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Google To Start Punishing Pirate Sites In Search Results
An anonymous reader sends word of a change Google will be making to its search algorithms. Beginning next week, the company will penalize the search rankings of websites who are the target of many copyright infringement notices from rightsholders. Quoting The Verge:
"Google says the move is designed to 'help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily' — meaning that it's trying to direct people who search for movies, TV shows, and music to sites like Hulu and Spotify, not torrent sites or data lockers like the infamous MegaUpload. It's a clear concession to the movie and music industries, who have long complained that Google facilitates piracy — and Google needs to curry favor with media companies as it tries to build an ecosystem around Google Play. Google says it feels confident making the change because because its existing copyright infringement reporting system generates a massive amount of data about which sites are most frequently reported — the company received and processed over 4.3 million URL removal requests in the past 30 days alone, more than all of 2009 combined. Importantly, Google says the search tweaks will not remove sites from search results entirely, just rank them lower in listings."
So no more YouTube search results in Google, then?
Right. Because all entertainment media is on iTunes and/or Spotify just like all games are on Steam.
Does iTunes let you download the videos to your computer at a time of your own choosing and in a format that will play on all of your devices? If not then it clearly is not superior to pirating and/or just plain ripping your own discs.
I've recently started using iTunes for music and movie rentals and it works flawlessly. So there's no justification of "no good legal alternatives" anymore, as both Spotify and iTunes are actually easier and nicer to use than pirate sites. The same goes for Steam.
Except that iTunes is garbage bloatware.
And doesn't run on Linux.
This has "BAD IDEA" written all over it. Google is going to tweak their ranking based on how many URL removal notices it has received? I smell both a new skill being marketed by SEOs, a new strategy employed by scummy companies to up their ranking, and just a total nightmare for anyone trying to compete with the big content boys. Start making real inroads in content delivery? Get hit by automated takedown notices brought by more-or-less acknowledged affiliates of big content, and watch your Google ranking drop. Maybe this will signal the recurrence of search engines like dogpile.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
If a search engine abandon neutrality this way. Then why not avoid violent sites? porn sites? sites with bad spelling? sites that are not political correct? where is the line here?. You must have a line, that you will never cross, because some people will push you more and more.
-Woof woof woof!
Include "site:thepiratebay.se" or similar in your search query. You can even create a Firefox bookmark like this:
Give it a keyword (e.g., "tpb") and then when you type in the URL bar:
Firefox will search for "FOO" at thepiratebay.se. Problem solved.
Liberty in your lifetime
Amusingly, it might stick the pirates bay somewhere WAY down on the rankings, basically making it "unsearchable" directly. But, sites that link to the pirates bay and talk about how it's a wretched hive of scum and villainy will be riding right on top of the rankings.
So there's no justification of "no good legal alternatives" anymore
Yes there are:
* Territory restrictions
* DRM
* Format choices
* Encoding Quality
* Content availability
* Not enough choice of stores with a wide selection of content
But perhaps the biggest one:
* Indefensible copyright terms
iTunes movie rentals download and then can be watched at any time for 24 hours after you start watching. They don't stream and you can watch them offline if you want. And their library is pretty big (if you're in the right countries).
Or is anybody here naive enough to believe that nobody will want to fill the incredibly lucrative market which Google appears ready to abandon?
Google will also start punishing site owners who make false claims.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Now that Google is dealing in "content" (movies/music), it makes sense that they'd want to push the "other" sites down or out. Not that I agree with this choice.
/tinfoil
It'll be interesting to see if Google Play's ranking in the search results start to "mysteriously" climb.
So, Google is finally tired of waiting for Bing to catch up (or they just feel so sorry for their miserable attempts at getting a market share) so they will try to screw up their own searches instead to give competitors a chance?
Google, how about you try to weed out the useless full of ads pages with fake/copy-pasted content that get top placements in the results instead of trying to be copyright police? With the search result quality decreasing dangerously the last few years, these kinds of algorithm tweaks are the wrong way.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Have you considred that different people have different ways to define a "superior" method? For my parents, the ease of itunes trumps anything else. For me, I prefer to buy and rip my discs.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
So they'll punish pirate sites but how do we know that's it? Even if it is just pirate sites now, we can pretty much assume it'll be something else next.
Just because your content tastes revolve around popular culture doesn't mean that's true for everyone. If you're not within the mainstream for your country, your choices are pretty limited. For those willing to go the extra mile for their content even that is hindered by things such as region codes on DVDs and BluRays.
Content providers will only provide what they feel contributes positively to their bottom line. This does not necessarily align consumer demand. Unless all content, is available in all markets, in the manner desired by the consumer, when they want it, and for a price they are willing to pay then there will always be a justification. I'm glad you are happy with what is served to you. I am not happy, nor are countless others who are not content to be told what they may enjoy, and how they may enjoy it.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
All copyright terms are defensible. If you don't like somebody's draconian terms, simply find something else to download.
1) Form shell company
2) Have shell company send take down notices about my competitors website
3) Watch them vanish from the search results
4) Profit!
Take Hulu. They pollute global search rankings by pretending to host movies, then refuse to serve any content because you're not in the US. Google, in turn, pretends to serve results that are relevant to your location - and still give back tons of Hulu results regardless of where you are.
No, the beginning was when they removed perfectly reasonable terms from auto-complete (such as "torrent"). Or was it when they started removing search results based on DMCA notices? Or was it when they implemented the mess that is ContentID?
Google really needs to learn to stop appeasing the MPAA, IFPI, et al.; the more concessions it gives them, the more they seem to demand.
If the IFPI and MPAA are finding their "legal" sites* being too low in search rankings, there is a reason for this. And it isn't that Google is rubbish. Google search is designed (one hopes) to direct end users to what they are looking for. Not direct end users to whatever the IFPI, MPAA or whoever want them to see. If people do a search for "[artist] mp3 download", chances are they're not looking for Spotify or iTunes. If there were sites, optimised for search, that offered a similar (or better) service than the dodgy, dubiously-legal ones, we wouldn't have this problem.
*Sites are neither legal or illegal; their operators and users may or may not be acting illegally in various jurisdictions, however these groups don't tend to care about that - they only care about which sites send a cut back to them. Hence their war against the Russian/Ukrainian music sites which operate under national collective licensing systems (soon to role out in the UK), but don't complain when sites such as iTunes or Amazon get caught infringing copyright. Plus there was that little matter with the CRIA not paying however many decades of royalties, and being sued for millions over that...
If I just search for the name of a song or something, chances are I -am- looking for a legitimate source like youtube. If I want a torrent, I'll just append "torrent" to the end of the search. Or, you know, search on a dedicated torrent-searching site instead of google, cause that often works better anyway.
Taken from the iTunes FAQ at https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2729 :
Videos purchased from the iTunes Store have FairPlay digital rights management embedded in the files
Ie. the videos will only play on devices with FairPlay DRM - support.
Let's call it what it is. Google is accepting payment from big media, in the form of reduced media licensing costs, to rank big media sites higher. While still claiming to not accept payment for ranking.
Well, true enough. I should have formulated my comment better to reflect "superior format" instead, or something similar.
... or ignore them. That's the most reasonable thing to do.
...did "do no evil" changed to "do necessary evil"
and until how long before it's just plain "do evil"?
Can you find 70s black sabbath?
The most-targeted domains? filestube.com, downloads.nl, isohunt.com, and torrenthound.com.
Two search engines and two torrent sites that don't host any files?
Is that what the DMCA is supposed to be used for?
Isohunt has put up a post discussing the matter
What's missing on Google's DMCA notices report? Youtube. The by far largest video content website in the world ought to have very high volume of DMCA notices, if not the most, and it's inconspicuously missing from the list. To downrank and censor any website that's not Google's that receives a high number of DMCA notices? Sounds exactly like antitrust to me.
Despite his lack of proofreading, he manages to make several other valid points.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Authorities such as major companies and governments have adopted a new paternalism: They know what is best for you, and will do it without your consent and often with transparency.
Consider the greatly diminished respect for privacy (e.g., the tracking and monitoring by government and corporations alike), for end-user control (authorities decide what software you can install, whether and when it updates, what websites you can visit, what files you can store, etc.).
From Apple to government, they claim it provides a better user experience. Your computer works better, you are more secure, etc. And they don't reveal what they know or are doing.
As long as the user experience is good, no one seems to mind.
Since *EVERYTHING* that can be downloaded is governed by draconian copyright laws, your comment is kind of lacking.
Here's the high points from the blog posting:
(1) It's going to be added to the list of over 200 signals, whic meands that if they were equally weighted and there were exactly 200 of them, you are talking about a 0.5% difference in ranking
(2) It may reduce where it appears in the results (read this as: it will not remove it from the results).
Google dropping something from search results because of some editorial policy would make them legally liable when something bad gets through anyway (check out the disclaimers on the "safe search" setting). And given the general bent, they are doubly unlikely to do anything simply to make RIAA/MPAA happier about what's generally acknowledged to be an obsolete business model.
I pirate pdf and djvu scans of out-of-print books, you insensitive clod!
The logical destination is evil. Just ask Anakin.
Google can either stay agnostic, or will become just as bad as the rest and will be tossed aside at some point in the not to distant future.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Social policies implemented with technology. They haven't learned, and continue to refuse to.
The blowback from this will probably be the eventual destruction of Google itself.
I am John Hurt.
I've recently started using iTunes for music and movie rentals and it works flawlessly. So there's no justification of "no good legal alternatives" anymore, as both Spotify and iTunes are actually easier and nicer to use than pirate sites. The same goes for Steam.
Pop open your iTunes client and do a search for me....(because as far as I know iTunes doesn't run on Linux).
;)
I want you to search for a song I recall from my childhood. My father used to play it on his record player while working in the garage. Being just a kid at the time, I'd sit nearby hammering nails into his workbench while he crafted bookshelves for people. The song is 'Escape'. If something does come up, I guarantee it's wrong. The song I'm looking for is by Michael Garrison from his album "In the Regions of Sunreturn". Nothing? Try Googling for it. You might find a youtube video with the song, or maybe a sample on some music geek's website, but good luck getting a legitimate copy.
Michael Garrison is long dead, and a few years before my father unexpectedly passed away I noticed a copy of the record floating around ThePirateBay. I grabbed it, burned it to a CD and gave it to him on his birthday. He hadn't heard the song since his record collection was destroyed back in the 80s. I never saw him so happy to be listening to a CD. Thank God we have the RIAA to try and stop moments like those.
In the last 10 years I have run into that record twice in all my eBay, CraigsList, and Amazon searching.
So good luck. Once someone creates a fairly complete library of music, along with an easy way to BUY songs (not rent or borrow), and the prices are reasonable--I'll start using it. I'd hate for my kids to grow up and remember a song their dad played in their youth, only to find "Barbie Girl" unavailable and unplayable because it's DRM'd and backed by a bunch of sue-happy lawyers.
Oh--and I'm joking. I hate "Barbie Girl".
There's no place like
Since youtube probably gets like 1000 copyright infringement notices a day, does that mean they will punish their own service and put it at the bottom of the results?
I'd be really happy to use Hulu or get the same content on Netflix as US users but due to an artificial restriction I am unable to. I don't want to have to pay for a proxy or VPN I want to get the same content that is available to US users (and Canadians?). I speak the same language and I have money. Feel free to offer me a product and you can have some of that money.
No, that was when they stopped searching for what I asked them to search for and began searching for what they think I wanted to search for.
In other words: I want it exactly my way, under my terms, otherwise I'll just take it.
This is typical of the "Insightful" commentary on this site.
Well, there's something insightful in saying "you could package your product in such a way that I'd give you money, but oddly you're not packaging it that way". I'm certainly willing to pay for games/movies/whatever, and my willingness to pay is almost entirely influcenced by ease of acquisiton and use (price barely comes into it, though I won't be paying $10/episode for a TV show)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yeah, iTunes is great. Lossy digital audio for only 50% more than the priec of a physical CD...
Be thankful you don't have iTunes on Linux. it's such a huge bloated piece of poop on Windows...
If only Android could offer an equally nice user experience on a phone/tablet, then I wouldn't have to use it...
creative commons, gnu gpl, lgpl, bsd, all of these are in no way draconian.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Hey where is the linux client for that. oh wait...
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Those are licenses, which interact with, but don't replace, the draconian copyright laws.
Here is the information you requested:
NSA-GOOGLE-FOAA
I'm in Canada. Spotify and Hulu don't work legally here, Netflix has a crappy selection, and I refuse to use Apple products. I'd really like to know where I can watch any of the following programs (legally of course) : Horizon (UK), Dispatches (UK), QI (UK), Planet America (Aus), Gruen Transfer (Aus)
the US has really good transparency. Not perfect, but it is a lot better today then 20 years ago, and it's a hell of a lot better then almost any other country.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If your looking for something that is less popular, good luck finding a torrent with any seeders.
Google still does search ? I had forgotten.
Respectfully, I refer you to Wikileaks and Cryptome, and boilingfrogspost.com (Sibel Edmonds). I recommend looking at boilingfrogspost before too confidently re-stating such things. I commend your faith, but fear there are some genuine problems. Also, this administration has been quite busy going after whistle-blowers. Please take a second look.
Sincerely
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
On Linux you have things like Rhythmbox and Amarok which are equally bloated software.
And doesn't run on Linux.
In this particular case, I'm inclined to say that's a major feature of Linux.
Now I will have trouble finding Youtube! They have so many complaints about pirated material. Help! ;-)
What I really wonder is why they are abandoning the idea of giving searchers what they want.
They were really good at that for a while, you know--it's what helped them get their current status.
Oh well, there's always Duck Duck Go.
expandfairuse.org
i think the point that apple, sopa, pipa, whatev-a are all missing is that regardless of how cheap you make downloads, free downloads will always be cheaper.
...and while i'm at it... FUCK MICROSOFT and FUCK GOOGLE, and FUCK JUSTIN BIEBER!!!! just for good measure (this is slashdot after all)
if i went to the supermarket and they had nachos for a dollar, and then they also had a special sample day for nachos where they gave away some packets for free, who on earth in their right mind would pay the dollar if they can get exactly the same thing for free at the same store?
yeah i know usually illegal torrents are apparently crappy quality (believe it or not i've never actually used a torrent program before due to all the hype about tracking) but how much better quality could a legally downloaded movie be, given that the operating word there is still "downloaded"? unless you're going to wait for an 8gb full dual layer dvd quality download, which you can only use for 24 hours, a smaller download (with a drop in quality that would be barely noticeable on most consumer screens) in most cases would suffice, and if you don't feel like watching it in the next 24 hours, you can always watch it whenever you like.
i'm not saying movie piracy is good (obviously its not), but film and music studios aren't either and they have brought the problem of piracy on themselves after years of rediculously high prices CDs and DVDs.
apple is just a middle man scraping their relatively small slice of profit as the product slides through their hands, so in this case i wouldn't really see it as "the" bad guy, but since they are filthy rich from their brainwashing and taking advantage of the ignorant and impressionable youth of the world (and their irresponsible parents)... so yeah, FUCK APPLE!!!!
make Linux suck less
itunes doesn't run on linux, which means linux already sucks less
ios and windows can keep their garbage bloatware
they also aren't laws either
And yet, Amazon has become the #2 music store by selling unencumbered MP3s that could be easily copied. In other words, they sell:
1. What people want
2. In a format they want
3. That plays on everything
4. Without DRM
And they are making millions doing it. You really should try it instead of breaking the internet.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"
If people want that info, they will not use Google to find it. If Google wants these people to search through them, they will change their way.
Off course ... Google has always participated in the filter bubble, so this seems part of that
Price has little to do with it. Look at sales of bottled water if you need further convincing.
no they simply aren't using those dracomian laws and can be downloaded without fear of the men in black SUV's and helicopters busting down your doors
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Linux has Rhythmbox and Amarok which are equally bloated on top of having terrible user interfaces and terrible code bases.
I'm not at all sure I would apply the word "Draconian" to these laws, as bad as they are, but let's say you are correct. The laws of the United States are supposed to be built to prevent Draconian terms. Whole sections of the constitution, such as the prohibition of Ex Post Facto lawmaking and the clause against Cruel and Unusual Punishment, are there to prevent Draconian terms from being codified into law and enforced. It could be argued that the clause relating to copyright that says "for a limited time", is an effort to keep copyright law from ever getting anywhere near Draconian. Certainly, putting all of copyright law originally in a non-criminal law section of the US legal code so it's limited to being tortuous, at worst, was a means of avoiding the risk of copyright violation being escalated from miisdemeanor to ever more serious felony - this is an area where people as disparate as Jefferson, Madison, and Jay all wrote to agree with that intent.
In the United States, the solution to Draconian laws is simple - armed rebellion. US citizens are supposed to rein in their government by less violent means long before anything gets to Draconian, and it's when the problem reached Draconian that we are supposed to reconize the less violent means have failed, and switch form ballots to bullets.
Who is John Cabal?
How old is your source?
"Currently, in the US, Apple does not sell songs with FairPlay encryption" - Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay
Your link doesn't say when the article was written. It does say, "Last Modified: June 26, 2012", but that doesn't mean it's been updated in years. I noticed the article also talks about needing to have iTunes 9, but no mention of iTunes 10. iTunes 10 came out in 2010 - http://www.oldapps.com/itunes.php?old_itunes=63 So, that article has to be at least 2 years old.
This is great news if you are selling media. However Google search should just be search. If I don't want pirate sites in my results, I'll tailor my query to do so. This is just continued commercialization of the web.
The song is, on the other hand, on spotify Link
well dude, your comparing songs to videos.
All copyright terms are defensible. If you don't like somebody's draconian terms, simply find something else to download.
I do.
It's called a Torrent.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Holy crap! Color me impressed. Now to launch Spotify and...oh...nevermind...it's cheaper to own the non-DRM'd record. I can listen to it forever.
There's no place like
rythmbox isn't all that bad, but even if you don't like its interface or code base or whatever at least you're free to improve it, or you can just whinge
I've been using YubNub for years so I can switch on the fly between engines, as users have added virtually every site I might encounter and I can add more as needed.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
any software license without copyright laws isn't worth a pinch of shit
although even with copyright laws, someone in somalia could still take a piece of gpl sotware an sell it as their own without gpl acknowledgement since somalia isn't a signatory to the berne convention
all the gpl does is give you certain freedoms under copyright, otherwsie gpl software would be copyright by default and you wouldn't be able to use it
You would be amazed. If you are not looking for completely obscure stuff which maybe two people on the whole planet like, but instead would like to have e.g. music which is ONLY sold in Japan (and not available via itunes, amazon, spotify, ... anywhere in the western world), there is an IMMENSE amount of websites which fill that gap (torrents with hundreds or thousands of seeders). I'd like to buy a lot of those CDs, I'd be willing to pay the usual $10 to $15 for an album, but I cannot download the stuff legally as mp3, e.g. via amazon and I cannot buy the physical CD except by ordering in directly in Japan and having it shipped here, which would end up at maybe $60 per CD or so. So I simply download the whole album as FLAC with cover scans like everybody else does.Seems they simply have not realized yet that they are missing out on a lot of money by not offering all the stuff worldwide, which really should not be any problem when you're talking about downloads.
Just for the record (no pun intended) if you're looking for rare music the best place to check is gemm.com. The site is a database of thousands of independent record stores' catalogs. I have not been let down with any oddball request I've thrown at it.
harmonious design
If the quality was lower, then piracy wouldn't be nearly as popular. The truth is that if the movie or TV show is on Blu-Ray, you can pirate it in Blu-Ray quality; actually since the mandatory FBI warning and any trailers are stripped, and since it is instantly accessible with no physical media, it's slightly better than owning the Blu-Ray. The only risk is getting caught, the odds of which are perceived to be very low, getting a virus of some sort, or wasting your time with a completely unrelated file, and those last two problems are virtually solved in the better communities.
Source: I am a filthy pirate, even though I've also bought maybe $30,000-35,000 worth of DVDs in my lifetime.
Oh great. SEO has always been a magnet for black hat web spammers. But that was always, always traceable back to the black hat site in question. Call it "defensive SEO". But now? The actions of unknown third parties can trash a sites ratings -- offensive SEO. And how long will it be before botnet for hire offers to destroy your competitors in way which is essentially impossible to trace. Because SEO is absolutely that petty and specific. The opportunity to harm a competitors Google rating is, for many, too good to pass up.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck I do not want to have to deal with that.
This situation isn't unique to the music industry, it happens with books as well. While you're never going to find a "complete" library of music from a single place you might want to check out Amazon.com. I'm not affiliated with them, in fact I mainly use them for books. Albums are available in MP3 format with no DRM. They've got some obscure stuff on there too which is how I came across it. I was unable to forage the album I wanted and after hearing the bands first album I liked them enough to purchase all of their music. I did some research (which I encourage you to do before pulling the trigger) and apparently the files are watermarked but they don't contain any unique information beyond that the file(s) originated from Amazon. It's convenient, reasonable (IMO), DRM free and it's from a big name company. Anyway, hope it helps!
I think what you'd really enjoy is discovering a site with users who have similar interests. I've come across some really amazing communities over the years with passionate people.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Are you sure it's really better? Are you sure they haven't just figured out how to hide the important stuff by burying it under a mountain of the mundane?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Looks like you can purchase the vinyl here. For anyone interested in the song (this guy was ahead of his time!) check it out here. You've just made me a fan =)
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
And they are making millions doing it. You really should try it instead of breaking the internet.
Pffbtt... Typical astroturfing I'd expect from a PRMan. No really, you can't break the internet, but you can break a monolithic business model. Pirating isn't the cause of the artists getting the short end of the stick anymore than the consumer getting it. It's the fault of all the board members, middle management, lawyers, and promoters that take a majority of the artists' profits while reducing consumer choice and the quality of the product. Downhill Battle has been faithfully uncovering the egregious excesses of the corporate owners and used to have some nice infographics breaking up the profits by percentages (I tried to find some as they don't appear to be hosted on their site, anymore). I don't know how many studies I've seen that show pirating causes more purchases and how many years, end-to-end, the music and movie industry have made record profits. Do they really expect me to believe that pirating a movie takes away from the profits (read: wages) that the set employees make? Hell no, because set employees (makeup, special effects, lighting, sound) don't get royalties! It's the worst junk propaganda I've seen in years. I find it ironic, yet fitting, that a Youtube user was blocked from displaying a MPAA Public Service Announcement on the grounds that NBC/U owns the copyright.
The Copyfight has reached a point where I only want to pay the artist, directly. I loved the idea Radiohead used for "In Rainbows" as they received all the money donated (minus PayPal or the credit gateway fees). I'd like to just give bands cash, from my hand, so they get it all..... no middle-man making money, even if it's just 2-5 percent. If anything, maybe Flattr can start gaining traction as a way to say 'thanks' to all the wonderful artists who give their work away on YouTube and Vimeo for free. Hopefully musicians aren't constrained from putting some sort of donation/appreciation link on their websites by a contract; and without giving a dime back to their publisher (of whom should be so grateful they are representing such talent!). When it comes down to it, I want to really own the music or media I purchase. I don't want to wake up to find out Amazon or Apple has deleted something from one of many devices I own (e.g., Amazon: George Orwell's "1984"; Apple: Siri app pre 4s).
I found a study ("Meh. The Irrelevance of Copyright in the Public Mind" by Brett Lunceford & Shane Lunceford) about the public's seeming irreverence to copyright (I have a feeling there are segments of the population that pirate music just to spite the corporate oligarchy). They think this indifference has existed since recording instruments were mass-produced. It's not as if people were even consciously aware they were breaking any laws back then. If anything, I bet more than a few musicians and would-be corporate overlords that had a reel-to-reel back in the 50s made illegal recordings to share with their friends. I remember a friend of my father who made copies of Laserdiscs onto VCR tapes and gave them to his friends --and he even made simple short movies taking choice scenes from movies much like I added Simpsons or Ren and Stimpy soundclips between songs on my mix-tapes. I think it's simple.... reducing the choice of the consumer to use the media they purchase reduces creativity (and commerce), overall. Until then, people will always find a way to circumvent any roadblocks; real or perceived.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Okay. Since iTunes doesn't have that particular song, you are now given a license to torrent every single song, movie, book or whatever for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. It's a-okay because your feelings have been hurt by iTunes. Go to it. Oh wait, I'm guessing you're already doing that anyway.
Yeah--that's exactly what I was saying. </sarcasm>
I do think the system needs to change for secondly big reasons. First, the RIAA says it's criminal to do what humans have done for a long time--shared music. Sure, 100 years ago it wasn't duplicating CDs or transferring files--it was gifted people (with a musical ear) hearing something someone else has done and duplicating it on their own instrument. Maybe even improvising and making their own tweaks. Criminalizing that is wrong. Secondly, it's human nature to download stuff if it's free and/or you won't get caught. As long as people can download it for free, they will--because paying $15 to download music that can be revoked at some later date is akin to just lighting a few bills on fire. Not to mention the risk/reward at that price point. People think getting out of paying $15 is easier/less risky/less hassle than locking in to a DRM platform or getting caught and sued by the RIAA.
It's not right, but doing it 'the right way' is more difficult than most people want. Me personally, I started watching movies again now that Google and Amazon have made it cheap enough for my tastes (rather than ~$20/person on average at the theater for movie, drinks, etc...and I *hate* watching movies in the theater--home is better). I still don't like that I get 24 hours to watch a movie though--I have kids. I'm lucky if I get to watch 30 minutes of a movie every night before I'm too tired to keep my eyes open. I had to rent the new Sherlock Holmes movie twice just to be able to finish it--it locked me out half way through.
There's no place like
I've recently started using iTunes for music and movie rentals and it works flawlessly. So there's no justification of "no good legal alternatives" anymore, as both Spotify and iTunes are actually easier and nicer to use than pirate sites. The same goes for Steam.
Although we own an Apple TV, we mostly use Netflix for movie rentals. On those rather rare occasions when we find a movie we like enough to want to watch again, I will buy it on iTunes - and then immediately run it through Requiem to remove the DRM.
Before we got the Apple TV, this was the only way we could watch our legally purchased movies on our television. I don't really need to do it anymore, but I do it anyway - just on general principle.
#DeleteChrome
Just for the record (no pun intended) if you're looking for rare music the best place to check is gemm.com. The site is a database of thousands of independent record stores' catalogs. I have not been let down with any oddball request I've thrown at it.
Noted. They had a bunch of old stuff I was looking for. Thanks!
There's no place like
Looks like you can purchase the vinyl here. For anyone interested in the song (this guy was ahead of his time!) check it out here. You've just made me a fan =)
Yeah--I noticed those listings while I was posting. I'm particularly fond of this article on the guy. I wish I had been able to meet him before he died--he lived only a few hours drive away from me. I'm sure he would have appreciated the fond memories of my youth--hanging out in the garage, rocking out with my dad. Heck--I even remember listening to his stuff while my dad and his buddies made and bottled wine. (Try finding info on that old-and-gone company on Google buried in the events of this week--they were called "Mars Landing".)
There's no place like
Orwell rolls around in his grave....Google becomes a copyright cop. I wonder what "wink wink" deal this was tacked onto with the studios.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Try finding info on that old-and-gone company
Which?
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Try finding info on that old-and-gone company
Which?
"Mars Landing" ;)
They made wine.
There's no place like
Steam is really the only one i get behind. They've gotten it perfectly and it's made them and developers a ton of money. Frequent sales, contests, promotions gets people excited and really reward impulse purchasers. iTunes is ok for music, though I'm not at all convinced its the best way. It's certainly not at all what I'm looking for in video entertainment, I'm pretty happy with Netflix for that. It has lots of interesting shows to watch and makes it nice and easy and keeps track of what you've seen. The recommendations are fairly good, especially if you are faithful with rating programs. I have used Hulu a fair amount, never bought Hulu+ though, It would be hard to get me to pay for content with commercials, especially in the middle. I would accept one or two minutes of commercial(s) before I watched any given movie or tv episode. Frankly though I just don't care to see the commercials and would prioritize lack of commercials as high as affordability and depth of catalog. Most importantly I don't want to pay per episode, I want flat rate monthly pricing. Music I'm willing to pay per unit, tv i want flat rate. Movie I could understand paying for each, but I'm not that much into the current movie scene. I find tv series to be much better sans commercials and on demand, 22 or 44 minutes a pop, no commercials, it's a whole new improved way to watch tv. Ally Mcbeal, Doctor Who, The Wonder Years and That 70s Show are among the shows I'm currently watching.
nobody's perfect
It's a-okay because your feelings have been hurt
No, it's a-okay because artificial scarcity is a crock that causes huge amounts of harm. The amount of destroyed value is insane. Ignoring such idiocy is the sensible thing to do.
To start punishing Google in my internet usage habits. If Google wants to censor, then they are no longer the best search engine for my needs.
Great Intellect...
VIDEO. Videos are still encrypted, and unplayable on anything but Apple devices (or with Apple software on non-Apple devices).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
And is not available in all countries.
I'd probably get series through Netflix (iTunes is really garbage, even on OS X) if I was in the US, but I'm not so I have to make do with alternatives...
Hmm. http://www.amazon.com/mp3
"We're sorry, Amazon MP3 is only available in the United States".
Oh, of course. There is no rest of the world, the ocean simply falls off into space about 2 miles off the coast of America.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
He was specifically asking for legal sources to prove a point. Providing torrents or other illegal download sources does not help.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Worst DRM ever though. Your internet connection dies? Fuck you, no Steam games for you!
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
If people do a search for "[artist] mp3 download", chances are they're not looking for Spotify or iTunes
I've done that before. Track wasn't available on iTunes, so did a Google search for it. Would have paid for it if it actually turned up on a legit site. Alas, it didn't. Never could find that track.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Oh, of course. There is no rest of the world, the ocean simply falls off into space about 2 miles off the coast of America.
Because foreign countries don't have entities which prohibit distribution (read want $$$$)? BBC iplayer requires you to be in the UK. I guess the rest of the world doesn't exist to them either... I am unable to watch many streaming services auf Deutch due to my geolocation. I guess the rest of the world doesn't exist to them either? My choice in recommendation was based on the assumption that the GP is American. Perhaps if he was speaking Korean another recommendation would be in order... where is your recommendation?
TLDR: Licenses, how do they work?
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Dude, the US is number fucking 24 on the Global Corruption Index. Qatar is less corrupt than the US.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Except that the copyright industry has made sure their terms apply to ALL content. Play ANY music no matter how it is licensed and the copyright industry collects payment for it. You cannot escape it legally and forcing them to return illegal collections or actually paying out illegal collections to copyright owners that are long dead or do not want the money is impossible.
If you created your own music and played it on your own radio show, you would have to pay for your own music and then have a hell of time trying to collect the money due to you minus a hefty fee if you ever get it.
Only a serf would claim copyright is fair.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The problem is that Google is not the law, has no formal role in law enforcement and cannot take any decisions on infringement other than when they have been confirmed.
This means that unless Google is linked to all court decisions in all countries it will be acting as judge and jury - and on top of that is taking a precog approach to the future.
Even if multiple offences have been registered, this could be due to the sheer size of the organisation and guess who would immediately get a hit downwards? Youtube.
Now, let me think, who owns that again. Hmmm...
Insert
Do we get a search modifier / term for that? So we can find sites that have get high numbers of these notices?
:)
You know, for, uhr, research purposes?
[T]here's no justification of "no good legal alternatives" anymore, as [proprietary, greed-driven corporate glory holes] are actually easier and nicer to use than pirate sites.
Bullshit — there's no seeding. I am, as far as I can determine, the sole seeder of many DRM-free, mixed-media works and data leaks. Many of these items are not available for purchase, anywhere, at any price; they're at risk of disappearing to the digital dark age or into the "vaults" of shortsighted, greed-driven copyright holders.
I serve approximately 100 gigabytes per day, and intend to continue indefinitely. I welcome and thank others who help protect our culture/data from the clutched fists of those who seek to serve only themselves, control other peoples' access to data, or both.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
* Lack of moral, economic, or rational justification for the existence of copyright in the first place.
Great Intellect...
Compare to the copyright-proponent's argument: I control this information, I can tell you how you can use it, I say who can use it, and I can revoke that whenever I want. BTW, I didn't even make it, I just bought it.
Copyright is a failed concept.
Great Intellect...
When I search something using your engine, I expect to find what I am searching for, not what YOU want me to search for. Got it?
If I search for say 'Johnny Hollows Stone Throwers' feel free to make some of the results to places to buy it. I'm sure they already do, probably in the ads I've blocked. But anyway, sure, weight the search results in favour of some store that sells whatever record that's on, or whatever. I'm fine with that.
I'll just search for 'Johnny Hollows Stone Throwers torrent' if I wish to download it. And if you fuck with those search results, well... then you're not a very good search engine any more, because then you are ignoring what I'm searching for and showing me what you want me to search for instead... And then I go elsewhere.
Because everyone lives in the US and wants to do business with Apple.... oh wait, I tried doing business with Apple and got $4000 worth of tech that completely died within 18 months. Not good for a class 1 monitor (30" cinema HD) and a top of the line laptop (2 dead batteries, dead SuperDrive, failed HDD, overheating CPU, dead GPU, and more). Meanwhile the $1000 laptop and $250 monitor I bought elsewhere have been working for 4 years without repair or incident (minus a dead battery)...
Apple - "There's no option for that"
I havent used amarok for years, never have used rithmbox and still keep on seeing movies and listening music on linux all the time without any trouble
Linux sucks, I know
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Here's an idea: what's preventing us from writing a Firefox plugin that auto-indexes all sites that we visit (except when in privacy mode -- or perhaps only when in a new discovery mode?)? This local index will then be shared with other machines running the same plugin and virtually combined into a big global index. Since there's no site that won't be one day visited with such a search-enabled browser, the index will likely cover most of the Internet. This way, we get rid of Google and other centralized search engines; and therefore get rid of corporate censorship.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Linking this to big media is so easy, it's automatic.
But many times when I did search for some piece of media, I would get nothing but torrent links on the first or even second page, where in reality I was looking for any interesting sites that would talk about the plot of a movie I didn't quite "get". They do have a point in that torrent sites preempt everything else in many situations, and they have an interest in protecting the main functionality of their site, which is finding people relevant info.
You can read more about it in the Bible!
LOL it's just another reason to continue using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine.
My point, which you seem to have only half gotten, is that unfortunately whenever someone talks about not having options to legally purchase content, invariably you'll have a ton of people showing up to link to Hulu, Netflix, Amazon MP3, etc - completely ignoring that said solutions are not available to, well, most of the world. I've yet to see someone on Slashdot start talking about how iPlayer has the content they want so clearly that is the solution.
You actually do a better job of proving the original point that options are not available by doing that (as well as raising the ire of internationals who get reeeeeally sick of Americans whining about there not being good enough options for getting TV and Music when they have so many good options available - I'm not saying you were doing this by the way).
For what it's worth, that GP also mentioned Craigslist so we can probably safely assume they're American - but still, every time someone goes on about awesome stuff like Amazon MP3 or Netflix, it might be a good idea to prepend that "if you're in the promised land" so that internationals are forewarned that they're about to be bitterly fucking disappointed - as usual.
And I say this from one of the only two countries apart from the US to have Pandora.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
YaCy.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Drop a few bucks at half.com and get your very own legit CD's to rip. Vol 4 FTW.
My point, which you seem to have only half gotten, is that unfortunately whenever someone talks about not having options to legally purchase content, invariably you'll have a ton of people showing up to link to Hulu, Netflix, Amazon MP3, etc - completely ignoring that said solutions are not available to, well, most of the world. I've yet to see someone on Slashdot start talking about how iPlayer has the content they want so clearly that is the solution.
I have first hand experience with the international annoyance. I regularly share things with a friend in Germany (links) and many times we cannot see or hear them due to the content not being available in our area. It's pretty lame.
For what it's worth, that GP also mentioned Craigslist so we can probably safely assume they're American - but still, every time someone goes on about awesome stuff like Amazon MP3 or Netflix, it might be a good idea to prepend that "if you're in the promised land" so that internationals are forewarned that they're about to be bitterly fucking disappointed - as usual.
Noted. I'm half joking when I say consider yourself blessed, reality television is a blight... In your opinion why haven't domestic services done what American companies are doing, locally? Is the demand not there? Is American entertainment that "good"? Is it legal hurdles?
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Honestly? We do actually have one streaming-on-demand service. It sucks. The content is either old or pay-per-play ($7 per watch - may as well rent the blu-ray, better quality). It's like Netflix, but with ten-times older content, and the content that isn't old has an additional price tag on top of the subscription. And did I mention that it contains no HBO content, despite the fact that... wait for it... HBO owns it?
We do also have the free catch-up services similar to Hulu but with no charges and no handy apps on every platform under the sun - unlike Hulu though, you get 7 days to watch the program before it vanishes, and every network (there's only three, two free to air and one pay tv) has their own platform. And with sub 50GB data caps, it's not something one could realistically make heavy use of.
In terms of Netflix and the like, Netflix has actually gone to the effort of coming here simply to tell us it's not going to happen. They claim our internet is too slow and expensive for them to see any chance of success.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".