4rr4r]

A normal person makes far less money than that. Also normal people do not get pensions. Those went away decades ago.

Try the math again with less than half that income.

You would make sure no one gives you anything in inheritance.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Znork]

As a matter of fact, the jobs do get moved to China and India so it's time the monopoly rights industries join in and smell the roses. If we're going to have a market economy based on competition that applies to everyone and nobody gets a monopoly, especially as the prevalence of rentseeking monopolists are part of the reason western workers are expensive. Paying for patents and copyrights isn't free, and the extra costs means jobs lost in other economic sectors.

As for your suggestion, if we desire to support creative endeavors beyond what the free market will bear, then paying authors an hourly wage, perhaps based on the number of downloads their works get, perhaps modulated by some max limits to be able to spread the graces to support as many as we wish from the desired funding rate, certainly wouldn't be worse than copyright. We might end up with fewer super-rich creators, but judging by the current efficiency rates of copyright we could easily fund ten times as many creators for the same money that gets spent today.

And attempting to support oneself on creative endeavours would probably be a bit more predictable than today, when you're more likely to win big serving fries with that and playing the lottery.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

Normal people don't get pensions?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

You made some bad assumptions. First you are ignoring interest. Nobody in their right minds would give them a 1.5million dollar loan, so likely-hood is you are stuck paying 'legal interest', which in the US is 1% a month (or 12.68% per year) which means interest is around $190k the first year (which will go up or down in subsequent years based on if you paid >$190k that year). Second you completely ignore taxes on your job, which mine currently is ~25% but if you are making that much probably closer to 35%, so that means just paying interest (no living expenses) would require $256k/yr. Third, the guy needs to find a job that will hire somebody who has multiple felonies on his record.

So yeah, there is no way this would be 'manageable for a normal person' unless you know of some legal place with lax restrictions on hiring and pays $300k+ per year. It might as well be $1.5trillion, it will never be paid.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[torkus]

Except there have been several examples of people who cut out the middle man and offered up their music - either for whatever the consumer decided to pay (trent resnor comes to mind) or free while asking for a donation...and did far better than they would have.

Not all people are opposed to compensating artists. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say while the majority of people no longer view copyright infringement as 'wrong' the majority of people WOULD compensate an artist for their work if a reasonable, non-abusive system was available.

100+ year copyright entitlements? The music industry finally 'got over' DRM only to see movies and (of all things) BOOKS jumping in right afterwards? Assignable copyright that corporations gobble up into an "industry?" Bewildering and arbitrary rules that prohibit things like a parent posting their 3 year old (barely) singing a small portion of a song? No. It's abuses like that which give people the moral justification to take the easy way out and pirate music.

Too little is effectively zero (or negative $) for MANY artists. Even when it's not, they would do better if you mailed them a $1 bill and downloaded their entire anthology off TPB.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[profplump]

They shouldn't, at least not from their employers. Why would you want to be trapped in one job for your whole life?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Sir_Sri]

1. I said decent enough job.

2. I didn't include inflation, investments etc.

3. I arbitrarily limited to 30 years to convey a point.

4. Everywhere in the west have minimal old age pensions for people with low income.

Lets do the maths again. The guy in question is Fredrik Neij, a 34 year old swede.

Average monthly salary in sweden is 3,911 (wiki page on sweden) euros, or 5,279 dollars. X12 = 63000 dollars.

I'm not entirely sure how poverty is calculated in Europe or sweden specifically. The UK uses 60% of median income as it's poverty rate, so lets stick with that measure, because you'd think that would be consistent with the EU.

By that account one would need 38k (more or less) dollars per year to not be in 'relative' poverty. Before tax. Leaving 25k per year (admittedly, before tax) to be used to pay off debt. So it would take 60 years, but he's still be living on just under 40k equivalent his entirely life. That seems not great but manageable. Except we haven't taken into account wage growth over time.

Which takes us to to a question of 'what is his average salary going to be over 30 years'. That is a much harder question.

http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____28313.aspx gives a longer more complex breakdown (that doesn't quite agree with wikipedia above but lets roll with it for the moment). In 1982 the 'average' salary in sweden was about 9000 Euro, compared to about 40k Euro now. Roughly a factor of 4 increase over 30 years. If you (wrongly but for sake of simple argument) assume that's linear. Then you can expect that in 15 years the median salary will be 126 dollars equivalent which would be the 'average' salary for the whole 30 year period.

So actually I undershot the projected income, but overshot on how much he'd keep. And I stand by my 30 year assessment then. It would take 15 years to be paying 50k (almost exactly, conveniently enough), but every year after that, assuming he only ever earned the exact average salary of an swede, he'd be paying more than 50k and have it paid of with 1 year before retirement at 65.

On top of that remember that's only his personal incomes. If he got married to someone also making the exact average income (and managed to stay together) they'd be doing pretty well for themselves.

So lets revisit what you said.

A normal person makes far less money than that. Also normal people do not get pensions. Those went away decades ago.

First part: True for today. Not true for the average swede over a 30 year period.
second part: not true for sweden at all. Not true for most decent places to live.

So given the choice between leeching off relatives until you die or living on the relative poverty line of 60% of median income (which is apparently about 38K USD right now) until retirement which would you prefer?

Obviously if he has to pay interest on that debt he's in trouble unless he can get a million dollar book deal. But a million and a half dollars is possible to pay off if you're in your 30's.

Again, I'm assuming he makes exactly the average income, if he manages anymore than that then it becomes significantly easier.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point: no one is going to work 30 years to pay back 1.5 million of this kind of stupid fine.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Teresita]

Just wait until they make replicators and Earl Gray starts charging you every time you tell the replicator to fix a hot cuppa.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mcgrew]

Copyright itself isn't a bad idea, but its current implimentation is. For one thing, the length. There's no reason whatever for Jimi Hendrix music to not be in the public domain -- he's dead, and there's no way to entice him to make any more music. Twenty years isn't unreasonable.

Having such a concept as noncommercial infringement is also a bad idea. Emailing you a copy of a movie should not be illegal and nobody should be able to sue me for it, but if I charge you for a copy of the movie someone else made, you've given me the money that they should have gotten.

Copyright is bad for society. It hurts our economy. It hurts our standard of living

You make those statements as if they were self-evident; they're not. You're going to have to explain how it hurts our economy and standard of living.

...and unjustly puts large amounts of money into the pockets of middlemen who are barely more than thieves themselves.

Copyright law doesn't put money in the hands of middlemen, private contracts do. These days, most artists need no middlemen, unlike pre-computer.internet times when publishers actually were good for society -- there would be no books or recorded music if there were no publishers, but that's changed.

Artists don't need monetary incentive to create great works, they need food and shelter and the tools of the trade.

If I didn't have to work for a living, my book would have been in hardcover years ago. If I had a publisher who gave advances, I'd have a lot more time to write and get the cover art finished.

Shakespeare didn't create his great works because he was trying to become rich and famous, he did it because he loved his work.

And people paid him to write those plays.

Van Gogh was a lunatic.

Yes, he was, but his total inability to sell any of his paintings caused him to commit suicide at a fairly young age. He didn't paint for the sake of painting and the love of art, he painted to sell paintings, but nobody was buying.

There is a vast and varied pool of independent artists, some of whom are as talented as today's top artists. The only reason you don't know who they are is because those very same middlemen spend most of the artists money to advertise the few works they choose, and ignore the rest.

That's because the rest aren't their clients.

Look, say my book became viral. Publishers would be beating down my door trying to get me to sign a contract so they could publish it, and I would profit from it, and have a lot more incentive to write another one. But if there were no copyright, they'd just make tons of money on it and I wouldn't get a dime -- the middlemen you hate would get everything, I would get nothing. This is your idea of fair?

I give my book away for free, and encourage everyone else to do the same, but I'd be pissed if you benefitted financially from my work while I got nothing.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Sir_Sri]

uh.. if you're 34 years old you have two choices. Leech off relatives for the next 30 years. Or work somewhere for the next 31 years until retirement, and what lifestyles would you have in either case.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[pakar]

Nope... Here in sweden, where he's also from, you pay into an pensions-fund that you save for yourself. Usually when you get a job the company is allowed to pay X amount of money per year into your fund and if you switch jobs you still keep that money..

Also, we get a pension from the goverment but this you will only survive without anything extra really..

Another thing we have here in sweden is that you can file for a sort of debt cleanup... this is only for people that will never be able to pay off the money in any timely fashion and will result in that all debts will be cleared out from you. But it will also require you to live on a minimal amount of money (think it's something like 3500SEK + rent for your apartment (must be approved and minimal).. You are also required not to gather any more debts for 5-10 years or so, and if you do you will get back everything... Everything that you earn above those amounts will be divided between the parties you own money...
Think it's also a good way to prevent companies from overloaning money to people that cant clearly pay off the debts they already own...... But all this is on a case by case basis...

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Sir_Sri]

I actually did a more sophisticated analysis, I was trying to be illustrative not exact. It's posted above if you want to read it.

he wouldn't be getting a loan, he'd be stuck paying the fine, now whether or not sweden has interest on its fines I don't know.

"Legal interest" is the maximum amount one can legally charge in interest. I'm not sure that applies here, since again, it's not a loan.

As it turns out, my bad assumption was that the average income for a swede over a 30 year period of 100k is too low based on the last 30 years. It should be 126K or thereabouts. But then my assumption that he could pay 50% was wrong, because I think the way the EU does poverty calcs is that he's be limited to about 40% of median income as debt repayment.

I agree that I haven't factored in taxes. That's actually tricky, because poverty numbers are calculated before tax, and paying off a legal fine might be tax deductible (if it's garnished from his wages).

The interest thing in general is tricky. 12% interest and sure, he's never going to pay it back. But even if he can get an exactly average job they can't garnish his wages below the poverty line (which is I think in the EU 60% of median wage), which is about 40k USD a year. That's not spectacular, but you can have a decent enough life on that and still get it paid off if it's low enough interest.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

Once produced, if the cost to replicate is close enough to zero that it doesn't matter, what do you judge to be the correct value? I hope you pay that toward every open source product you've ever used or you are your own hypocrite.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Sir_Sri]

They shouldn't, at least not from their employers. Why would you want to be trapped in one job for your whole life?

Depends where you live. You can transfer pensions between employers here. Some places have government 'earned pensions' where you pay into the government pension system and the more money you paid in the more you collect when you retire.

Those are still pensions.

The other thing that happens here is that you can collect a pension when you retire from all of your past employers. So if you worked for 10 employers you get 10 pension cheques.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mcgrew]

I notice almost none of ye suggested an alternate method for authors to get paid for their books, songs, movies. MY proposal is that we treat them the same way we do other creative types: Programmers, engineers. Give the authors an hourly wage upfront.

Who's going to pay them the wage, and without the author having a copyright, why would a publisher pay them the wage, and once the first publisher published, what would keep all the other publishers from also publishing that work?

Programmers' work is protected by copyright and sometimes patents, engineers' work is protected by patents, or there would be very little programming or engineering done.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[hackwrench]

When I read artists deserve to be paid, what always gets left off is whether or not their works get used..

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[bky1701]

Many people believing many things does not make them true. Personally, I'm waiting to figure out a way to get policies based on facts, rather than who screams the loudest, but I suppose that is not likely to ever happen as long as the majority prefers to remain ignorant.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[bky1701]

"But the feeling of entitlement, that you should be able to grab whatever is produced at no cost to yourself, regardless of what justification you use.... that one I can't go with you on."

I feel that "I have a right to profit off of my work, via a government enforced monopoly on its use" is a far worse idea of entitlement than anything pirates are physically capable of.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[ifiwereasculptor]

Look, say my book became viral. Publishers would be beating down my door trying to get me to sign a contract so they could publish it, and I would profit from it, and have a lot more incentive to write another one. But if there were no copyright, they'd just make tons of money on it and I wouldn't get a dime -- the middlemen you hate would get everything, I would get nothing. This is your idea of fair?

I give my book away for free, and encourage everyone else to do the same, but I'd be pissed if you benefitted financially from my work while I got nothing.

In that case, people pay the publisher solely for the medium and printing. Considering I just bought Ulysses (lots of pages, out of copyright) for $4, the price seems fair. I could download it for free at Project Gutenberg. If I had an eReader, that would be my preferred method of reading, actually.

For the customary car analogy, it's like paving streets for free and complaining that car companies are profiting from your asphalt. They are, but indirectly.

It's the same objection Mark Twain had, and why he defended copyright extension. However, it just doesn't hold water in this day and age, when unlimited digital copies can be made and downloaded at virtually no cost and a physical medium for distributing isn't necessary.

Bt the way, I do believe copyright should exist, but for about five or ten years, maximum. After that your work, if scientifically or culturally relevant, should be shared.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Ironhandx]

Most artists don't make a living wage from their recordings. The ones that do have basically set up their own record companies and said F U to the big record labels.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[RoboRay]

I'm a normal person and have close to that. Heck, I'm 41 and already pulling in a pension and working now on a second one. What are you doing wrong?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Ironhandx]

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the current system is beyond broken, and until such a time as it is fixed, no one is really harming the artists by downloading songs. The artists don't get sweet fuck all out of it anyways. N-Sync sold millions of records and ended up with over a million dollars on a BILL from the record label at the end of the day. They had to go do all of those massive tours to make back the money to both pay off the record label and actually have something for themselves.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[aaaaaaargh!]

Or, you just try to harm for the next 30 years those companies who imposed the fine with their immoral lawsuits, invent and promote new p2p technology and generally try to make sure these companies loose billions after billions.

At least that's what I would do if somebody told me to pay 1.5 million dollars for maintaining a site with links to files that could be used to obtain potentially copyright infringing content.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[C_amiga_fan]

The Piratebay owners should be freed.
They have done NOTHING wrong.
In fact every book movie song should be given away for free!!!

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mooingyak]

Once produced, if the cost to replicate is close enough to zero that it doesn't matter, what do you judge to be the correct value? I hope you pay that toward every open source product you've ever used or you are your own hypocrite.

There's a hole in that thought process -- developers of an open source product have chosen of their own free will to allow myself and others to download their works free of charge. Hypocritical would be to condemn piracy while using GPL code in my closed source product.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[h4rr4r]

I am not a government employee?

In the USA pensions went away a long time. My income is also not that far from that, but I know I am not a normal person. I make far more than the median income.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[geoskd]

Copyright is bad for society. It hurts our economy. It hurts our standard of living

You make those statements as if they were self-evident; they're not. You're going to have to explain how it hurts our economy and standard of living.

It took me a long time to understand that for many people, this simple truth is not self evident.

Copyright reduces the standard of living in a very simple way: It prevents everyone from having every piece of art they desire. It limits how many people can enjoy this particular luxury. It is an artificial limit, meaning that without copyright everyone, who wanted it, would have it. Therefore, it harms society.

It also hurts our economy. That may seem like a far fetched statement, but it is merely an extension of the Broken Window Fallacy. The idea is simple, if people didn't have to pay for entertainment, they would spend the money back into society in other ways that would increase the total economic production of society.

So in essence, as long as the artists are producing art, it is best for society and the economy if as many people as possible are able to derive value from that art, as cheaply as possible; Hence the original statement. Now people make a grand gesture about "rewarding the artists", but that's not whats at issue here, whats at issue is what is best for society, which always trumps whats good for an individual or group of individuals.The only caveat is that the artists must continue creating art. For that to happen, the artists need three things: Food, shelter and the tools to create their art. Given those three things, artists will create. In point of fact, given those three things, you might not be able to stop most artists from creating art shy of killing them. its just part of their nature

I do pay for music and movies because there is no other legal way to acquire the art, and to my mind the rule of law is more important than all of the above. The laws should be changed so that we can maintain the rule of law and have the increased benefit to society. I do however fully support "piracy", and would wholeheartedly support a government provision, like the National Endowment for the Arts, that works to make sure artists get the funding they need to eat, sleep and make art. What I don't support is the recording industries strip mining approach to copyright, and their death-grip hold on what, even under our original copyright laws, should have been public domain by now.

-=Geoskd

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mooingyak]

Fair enough. I suspect we agree on most aspects but disagree on how the abuses of the RIAA to their artists allow you to respond.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mooingyak]

"But the feeling of entitlement, that you should be able to grab whatever is produced at no cost to yourself, regardless of what justification you use.... that one I can't go with you on."

I feel that "I have a right to profit off of my work, via a government enforced monopoly on its use" is a far worse idea of entitlement than anything pirates are physically capable of.

I would argue that the principle is sound, the current implementation is not. I'd personally like to return to the 14 years, renew once for 14 more system, and I believe that would be preferable to complete abolishment of copyright.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[geoskd]

Look, say my book became viral. Publishers would be beating down my door trying to get me to sign a contract so they could publish it,

If your book became viral, then the publishers no longer have anything of value to offer you...

$199 is all it takes

-=Geoskd

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

I probably could (since i earn a little more than average and my other expenses are low), but the other question is would I want to work my ass off while getting none of it for myself. Nah, I'd just grow and sell ganja or something.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[geoskd]

I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright). I guess ye have no objections if I lay you off, and send the job to poor people in China/India. After all it is for the "good of society" that jobs go to those who need them the most. Those citizens need the jobs more than us rich Americans.

Look up the Broken Window Fallacy. Creating jobs for the sake of having some way for people to make money is bad for the economy and very bad for society. What is needed are jobs that increase the total wealth of society. This should somehow increase the total availability of luxury items (since we already produce more than enough food to feed the whole world with only a small fraction of our economic effort). This means more manufacturing and more service industry jobs. That is why our economic policy is a recipe for disaster, and why china doesn't give a crap about our Intellectual Property laws. They are smart enough to know that a strong economy depends on making things, ideas should be free to all (what are we going to do? Start WW3 over IP laws? don't be stupid). Spend your valuable effort on things that require effort to duplicate. Now to be sure, an artists gotta eat, and for that reason, there needs to be some method in effect to ensure they have what they need to survive and create, but artists don't create for the sake of getting rich any more than programmers work on an open source project to get rich. I don't need to know why a programmer works on OSS projects to know that it is inherently good for society that they do, and that is done without any real monetization at all. In fact, many OSS projects are pointedly free (as in beer ) as well. The same model works with artists. You don't need to tap human greed to get quality art made, you just need to stay out of the artists way; pride, the greater good, fame or whatever motivates them, will continue to do so.

-=Geoskd

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[C_amiga_fan]

You are 100% correct.
I'm surprised nobody's modded you -1 troll.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Sir_Sri]

In the USA pensions went away a long time.

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/11000.html

Worst case that's your pension. It's still a pension. Shitty as it may be. Although if you follow the paperwork there, there are a few additional avenues of getting stuff, food stamps, medicare supplements, medicaid, the social security you earned (on top of SSI).

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

But I hope that you know that, were you to run for Congress, the level of funds you would require to get your voice of reason into the discussion would require you to take the money of those selfsame middlemen to pay for it.

"But wait! I can get on debates and get media coverage of my campaign!" Not without enough funding to make you a viable candidate.

And then, should you actually be elected, you would be bought and paid for. You may indeed hate copyright implementation, but you'll either remain silent or you'll smile and nod at the next SOPA. Or you'll vote yes because you need the key votes of its' backers to vote for your rider adding a $12 million work project to your district. (Or, should you be lucky enough to actually have and speak your conscience on copyright, you'll be bought and paid for on the other issues.)

Rock the boat enough and you'll end up losing your party's support.... then you'd be out of a job. (And you don't strike me as someone who would want to be a lobbyist.)

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[AmiMoJo]

You are looking at it backwards. If you publish something you lose control over it. It's out there, you can't stop people accessing it, copying it. That is just how the world works - once one person hears a song they can hum it, play it, sing it to others, and now send them the MP3. If you write a story a person can read it and then tell it to someone else, or now they can send them a copy of the actual text.

To encourage people to produce more of the stuff we like we offer creators an exclusive right to commercial exploit their work for a limited time. That right should only cover commercial use. That is an entitlement, it goes against the natural way the world is and is granted by society.

That right is extremely generous. Keep in mind that creators are not the sole authors of any work. If they were influenced by other works, if they use elements from the public domain like the English language or popular culture then their ownership is already shared.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[pipatron]

Option 3 is what Gottfrid Svartholm, the other guy, took. Last we heard is that he went to work in Cambodia, but he has since disappeared.

A shame really because he had the only access to a nice server with very offensive and childish Disney comic remakes. It crashed some year ago, and since then no one has been able to restore it. :(

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Kjella]

Another thing we have here in sweden is that you can file for a sort of debt cleanup... this is only for people that will never be able to pay off the money in any timely fashion and will result in that all debts will be cleared out from you.

You might want to check the law for exceptions to that, at least here in Norway debts from court rulings is not treated the same way as regular debt and you can't get rid of those that "easily".

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[freman]

Here we have superannuation - which is like a pension only it gets smaller due to excessive fee's and market crashes.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Man Eating Duck]

Also normal people do not get pensions. Those went away decades ago.

Based on previous posts I believe you are American? What on earth do you do with elders who have worked a long life, but can't pay for a retirement home when they need more care than family can provide? In civilised countries pensions are included in your tax.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

to put your focus on the advertised works, and take the focos away from the independent works

Perhaps the real culprit here is not copyright, but advertising.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

"Entitlement" is the most abused word today. Get off my lawn, or I'll get off yours, but quit derailing otherwise intelligent discussion with this idiocy.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[luther349]

i really don't know where these courts think fining someone millions is going to do anything other then add to the welfare state. the man will work off the books like he did. and collect welfare. thanks you oh wise courts.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

That's also a good argument against harsh prison sentences. If you're wanted for something that would put you away for 50 years, why stop there? At that point, there's only incentive to become crazier in order to stay out of prison and get more bang for your buck, so to speak.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy "right" was created for the public good. It should be abolished as it is NOT serving the public interest. It's easy to see this. Just look (actually don't- cause it's sick) at illegal pornography statistics online. The law and media would have you believe it flourishes at least. If content is being created without any financial incentives than why do we bother with it in the first place?

If you don't want me getting at your content without compensating you don't publish it. I'm not against rewarding artists and people for time spent working on creating, developing or improving. However copyright is fucked up and has no place in this rear. Force companies products commercial content to find non-digitally restrictive ways to profit. Our right to see and hear what we can generally get should exceed that of the producers.

I operate a company the funds GNU/Linux developers. We don't ship proprietary software, digitally locked anything, or similar. Even CrossOver's just about completely open source'd software is unacceptable. I wouldn't have a problem if they released it completely- but they should be making money from legitimate. support. Charge for downloading, charge for support, but don't implement digital restrictions even if the software is 99.99% free anyway.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

But the feeling of entitlement, that you should be able to grab whatever is produced at no cost to yourself, regardless of what justification you use.... that one I can't go with you on.

But the feeling of entitlement, that some believe copyright law should exist...

Yeah, you can create feelings of "entitlement" anywhere and out of just about any situation. Invoking that word means absolutely nothing.

What, did you cast your silence spell on him or something ?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[bky1701]

You're free to think that, but I don't see any proof that copyright is doing good. We got along fine before it and it is looking more and more like copyright is merely a means to control and profit from culture that would exist anyway, while hurting technology. I think you highlight your proposal's central problem, too: it USED to be that way. Unless copyright is totally abolished, it will simply end up screwed up again in 50 years.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[brit74]

> "Less than 25% of the public view downloading music as illegal, and to be fair NONE should."

2/3rds of Americans view piracy as theft. I realize, though, that pirates have an interest in twisting numbers around to make it seem like everybody's on their side.

"A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% of Likely U.S. Voters agree that someone who downloads a movie online without paying for it is stealing from the company that made the film. Eighteen percent (18%) do not view this free downloading as theft. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure."
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/january_2012/ 71_see_government_censorship_of_internet_ as_bigger_threat_than_illegal_downloading

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Dodgy G33za]

I would doubt that this debt would be collectable if he moved to another EU country, so that would be the sensible thing to do. Many Australian graduates do so to avoid paying back their Uni loans, and they are a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than this one.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[sir-gold]

They generally work until they can't work any more, then sell everything they own (a lot of people own houses), and spend 10 years waiting to die in whatever retirement home that social security (small tax-funded pension) can afford.

American society as a whole is pretty messed up, parents don't raise their kids anymore (both parents too busy working) and adults don't take care of their old-age parents (they don't live in the same house, and are still too busy working).

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The root issue for me and for many is with copyright law itself. People seem to assume that there is some natural right in controlling the art that you create. Others disagree and see more deeply to the simple truth that if artists have the right to control their art (to the extent copyright law allows) then others are deprived of their right to share knowledge they have with one another.

If you want artists to have the right to keep secrets I'll back you.
If you want artists to have the right to enter a contract with another person, sharing the art in exchange for a promise not to share that art with others, I'll still back you.
If you just want the internet destroyed to limit humans ability to share information with one another and help reinstate the old world order then I can understand but would likely argue against this as, in my opinion, global communication is worth more than all music, movies, computer/video games, and software combined.
But when you push for copyright (even with low penalties and short terms), a law which implies that a person cannot share art with others without first getting permission; art that they have come across without signing an agreement to "keep quiet", art that they might have been first exposed to as children, I can't support you.

It seems both GP and I are trying hard to accommodate those on the other side of the copyright debate but, both of us giving a lot, we still can't seem to reach mutual ground. An across the board mind-slavery law is just a little bit too much for me.

Possible way out: Change copyright law so that it is merely a regulation on businesses and does not apply to private individuals in any way. With the human right's abuse element removed I could be convinced of supporting copyright.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[david_thornley]

Copyright reduces the standard of living in a very simple way: It prevents everyone from having every piece of art they desire. It limits how many people can enjoy this particular luxury. It is an artificial limit, meaning that without copyright everyone, who wanted it, would have it. Therefore, it harms society.

Completely correct.

It also hurts our economy. That may seem like a far fetched statement, but it is merely an extension of the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. The idea is simple, if people didn't have to pay for entertainment, they would spend the money back into society in other ways that would increase the total economic production of society.

Incorrect. Let's divide the stuff we make into copyable and uncopyable. If everybody gets to enjoy the copyable stuff, that doesn't affect how much uncopyable stuff there is, or how much per capita. If we abolished copyright, the money I used to spend on ebooks would stay with me, but it equally wouldn't go to publishers and authors. This means they aren't spending the money to increase production, instead of me not spending that money to increae production.

.The only caveat is that the artists must continue creating art. For that to happen, the artists need three things: Food, shelter and the tools to create their art. Given those three things, artists will create. In point of fact, given those three things, you might not be able to stop most artists from creating art shy of killing them. its just part of their nature

You seem to have an idealistic view of art and artists. Most raw art really isn't that good (excepting the visual arts). Writers need editors, and musicians need somebody to take the music and make a good recording. People do that for money, not for the fun of it. It's fun to write something, much less fun to edit somebody else's stuff. Right now, a good editor can make money by doing a good job on an author's manuscript. Take that incentive away and you get bad books available. (Lots of good writers submit unpublishable messes to editors, who make good books from them.)

Also, there are people who are going to create because they want to or have to, but there's a lot of people who won't do good work without some incentive. Writing a novel isn't that difficult (see National Novel-Writing Month). Writing a good one is hard, and hitting any sort of deadline takes discipline. Lots of artists of various sorts have families, and they can't get by with random food and shelter. Moreover, I want my favorite authors to be able to write full-time, so I can read more of their books, not having to support themselves doing something else. (Some choose to do other things, but I don't want them forced into that.)

I do however fully support "piracy", and would wholeheartedly support a government provision, like the National Endowment for the Arts, that works to make sure artists get the funding they need to eat, sleep and make art.

I don't approve of the NEA all that much, on general principles. With laudable exceptions, its money tends to serve the upper middle class and up; as a liberal, I'd like the poor included in all government benefits. I'd like the government to stay out of art, much as I like it to stay out of religion.

That being said, you're proposing a situation in which a person can become a full-time artist only if he or she can get approval from the government, and has to live on whatever the government thinks appropriate. I'd rather have people able to strike out on their own as artists, and go for whatever they can get without government assistance. The market is superior to government control whenever it works.

I do think that the only reason copyright should exist is to encourage artists to create, and that having a longer term than is useful for incentive is wrong. I know that some copyrighted works rake in money more than ten years after publishing, but, really, nobody creates something based on expected rewards ten years down the line, which for any individual work will be about zero.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[green1]

ever re-told a joke?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mooingyak]

ever re-told a joke?

That's a great point. Wish you'd gotten in on this earlier, as I could respect this getting modded up more than the guy grumbling about my use of the word 'entitlement'.

Jokes in theory should be entitled to the same protection as any other creative work. In practice they receive a level of protection that seems to be what many on slashdot are looking for -- comedians often buy material from joke writers, and copyright is the only legal protection they have from anyone stealing their material. But once disseminated to a large audience they're effectively fair game for anyone to use. Another comedian using them might be considered infringing, but if not he'd still be considered stale and unoriginal. The usefulness of copyright in that industry is much shorter term than in any other, as people are rarely interested, especially commercially, in old material.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Ironhandx]

Movies, not music. We have similar numbers here in Canada for movies. Movies people understand because there is a huge expense in producing them.

Music is an entirely different ball of wax. What it costs to do HIGH QUALITY producing of a track is about $60k. Cost goes down rapidly with volume so you could do a 15 track album for about 200-250k Meanwhile we have record labels raking in 100's of times that in profits and passing almost none of it on to the artists.

If it wasn't for the big record labels we wouldn't have this problem.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Raenex]

[..] companies who imposed the fine with their immoral lawsuits [..] At least that's what I would do if somebody told me to pay 1.5 million dollars for maintaining a site with links to files that could be used to obtain potentially copyright infringing content.

I love how you guys play the, "I'm not touching you!" defense when they've got their finger almost in the eye of their target. They were called "The Pirate Bay", and their main reason to exist was to allow copyright infringement of commercial materials. When links to such materials were asked to be removed, they publicly told the media lawyers to go fuck themselves. They were also making money on ads, and while they claim it was just to cover costs, there was never any transparency and any site with their traffic should have been a big money maker.

I give these guys credit for being ballsy, but otherwise they were a bunch of leaches.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Raenex]

It took me a long time to understand that for many people, this simple truth is not self evident.

That's because things you call "simple truth" aren't.

Copyright reduces the standard of living in a very simple way: It prevents everyone from having every piece of art they desire.

On the flip side, it provides an incentive to create, and in particular create more than just hole-in-the-wall theater. You wouldn't have the blockbuster movies, or the expensive games, or the jobs that go along with them without some form of copyright.

whats at issue is what is best for society, which always trumps whats good for an individual or group of individuals.

If that's the case then we can just eradicate people living on the margins, since they are a net drain. Speech considered harmful to society can be forbidden. Medical experiments can be done on prisoners. I'm sure all of this is "self evident truth" to you.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Thanshin]

I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid.

I don't understand this concept of "deserve" you have. How much money do I deserve from this post I'm writing?
Who do I deserve it from? The government? The readers? How much do you owe me?

I notice almost none of ye suggested an alternate method for authors to get paid for their books, songs, movies.

I notice you didn't suggest a method for the unemployed to get paid for their thoughts or pictures of their cats.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[psiclops]

Big Media works within the laws(even trys to change them) to fuck people over, so why should TBP be punished for working within the laws to fuck big media over?

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Raenex]

That's assuming they were working within the laws. The courts said they weren't. At least the companies behind a movie like Shrek created a movie (at great expense) that people wanted to see. The Pirate Bay were pure leaches.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

only people who disagree with pirate bay are the ones who steal other's labor and enslave them,thinking they can continue making money forever with unethical way !

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Fjandr]

That was my immediate first thought as well. Granted, it's actually only $1.5M USD, but I don't see it being realistic to "work off" that amount of money unless you are in the upper echelons of business or have significant ability to command top pay.

He'll end up doing whatever he likes for the rest of his life, content knowing that they cannot strip him of a lifestyle below whatever the garnishment floor in Sweden is. The only way he'd actually be impacted is if his behavior could result in him going to prison, and so engaging in behavior punishable only by monetary fines probably holds little deterrent value at this point.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[sapphire wyvern]

Not everything protected by copyright is the work of a single artist or small band.

Yes, there will always be new songs (and YouTube videos), even in a post-copyright world. But it takes a bit more capital and organisation to produce the Lord of the Rings films. Copyleft has worked great for software systems where you can develop iteratively, but it's not exactly making Hollywood quake in its boots due to the storm of theatrical-quality copyleft movies & TV shows. And copyleft only works because of the protection offered by copyright.

Personally, I like the fundamental benefit of copyright: It makes it (relatively) easy to amortize the cost of a gigantic, complex production across the pool of people who would be interested in enjoying the results. What's the alternative in a world without copyright? Kickstarter? Personally I'm not so enthusiastic about the idea of prepaying for a movie years before it comes out, especially if it turns out to be a stinker...

I know the music industry sucks, and I certainly agree that copyright terms are excessively long, but there's a lot more to the copyright-enabled creative industries than rock bands and authors.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Yes, he was, but his total inability to sell any of his paintings caused him to commit suicide at a fairly young age. He didn't paint for the sake of painting and the love of art, he painted to sell paintings, but nobody was buying.

Now you are just making stuff up. It is just believed that he committed suicide, and there is absolutely no evidence that it had anything to do with his ability to sell.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[JosKarith]

Or, decide that as society has totally screwed you you may as well quit playing by their rules and sell out your expertise to the criminal underworld. Punishment is supposed to be about showing you the error of your ways and reforming you. Excessive punishment merely creates a situation where the criminal feels no restraint about escalation as they no longer have anything to lose.
For example if you pass a law that if several people are committing a crime and someone gets killed in the commision of that crime all of the group will be punished as murderers then you create a situation where once the first murder has happened none of the group have any reason to show any level of restraint.
May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb is a time-worn saying for a reason.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[pantaril]

I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright).

Your assuptions are wrong. I'm opposing copyright because it limits distribution, not because i don't want to pay authors. According to some studies, pirates pay more money for media in average then non-pirates, so pirates don't have any problem with paying.

Limiting distribution is the main problem here. Without it, collective knowledge of all humankind could be avaliable to every person connected to the internet now. You could build upon existing works, make derivative works, extend them etc. The benefits would be unimagginable.

On the other hand, copyright invades big portion of our lives and constantly deteriorates our privacy.

I'm wholy in support of some system, which would provide incentive to creators to make new intelectual property, But such system can't limit distribution and can't be called copyright.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[pantaril]

Who's going to pay them the wage, and without the author having a copyright, why would a publisher pay them the wage, and once the first publisher published, what would keep all the other publishers from also publishing that work?

What about goverment paid them from tax-payers money? Intelectual property is part of the commons so it should be funded by the whole society and the benefits should be available to everyone. The main problem in this model becomes fair money distribution, but it can be done using some combination of grants, kickstarter-like platforms and other regulations. It works for goverment-funded fundamental research, it should work for other media too. The problems of this model are far lesser then problems of current copyright. The benefits of abolyshing copyright are enormous.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mcgrew]

What about goverment paid them from tax-payers money?

Then you'll have talented people who can't get paid for their work at all, while government insiders' talentless cronies get big chunks of taxpayer cash. It's unworkable.

Rather, simply reduce the term back to a reasonable time frame, maybe 20 years, and make any noncommercial use non-infringing. That would legalize file sharing while preventing commercial publishers from exploiting artists.

The concept of copyright isn't what's wrong, it's the current implimentation.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[mcgrew]

Copyright reduces the standard of living in a very simple way: It prevents everyone from having every piece of art they desire.

Coopyright itself doesn't, just the current implimentation. If noncommercial distribution was legal, you could still get the art if someone who had it was willing to give you a copy. IMO copyright should only cover commercial copying.

The only ones who are against fil sharing are the corporates. Almost all independant artists and many non-independants are all for file sharing, they realize that file sharing gets their work out there and actually earns them money.

It also hurts our economy.

The other responses to this answer it well, I believe.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes slavery at its finest.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[geoskd]

If that's the case then we can just eradicate people living on the margins, since they are a net drain. Speech considered harmful to society can be forbidden. Medical experiments can be done on prisoners. I'm sure all of this is "self evident truth" to you.

If resources become scarce enough (and mark my words, they will within our lifetime), then, yes, society will elect to eliminate the fringe. It is an unhappy, but inevitable extension of the laws of supply and demand. When people are afraid they or their children will not have enough of the things they consider essential to a quality life, then they will happily agree to anything that promises to provide that life. It is the one immutable , recurring, nightmare of human history. It is the reason we wage wars, it is the reason people discriminate. It is a basic property of human nature, and it didn't get there by accident: There is survival benefit to it. We don't see it now because we live in a world of enormous excess, but when the chips are down, watch how fast people become all the worst things we have been, and then watch who survives to populate the future. We are not masters of our own destiny, we are merely enjoying a temporary reprieve from the cosmic practical joke that is survival of the fittest.

-=Geoskd

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[geoskd]

It also hurts our economy. That may seem like a far fetched statement, but it is merely an extension of the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. The idea is simple, if people didn't have to pay for entertainment, they would spend the money back into society in other ways that would increase the total economic production of society.

Incorrect. Let's divide the stuff we make into copyable and uncopyable. If everybody gets to enjoy the copyable stuff, that doesn't affect how much uncopyable stuff there is, or how much per capita. If we abolished copyright, the money I used to spend on ebooks would stay with me, but it equally wouldn't go to publishers and authors. This means they aren't spending the money to increase production, instead of me not spending that money to increae production.

I'm sorry to be a pain about this but you're wrong. You need to talk to an economist about the Broken Window Fallacy, because you are making the same logical mistake in your reasoning here. It is understandable, it is not an intuitive theory, but it has been rigorously tested, and the mathematics is undeniable. The simple matter is that without copyright, the GDP would be higher, and the standard of living would be higher. Just like crime, it is a pure drain on society, because all of the benefits copyright used to have were replaced by the internet. Copyright no longer has any benefits for society, and the harms it does no longer have any justification.

-=Geoskd

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Raenex]

If resources become scarce enough (and mark my words, they will within our lifetime), then, yes, society will elect to eliminate the fringe.

You're missing the point. We could do all these things now under your justification that "what is best for society, which always trumps whats good for an individual or group of individuals".

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[RockDoctor]

I'm a normal person

You say that on Slashdot? ! ?

I'm not sure if I should be confused, shocked, or rolling on the floor, helpless with mirth.

No, seriously.

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[KingBenny]

the moral of the story remains the same : it's better to sling coke and rob banks than to operate a search engine that doesnt run in the billions, it's also less bad to rape someone than to download a cd, the fines are obviously a lot smaller there as well, Best thing he can do if he has reliable friends/family is to never own anything again himself and hope they don't turn their democratic eye on whoever is helping out. They might just have forgotten to report $5 of income without paying tax and get jailed for a few years for crimes against humanity themselves

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[Anonymous Coward]

If you mean many people, absolute numbers wise, you would be correct.

If you mean many people, percentage wise, you couldn't be more wrong. Less than 25% of the public view downloading music as illegal, and to be fair NONE should. The recording industry is entirely fabricated. Artists get next to nothing out of it and have to tour to make money.

Fuck the entertainment industry Who the fuck can spend $9.00 US to watch a movie???? why should the poor people be deprived due to some FAT CATS want to be FATTER . The first people they screw are the Artists then the public... I vote for Pirate Bay over Hollywoos and New York money men

Re:if you already owe 10mil

[pakar]

Currently it does not matter if it's from loans, unpaid bills, lawsuits or criminal fines... Even if i think criminal fines should be excluded from this.

What they do is that they review all the debts that are outstanding and see if the person will have a chance to ever pay them off in any timly manned.... It's the total of all debts they take into account... Ie a debt of 10M with 8% interest ie ~800k per year is more than most people make per year..

The reason for this... If a person will never be able to make anything more than the absolute minimum they would not have any motivation to actually work.. Ie a welfare case... If they make it so the person will be punished (5 years on bare minimum) it will give them an incentive to actually make some money and behave in the future..

I think it's good for the most part... But i think it should be a little more restrictive in some cases... Have read about people getting a debts of around 500k SEK that they could have paid off in 10 years (not living on the bare minimum) that have gotten debt sanitation and that, i think, is not totally right...

Chances of them ever collecting: 0

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just pro forma so it looks like they're doing something "about that darn Pirate Bay" so the USTR doesn't try to blackmail them. Again.

Visa, mastercard, blood or cheque.

[DeTech]

Hopefully they accept bitcoin.

Re:Visa, mastercard, blood or cheque.

[morgauxo]

No, but if the pb founders could manage to live off of bitcoin...

Re:Visa, mastercard, blood or cheque.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, considering that you can convert bitcoins into prepaid credit cards, or Secondlife Linden dollars (which are convertible into all sorts of things), I wouldn't entirely put it past them. Easy, however, not so much.

Gorrfrid Scatholm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't it be Gottfrid Svartholm?

Wrong name

[pipatron]

It's Gottfrid Svartholm, ffs.

Re:Wrong name

[freeze128]

I thought it was Slarti Bardfast.

Re:Wrong name

[ard]

Scatholm? Almost makes you think it was misspelled on purpose.

The other guys name...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is Gottfrid Svartholm Varg, nothing else...

They deserve it.

[cpu6502]

It's one thing to download a song or movie, say "That was crap", and erase it. It's another thing to actively copy millions of them, or assist others to do it, and distribute those copies to other people.

Only the original author(s) have the right to copy their creation. Maybe that law is unjust and needs to be changed (like downsizing the 110 year span to 20 years), but for now that is the law and these guys are clearly violating it.

Re:They deserve it.

[DeTech]

Just proving a point

it's one thing to download a song or movie, say "That was crap", and erase it. It's another thing to actively copy millions of them, or assist others to do it, and distribute those copies to other people.

Only the original author(s) have the right to copy their creation. Maybe that law is unjust and needs to be changed (like downsizing the 110 year span to 20 years), but for now that is the law and these guys are clearly violating it.

Re:They deserve it.

[spikesahead]

Yeah, blacks, get to the back of the bus. Don't you know you're breaking the law?

Don't give me none of that 'civil disobedience' crap, you're breaking the law!

Re:They deserve it.

[brit74]

> It's another thing to actively copy millions of them, or assist others to do it, and distribute those copies to other people.

I saw part of a documentary with the PirateBay guys in it. Their attitude was very much along the lines of: "If your stuff is getting pirated, too bad for you; find a different way to make money." They were completely unapologetic about piracy. They might as well have said, "You can't stop us and might makes right".

Re:They deserve it.

[Tom]

Your .sig reveals the flaws in your thinking better than your comment above, but it is of the same kind.

You can not compare one with the other. Have you failed to notice how the content industry is behind all the anti-piracy propaganda, while authors and musicians are mostly busy doing what they've always done?

What needs changing is not only the law, but also the content distribution system. Once the authors get more than a couple cents from that CD that I didn't buy, we can talk about unjust laws and author rights, deal?

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying piracy issues are comparable to civil rights?

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're saying any law is basically negotiable and should be bent to the whim of the people. I suppose since rape is so prevalent in South Africa, it should be considered "civil disobedience" by all the (former) virgins unable to get laid because magazines manipulate the public and promote an unrealistic image of what male characteristics are desirable in a mate.

Re:They deserve it.

[gman003]

Yes, I think he is. Are you implying that they are not?

Re:They deserve it.

[DM9290]

I think that is what he was doing.

Re:They deserve it.

[DeTech]

More likely he's pointing out that sometimes the law is wrong.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, enablers, huh? So why not fine those equally as involved, manufacturers of blank media? Throw a bill at anyone who's ever been in the business of selling writable CDs and DVDs and then go retroactive on the VHS and cassette crowd. If there's anyone that's ever enabled piracy on a worldwide scale, it's those bastards.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, blacks, get to the back of the bus. Don't you know you're breaking the law?

Don't give me none of that 'civil disobedience' crap, you're breaking the law!

Wow.

What's life like when you have absolutely no sense of perspective?

Besides blessing you with the unmitigated ego that allows you to make the utterly asinine comparison of endemic societal mistreatment of human beings to your arrogant sense of entitlement of being allowed to freely download whatever lame form of entertainment you want, do you often walk into furniture?

Or. maybe if we're all lucky, do you find yourself playing in traffic, while chained to a refrigerator?

Re:They deserve it.

[Dan667]

hollywood account is stealing. When are the laws going to be fixed to deal with that? It is a much bigger problem.

Re:They deserve it.

[h4rr4r]

Might? When did they use force?

As far as I can tell the only use or threat of force is coming from those supporting copyright in this case. The government in this instance.

Copyright is really not a right, it is depriving the rest of society of the right to copy. I personally think that if the scope and length of this monopoly was lower it might be morally acceptable, but 100 years is surely not.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Women have a natural right not to be raped.

Copyright is not a right at all. It's a privilege granted by "the people" to the copyright holder. Do you think "the people" extended copyrights? No, that was lobbyists and our so-called representatives. If people are being abused by a law created by people they feel do not represent them how do you expect them to have any respect for that law at all? Especially when that law isn't protecting anyone's natural rights...

People deserve just compensation for their work. They do not deserve to receive compensation in perpetuity at the expense of sending others to jail or fining them into oblivion.

Re:They deserve it.

[sanosuke001]

They do; there's a tax on rewritable media.

Re:They deserve it.

[roman_mir]

Fuck the law, there shouldn't be that law, the gov't shouldn't be allowed to pass laws that protect any specific business model, any specific business, any specific individual from other individuals in business.

Gov't is the culprit here, sure, there is a law, but it is an unjust law. Copyright and patent laws are unjust and every time anybody is in jury and there is government on one side and an individual on the other side the jury must nullify the law. Yes, the law is broken, no, it shouldn't exist.

Re:They deserve it.

[cpu6502]

>>>Yeah, blacks, get to the back of the bus. Don't you know you're breaking the law?
>>>Don't give me none of that 'civil disobedience' crap, you're breaking the law!

Democrats always turn-everything into a race argument. Okay fine : PIRATEBAY OWNERS STEALING AUTHORS' WORKS IS THE SAME AS TREATING THEM LIKE SLAVES - making them do work without pay, while the owners get rich off the profits. Piratebay is like a modern day plantation, and these modernday "masters" deserve to be punished. (Got it? Clear enough for you? Racism seems to be the only thing you liberals comprehend.)

Re:They deserve it.

[fluffythedestroyer]

They might deserve it but telling it's all of their fault is not true at all. I feel like the industry didn't ask important questions like "why is my product getting pirated ? " and "how can I stop piracy ?". Never in my life I never heard of any of these types of questions from these guys...ever. I don't think I ever will too since those same guys are just penalizing folks with millions of dollars (or Knonor ?). Nope, instead of putting ressource, time and money on the origin and source of the problem, they still continue to release and distribute products with the same "security" or "system" without any improvement. The only system i heard which is a debate in itself is DRM (I won't go in that lol)... but that's it, nothing else.

i can honestly say I pirate games and software to try it first if it's worth the money I spend. Unfortunately, I admit that most games and software I pirate are not worth it....mostly are crap in my opinion. I know it's general but most games are played between 8-20 hours alone, linear and the replay value is almost zero. In my book, that's not worth 60$....hell not even 20$. There was a time where gameplay, replay value and how you play your games with friends was on top of the todo list instead of the deadline. So today, I mostly buy my games on Steam (I wait for the weekend specials at 75% reduction)

So if the industry and company won't make the effort to "fix" this problem, why would I do it ? this is a game thats played bothways....if they want my money... seduce me ffs

Re:They deserve it.

[dosius]

"Intellectual property is neither"

-uso.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any market with a 400%-500% ROI is probably worthy of investigation, or at least in need of some government intervention to introduce competition.

Re:They deserve it.

[cpu6502]

>>>Women have a natural right not to be raped. [Wages/salary] are not a right at all. It's a privilege granted by "the people" to the laborer.

Fixed that for you.
Just wanted to clarify where you stand on this issue - that you don't think authors, movie directors, actors don't deserve to be paid for their labor. Because if there's NO copyright, and everything is free to download through Piratebay, then that's exactly what will happen. No money for the book, song, movie creators.

Re:They deserve it.

[X.25]

it's one thing to download a song or movie, say "That was crap", and erase it. It's another thing to actively copy millions of them, or assist others to do it, and distribute those copies to other people.

Only the original author(s) have the right to copy their creation. Maybe that law is unjust and needs to be changed (like downsizing the 110 year span to 20 years), but for now that is the law and these guys are clearly violating it.

I guess the guy who made the bench in the park should get to choose who sits on it, and should get certain amount every time someone sits on the bench.

Re:They deserve it.

[MarkvW]

Fuck the law, there shouldn't be that law, the gov't shouldn't be allowed to pass laws that protect any specific business model, any specific business, any specific individual from other individuals in business.

Gov't is the culprit here, sure, there is a law, but it is an unjust law. Copyright and patent laws are unjust and every time anybody is in jury and there is government on one side and an individual on the other side the jury must nullify the law. Yes, the law is broken, no, it shouldn't exist.

The situation you propose favors the parasites too much. There needs to be an incentive for people to create. People are not going to spend months developing books and products if some parasite can just copy their work, market it better, and take their profits.

Re:They deserve it.

[gl4ss]

Are you implying piracy issues are comparable to civil rights?

copyright is a limit of civil rights.

though cultural professional("the establishment") lobbying is trying to prove that copyright is a civil right, quite successfully too. however, copyright needs essentially endless involvement from government(aka "authority") limiting what people are allowed to do.

the fines are ridiculous - he's just going to live on welfare and do untaxed work. what's more ridiculous is that he could have gotten away with less financial penalties for combined manslaughter and a bank robbery.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, blacks, get to the back of the bus. Don't you know you're breaking the law?

Don't give me none of that 'civil disobedience' crap, you're breaking the law!

*grumbling sigh and not-at-all-gratuitous facepalm* Yes, sure, I completely and entirely see your point. Because some laws were unjust in the past, we can generalize that all laws are entirely unjust and any and all resistance to any and all laws is righteous. Remember, civil disobedience is always right, you're breaking the law!

There are reasons why most theory of computation honor students aren't lawmakers or law enforcement officers, or really any position of responsibility in the real world. Reliance on absurd reductions, senseless generalizations, and a pathological devotion to binary logic because they all worked in textbook proofs is only one of those reasons.

Re:They deserve it.

[cpu6502]

Not Hollywood but the record companies recently got punished for owing over 100 million in unpaid royalties to singers. The various CRIA-affiliated companies were using the songs on Greatest Hits CDs and not paying for them. "They deserve it".

Re:They deserve it.

[CrimsonAvenger]

I guess the guy who made the bench in the park should get to choose who sits on it, and should get certain amount every time someone sits on the bench.

You laugh, but if he had a PATENT on the bench, this would pretty much be true....

Re:They deserve it.

[xstonedogx]

I hear the argument a lot from pirates that copyright is immoral because it is so long. So... why don't they only pirate things which are (say) 20 years old or more? Because they aren't thinking critically, they are just rationalizing their behavior. They want something, have the power to take it, and so they take it. Everything else is just to help them sleep at night.

The pirates behavior is a social problem. It shouldn't be a legal one. The use of force against them is completely unjustified and immoral.

(And yes, I'm sure there is the rare pirate who actually purchases something if he tries it and likes it. Good for him, but let's get real. Mostly they just want free stuff.)

Also, yaaaargh!

Re:They deserve it.

[h4rr4r]

Wages/Salary are something the person buying the labor pays for. He also gets the results of that labor.

Without copyright an artists would want to sell the labor not the results. Concerts are one example of that.

Re:They deserve it.

[cpu6502]

>>>Without copyright an artists would want to sell the labor not the results. Concerts are one example of that.

Does this apply to programmers/engineers too? We get paid for doing live "concerts" but do not get paid for the result (program,schematic) we produce?

Re:They deserve it.

[gman003]

No. You're putting words in his mouth.

Artists deserve to be paid. They are not being paid under the current system, and they would arguably make *more* under a "copyright doesn't exist, pirate whatever you want" system.

Why?

Artists do *not* get paid properly for recordings. Seriously. Your album can go multi-platinum, and you still will see *maybe* a few cents on each album. Often less - Hollywood accounting means that you'll quite often see *nothing*. At that point, it doesn't matter whether people pay for your albums or not - all you can make money from is licensing (if you managed to retain the rights to your own music), and concerts. And your "publisher" *will* take a cut from both.

So let's suppose, for a minute, that we get rid of all that. Piracy is completely legalized for personal use - you only need to pay for it if you're using it in a movie or broadcasting it on the radio or something.

That turns your recordings into advertisements for your concerts. Which means you *want* them spread as far as they can - you *want* people to pirate your music, because that means more people are likely to shell out $$ for tickets, and t-shirts, and other merchandise.

And how do I know this would work? Because artists are rooting for it.

Not all of them, no, but there are more than I can list, who *already* say "pirate my music, come to my concerts".

How many other industries are there where the producers actually *encourage* their customers to break the law? That alone should be enough of a sign that the law, and the system, are *broken*.

And what do we do with broken systems? We throw them out, destroy them, and build a new one.

Re:They deserve it.

[DeTech]

At least until someone open source hardwared a butt supporting apparatus sufficient for outdoor use.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damm right. As a home builder it greatly offends me that just ANYONE can move into these houses after i build them.

It's criminal that i don't get to keep control forever of my creations.

Re:They deserve it.

[roman_mir]

There is no problem with parasites. You are looking at it from the wrong perspective, neither you, no government it looks like are able to understand a very simple thing: nobody in business should be protected, even when one business steals from another, if the result is a cheaper, better product, then the customers win.

We don't need to care about HOW specifically anybody provides us with goods and services, the people who want to make money will make it their business to ensure that they have the advantage in the market somehow, they will just understand that it is just one more risk of getting into that business, but so what?

People shouldn't care that 2 or 20 businesses are duking it out, the only thing people understand is that from this fight they get better value, that's all.

Government shouldn't be protecting any specific business, any specific person's model to make money. We SHOULD NOT CARE that somebody's idea may or will be replicated.

Now, we MAY want to look at the product we purchase and try and reward those, who come up with the original products and ideas first, it's up to us, but we shouldn't be forced to do it either.

Again, there is nothing special about anybody's business, let them figure it out, they will, if they don't somebody else will.

People do not stop competing just because there is no government protection against borrowing ideas or even specific implementations, quite the opposite is true, people compete more.

Do you know why? Because it's not about inventing something new, it's about coming into the market with the best implementation.

By the way, this is the reason that large companies that are good at building and selling products often have research departments and many do long term research (IBM, Xerox, phone companies, energy companies, auto-companies, builders, manufacturers, chemical companies, medical companies, electronics companies, food companies, etc.etc.), they hire people to do research and they pay them. So if you are good at research and innovations you can do it on your own and sell it to large companies or you can work for a company and do it there.

But you can also try to innovate and bring your own product into the market. There is a way to hold off competition for a while at least - trade secrets. That's what should be used and is used in the market. Trade secrets are great - they provide some time before competition catches on, but they don't crate lawsuit happy environment and they don't prevent people from trying to figure out how to build the same thing differently, which really means they don't prevent all sorts of innovation, they encourage innovation.

Re:They deserve it.

[Hatta]

Buggwhip operators couldn't stop Henry Ford either. Should Henry Ford have been apologetic to them?

The progress of technology has made the artificial scarcity model completely unworkable. Adapt or die is the only reasonable position to take. Trying to stop the forces of history with legislation just makes you backwards.

Re:They deserve it.

[Andrewkov]

You can't do that in a park, but you could build a bench in front of your house and charge people to sit there.

Better yet, you could show downloaded movies and make even more revenue from your bench.

Re:They deserve it.

[Ziggitz]

You know I think you're right. I don't think I can recall any occurrences of people enacting socail change by breaking the law~. You might be on to something here. ~~

Re:They deserve it.

[MarkvW]

Your best implementation argument assumes that the best implemenation will win.

That's nonsense. The second-best implementation will always kick the crap out of the best implementation if priced sufficiently lower.

Make an almost-as-good copy, sell it cheaper, and crush the inventor who cannot recover his development costs.

We need copyright and patent law. But it does need to be made more fair.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I think he is. Are you implying that they are not?

...no, I suppose I'm not implying that. Glad that's settled, then. I'm really, REALLY buying into the entire "circuses" part of "bread and circuses", to the point where my sense of well-being is directly tied to it such that the inability to view ALL the movies and TV shows for free at my leisure (or even the slightest delay in same) would prove irreparably damaging to my psyche or something, and that's JUST like discriminating against an entire race due to their skin color, right?

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

any analogy made results in nothing more than making the person making it look stupid, they are for people who cannot think clearly. no analogy actually works as there can be, as most philosophy students could happily show you, subtle differences in everyone that can be exploited.

Re:They deserve it.

[cheekyjohnson]

we can generalize that all laws are entirely unjust

I don't see where that was said.

Re:They deserve it.

[nomadic]

"It's one thing to download a song or movie, say "That was crap", and erase it. It's another thing to actively copy millions of them, or assist others to do it, and distribute those copies to other people."

For money. Pirate Bay is a bunch of people who wanted to make money from selling movies, but don't know how to make the movies themself.

Re:They deserve it.

[nomadic]

"I guess the guy who made the bench in the park should get to choose who sits on it, and should get certain amount every time someone sits on the bench."

If a guy spent a year of his time and money designing a bench to sell to parks, then no, other parks should not just be able to swipe the design.

Re:They deserve it.

[nomadic]

"They are not being paid under the current system, and they would arguably make *more* under a "copyright doesn't exist, pirate whatever you want" system."

And arguably, they'd make far less.

That turns your recordings into advertisements for your concerts. Which means you *want* them spread as far as they can - you *want* people to pirate your music, because that means more people are likely to shell out $$ for tickets, and t-shirts, and other merchandise.

With the premise that only music that can be performed in concert halls AND bring in enough concertgoers is deserving of being made. And what about movies?

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay fine : PIRATEBAY OWNERS STEALING AUTHORS' WORKS IS THE SAME AS TREATING THEM LIKE SLAVES - making them do work without pay

No one is making the authors do work. Me copying a file from one hard drive to another does not involve any work on the part of the authors.

The work that they do (should be paid for, unlike slaves) is bringing about the circumstance where that data exists in the first place. But once that circumstance exists, copying the data is not work that they do, and they should not be paid for the copying. Forcing other people to pay for what they do with their own hard drives is vastly more akin to slavery than copying data is.

Re:They deserve it.

[h4rr4r]

To be clear I do not pirate anything. I use netflix for my video needs and FREE software for my software needs.

Re:They deserve it.

[xstonedogx]

Sorry, friend. Wasn't trying to imply you personally were pirating anything.

Re:They deserve it.

[dowens81625]

My thoughts from a person that never listens to music unless I tune it on AM.

Start a New Tune Tax 0.001% person globally is taxed annually paid to the RIAA gets everyone access to download at your preferred Bit Rate and format the top 20 songs from any genre you prefer at any time. Everyone has access to everything so no more need to pay iTunes store / Amazon / Pandora / preferred Capitalist 3rd party money pit. Just visit the socialtaxmusic.com or socialist.music.world.com site and download your music. The recording artists will also have to pay the same Tax. Opt out of paying the tax by selecting the I don't listen to music check box on your tax form. The audit police may get you if you get caught with any of the previous years top 20 on you computer, and send you a bill for that 0.001% of your income. For example if the average person globally made 7,880 USD a year and would get taxed $0.08 per year. Which even a person clearing $1,000,000 a year would owe $10. This should give the authors and artists an extra $500 million a year to stop complaining about people enjoying what the produce. Not to mention the Billions it would save on legal costs. Would this be any different that government financed Libraries that let you check out ebooks, and mp3 audiobooks written by your favourite authors online?

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed with it being rationalization. Biology (even water) finds the easiest route. The heavy music monopolies & the concept of copy-limiting is outdated. It doesn't help artists (and therefore, creation) better than the alternative, and therefore "Copyright"'s only basis of existence, the 1 line of the constitution "to promote science and the useful arts" is unfulfilled.

Beyond that, it's corporations influence on lawmakers that keeps the current system alive.

Re:They deserve it.

[h4rr4r]

That is how it works for me. I am not paid every-time my work is used. Do you get a check each time someone uses your works?

I am only offering a new way for them to stay relevant, if they want to go tilting at windmills that is their choice.

Re:They deserve it.

[gman003]

With the premise that only music that can be performed in concert halls AND bring in enough concertgoers is deserving of being made.

Seems correct. You can get people to go to a concert for anything - look at all the dubstep musicians who show up, press a few buttons on a computer, and bam. Music.

If you can't get people to come to your concert, the only reason is because nobody likes your music.

And what about movies?

Movies seem to be doing fine, despite all of Hollywood's claims to the contrary. It helps that they already make most of their money from concert-like theatrical experiences you cannot recreate at home. Also known as movie theaters. Home VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray sales have never been the primary moneymaker for movies.

In short, you can pirate Michael Bay presents: Guns and Tits ]I[, but you can't pirate watching MBpGaT3 on a massive 60' screen with subwoofers that need a DoD export license.

Any problems the movie industry is having are a) minor, and b) self-inflicted. Stop giving movies *that* much of a budget, start greenlighting some more original movies and fewer sequels, and knock off the stupid practices like staggered releases, and they'll be fine.

Re:They deserve it.

[h4rr4r]

No problem, I just wanted it to be clear that I was not justifying anything since I don't do that.

Re:They deserve it.

[roman_mir]

That's nonsense. The second-best implementation will always kick the crap out of the best implementation if priced sufficiently lower.

- you maybe 100% right in THIS, but you are 100% wrong in this:

We need copyright and patent law. But it does need to be made more fair.

It's OK if somebody gets crashed because they couldn't understand that instead of going for perfection in product development, they should have gone to the market sooner, maybe with a product that is not as ideal, but it would sell and it would sell for less, because there is less money was spent developing it.

Make some more money over time and improve your product. You are making a mistake equating the best quality product with the best product for THE MARKET. The market doesn't want your best quality product at highest price, it wants a balanced approach, and if you provide this balanced approach, then you are satisfying the market need, and if you can't understand it, you SHOULD LOSE to your competition.

No, patents and copyrights shouldn't be law.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your best implementation argument assumes that the best implemenation will win.

That's nonsense. The second-best implementation will always kick the crap out of the best implementation if priced sufficiently lower.

"Best" - by what criteria? If the 2nd best (by your criteria) wins in the marketplace, doesn't that just mean that the market as a whole weighted the price criterium higher and whatever [technical] criteria you considered in your "best" declaration, lower, than you did?

Re:They deserve it.

[bzipitidoo]

I wonder if you understand how copyright fails academia? The real parasites are publishers such as Elsevier. We write and publish papers describing our research. We are expected to do so as part of a university job. In exchange for the privilege of publication in a recognized journal, publishers insist we give away our copyrights. We get no percentage, no flat fee, no co-ownership of the copyright, nothing at all from them. You might think they at least do some editing work, but no. The job of deciding which submissions are worthy of publication is farmed out back to us, for peer review. Then the publishers lock our work up behind paywalls for eternity minus 1 day, if they offer any way at all to obtain it online. Their main revenue stream comes from gouging university libraries for printed copies. Often, they force libraries into expensive package deals, rather like what cable TV companies offer. Zero of any money that they make from all this is paid to the authors.

Technically, we are in violation of their copyrights when we make our own works available online! The only thing that makes this whole scheme work at all is the salary that the public and the university pays. The publisher didn't pay one damn cent. Neither the authors nor the public who financially backed all this have any rights at all to the works. It's a raw deal, and we all know it.

Understand, we are okay with not receiving any direct compensation. Our salary is our compensation. It's this lockup that these miserable publishers do that is so outrageous. Our works should be under something like a Creative Commons license, not a privately held copyright. If these academic publishers all went bankrupt and vanished tomorrow, the world would be a better place. We sure don't need them, not with the Internet.

The failure extends further than that. There is also the textbook racket. Students are required to purchase textbooks at very high prices, and often the work is a poor quality rush job. You might think the author makes out on that deal. Not so much. The publisher gets the lion's share. Closely related are technical books. Most technical books earn the authors such a paltry amount of royalties that the money is no incentive for creating such a work. Could have made a lot more money working in industry. Authors publish for the name recognition.

Re:They deserve it.

[negativeduck]

"Seems correct. You can get people to go to a concert for anything - look at all the dubstep musicians who show up, press a few buttons on a computer, and bam. Music."

I keep seeing this said and referring to concerts and I have to say, I disagree 100%. The Concerts should *NOT* be seen as the money making revenue stream for these artists. It is but certainly not all of them there is a good reason why these are often called "Promotional Tours" they promote their album their image their style but that ticket price is serving the to pay the facility first!

Now that said, I hate concerts, I find them boring and tiring I have zero interest in going to listen to the song that I just listened to in the car. If I enjoy their music I have no problem paying for it. As a fan of $artist your saying they have no place to make money from me unless I goto a concert. That's just not correct.

Yes Copyrights might be excessive, but really you created something that others enjoy. You should be able to profit from that, just as an earlier post commented on artists of old not making money, several of them wanted to, but their talents were not appreciated till they passed. Bottom line it's a capitalistic society we live in. There is no such thing as "fair" or "even" if there were all houses would be the same, cost the same and all individual income would be capped at X. Your boss would make what you do.. you would make as much as that guy in your job who you hate because you work three times harder than he does but your paid the same. It's simple really...

(yes I know TLDR)

Re:They deserve it.

[dvice_null]

> People are not going to spend months developing books and products if some parasite can just copy their work

"I don't ask for money. I don't ask for sexual favors. I don't ask for access to the hardware you design and sell. I just ask for the thing I gave you: source code that I can use myself."

        Torvalds, Linus (2007-06-14). Message to Linux kernel mailing list. Retrieved on 2010-02-01.

Linux kernel is about 20 years old (So Linus has been developing it for a little longer than a few months). It has been sold commercially by people who didn't even ask permission from Linus before doing that. And Linus is okay with that. If you need more examples, you can google for free software, free movies, free books, free music.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are making a mistake equating the best quality product with the best product for THE MARKET. The market doesn't want your best quality product at highest price, it wants a balanced approach, and if you provide this balanced approach, then you are satisfying the market need, and if you can't understand it, you SHOULD LOSE to your competition.

You are right, comrade roman. That is why our socialists overlords were able to beat the silly libertarians and capitalist dogs

While the libertarians seek "perfect" freedom and free market, our socialists masters offered a watered down version where the people have a little less freedom, the market is a little more regulated. Our masters offered the balanced mixed market which appeals to the public (the market) much more, and the public lapped it up almost every time.

We repeat this process and slowly take away all their freedoms, and now we can be proud to say that capitalism is on the run. The capitalists are fleeing the US for China, but it's only a matter of time that they have to flee from China too.

They can run, but they can't hide. It is inevitable that capitalism and freedom will fall to socialism. Like you said, capitalism and freedom SHOULD LOSE.

Re:They deserve it.

[hackwrench]

My sense of well-being isn't directly tied to my ability to view ALL the movies and TV shows for free at my leisure (or even the slightest delay in same), but my memory is of such quality that not to be able to refresh it at any time with material I've already seen is proving irreparably damaging to my psyche or something like that. On top of that, there's my lack of ability to freely communicate what I have previously experienced.

Copyright as it is currently implemented stands in the way of both those things.

Re:They deserve it.

[bzipitidoo]

Stop being stupid! That was not about race, and you know it! That was a comment about civil disobedience. Plenty of civil disobedience had nothing to do with race. Piracy is on the same level as draft dodging during the Vietnam War, or joining a union in the days when that was illegal. With Vietnam as the goad, we broke the draft. We should be grateful to everyone who risked imprisonment and injury to end the draft.

Time and time and time again, we've said that copyright infringement is not stealing. There are many different crimes on the books. Vandalism, assault and battery, stealing, speeding, and copyright infringement are all very different. Do you really not understand that stealing and copyright infringement are different? I think you do. Why do you keep trying to equate them?

Really you deserve a troll mod for that. If you can't come up with any better arguments than this, you may as well just shut up.

Re:They deserve it.

[cpu6502]

>>>Do you really not understand that stealing and copyright infringement are different? I think you do. Why do you keep trying to equate them?

Why do YOU not read my original post where I VERY clearly stated copyright law needs to be changed? Funny how you skipped over that. At the same time I want people like Gene Roddenberry and J.Michale Straczynski to be rewarded for their works, not left penniless because Star Trek & Babylon5 are handed-away for free via piratebay.

Re:They deserve it.

[Pigeon451]

The authors and musicians are busy doing whatever they've been doing BECAUSE they have someone fighting for them. Do you think that if the RIAA/MIAA didn't rally for piracy measures, the artists would just shrug their shoulders? Maybe some.

I don't agree with how things are handled either, but change takes time. We're headed for a different type of media system anyways, with people buying less "tangible" items such as dvds and cds, and going to more streaming/digital media.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do YOU not read my original post where I VERY clearly stated copyright law needs to be changed? Funny how you skipped over that.

I hate to break it to you... actually, no, that's a lie. I love to point out when you are wrong. But your original post where you "VERY clearly stated copyright law needs to be changed"? That in NO WAY WHAT SO EVER shows that you think copyright infringement and stealing are different.

This little gem, however, VERY clearly states that you do think they are the same.

PIRATEBAY OWNERS STEALING AUTHORS' WORKS IS THE SAME AS TREATING THEM LIKE SLAVES

Please please please learn to communicate better, and try not to get upset when people end up misunderstanding you. Also try to not get upset at the people trying to help you communicate better by pointing out the error of your ways.

(CAPTCHA: linguist)

Re:They deserve it.

[C_amiga_fan]

Here's what the original Top Post of this thread said: "Only the original author(s) have the right to copy their creation. Maybe that law is unjust and needs to be changed (like downsizing the 110 year span to 20 years)....."

Re:They deserve it.

[lightknight]

And yes, the plight of African-Americans was once minimized as you are now doing.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, which does NOTHING to show that you think copyright infringement and stealing are different. You repeating it won't change that fact. Just man up and accept that you made a mistake. You thought your original post somehow proved to us that you recognize copyright infringement and stealing as two different things, but you were wrong.

There's no shame in admitting you were wrong, and frankly, it will help you garner respect if you are able to admit when you made a mistake.

Re:They deserve it.

[DeTech]

If a guy spent a year of his time and money designing a bench to sell to parks, then no, other parks should not just be able to swipe the design.

Why not? If it's a clever bench people should be able to try and make it themselves.

Re:They deserve it.

[C_amiga_fan]

Non-payment of workers' wages is stealing. It's theft of Labor. It doesn't matter if the worker is a guy in a factory or a guy writing a book. Therefore piratebay's owners still deserve to be fined. Amazon did it the proper fashion (paying the author or author's rep).

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Criminalising something that up to 25% of the population likes to do, is harmful for the continued existence of a state of law (it erodes respect for the law) and will lead directly to a police state.

A police state means that everybody (of the 99%, of course not of the 1%) is guilty, and the police only has to arrest that subset of the guilty that they fancy arresting that day.

Slashdot is largely populated by people from the USA, didn't you get the topic "Prohibition" taught in your history books? Scum floats to the top in such conditions, viz. Al Capone.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh brother.

Concerts are ridiculously expensive promotional tours now because they can make ridiculous amounts of money on their copyrighted music. Take away copyright and that changes.

So you personally don't like concerts. I'm sure all artists will starve. And you certainly couldn't buy a t-shirt, make a donation, or do any other of number of things to support your favorite band (things that people are doing RIGHT NOW). And they can ALWAYS sell official versions of things directly to you.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what? So when you got mad at bzipitidoo for accusing you of not understanding the difference between copyright infringement and stealing...

(please complete that sentence for me, I do not wish to misunderstand you again).

Re:They deserve it.

[Kjella]

Not all of them, no, but there are more than I can list, who *already* say "pirate my music, come to my concerts". How many other industries are there where the producers actually *encourage* their customers to break the law? That alone should be enough of a sign that the law, and the system, are *broken*.

If it was their songs, they wouldn't need to ask customers to pirate it as they could release it for free download. They want to both sell the rights and give it away for free too, Winnie the Pooh would be proud.

Re:They deserve it.

[Tom]

There's a lot of truth in your first paragraph, but it falls short of the whole truth. The various industry associations are mainly representing the top 1% of authors. For the european countries, with its collecting agencies for public performances, most of the money goes to the top artists as well, so much that artists have begun to leave those associations because they don't see their advantage anymore.

So yes, the RIAA/MPAA does work for the artists - as well as the producers, distributors and a dozen others in the system. And in many cases, the artist, while always at the forefront in the propaganda, ist the one getting the short end of the stick. Fortunately, artists are not only waking up, they are also discovering that for the 2nd paragraph of yours, they don't need a good part of the system anymore, they can do it themselves.

Re:They deserve it.

[brit74]

The comparison between "buggy whips" and automobiles is a silly comparison. Here's the thing: I'm *NOT* about preserving jobs. I'm about preserving productivity and the creation of stuff that people want. Buggy whip manufacturers went out of business because their business was replaced by a new technology. People didn't need or want horses or buggies or buggy whips anymore. This is completely different than the copyright situation. People still want musicians to create music, want movie makers to create movies, want software developers to make software. But, they've found a clever way to avoid paying people while still getting the product. They still want the product to exist, and they want people to continue creating those products. For that reason, this is nothing like buggies and automobiles. It's more like people have figured out a way to steal automobiles and because "there's a way to do it" the economy is supposed to adjust and the thieves are trying to get everyone to stop blaming them. They want to shift the blame off of themselves and get everyone to blame the "silly, outdated" business model of "making automobiles for money".

Re:They deserve it.

[brit74]

It doesn't help artists (and therefore, creation) better than the alternative, and therefore "Copyright"'s only basis of existence, the 1 line of the constitution "to promote science and the useful arts" is unfulfilled. [Citation needed BADLY]

Re:They deserve it.

[brit74]

Might? When did they use force?

The ability to take stuff and not be held accountable is a kind of power. I thought this would be self-evident enough.

Copyright is really not a right

If you have a "Copyright" then you have rights to copy.

it is depriving the rest of society of the right to copy.

Yes, like the ability to not let the general public into a concert or amusement park without a ticket. Or preventing the public from being allowed to conterfiet money. It is "depriving them".

I personally think that if the scope and length of this monopoly was lower it might be morally acceptable, but 100 years is surely not.

How in the world do you square that with your earlier statements about copyright depriving the public of the "right" to copy? If copyfight lasts for 2 minutes, it's still stealing away their "rights" - if you're being consistent. (I'm fine with shorter copyrights, but I hate all the twisted logic people use to claim that copyright shouldn't exist, everybody should be allowed to get all their entertainment for free, etc, etc.)

Re:They deserve it.

[Sabriel]

They want something, have the power to take it, and so they take it. Everything else is just to help them sleep at night.

*long pause* ... I forget, were we talking about the pirates or the record companies?

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-payment of workers' wages is stealing. It's theft of Labor. It doesn't matter if the worker is a guy in a factory or a guy writing a book.

You can only "steal labor" from a worker if you made an agreement to pay that person to perform work and then reneged after the work was performed. Even then, you haven't "stolen" anything, you've instead committed fraud and/or breach of contract.

Copyright infringement is not theft and cannot ever be theft. Whether it is wrong is a different question entirely, and doesn't hinge on the "theft" angle.

Re:They deserve it.

[Kidbro]

It doesn't help artists (and therefore, creation) better than the alternative, and therefore "Copyright"'s only basis of existence, the 1 line of the constitution "to promote science and the useful arts" is unfulfilled. [Citation needed BADLY]

Not really. Citation badly needed for the opposite. You don't need a good reason to not make a law. You need a very good reason to make one.

Re:They deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe that law is unjust and needs to be changed (like downsizing the 110 year span to 20 years), but for now that is the law and these guys are clearly violating it.

It's called civil disobedience

units!

[colsandurz45]

10.6 million what?

Re:units!

[Anonymous Coward]

10.6 million what?

10.6 million Watt.

At least that's what he needs to get his time machine running so he can go back and invest his 1 kronor in the RIAS and MPAS.

Re:units!

[Anonymous Coward]

Watts.

Re:units!

[Ksevio]

Looking at the old article, it was 10.6 million Swedish kronor, so I guess he's up to 11.1 million Swedish kronor now.

Re:units!

[colsandurz45]

big difference between dollars and Swedish kronor

Re:units!

[Anonymous Coward]

Still $1.5M

Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Nicolas MONNET]

the first million times. Do you have anything new to contribute?

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[cpu6502]

This is the first time I've posted it. Usually I'm on the side of NOT sending people $5000 extortion letters, or fining Jamie Thomas 10 million dollars.

BUT these guys are different. They are the modern equivalent of VHS or DVD copiers and profiting from the action. They deserve to be fined, just as a speeder going over 65 mph deserved to get a ticket. If you don't like it then change the law.

YOU on the other hand seem to think Authors deserve NO PAY for the work they perform (that all their books, movies should be free for us). That makes no logical sense. It's equivalent to a boss that makes you work all week, fires you, and then doesn't pay you any wages.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[tnk1]

People who obstruct traffic in the left hand lane or drive too slowly also deserve tickets, if your reasoning holds up. Good luck with that happening.

What is legally correct is not necessarily morally or even ethically sound. And you can always make laws, they don't mean they will achieve what they aim to achieve. For instance, the patent system these days.

We all state that authors and such deserve an income. I agree that I don't want to keep them from making an income for something I want to see.

However, people also make choices about what they do that also involves their interest and enjoyment. I enjoy playing video games, but its unlikely that anyone is going to pay me to play them, even if it is entertaining to watch (just ask South Korea). I don't deserve to get paid for what I want to do, people get paid for what they provide that others need. I want to try my hand at pro gaming, I have that option. I also have the option to make no money and starve.

If music and movies are needed and enjoyable, they will be paid for somehow. I am not worried about the end of music or movies or content. As for the music industry? Their job is to provide a service, and it appears that their distribution service is now redundant. If my job became redundant, I'd be laid off without so much as a bit of sadness on the part of the corporation. I don't see why I need to change my habits so that content businesses can continue to be paid when they should be laid off. Call me when I have guaranteed employment in the career of my choice and can make good money at it.

Certainly until music company execs, actors and rock stars stop making millions, I have zero pity for them. Call me when they really are in any danger of anything approaching hardship. As for everyone else, including indie musicians or actors, they are in a business just like I am. If they want to get paid, they need to figure out how to provide it in this shitty world of globalization and outsourcing, just like I have to. If you want to support them, I am 100% for it. Just don't make me pay for it with craptastic legislation.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[geoskd]

YOU on the other hand seem to think Authors deserve NO PAY for the work they perform (that all their books, movies should be free for us). That makes no logical sense. It's equivalent to a boss that makes you work all week, fires you, and then doesn't pay you any wages.

You misunderstand the underlying principles involved. The disagreement has nothing to do with, should the artists get compensated or not, the argument should be framed as what is in societies best interests. Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period. So, re-frame the question as "What is the best alternative for society?" The answer is not what we have now, copyright is an abysmal failure, and ends up harming society far more than having nothing at all. Remember that there was no copyright when Beethoven or Bach did their work. Shakespeare had no protection. Let me ask you, would we all be better off with Shakespeares works locked firmly behind copyright? Would William Shakespeare have been better off? What is needed is a solution that makes *society* better. To do that we need to do two things. First, we need to ensure as wide and cheap access to cultural works (aka The Arts) as possible. For that purpose, we have accidentally invented the perfect tool: The Internet. The second thing we need to do is ensure a continuing supply of new cultural works (aka The Arts). For that purpose, we have a miserable failure of a tool called copyright. Copyright was supposed to solve both problems, but today it is a barmier to solving the first, and of almost no help in solving the second. Lets wipe out copyright and find some way to keep the artists creating new works. I would humbly suggest: Vastly expanding the National endowment for the arts. Lets trying getting the funds directly to the artists, get the money grubbing middlemen out of the picture. They're no longer needed for the process to work, and move on. Back in the middle ages, this was done by royalty who supported good artists, and generally made their works as available as possible (after all, good entertainment is dynamite crowd control), Today we have the **AA who are doing everything possible to *prevent* the spread of these works, and starving out most artists in favor of a few "megastars", and those in political power are complicit the process.

-=Geoskd

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep seeing your posts, thinking 'Hmmm... yet another asswipe contrarian troll yearning for any attention at all' and then I see it's *you*.

I want your babies.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Ironhandx]

If you're not generating propaganda, you're clearly overly influenced by it.

The pirate bay didn't even make enough money from Ad revenue to pay for a single persons living wage in sweden. It had something like 20,000 kronors on hand after server expenses and that money was ear-marked for hardware upgrades needed just to keep the site running. Up until very shortly before the trial the pirate bay was a LOSS generating activity for those involved.

"If you don't like it change the law" is total bullshit as well.

When you've got multi-billionaires waving money at every government official in the world, who the hell is going to change anything?

Be perfectly honest with yourself too: You or anyone wouldn't do anything much differently than all of the government officials around the world have already been doing.

Most government postings have either time limits or a cycle of elections that mean you having or not having a job is a very fickle or finitely determined thing. You NEED money from lobbyists etc to ensure your financial security after you get out of office. Until this changes, nothing will change.

Whats hilarious is that in general the places with the most progressive and sensible copyright and patent laws are actually the ones with what we often consider the most backwards forms of government.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[91degrees]

To be fair, nobody in this entire thread is going to have anything to say that hasn't been said in the last several dozen posts regarding the pirate bay.

I expect a comment to the effect that all copyright is bad, another about how TPB was just linking, someone to talk about the difference between stealing a car and making a copy to turn up in the next few hours.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[cpu6502]

>>>Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period.

So you have no objections if I lay you off, and send the job to China and India. After all they are MUCH poorer than we are, and it is for the "good of society" that jobs go to those who need them the most. China/India citizens clearly need the jobs more than us rich Americans. Like the authors, you can go earn your money some other way. (Enjoy!)

BTW I notice you didn't suggest an alternate method for authors to get paid for their books, songs, movies. MY proposal is that we treat them the same way we do other creative types: Programmers, engineers. Give the authors an hourly wage upfront.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[cheekyjohnson]

And the number of people convinced by the other sides' arguments...?

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

you're a tool

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[JimCanuck]

Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period.

God damn communist.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Ziggitz]

There is more than one way to make a profit off of a piece of work. The pirate bay's approach of torrenting all content might not be moral or the correct approach, however Hollywood is still making their money and challenging the legitimacy of and practicality of current copyright law is a worthwhile cause. If it wasn't these guys it would be someone else and at some point governments, content publishers and Internet users are going to have to reconcile that an open and free internet is not compatible with draconian copyright law and the current business model most content publishers employ.

Even if publishers have a valid case against piracy and will actually fail as a result of it, I still choose a free Internet over the publishers. As it stands no data indicates that they do and even if they did it is not our obligation to change the world and restrict technology for the benefit of their outdated business model at the cost of progress.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[BigSlowTarget]

>Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period

Nope. It is not even good for society for individual interests to always take a back seat to the good of the society and it is certainly not always in the best interests of the individuals.

You could say it is best for society to have a balance between societal and individual interests but this means re-framing the question inevitably involves how much is fair for whom.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[DaneM]

It's equivalent to a boss that makes you work all week, fires you, and then doesn't pay you any wages.

In point of fact, I've had that happen as a result of working for a door company. Just saying...

You all know the normal arguments about out-dated business models, as they apply to these things, so I won't repeat them at this time.

(I've also released works under the Creative Commons, just to "head-off" any heated replies on that front.)

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[C_amiga_fan]

The pirate bay didn't even make enough money from Ad revenue to pay for a single persons living wage in sweden. It had something like 20,000 kronors on hand after server expenses and that money was ear-marked for hardware upgrades

And the source for this?
The owner of the site?
Not very reputable. If he's like the scam artists I've experienced in my past: "Oh I only made 30,000 this year," while he's actually earning half-a-million secretly.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the Swedes posting here know the TBP guys personally. Sweden is not that big, and our cool hacker startup guys meetup scene is even smaller.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[geoskd]

Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period.

God damn communist.

It would probably shock you to learn that I'm an anarchist... My only problem is that I also have a conscience, and I'm smart enough to know that everyone is a little poorer when a neighbor suffers in poverty. In a perfect world, no government would be necessary, but unfortunately we don't live in that world, we live In New Jersey

-=Geoskd

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[geoskd]

>Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period

Nope. It is not even good for society for individual interests to always take a back seat to the good of the society and it is certainly not always in the best interests of the individuals.

You could say it is best for society to have a balance between societal and individual interests but this means re-framing the question inevitably involves how much is fair for whom.

Wow, that is some of the most disingenuous and circular logic i have seen. I understood what you were trying to say, but a better way to phrase it would have been: Society cannot always be trusted to decide what is in its own best interests, and subjugating citizens to the "will of society" is inherently dangerous, as it allows the majority to persecute a minority. This is not in societies best interest, and if the society always acted in its own best interest, it wouldn't happen. In short, smart people in groups are monumentally stupid (Go figure).

-=Geoskd

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[mcgrew]

Remember that there was no copyright when Beethoven or Bach did their work.

There were also no ways of recording music. They were paid by rich people to write music, and only the rich got to hear it. Having only the rich have access to art is good for society??

Shakespeare had no protection. Let me ask you, would we all be better off with Shakespeares works locked firmly behind copyright?

Yes, even with today's rediculous copyright lengths, his work woud still be in the public domain. With reasonable copyright lengths, how could copyright hinder society?

Wiping out copyright isn't the answer, reforming it so that only commercial copying is infringing, and bring it back to no more than 20 years.

Vastly expanding the National endowment for the arts. Lets trying getting the funds directly to the artists, get the money grubbing middlemen out of the picture.

You'd replace one set of middlemen with another. The internet has made gatekeepers obsolete, and you would go back to that?

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[mcgrew]

MY proposal is that we treat them the same way we do other creative types: Programmers, engineers. Give the authors an hourly wage upfront.

That's how it works already, at least with music. Phonorecords are "works for hire" under US copyright law. The only way to retain your copyright is to self-publish.

How many programmers would MS hire if computer manufacturers could just slap Windows and Office on a computer without paying MS? Those programs, just like music, are covered under copyright. Engineering solutions are often if not usually covered by patents -- again, held by big corporations.

The problems with copyright are a) they last WAY too damned long and b) noncommercial copying is deemed infringing. Fix these two glaring obscenities and copyright would work just fine.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period.

Seriously? I'm the most liberal person I know (which probably has something to do with moving to Nebraska) and I have a hard time believing in that. I concur with the opinion that we should make "The Arts" easily accessible for all, but maybe you should frame your argument in a way that people can actually agree with.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[marcosdumay]

I can agree that he is different.

I can also agree that he deserves to be fined, just as a speeder going over 65 mph deserves a ticket... The problem is that the government doesn't go out finning speeders 50%-90% of what an average person earns his entire life. Why not cut the hipocrisy and declare him a slave for once?

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[LavouraArcaica]

Tnk1, your post was the best about this whole copyright-war I've ever seen. Thanks for the enlightenment

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

People who obstruct traffic in the left hand lane or drive too slowly also deserve tickets, if your reasoning holds up.

Assuming you mean the outside lane, bloody right they do.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want to get paid for your work here's a tip:
line up payment before you do the work, not after

technology has moved on, it used to be that if you heard someone perform a cool song you could only reproduce it if you had years of training

nowadays everyone can reproduce without any training at all by simply recording it and playing the recording.
so guess what? that makes it so the bottom dropped out of the reproduction market. That means that if you want to get payed for reproducing you had damn well better make it so your reproduction is enough more convenient then doing it myself for me to want to pay you for it. Given available technology that's going to be hard.

on the other hand it's still possible to get payed for doing live performances, or creating things on request. Ofcourse that means you'll actually have to spend enough time doing those things to make a living. The vast vast majority of professional artist doesn't come anywere close to 8 hours a day on the job. So color me unsurprised if they can't have an equal standard of living as the average joe who does.

Re:Yeah, yeah, we've heard the propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

There were also no ways of recording music.

sure there was, it's just that back then that recording had a high barrier of entry: it consisted of having someone with enough musical skills to play it spend enough time on it to know how to play it.

nowadays on the other hand anyone has tools that allow recording and reproducing music without any technical skill at all, consequently the bottom dropped out of the reproduction market

You're thinking too small.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

If you're going to throw fines you'll never be able to collect, might as well put it in the billions, and then blame him for the economy crashing.

Re:You're thinking too small.

[girlintraining]

If you're going to throw fines you'll never be able to collect, might as well put it in the billions, and then blame him for the economy crashing.

They are already blaming piracy for crashing the economy. Hell, after 9/11, they called pirates terrorists who were bent on destroying our way of life. Apparently, when you download music, you're downloading terrorism. As for the site going down... there's already DHT and hundreds of other trackers up there. People will simply migrate to other services. They could scream about how they're going to give people trillion dollar fines and 300 years in the electric chair for downloading, but there's billions of people doing it and only thousands of people trying to enforce a law they crafted themselves. They'd have to co-opt and topple entire governments to get what they want, and even at that... the statistics are not kind.

The only way for them to have any effect on piracy is with high profile legal cases that get lots of press coverage so people think "boy, I don't want to be that guy." It's the same reason the Lottery is so popular: People suck at math, and if they hear about something a lot, they'll change their behavior... because critical thinking is hard, and following the herd is easy.

Re:You're thinking too small.

[Translation Error]

The only way for them to have any effect on piracy is with high profile legal cases that get lots of press coverage so people think "boy, I don't want to be that guy." It's the same reason the Lottery is so popular: People suck at math, and if they hear about something a lot, they'll change their behavior... because critical thinking is hard, and following the herd is easy.

I'm not so sure about that. If people are inclined to think 'It'll happen to me!' about winning the lottery, I expect they'll also think 'It'll never happen to me!' about getting sued for file sharing.

It's one thing to download a song or movie,

[Anonymous Coward]

In law it isn't, but if I had to guess this reflects you usage and you forget the time you downloaded and didn't have to say 'that wasn't crap.' (I know it may have been too infrequent to remember but that another story.) So you concider your usage innocent infringement and anyone who helped you and others infringe a criminal and possible a terrorist. Convenient. I'd go with that.

Not enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 500,000 kronor? Had they done 500,001 kronor copyright infringement would have been dealt a fatal blow. As it stands the pirates continue to run amok stealing movies and eating babies.

So close, yet, so far, Sweden.

Re:Not enough.

[jmerlin]

I've never stolen a movie, but babies.. mmm.. delicious.

Re:Not enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoY_Fahp_Qc

Re:Not enough.

[buck-yar]

Used to be hollywood's formats were beyond the internet's capability to transmit them in decent quality. Now anyone can download 700 or a couple gigs. Hollywood should have made bluray 120fps @ 1920x1080 non-int and been filming in high fps for the last few decades instead of 24fps.

Give the customers something worth paying for.

Re:Not enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give the customers something worth paying for.

Like... a script?

First off, dude's not involved, he just won't nark

[Nyder]

Dude isn't involved, he just won't say who's in charge of thepiratebay now.

Since he won't say, they are saying he's involved.

typical lame government shit.

flattr!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets wipe out copyright and find some way to keep the artists creating new works.

Flattr! ;-)
It's funny, because one of the other Pirate Bay convicts came up with that, presumably as an answer to your question.

It's dead, Jim!

[xenobyte]

Why do they keep on beating that dead cow?

The Pirate Bay never provided any pirated stuff. It helped people find it, but that's it. The rest happened between users and TPB was not involved.

These days there's not even a tracker anymore. A search just yields a hash and you can not turn it into anything illegal using just the browser. There's no direct link to anything involved. Repeat the same search on Google or Bing, you CAN find links that enables you to download the pirated stuff with a single click and no additional software. But TPB is the bad guy here? - It only makes sense because it's easier to fight the little guy than Google Inc. or Microsoft Corp.

On another note, what's the point of piling on an already unpayable fine? 10.1 or 10.6 million? It's an exercise in futility! They'll never see any of that money!