Slashdot Mirror
Why Internet Pirates Always Win
An anonymous reader writes "Nick Bilton writes in the NY Times about how the fight against online piracy is 'like playing the world's largest game of Whac-A-Mole.' While this will come as no surprise to Slashdot readers, it's interesting to see how mainstream sources are starting to realize how pointless and ineffective the war on piracy actually is. Bilton writes, 'The copyright holders believe new laws will stop this type of piracy. But many others believe any laws will just push people to find creative new ways of getting the content they want. "There's a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it's an inverse relationship," said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. "The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online." The hit HBO show Game of Thrones is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don't really want to solve the piracy problem.'"
If the copyright holders were to take a more sensible, open approach and show a direct link between the copyright fees they collect and real artists (not multi-millionaire celebs) making a living from those royalties - with maybe a small "fee" taken by the media businesses themselves, then I reckon the public would view copyright fees like restaurant tips - directly benefitting the people who merit them, rather than just buying a few more snorts of coke for some anonymous fat-cats.
Agreed !
A good example of this is Louis C K. The best part, a Paramount Exec Al Perry claimed that Louis C K could have earned more with DRM !
Another example is Russel Peters, who gives a lot of credit to pirated videos (on YouTube) of his early career performances.
That threw me at first, too, but judging from the rest of that comment, I think the AC just made a typo. It's the only thing that makes sense. He probably meant "The majority of Pirates pirate because they can't afford to buy the products," intended to spell "cant" without an apostrophe and didn't hit the T hard enough.
AC should get an account, he'll never see your response.
Free Martian Whores!
Cocain, unlike heroin, doesn't cause physical dependance. Basically, all the craving for cocain is psychological, much like marijuana. It is somewhat addictive, as some studies showed that 5% of regular cocain users become addicted to it, but it's not essentially any worse than marijuana. The problem is that it needs to be processed and costs more to produce than pot, so addicts have to get more income to sustain their habit (leading to more frequent or more ambitious crime if the user is poor). Heroin, on the other hand, is addictive on the physical level. Users who try to kick the habit by going cold turkey will be violently ill for days and can even die. I never really understood why those two drugs are often bundled together when talking about the consequences of drug addiction, because they are vastly different. Cocain and heroin use don't have nearly the same consequences.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Time Warner Cable (TWC) Does NOT own HBO -- Time Warner Entertainment (TWX) owns it - whilst sharing a name, and about a 20% stake of Time Warner Cable, these are completely separate companies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Deal
so much of the argument about regulation and monopolies in the USA is just so many Americans unfamiliar with their own history in the Gilded Ages.
Just read your history folks. The USA is currently repeating history because we seemed to have forgotten our lessons the last time we had little regulations and large corporations were allowed the trample our rights and our livelihoods. there was a backlash, as people were poisoned, abused, and impoverished. it seems we now have to do go through that backlash all over again, because so many fools distrust the government so strongly, and don't even think about the real threat: corporations
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it