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The Pirate Bay Launches Free VPN
bs0d3 writes "The Pirate Bay team is going to be making the RIAA angry, with the launch of a new ad-supported VPN service. PrivitizeVPN is available for free from The Pirate Bay. Instead of earning revenue through subscription as ipredator does, PrivitizeVPN comes packaged to install the Babylon search bar (adware). PrivitizeVPN appears to be available for Windows users only at the moment. The Pirate Bay staff has a long history of promoting services that have no logs; e.g. , you can't get in trouble if your anonymized IP is subpoenaed by government officials. Although PrivitizeVPN is being released silently, with no press coverage, no official statement, and no comments from The Pirate Bay of any kind, people are assuming that PrivitizeVPN will have the same familiar data protection policies. A backup download location has been setup here for people who have limited access to the Pirate Bay domain."
honeypot!
If anything, running Windows traffic through a VPN is like putting 20 inch rims on an '89 Corolla. It's already insecure.
Jokes aside, I wouldn't mind trying it out on a couple virtual machines to see what it'll do. Maybe they can develop a *nix version that doesn't require the adware.
Theft implies loss of property.
... whatever
This would be the worlds greatest honeypot if it was setup by the **AA themselves.
The RIAA is probably behind this, Babylon search bar is a far worse punishment than thier frivolous lawsuits.
No sig today...
It seems I cannot opt out of installing the search bar during installation. Too bad, I will never get to try it out.
wooosh!
Theft implies loss of property.
That is true, but doesn't make piracy less wrong.
Even when the damage is data retention laws and the best censorship their wholly-owned politicians can shove through the legislature. Will the dying, dinosaur media companies ever realize that Pandora's box can never be closed, and the genie cannot be returned to the bottle?
You would think they would realize now, almost 15 years into this cat-and-mouse game that their offensives are futile, burn goodwill with their customers, and make them look like an angry old man who wants the kids off his lawn.
Smart record, production, and media companies take note right now: You WILL innovate, or you WILL go bankrupt. I'm not some radical pirate or communist, I'm giving you advice, trying to help you. Technology CANNOT be killed by legislation and propaganda. Your only hope is to adapt. Better to realize that now than before you are completely bankrupt. You're welcome.
Theft implies loss of property.
That is true, but doesn't make piracy less wrong.
Actually it does. If you buy something and share it with someone that is good not bad.
The war on piracy uses pretty much the same tactics as the war on drugs.
You can't have downloaded content. Any downloaded content you do have must be in clear digital containers with the administering agency. Even if you have prescr--er, license, for the downloaded content you have in your possession, you can still be charged with a crime if it does not come in a pre-approved container. Taking other people's downloaded content, even if they have the same content as well, is also forbidden. You cannot move your downloaded content from one container to another container, this is also illegal. Admission that you have downloaded content, or a suspicion that you may be in possession of downloaded content, legally or not, is grounds to search your person for it. Possession of a sufficient quantity would normally get you intent to distribute as well, but we have declared a quantity of zero to be intent to distribute: Every downloader is also an uploader, as a matter of law.
If charged, you are guilty until proven innocent. The best lawyers in the geographical area you are being prosecuted in will be used against you, while you will be given a crappy public defender, or none at all, since we've found that we can throw you in jail for civil violations as well, and only criminal court has to provide one. Possession in and of itself, regardless of whether or not you have a valid license to possess it, is sufficient for a conviction. There is no appeals process, or any appeals process present is designed only to look at things that are a "matter of law". You'll note the law has been so narrowly written as to make everyone guilty, merely by possession.
Fines and punishments will be far worse for this than any other crime. In fact, if you murder the artist who's song you downloaded, you'll face less time in jail and less fines. Actually, you could murder the whole band, and their agent, and still get off comparatively light.
Oh, lastly, trying to hide your content trafficing using encryption, vpns, or any other obfusciation technology will result in additional punishments, as it is obstruction of justice now to do so. Thank you for you cooperation, corporate citizen.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'm curious, does it creep you out every time you hear someone say the government has to pay for tax cuts?
To install you need to check "agree with the terms and conditions". Which link doesn't work to view.
I suppose that means I'm agreeing to NO terms or conditions.
*And* being hosted by a seedy torrent site?
What could possibly go wrong there? Hope you enjoyed your accounts while they lasted if anyone installed THIS.
No, they're handing out their own IPs.
That's right. Piracy off the coast of Somalia is plain wrong.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
It will just make it easier for you to be tracked.
Warrant a legit company. Pull User ID's (and perhaps personal info) from people who have pirate bay IP Addresses. See if they have non-pirate bay IP addresses connected to that login. keep an eye on that IP address, gather more personal information to prove it is the person not just the Address. Get enough info to get the the person. Warrant to check their computer. Then they got you.
Congratulation you had just made your user account flagged as a hacker/pirater.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is a normal thing that you see within any context where there are people who want control vs people who want freedom, this is just one type of manifestation of such a situation. Yes, RIAA and the cohorts will be pissed and they will try to shut it down as well. Yes, TPB will try to avoid being shut down and there will be more services like this one available. The fact that TPB is going to try and make a buck off of it makes perfect sense, somehow the service has to be managed, somebody has to put in the time and resources, whatever capital, land and labour that it will take to have this thing running and it makes perfect sense to try and run it for profit, why not, if people find this to be a useful service, they'll go for it, ads or no ads. Actually I wonder if they will also just have a subscription model, so that the service could be just bought with a monthly payment?
MY OTHER COMMENTS
It's true the boarding a ship at sea, and steeling it cargo is wrong, all though the majority of (Elizabethan) piracy was performed by government license and so may be considered a form of warfare.
Theft implies loss of property.
That is true, but doesn't make piracy less wrong.
Actually it does. If you buy something and share it with someone that is good not bad.
At least, that's what Jesus and our Kindergarten teachers told us.
What determines how wrong 'piracy' is is the individual's own moral code.
These people don't realize that IP law is just freedom infringing bullshit and that sharing is a good thing.
It's not called stealing. It is called infringement, but it isn't stealing by *any* definition.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Call me paranoid, like the voices in my head do, but why should I trust the Pirate Bay with access to my network? A VPN goes both ways and most people are not going to be up to the task of fire-walling off the VPN host from connecting back to their local system.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Since when was war anything other than robbery and murder? How is that right?
The problem is the "Guilty until proven innocent" take on the stuff I do by legally. Why am I not allowed to copy it however I see fit? I bought it, and by 'it' I mean a license to use it, so I can use it wherever I like.
And if you want to argue I need a new license for every different 'use' of it, well you'll find most people won't agree with you when you explain that...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Yes! we must outlaw the unauthorized use of VPN. ISPs will be required to monitor the end points. Route around that!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
no comments from The Pirate Bay of any kind
Who's to say this isn't being released by some government body so it's easier to track what you're doing?
They have all the freedom to create or not. They do not the sacred right of exclusive control over which they created though.
Yes, it does make it less wrong. A lot less wrong, in fact. It just doesn't make it right.
Well historically right and wrong has been defined by the wining side. That is why we shouldn't give too much credit to people saying stuff is "wrong". They just don't really understand the concept.
Drop the property meme. It's rubbish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services
That is true, but doesn't make piracy less wrong.
Cheating on your spouse is wrong but it shouldn't be a crime.
drop the word "sacred" out of that & you're right. with the word, you're implying a deity.
prove that deity exists and you might be onto something :)
It might be making the RIAA members angry, but I doubt it is making the RIAA angry -- in fact, quite the reverse. The RIAA is an organization whose members will be more convinced that they need the RIAA and will happily pay dues to the RIAA because of actions like this from the Pirate Bay.
Really, one of the issues that needs to be highlighted is how the large music publishers have changed the dialogue from how the music publishers are suing people over file sharing into a dialogue about how a faceless organization is suing people over file sharing.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't have a big moral problem with free file sharing only because the people this harms (MAFIAA) are such immoral scam that they deserve the treatment way worse than this. They are greedy assholes who are going around harassing and suing single mothers for ridiculous amounts of damages. This waaaay overshadows everything file sharers do.
BTW, I know people who download content illegally on principle, just because they don't want to give any money to this scum.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Yeah but taking a sniff of that smell doesn't prevent anyone else from smelling it.
If I have an orange in my hand and you take it from me, I no longer have the orange. I now have one orange LESS than I had before. That is stealing.
If I have a cd in my hand and you copy that CD, I still have the CD in my hand. I do NOT have one LESS cd than I had before.
Small children can detect the difference between these two scenarios; but to some people they are equivalent. I have no clue why that that is.
Piracy of Linux is indeed a serious issue. I found quite a few Linux torrents at TPB.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Is this really true? I had never head the numbers about whether or not most pirates in the 18th century were actual "privateers". I wonder what the actual percentages really are.
If you need a VPN, pay a couple bucks a month. This is just adware crap.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Okay:
So basically you just ceded the argument to him completely, but then tried to avoid admitting it by changing the subject.
> Small children can detect the difference between these two scenarios; but to some people they are equivalent. I have no clue why that that is.
It is because they are lawyers and politicians. They are impervious to logic or reality.
Everyone else, once they think a bit about it, can see that "intellectual property" is an oxymoron.
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
It would be impossible to make something that isn't wrong... less wrong. So you are correct.
If I have an orange in my hand and you take it from me, I no longer have the orange. I now have one orange LESS than I had before. That is stealing.
If I have a cd in my hand and you copy that CD, I still have the CD in my hand. I do NOT have one LESS cd than I had before.
Small children can detect the difference between these two scenarios; but to some people they are equivalent. I have no clue why that that is.
And is it wrong if I lend you my CD, you rip the CD and give it back? Pretty sure that is called "fair use". Look it up.
No, that's called competition.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Because it is not about the orange or the CD. It is about the money in your wallet. You have it. They don't and they want it, so it must be theft, because otherwise they would have it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If you want to be taken seriously, try using actual descriptions that match what you're talking about. Otherwise you're just another AC troll....
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Because you are focusing on the end user rather than the producer. If you take something, without paying for it when you are legally required to is called what?
Small children also know it's wrong to take things without paying for them. What is your point? That you think of things in terms of small children?
So do You plan on criminalizing the loss of potential sales, then?
How about a bad review, then? It certainly limits the earning potential of the imaginary property owner, as some people might trust this reviewer and don't buy a CD. It's definitely a loss of a potential sale, isn't it?
Well, it's stealing by the second definition here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal
The gov't response to this (already in some jurisdictions) will be mandated logging.
Today, you can't drive on a public road without a driver's license, current vehicle registration and liability insurance. Soon, Internet access will be taxed, registered and and regulated. Sure, some people will bypass this and continue to surf without a license. Just like some drive now. But the majority of the population will comply. And when they do, the majority (that pays its taxes) will look down on the unlicensed freeloaders as some sort of criminal or lower class who must be dealt with. Or at least kept out of their neighborhoods.
Have gnu, will travel.
So what you are saying is a musician should only be able to sell their music once?
Who the fuck said that?
no, I didn't quite finish that. I know what I mean :)
let me try again.
drop the word "sacred" out & you're just plain wrong under current IP law. without law we have anarchy, which can be fun at times but we all have to live together & get on without killing each other. or at least that is the optimal position from both sides of the fence.
with the word you're implying a deity, which unless you can prove it only lives in your head.
that is called 'insanity'. mad people tend to do whatever without regard for the consequences, which pretty much sums up the other side of the argument.
It's about what is on the plastic disc, and if I copy why is on the disc, the owner has not LOST what was on the plastic disk.
This idea of potential sales is stupid; it exists only in your imagination. It's handwaving puffery.
If you take my car, I no longer have a car. The car has been stolen from me.
If I create a song, and you copy it without paying for it, I still have the song. I have lost nothing.
Again, small children understand this distinction; apparently you do not.
I consider iron-clad anonymity on-line to be a human right, but I'm not going to throw my house keys and bank books into a mob-rule crowd that sports a few protest signs I might agreee with.
I think it might be called fair use; but whatever it is, it's not stealing.
I point out the examples of small children understanding this because it really is very simple. IP lawyers have tried to make a simple concept seem complicated by equating the two, but the vast majority of Americans know that making a copy of a cassette tape or CD just is simply, fundamentally not the same as walking into a supermarket and ripping off a candy bar, no matter how they try to spin it.
>If you take something, without paying for it when you are legally required to is called what?
Fraud.
Yes, you see, it is a different word. You know it has a different word yet you choose to remain ignorant of it. I have no idea why, other than to suggest you really aren't smarter than a 5th grader.
Well, not a "crime," but it certainly should be grounds for contract nullification in favor of the injured party.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
What makes it wrong exactly? Potentially illegal sure but, wrong?
Thats like saying its wrong to smoke pot.
I don't recognize the wrongness of crimes with no victim. Even pollution can make a case for their being a world full of victims, but.... data copying? Copying using ones own hardware, own internet connection etc?
I don't see it. Frankly, I think its wrong to make laws like that. If you wanna talk about wrong, talk to the people who did that.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It's not taking. It's copying. Copying is not taking.
The point about small children is that at a base level, the vast majority of people around the world understand that the two are not the same. Copying is not taking. Taking implies a LOSS from the person who had what was taken; copying does not.
That's why a very large percentage of Americans have copied music, for example, and have no ethical qualms about doing so, while a very small percentage of people would ever walk into a store and walk out with something without paying for it. They KNOW that there is a difference between the two.
IP lawyers try to blur the lines so that people will think they are the same, but people just aren't having it.
My App costs 5 shells. So if two people have the App I should have made 10 shells.
If person B copied the App from person A, person B' actions cause me to have 5 shells instead of 10.
I have 5 shells less than I should have, by the doing of person B.
Like the orange: stealing.
Privacy is terrorism.
No, what he's saying is that the two things are different, he didn't say that they were OK. Let's try another analogy: Someone burns your couch while it's outside and you go to the police saying that someone stole your couch. The police is now looking for a couch thief and not an arsonist because you don't know what words mean. That doesn't make it OK to burn your couch, it just means that you are not communicating properly by calling arson theft. When you call copying stealing you are doing the same thing. When you say that someone stole software, what you are saying is that they went into a store and shoplifted a physical thing thereby depriving the store of something physical - you are not talking about copying.
I expect that the reason you resist using words to mean what they actually mean is that we all already agree that stealing is bad in almost all cases, while it is not as clear that copyright infringement is bad, so by equivocating the two you end up not having to make an argument - you can just say "it's stealing, you don't support stealing, do you?". It's obfuscation that serves you, so I expect that you are using words wrong not because you don't understand that you are doing it, but because you do understand that your case benefits from the obfuscation.
Actually, I believe the term is not fair use, but copyright infringement.
No, technincally speaking, that is not fair use. Fair use is only if you are making a backup of your copy for your own use. It does not allow you to transfer a copy to another party.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
No, this sucks, keep it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
When people can be secure in the product of their labor, to sell as they see fit, it's called competition, and is the source of the power of farming.
When they are not, it's called looting, and is the source of failed civilization and living in the wilds as a hunter/gatherer.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Nono, silly person.
If you copy my car keys, you have copied my car keys, and I still have my car keys. You have not STOLEN my car keys (unless you take the car keys, copy them, and then don't give them back.).
But when you take my car, you have stolen the car.
Imagine if you could somehow copy my car, say with a 3d printer. Would I say that you have stolen my car if you make a copy of my car and drive off with it? Of course not; that would be ludicrous.
That's because if i have a cd on my hand, and you buy it from me, you take my cd from my hand and put some money in it. If you copy the cd, you are taking the money from me (or from my account) which could be stealing.
i know it's still not the same, but it does hurt.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Just to play Devil's Advocate:
Do you now have something you never had before?
That someone else made?
And didn't get paid for?
It's easy to prove theft in the case of limited supply.
It's difficult in the case of unlimited supply.
small children probably dont know the difference between finite and infinite supply.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I'm an advocate of piracy myself - I believe that enforceable copyright law is incompatible with fundamental freedoms of the internet - but I still have to point out that 'potential sales' are a widely-accepted concept in economics. A dollar not earned is in many ways equivilent to a dollar lost: The effect on a company bottom line is the same.
Should have made = potential sales, which is handwaving puffery; it does not exist. Liek the poster above said, posting a bad review of a product causes a loss of sales; should they be sued for loss of "potential sales"?
"If person B copied the App from person A, person B' actions cause me to have 5 shells instead of 10."
This is true only if person B was going to otherwise buy the app; you have no idea if he would do so. You are assuming he would, but you can't base a definition of stealing around what COULD have happened in this alternate universe of yours.
You have 5 shells less than you should have only if person B was going to otherwise buy the item. Perhaps he just wanted to demo the app to see if he wanted to purchase it.
YOU are not the owner of what's on the CD. YOU are an end user licensee. Licensees don't have the right to distribute without a distribution license.
IF you produced what's on the CD, then sure, it's yours - do what you want with it.
This isn't a small children discussion. It's an adult discussion about responsibility. Something you clearly don't understand.
Grow up, small child.
to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
Copying isn't that either. That second definition deals more with plagiarism.
Copying is appropriating WITH acknowledgment. Most file sharers don't claim to be the original creators of the book/movie/song/game/etc.
Rights don't come into play because copyright is not a right, but a temporary monopoly/privilege granted by government.
to expound on myself some:
i figure if you bought it, you get to copy as see fit. Fair use and all, I believe in.
i also figure that if you didnt buy it, but say, just downloaded it, or copied a friend's copy of it, you did do....well, call it whatever you want, but you got the benefit of someone else's work without paying for it.
Not saying I'm innocent, by no means, just realistic about which is which.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The first one is the legal definition - which is all that matters.
In common language usage, yes 'stealing' can mean many things. Such cross action labeling is used when you want to impart the seriousness of taking something physical on to the significantly less important transfer of ideas or other non-tangible concepts.
i.e. it's used for effect, rather than substance.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
So what you are saying is a musician should only be able to sell their music once?
No. Saying copyright infringement is not theft is not saying anything else, not about the morality of it or the economic effects. Copying is not stealing.
Consider that vandalism also has some common effects with theft. If I destroy your property, the effect on you is basically identical to if I stole it, yet nobody calls vandalism theft. There is no insane desire to describe vandalism as theft in order to prove it wrong.
"Copying is not theft" and "copyright infringement is wrong" are completely compatible statements. You can not demonstrate that copying is theft because it differs in important ways. If you think it's wrong by all means make your case. There are lots of things that are wrong that aren't theft.
What it comes down to is that there are certain people and organizations that don't want us to think too deeply about the morality copyright infringement. They try to shut down discussion and thought by describing it as theft. If there was a proper discussion, they might not get their way.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
This. Exactly.
I'm not advocating copyright infringement by any means. I'm pointing out the difference between the two. I have a real issue with a movement by politicians, IP Lawyers and others to equate the two for exactly te reason you mention. Calling the copying of a song the equivalent to theft suddenly makes millions, literally millions and millions of people THIEVES.
I have an issue with that. The vast majority of those people would never walk into a supermarket and take a product there without paying for it. Most people know that the two actions are simply not the same.
Around 70 years ago it was illegal for black people to enter places and use buses in US. That was the law, and, thanks to people who defied those laws, sometimes at great cost to themselves, they changed. That is called civil disobedience and is many many times the only way to change things, especially against corrupt governments that have the power to perpetuate themselves, like US government, for example.
Furthermore laws are not absolute. Laws are only obeyed in 2 situations:
- When people agree with them
- When they can be forced upon people
A lot of people do not agree with IP laws, and those laws can't be really forced upon them. Add that to the fact that IP law can be very different from country to country and you will see the futility of fighting for IP in our world.
This is not a Pirate Bay project at all.
It's an advertising campaign, and a damn good one since it made it onto Slashdot...
Because you are focusing on the end user rather than the producer. If you take something, without paying for it when you are legally required to is called what?
Small children also know it's wrong to take things without paying for them. What is your point? That you think of things in terms of small children?
No, they clearly think of things in an entirely solipsistic manner (small children can at least eventually be taught that there are other people in the world who disagree with them, yet aren't wrong). Clearly, all what matters is their own uses of the good or service in question. The producers of that good or service are completely abstracted away by the time it gets to them, to the point where their only responsibility is to provide (note the lack of a two-way relationship), and anything that prevents that is considered a failure, because it inconveniences the user.
Note carefully that the token users-who-are-also-producers will add the firm belief that, since THEY support this definition (i.e. they either release things for free or have some other manner of income with their products, thus they personally have no stake in the matter), anyone who disagrees with them must be incorrect and flawed.
I agree, words can only ever have one very narrow definition. I'd see a doctor about that orange in your hand though, Carotenosis can be a sign of a bad diet or of a more serious condition.
Now if you excuse me, I've got to go write to publishers about all these romance novels with people "stealing glances", Unless they're ripping their eyes out, all these literary greats are clearly wrong.
I'll also head down to Oxford and tell them that the eymology of steal involving something non-tangible that they say dates back hundreds of years is wrong!
It's not theft if the person still has the item that they made and did not get paid for. If they still have it, and I copy it, they have "lost" nothing. In the case of an Orange, the limited supply is a supply of exactly one (the one in my hand). The small child does understand that if someone could copy a cd or tape, then the person who originally had the cd or tape would still have the cd or tape. They are fundamentally different.
In an investigation in 2006, the police concluded that The Pirate Bay brings in 1.2 million SEK (US$169,000) per year from advertisements.
> for things that you'd wet yourself with indignaton if somebody was doing to your beloved GPL stuff.
Actually, my guess is that very, very little of the content distributed via torrents available from TPB and elsewhere are derivative works rather than straight-out copies.
Double fail. Sorry, to get epic you'll have to, in addition, shill for Windows and add an ad hominem attack against RMS.
Whole sale copying of an entire piece work is absolutely not fair usage. Back ups are for personal use for your own property.
It's the content industry that started the property comparisons. E.g. "You wouldn't steal a car?"
"Theft of services" is an obscure turn of phrase. Most people understand the concept as "larceny" or some sort of fraud.
I still have to point out that 'potential sales' are a widely-accepted concept in economics.
Yet there is no evidence that a given incidence of copying results in a lost sale or even a lost "potential sale" since in some cases copying IS followed by a sale.
A dollar not earned is in many ways equivilent to a dollar lost
Except it is impossible for me to steal from you something that you have never obtained.
The effect on a company bottom line is the same.
Publicly protesting the company's unethical behaviour might have the same effect on sales too, but that doesn't make it theft.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
I promote IP theft the same way I promote Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, as there is no such thing as any of the above list.
When people can be secure in the product of their labor, to sell as they see fit, it's called competition, and is the source of the power of farming.
When they are not, it's called looting, and is the source of failed civilization and living in the wilds as a hunter/gatherer.
No one can ever be secure in the product of their labor. I can harvest my corn crop tomorrow and sell it for $1.50/ear and my neighbor could decide to sell hers for $1.00. Some years we have farmers in the area give crop away for free because they can't sell it and it's about to go bad. So tell me how I'm supposed to be secure in my labor. Next you're going to tell me that when my corn 'goes to seed' and some of those seeds blow over to my neighbors property and they start growing corn, it's 'theft' even though I haven't been deprived of any property...
If B wants to demo the App, he can download the demo version or express edition.
If B wants the full version, he has buy it. It's really simple.
Privacy is terrorism.
Don't you think it is obvious that the feds are watching your VPN server traffic? If you are paying for it, they can easily tie you to your activity. Having a VPN just means you are being tracked at your VPN provider instead of at your ISP. Same with proxy servers.
Apparently some 60-70% of Americans need to grow up as well, because that is the number which has admitted to copying music. Are they small children as well, because they understand this distinction? Perhaps you should reevaluate your idea of ethics.
We are talking about the difference between theft and copyright infringement. Your definition above refers to the latter, and yes, a case can be made that it is wrong. But "Licensees don't have the right to distribute without a distribution license" has nothing to do with theft; it's copyright infringement. They are not the same, as I have been at pains to point out.
Try to keep up.
They have all the freedom to create or not. They do not the sacred right of exclusive control over which they created though.
Bull. I created something. I DO have the right to share it, sell it, or destroy it. That means I do have exclusive control over the content I created.
If person B copied the App from person A, person B' actions cause me to have 5 shells instead of 10.
No, person B didn't cause you to have 10 shells instead of 5. Your number of shells not increasing is not the same as your number of shells decreasing.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
That may be true, but it has no bearing on whether or not B stole from the app developer. What if he copies the app, and then purchases the app?
The correct answer is "He committed copyright infringement, then purchased the app."
The enterprise software we write commands 5 figures per copy.
We don't depend on Imaginary Property. What we do is have written contracts with our customers, which include remedies for unauthorized copying.
Contracts are legitimate. So-called "intellectual property" isn't.
A VPN for that much data must cost a lot to run - there are pirates, they download by the gigabyte. I imagine intrusive, annoying adware is the best means of getting some income off of the service, and even then I doubt it'll be enough to break even.
What you take away from me by copying is my legal right to control my own creations.
It's similar to if I create a computer program and release it under GPL then you can't take it and incorporate it into a proprietary product.
I'm not directly hurt, but it's still wrong.
Okay, fair. I see what you and the other responders are getting at. I mistook your earlier comment as justification for copying something just because it's easy and digital. Thank you for clarifying. The problem now is what can we do about it.
Bad reviews are theft then?
A dollar not earned is in many ways equivilent to a dollar lost: The effect on a company bottom line is the same.
In many ways it is equivalent. In many ways it is not. I am completely that punish people who steal, for example, a macbook instead of buying one. I'm not for punishing people who choose to not buy a macbook. The effect on Apple is mostly the same (mostly because in the second case, they can sell the macbook you chose not to buy to somebody else, but let's assume we're talking about them having a surplus of macbooks and having to get rid of them Atari E.T. style, which would make the effect on their bottom line the same).
Things get a little more iffy with data. You can download a song / movie / game / whatever without paying for it. So you choose not to buy it without actually having to do without. But the point is that you're still not stealing something from the company. The company can still sell the music / movie / game you didn't buy to somebody else. Assuming that the piracy actually cost them a sale (which is a big, provably incorrect assumption. From another widely-accepted concept in economics, demand is going to be higher when the price is zero than when it is higher), it might affect the company bottom line the same way as stealing, but it also affects the company's bottom line in the exact same way as someone who simply chose not to buy it and go without, which we all agree is behavior that should not be punishable. That makes the argument of "how does this affect the company's profits" irrelevant. We either decide the behavior is acceptable or it is not. The company doesn't have a right to make money.
My personal opinion is that copyright law is important, but it is currently ridiculous. How many people are still using Windows 2000 today? It's obsolete, and it should have already reverted to the public domain. If you can't profit in 10-15 years, it's not our responsibility to help you out any more. The whole intellectual property movement is about conflating something that is not property with property. The creators don't have any intrinsic rights to their creations precisely because they can't be deprived of anything that is not physical. It's simply that society agrees to give up our rights to those creations for a limited time in exchange for encouraging further contributions to society. So if we don't get it back in a reasonable time, we're not getting what we bargained for.
A customer makes bad review of a bought product. The IP owner has one less potential sale because he deprived them of earning potential. Theft?
I'll take it seriously when I get my Baywords account back.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-did-not-launch-a-free-vpn-120827/
Slashdot broke a story earlier today claiming that The Pirate Bay had launched a free VPN service called PrivitizeVPN.
Interesting, except for the fact that itâ(TM)s not a Pirate Bay project.
The Pirate Bay team informed TorrentFreak that they have nothing to do with the service.
They are just running it as an ad next to the regular download links.
That does not mean that a free VPN isnâ(TM)t a good deal, if you donâ(TM)t forget to bypass the ad-ware installers. However, when we tried it the service didnâ(TM)t work at all.
According to people close to PrivitizeVPN they are working on the connectivity issues. Those looking for a more stable and high bandwidth VPN are probably better off looking for a paid alternative.
Theft implies loss of property.
That is true, but doesn't make piracy less wrong.
It also doesn't make it more wrong. What it does indicate is thet the original statement has nothing to do with a discussion that has nothing to do with theft/stealing/-some-other-emotionally-charged-phrase-that-some-people-can-push-your-buttons-with-so-they-can-take-more-money-from-other-people-. You might notice that the term 'stealing' could actually be used with that last descripter (you know, actually depriving people of money). But in that case, we would need to be referring to someone like the RIAA, MPAA, etc., and not actually a VPN provider.
How about competition? If I record a better album then you and release it, causing potential customers to buy my CD instead of yours, isn't that also loss of potential sales? Should I get raided by the FBI for that? No court should ever rule in favor of someone claiming damages for loss of potential sales as there is no way to prove that those sales would have actually happened. Such should only be used as a basis for a settlement if someone committed some crime or damage against the owner that could be reasonably shown to result in loss of sales. Bottom line: loss of public sales by itself does not prove criminal activity or civil damages as there is no way to really prove in a court why the loss of sales occurred. Discalimer: IANAL
if I take your car, there's still the same number of cars on the planet, so that would be ok I guess.
even a small child could understand that.
wow i didnt expect that you would spell out the fact that you do not understand the idea of ownership.
So what you are saying is a musician should only be able to sell their music once?
No one wants to say it in the daylight but YES. We are in this place because undervalue ourselves and then expect to make up the difference by shaming society. We are kidding ourselves. The Internet is for making copies. You can't have Google without scraping/copying the web. Preventing copying -- even if simply by outlawing "Save as..." -- is preventing networking and communication in areas no one should be able to dictate except me. They are my computers, my home, my hard drives... They are as much my copies as the "artist's." People can't stop dubbing/copying/swapping without obliterating private property. No. Real property is inarguably more important than imaginary property. So I say again: the solution is (simply) to charge a fair(er) price, not to charge an unfair one and then try to rely on extortion.
Thoughtcrime? I see no other way of proving that I, in fact, intended to buy music at all but changed my mind. Besides, I am not compensated if I like this music and eventually go to a concert. I mean, I wouldn't spend my money there without having listened to the CD.
The problem now is what can we do about it.
You can adapt, just like everybody else.
Technology changes the way we do business. Old models who can't adapt will fall, replaced by new ones.
Kodak was actually involved in a lot of research into digital photography. Too bad they couldn't adapt their business to it. That's life.
All the legislation and DRM and grandstanding is all part of adapting. The pirates are also adapting (as shown in this article). Everybody's adapting hoping to survive.
In the end, some people will survive, some people won't. There's no guarantee that the same people will survive over and over.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-did-not-launch-a-free-vpn-120827/
Except that nothing is taken.
Could you be sure that some other backdoor wasn't installed with the VPN software?
I have dedicated VPN host running under VM KVM/Centos, will install the PB VPN under virtualbox as backup vpn. thanks PB its party time.
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
Which wouldn't work with this VPN, as it is windows-only?
Tortius Interference
Tortious interference with business relationships occurs where the tortfeasor acts to prevent the plaintiff from successfully establishing or maintaining business relationships. This tort may occur when a first party's conduct intentionally causes a second party not to enter into a business relationship with a third party that otherwise would probably have occurred. Such conduct is termed tortious interference with prospective business relations, expectations, or advantage or with prospective economic advantage.
Basically, interfere with the business of someone richer than you and there will be heck to pay Just Because You Got in the Way.
Yes, this includes bad online reviews if they can find you. Yes, it's an oppressive idea right up there with "All game animals in the wilds belong to the King."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
google eff TPP . nafta shafta facism.
Sorry, I'd rather pay $$$ anonymously than trust adware to protect my anonymity.
From what I learned here on /. (and on reddit) during numerous conversations on VPN as a solution against ever increasing presence of hairy bony government arms ("bony arms" - direct copy from a Russian idiom) on your private parts I understand that the major problem with VPN is speed. I already noticed that trivial books (several megs) are loaded extremely slow sometimes on my muTorrent client even without VPN condom, I can imagine how painful torrents might become via VPN.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I can harvest my corn crop tomorrow and sell it for $1.50/ear and my neighbor could decide to sell hers for $1.00. Some years we have farmers in the area give crop away for free because they can't sell it and it's about to go bad. So tell me how I'm supposed to be secure in my labor.
DUH! The government subsidy you get for growing the crop they told you to.
Next you're going to tell me that when my corn 'goes to seed' and some of those seeds blow over to my neighbors property and they start growing corn, it's 'theft' even though I haven't been deprived of any property...
Monsanto certainly thinks so.
Theft only makes sense in one of 2 contexts, personal property or capitalism. Your example deals with the 1st and assumes that possession is binary (either I have a thing or I don't).
In the context of capitalism, and particularly with regard to copyright, the possession of a legitimate copy of a thing must be secured from someone possessing the right of distribution. The original copyright laws were passed to protect the distributor from unfair competition. (Companies without a contractual agreement with the author were selling/distributing copies of sheet music without the right to do so or the implied obligation to compensate with author in the form of royalties.)
Your argument is: specious
Adjective:
1. Superficially plausible, but actually wrong: "a specious argument".
2. Misleading in appearance, esp. misleadingly attractive: "a specious appearance of novelty".
It is called sharing, actually. Don't get me wrong, it is a crime to earn money by selling a copy without authors permission and should be punished. But if no money changes hands there is no IMO no crime, just sharing: a side effect of author's ability to create unlimited copies of a product at zero cost. Because by the devil's advocate logic it is a crime to buy a DVD and watch it with your family: your family members got the benefit of someone else's work without paying for it.
Fair use, of course, I know. There is a line between fair and unfair use though. To me this line is money: if money changes hands then there is an infringement, if not -- fair use. Simple to understand, simple to implement, simple to prove (kind of).
Those some people are are lawyers. For whom, the profit is in running lawsuits, irrespective of whether they are justified or not
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
That's right. Piracy off the coast of Somalia is plain wrong.
What about piracy in the Caribbean? Capitan Jack doesn't seem that bad
xevioso argued:,/p>
I think it might be called fair use; but whatever it is, it's not stealing.
I point out the examples of small children understanding this because it really is very simple. IP lawyers have tried to make a simple concept seem complicated by equating the two, but the vast majority of Americans know that making a copy of a cassette tape or CD just is simply, fundamentally not the same as walking into a supermarket and ripping off a candy bar, no matter how they try to spin it.
You're correct that it's not stealing.
It's cheating.
When you anonymously download a copyrighted work, you cheat the copyright owner out of fair recompense for your use of his work. You're not stealing from him - you're cheating him.
You can wave your hands all you like, and scream about how broken the copyright system is until you're blue in the face, but what you are doing by pirating movies and music is fundamentally unethical. Full stop.
Even a small child recognizes craven, self-serving rationalization when he hears it.
Check out my novel.
So what you are saying is a musician should only be able to sell their music once?
I am a musician/artist/songwriter/composer.
I sell my music every time I'm paid to perform.
I give away recordings. They promote my performances.
The CDs all have "Please feel free to copy and share this music with anyone you'd like if you enjoyed it." printed on them and the jewel cases. I also provide free high quality downloads.
Trying to make income selling recordings is a dead business model from the last century. Recordings are a promotional tool, nothing more.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
You reminded me of an event that happened during an early grade in school (grade 1, perhaps 2?). We were given two tubs, one half-full of water, the other empty, and a hose. We were told to get the water from one tub to the other without simply dumping the water from one to the other. We were split into groups of 3 to do this activity.
Most of the groups (including mine--I'm not claiming I'm a genius) had no idea what to do, so we tried splashing it, or cupping it in our hands, or sucking some water into the hose and then moving the hose to the other tub. Terribly inefficient, and then the teacher said "Okay, exercise over, who managed to complete it?"
One team did because they had a team member that had learned the magic of "siphoning"! He demonstrated it to us all and was very proud of it, and the teacher was suitably impressed, too. So we all copied him and completed the experiment and went home happy.
According to modern IP law, we're all thieves and deserve punishment, and he was screwed over because he didn't charge us money for use of his idea. Funny how that is something that isn't built in and has to be "taught", but most kids don't have to be taught that hitting, killing, stealing, or even lying are wrong. I find that if you have to be taught to obey a law, chances are the law isn't "natural", and if it's not a built in reaction it might just be that the law is wrong (although not always--so it's worth investigating, but best to assume the law is wrong until proven right in these cases).
Why should it be one-way? Don't want your product to be copied? Then don't make a product that can be copied or don't distribute it. Nobody is forcing anybody, you know... Musicians can make concerts, actors can act in theaters, book writers can read books aloud to selected audience. They chose, however, to make a product which can be multiplied infinitely at zero cost. Such ability has its price which is a relative ease of sharing.
Those who accept this reality and treat a customer with respect will get my money -- i have bought several Humble Bundles, for example. Piracy is a service problem, after all.
And if they won't sell me the full version of the app? Or have no demo version?
VPN can be abroad which is not the case with ISP.
And if you made an unauthorized copy of another ship captain's Letter of Marque, would that be privateering piracy?
Fraud requires some kind of deception though. Copyright infringement is rarely fraud.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-did-not-launch-a-free-vpn-120827/ Just sayin....
My App costs 5 shells. So if two people have the App I should have made 10 shells. Person C makes a new App from scratch with the same basic functionality.
If person B bought the App from C instead of my App, person B's actions cause me to have 5 shells instead of 10.
I have 5 shells less than I should have, by the doing of person B.
Like the orange: stealing.
And true enough, "IP" covers that too, with software patents and design patents. The greed of "IP" holders is endless.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
fundamentally unethical
Woah... full stop, where does "fundamentally unethical" even originate in your fabricated world? We're talking about laws here that people have invented. You can wave your hands all you like, but randomly injecting terms like that doesn't make you right about anything. Breaking a law does not have some kind default automatic ethics association.
Fear is the mind killer.
That's pretty awesome. I'm suddenly very interested in hearing your music. What kind of music is it? Could you link me to your website, or a source for your tracks?
Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
I other news, farmers with infinite crops and infinite land are complaining that people are stealing their crops. Farms threaten to stop growing new crops. At least there's an infinite supply of the old crops.
My App costs 5 shells. So if two people have the App I should have made 10 shells.
If person B copied the App from person A, person B' actions cause me to have 5 shells instead of 10.
I have 5 shells less than I should have, by the doing of person B.
Like the orange: stealing.
So person B did the stealing, OK. Now if people P1 .... P10000000 copy it from person B, who stole it then? It's clear who committed copyright infringement, every single person Pn and B, but P0 didn't even interact with you, how can he have stolen something from you? Did he steal from B maybe?
Damn it! That should be P1 not P0. Curse these 0-based arrays.
The person who allowed you to copy the cd didn't have the right to allow you to copy it.
Jack of all trades,master of none
But it's not stealing. Your argument doesn't change that fact.
The OP posted that posting info about the Pirate Bay is promoting IP THEFT, which involves stealing. And my point, still to be rebutted is that they are not the same.
If you want to call it cheating, that's fine, if you want to call it copyright infringement, that's fine too.
But there is an active movement by powerful people to conflate copyright infringement with theft, and I'm pointing out, in as clear a way as possible, that they are NOT the same thing.
As others have pointed out, there is a benefit to powerful people by conflating these ideas, because if they can then they believe most Americans will shy away from downloading a copy, because they also know that most Amercians will not walk into a store and run out with a candy bar without paying for it. The thinking is, "If Joe Schmuckatelli believes that it is wrong to steal, and if we can convince him that copying a CD is theft, then Joe Schmuckatelli will be less likely to copy the song."
The problem with your cheating argument is, who are people cheating? The artist? Or the studios? Good luck trying to convince people that copying a CD is cheating from an artist...
Thank you for your adding your experience. Look, I am not strictly against downloading / copying music. I do it sometimes and if the music is great then I will gladly pay for a CD or go to a concert. I understand the alternative revenue streams. But I know many people who only download -- they don't go to any concerts, don't even throw in a dollar for one measly MP3. And it bothers me when they wonder afterwards why the band sends out a newsletter about being broke and breaking up or when they 'sell out'.
In other news, self righteous nerds think that because a product is created/distributed on a computer that they can either use the product for free or demand to only pay an amount they feel is appropriate. Infinite are these nerd's excuses and rationales.
It IS a violation of privacy, however.
I wish I had mod points for you. The comments in this article has to be one of the biggest double standards I've seen in a while. The thing protecting the GPL is the same thing protecting music and the like. The only difference is the MAFIAA actually has the money to widely protect their IP.
How many panties would be in a twist on this site if some company was brazenly raking in >$100k/year in misappropriated GPL code, or created a custom flavor of Linux distro that somehow became the next big thing without releasing the source? (the likelihood of this is beside the point.) I have a feeling the overall tone of most of the comments section would be completely different. Just look at what happens when Google doesn't release the source to the next flavor of Android and how everyone panics even just a day beyond when they were supposed to release.
For the record, I don't believe copyright infringement is theft, but I also don't put music, movies, games, etc in a vacuum with regards to the value of copyright like many people seen to do.
retroactive abortions
You can go through all that hassle to anonymize yourself, or you can just pay for your games/music/movies/pr0n. The only thing I condone stealing anymore is Game of Thrones from HBO, screw them to Hell and back.
Then don't buy it, or call/email the maker of said product and let them know that you would like to try out their product. Maybe if they get enough requests for a demo they will create one. Maybe you can find an alternative product that you can buy, or that does have a demo version. Pirating just gives them ammunition for reasons why the internet should be locked down. If instead you just opt to not use the product, they really have nobody to blame but themselves for low sales. And there probably aren't too many apps that most people couldn't just get by without. Maybe something like AutoCad or SolidWorks if you really do operate professionally in a field where they are pretty much required, but then, that's a decision you have made about what your job is, and you should be comfortable paying for the correct tools.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
You want ridiculous? I work at a school. A couple of months ago I had to delete a copy of MLK's "I have a dream" speech from a teacher's area on the server and inform her that the video is copyrighted and I cannot determine that we have a license that covers playing it, therefore I cannot permit the use of school IT facilities for infringeing purposes.
I pirate like crazy in personal life, but when at work I am the Copyright Nazi. One problem with knowing anything at all about copyright law is you start to see infringement everywhere.
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." â" Mel Gibson (from an interview)
##
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." â" William Casey, CIA Director
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It
The problem with that is, let's say that I'll sell you a book if and only if you'll sign a contract saying you won't make copies. You make copies anyways and I sue you. I win. However, all the people that got those copies continue to make copies. Since I never had a contract with them, I've got no recourse.
Since it has become clear that PB isn't providing this service, I tried to find out who is. I could find no info anywhere and the only link is the person that signed the exe with an ooo-industry.ru email and the website that doesn't say anything... http://ooo-industry.ru/ Looks pretty shady to me
I don't have a big moral problem with free file sharing only because the people this harms (MAFIAA) are such immoral scam that they deserve the treatment way worse than this. They are greedy assholes who are going around harassing and suing single mothers for ridiculous amounts of damages. This waaaay overshadows everything file sharers do.
BTW, I know people who download content illegally on principle, just because they don't want to give any money to this scum.
If it was really a matter of principle, they should not download the content, either, since continuing distribution of the content helps entrench the status quo.
Stop! Dremel time!
I would not have bought the thing i copied from a friend, anyway. Sot they do not have "one less potential sale". So the "owner" of the ip has lost nothing. Zilch. Nada.
But on the other hand - if the stuff was any good - they might get a peer recommendation from me. So they have actually GAINED a potential sale.
Even a small child could understand that.
Wrong.
You might want to add which banana republic this refers to.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
I now have one orange LESS than I had before
FEWER
You're welcome.
Were they even potential customers in the first place? Has their downloading perhaps not given some small benefit in that they may introduce some music they have downloaded to someone who will pay something, like (or me), even though they themselves never would have?
You consider it cheating and fundamentally unethical as you grew up under the system that defined it that way. As did I, so I tend to only download things which I then find a way to compensate the artist for, i.e. by buying the crappy compressed versions off of iTunes
However, my music buying is a fraction of what it would be if the ridiculous gatekeepers (RIAA) weren't siphoning off virtually all the profit in the old system, with artists then able to sell their stuff at 1/4 or 1/10 the costs and still have a better income than they did that way. If I am unwilling to spend more than $10 per album (still my preferred format over singles), younger people today (who never seen anything but despicable behavior from the labels) certainly aren't, and are bound to come away with the impression that ethics don't apply to record companies. I'd tend to agree with them.
You want ridiculous? I work at a school. A couple of months ago I had to delete a copy of MLK's "I have a dream" speech from a teacher's area on the server and inform her that the video is copyrighted and I cannot determine that we have a license that covers playing it, therefore I cannot permit the use of school IT facilities for infringeing purposes.
Yeah, that's another level of ridiculousness. Not only did it happen long enough ago that it should no longer be under copyright, but it's a historically significant event. It doesn't make sense to deny us the ability to view and copy at will something which has literally helped shape the society we live under today.
I pirate like crazy in personal life, but when at work I am the Copyright Nazi. One problem with knowing anything at all about copyright law is you start to see infringement everywhere.
I used to do some pirating back in my younger days, but honestly pretty much quit altogether once I graduated from college, got a job, and had some spending cash. If there's one thing that would make me go back to the pirating days was if I still had to time to play lots computer games. I refuse to buy games with the DRM that is standard in modern games. As it is, I don't have that much time, and when I do play, I'll either get something cool from a Humble Bundle I've learned about, or take a trip down nostalgia lane and dig out an adventure game from the 90's, so honestly, I'm perfectly fine with doing without and have no need to pirate.
Sometimes the cynic in me thinks that's the reason for the modern DRM. "You mean people can play games they bought two decades ago and be satisfied? What can we do to ensure they won't be able to? I know, let's make them log in to a server every time they start the game. In two decades, that server address won't exist."
Okay everyone.
Real world lesson time.
I'm hanging at your house. I see you have a copy of Big Black Atomizer CD. I pick the CD up, and:
1. I put the CD in my pocket, leave your house with it.
2. I put the CD in your computer, copy it to a USB Drive. I then leave your house without the CD, but a copy of it on my USB Drive.
Okay, folks. One of the above is stealing. The other isn't. Can you guess which one?
Yes, folks. #1 is stealing, since I deprived you of something you owned. Example #2 isn't stealing, i made a copy of it. Now, did i keep the record companies from making any money? That is debatable. Would i have bought that CD new? Would I have bought that CD used? If i bought it used, then the Music Industry doesn't get any money, only the used music industry does. And the CD I made a copy of was used, since it was owned by a person and not in the store. You understand? If me making a copy of the CD is considered "stealing" profit/revnue from the music corps, then Used Music Stores are doing some big time stealing.
Be seeing you...
If I have an orange in my hand and you take it from me, I no longer have the orange. I now have one orange LESS than I had before. That is stealing.
If I have a cd in my hand and you copy that CD, I still have the CD in my hand. I do NOT have one LESS cd than I had before.
Small children can detect the difference between these two scenarios; but to some people they are equivalent. I have no clue why that that is.
LOL what a deceptive argument that's become the meme for like-minded people. Content providers capture the essence of a performance or work (e.g. art, literature, photography, and software), embodied by the CD in your argument. These mediums enable control over the dissemination, we all know that, but only that. Most people are obviously focused on the quantifiable aspects, the tangible objects like a CD, a book etc. and tend to forget what really gets "stolen" here is the creation itself, an intangible act. If a writer doesn't write, there will be no books, or music. If actors and cinematic infrastructure do not perform, there will be no movies in films; and so forth and so on. Content and systems of delivery are inseparable; but they are also definite from each other. Without delivery media, every act of content creation is a one shot affair. If you want to witness a performance, you'd have to do it live; and there would be no such things as books, paintings and pictures. Without the content itself, then we'll have a lot of blank pages, DVDs, film, and the like. Clearly, media defines the tangible aspect, while the creative process associated with music, the arts, and computer sciences define the intangible aspect. This intangible aspect is what gets "stolen" with each act of piracy; or as someone below put, "it's cheating". Like breaking in a concert hall, or theater to watch for free. The end result is the content creator asking the question: "That's something I made. I sell that for a living. Did you buy that from me?". What does a pirate have in answer to that? "Um, I'm reviewing it to see if I should buy it or not." "I didn't mark that for demo purposes. But I'll let you go this time. How long do you plan to keep that copy?" "Um,.....". While people from richer countries are conscientious enough to purchase more than pirate, the vast majority of the world isn't so rich and doesn't give a shit about what a creator is entitled to. So shut up about justifying what is blatantly wrong done to people who create stuff and explicitly don't want any part of their creation to be free. I say that because newer artists adapt to giving away media with content for free in the hopes people will come to watch them perform. That doesn't work everywhere people.
What is he "borrow" the orange from earlier in this thread and decide to pay for it the next week after he tried it?
Orange, app, it's both a product he took for which he was supposed to pay, But he didn't. Theft.
Privacy is terrorism.
Well? Does that give you the right to take it anyway?
Privacy is terrorism.
That was a great comeback.
I've gotten my a$$ modded (rather kicked) clear across the board for rubbing either GNU, Apple or Microsoft fanboi sensibilities the wrong way. (The GNU crowd is losing their impetuousness lately...)
Exactly :) :)
As a student I had access to a student licence for AutoCad and I developed some nice things for it.
I would love to do so nowadays, but buying AutoCad for fun.. I don't think so.
So no AutoCad development for me anymore.
It's not more complicated than that
Privacy is terrorism.
For someone in such a position, you should know that such a work is covered by "Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians"
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Is this not wonderful?
Not sharing ideas and culture is unethical.
No, it's called stealing no matter how much you want to try and rationalize it.
I agree, 100%. Thankfully, this means you now owe me a billion dollars. And I expect you to pay up!
I had a business plan involving posting ads to slashdot under the name "toddmbloom" and would have made billions of dollars. And here you are, having taken my name, and completely ruined my business plan, preventing me from making, i mean STEALING, those billions of dollars from me.
Since I claim I would have made a billion dollars, by your own logic and claim made just now, you now have stolen that billion dollars from me.
That makes you a criminal and a thief. If you do not pay me within 24 hours every last penny you stole, you shall hence forth be known all over slashdot as a hypocrite and a thief.
Hey, stop using English/Math/Logic, as that is all learned/copied/stolen. Someone else created/discovered them, you should be paying royalties!
If they want my money, why don't they take it?
Because the cartel wants more of your money than you are willing to offer. Time Warner doesn't want you to buy just HBO. It wants you to buy the Turner bundle too: CNN, HLN, TBS, TNT, TCM, and Cartoon Network.
Availability of movie content outside the USA in a non-streaming form that allows format shifting doesn't exist.
Others are recommending to me that I country shop. Why isn't country shopping more common?
You make an app that costs 5 shells. Person A and B would buy it. But wait, it's a bad app, you did a terrible job promoting it, and it's a ripoff of a superior product that costs 3 shells. Neither Person A nor B buy it. Did you just steal from yourself?
your second post, which did nothing but the quote the first in its entirety
"Nothing" is a strong word. It looked to me like the second post added a list of citations.
Pretty sure timeshifting and format shifting has been legal for a very long time now.
In which jurisdiction? If the United States, I must be misinterpreting Universal v. Reimerdes and the other DeCSS cases.
You are forgetting about the legal concept of "theft of service".
For example, suppose you are driving a bus. You pull up to the bus stop, and a guy gets on. But, instead of paying the fare, he just sits down at the back of the bus.
You say, "Hey, buddy, aren't you going to pay the fare?"
He replies, "Of course not. There were empty seats at the back, so I'm not taking anything from anybody."
Now while there may be a certain logic to that, the fact remains that a bus service just can't be run that way. Legally, the freeloading bus rider is guilty of "theft of service" even though he didn't take anything away from another person. If the cost of running the bus isn't compensated somehow, the service will be discontinued. And then everyone suffers, payers and freeloaders alike.
Media companies are like bus companies. No pay -> no service. It has nothing to do with whether other music or film fans are being deprived of anything.
The fact that the media companies are gangs of filthy swine and deserve whatever they get is a separate issue.
It appears to just be PPTP, with the credentials generated dynamically from a JSON HTTP endpoint. There's a required ping URL the client has to hit every 900 seconds in order for the credentials to stay alive. Shouldn't be too hard to make an open source client.
Interestingly, the JSON config endpoint contains a list of IP address ranges that should be excluded. Haven't started investigating these yet, but here are the ranges if anyone wants to look:
ZX2C4
It isn't a Pirate Bay VPN, they are just running an ad next to it. At least that is what Torrenfreak is saying.
That's pretty awesome. I'm suddenly very interested in hearing your music. What kind of music is it? Could you link me to your website, or a source for your tracks?
Thanks k3vlar.
I play high-energy electric blues along the lines sound-wise of Joe Bonamasa, Smokin' Joe Kubek, Bernard Allison, etc. I also design/build/repair/restore vacuum tube guitar amps. I do the amp thing strictly locally. Generally play bluesfests, clubs, openers for major blues acts, etc mostly in the lower-MI/IN/OH/IL area.
I swore when I finally created an account here back in '02(?) I think, that I would never spam or pimp my personal music or business on this or any other non-music-related forums, etc even if asked.
This isn't the place for that, this is "News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters". I hate it when discussions all over the 'net are full of "buy my dope beat-tracks"-"buy my CD/Ringtone"-"visit my website" crap, and I refuse to add to it in any manner whatsoever even with good intentions, as that's what the road to hell is paved with.
However, you can hear me on the regular playlists, and other indie artists like me as well, on streaming stations like Kansas City Online Radio (KCOR) and KOQX/San Jose.
http://www.kconlineradio.com/
http://www.koqx.com/
There are tons of artist links. If my music is worthy, as long as you hear it on stations like the ones above it should speak for itself. Blues artists, blues music, and the blues community needs all the support they can get.
Thanks again for your interest.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Sometimes it's not even infringement. It's just timeshifting and formatshifting.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Example #2 is stealing too: you'd have stolen electricity that was not free in the first place. However, if you had used your own (charged) PC to do the copying, it wouldn't have been stealing at all.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Of course, it would have been stealing only if I didn't authorize your using of my house's power grid. ;-)
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
You do have the right to share sell or destroy it and by the current laws of some countries you also have the right of monopoly over it. Fortunately this right is each day more difficult to be enforced because most people in our World disagree with your idea that thoughts and ideas can be owned and neither you nor any government can't really force them to do what you want in this matter.
Yeah, I kind of agree with you here and I told them that before, but other than that I can't affect their decisions :) (which is a good thing).
May Peace Prevail On Earth
That is true, but doesn't make piracy less wrong.
First you would have to establish that piracy is wrong. Sharing is an altruistic activity.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Looks like whoever has posted this story hasn't fact checked, but according to TorrentFreak, TPB have already responded - specifically to this article - indicating that PrivitizeVPN is not their project, and is merely the link to one of their advertisers. http://torrentfreak.com/tag/privitizevpn/
'potential sales' are a widely-accepted concept in economics
So is supply-side theory. Wide acceptance doesn't really imply validity.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
Indeed,
This reduces sales of Linux and delays the year of linux on the desktop.
If you can't profit in 10-15 years, it's not our responsibility to help you out any more.
We wrote a unique engineering book, it took 8 years. We were lucky and it's been picked up as a textbook. I'd hope that "your" society would be willing to let us collect royalties a bit longer than 10-15 years. Only now are the royalties adding up to a modest wage for our effort -- the book is still selling reasonably (about 1000 copies/year) and it's been 18 years since publication. It's still the first edition, although our publisher allows us to make corrections that stay on the same page (~200 small improvements to date)
Of course, if your shortened (c) term were in effect, we would do what the big textbook companies do -- produce new editions that have different pagination and try to strongarm the profs to teach from the new version... As it stands now, used copies circulate among the students, sold by former students who don't choose to work in our specialty.
> The comments in this article has to be one of the biggest double standards I've seen in a while.
You're simply confused.
> How many panties would be in a twist on this site if some company was brazenly raking in >$100k/year in misappropriated GPL code
But that's not what TPB does. For your comparison to be correct, TPB would have to be a service which streamed infringing content directly to consumers in return for payment. What TPB actually does is empower people with the ability to personally choose to infringe on copyright. There's a difference.
Why is that wrong? Copying is a free speech issue, for instance. While I don't necessarily agree, the argument could be made that the right to copy is more important than the right to control one's own work.
My own way of thinking is that an author should not be able to control the copying of their work except the initial decision to publish, but should be guaranteed part of any profits made from it. This is for artistic works. I don't think this applies very well to applications.
GPL was created to achieve particular goals within the current system. We should not avoid reforming the system just to keep the GPL effective.
Play Command HQ online
Wrong country. I'm in the UK. Good news is that - as far as I can figure out - the copyright here expires on IHAD at the end of 2013. It's got a couple of decades to go still in the US. So at the end of 2013 that speech in full is going up on my website for anyone to view, free and legal. We do have an educational exception in our copyright law, but we also have an exception to the exception that renders it effectively useless. I regard it as an artifact from the legal back-and-forth as the law was being written.
Most people seem to respect information security. They would consider it unethical to hack into iTunes and download songs for free. It would be considered wrong by most to get Hulu Plus for free if a way was found. No one thinks you should be able to get into private Dropbox accounts and have access to any file at will. You certainly don't want your private IMs, txts, or e-mails published without your approval. Why is it then, that when the ACL becomes a written or verbal request instead of a matter of file permissions is that considered a different matter?
Nope, because to appropriate is to take for oneself, and thus to deny the original owner such access. (And to take something means you don't leave it, similarly.)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
> ["steal"]'s used for effect, rather than substance.
Unlike "piracy", which was never supposed to dress the crime of propagating information up as being in any way sinister, no, not at all!
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Thank you for your adding your experience. Look, I am not strictly against downloading / copying music. I do it sometimes and if the music is great then I will gladly pay for a CD or go to a concert. I understand the alternative revenue streams. But I know many people who only download -- they don't go to any concerts, don't even throw in a dollar for one measly MP3. And it bothers me when they wonder afterwards why the band sends out a newsletter about being broke and breaking up or when they 'sell out'.
You're welcome.
I understand your feelings and sympathize to an extent, but the "freeloaders" are simply a fact of life and I don't worry about it.
Life is too short.
Besides, most people are generally not bad people, even the ones that freeload. I create the music to be listened to with the understanding that not everyone will or can contribute. I'd rather they're listening to me than some other artist regardless.
And also don't feel too bad about the bands you described. I doubt seriously that their only or main problems centered around people not paying for their music. Almost every single one of those bands/artists likely failed/broke-up due to poor business/marketing/promotional strategy and planning.
Not to mention that simply keeping a group of marginally-stable-at-best musicians' personalities, personal lives, & egos in a band all working together to a common goal for longer than it takes to play a couple of songs is akin to herding panicked feral cats in the middle of a large, high-density minefield while juggling live grenades and chainsaws. :)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I have no clue why that that is.
If you genuinely cannot fathom this then here you go;
Primarily it is because of the notion of "acquiring a product without paying for it", or "without permission", both of which rely on the notion of "intellectual property". A related concept is to 'steal' an idea. Sure, you may ultimately disagree, but it doesn't take much mental agility to see how people equate copyright infringement with theft.
[that there is no loss is] why a very large percentage of Americans have copied music, for example, and have no ethical qualms about doing so,
I think you are partially correct, but partially the reason why people have no qualms is that it's out-of-sight, out-of-mind. The physicallity of taking a CD from a shop makes the consequences obvious. Copying bits from the comfort of your own house does not.
Fair Use covers a lot more than just making backups. It permits you to even broadcast, i.e. indiscriminate dissemination to the masses, not just a single transfter to a known individual, parts of copyrighted material.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Not just one fewer potential sale - maybe hundreds, or millions, depending on who that reviewer is.
Hmmm, the most influential reviewers tend to get freebies rather than having to pay money for things - which of course makes their review even less objective, and less reliable as a reviewer.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
xevioso responded:
If you want to call it cheating, that's fine, if you want to call it copyright infringement, that's fine too.
...
The problem with your cheating argument is, who are people cheating? The artist? Or the studios? Good luck trying to convince people that copying a CD is cheating from an artist...
The songwriters get mechanical royalties from each song on a purchased CD. Although some new artists do bargain away some portion of those royalties in exchange for recording contracts, they AUTOMATICALLY get the remainder, regardless of recording company accounting practices, and third-party songwriters get the entire amount. That's a matter of law. Artists also get contracted royalties for each CD sold, and that income is critical to their ability to continue to be recording artists. That's a matter of fact.
Because selfish, simplistic torrenters stick their fingers in their ears and chant, "No, no, no, no, no!" when confronted with these arguments in no way invalidates them. They are still cheating the artists whose work they download without recompense - the same artists whom they profess to "love".
Will that argument change the behavior of those who have accustomed themselves to unethically obtaining for free artistic works that an ethical person would be forced to pay for? Probably not. That doesn't change the fact that they're cheating the artists out of income upon which those artists depend - and which they need in order to continue to make their recorded art.
"Because I can," is an excuse - not a justification.
Check out my novel.
If go to the store and buy a widget and I take the widget home and it turns out the widget is busted or is the wrong widget, I take it back to the store and the store refunds my money. That is one of the things I love about America. We have insanly liberal return policies on physicall goods. If I decide that I no longer need my widget I can give my widget to my friend.
If I go out and buy a piece of software and I install it and then determine that the software is busted or doesn't suit my needs, I cannot return it. If I decide I no longer need the software, I am not allowed to give it to a friend.
Software is not a product. It is a service.
http://www.12monthloanintheuk.co.uk/
Unfortunately, here's how it works: ;-)
1. Copyright law is there to prevent someone from taking credit for another person's work. I have no problem with this and all lawsuits based on copyright infringement are basically null because people are not claiming credit for another's works.
2. Theft constitutes inflicting a measurable loss against another party. (this is where things start to get hairy)
3. Regardless of your opinion of the healthcare law, the government has shown that they can and will force people to engage in commerce, with the purchase mandate.
4. With the ability to track and tally data transfers on the internet now, there are now measurements of how often and the number of times something has been downloaded. Before the internet (well, before the masses had access to it), the RIAA couldn't provide metrics as to losses because there were no metrics, even though we all know exactly what those cassette tapes were used for
5. Contraband laws which cover stolen goods/services
What you now have is the cliche' recipe for disaster for the masses, and here's why:
- The RIAA/MPAA/etc. now have a quantification of their 'losses,' which means they can apply theft laws with metrics based on quantity of downloads.
- The pirated copies are now considered contraband, as they are now classified as stolen goods, and possession of stolen goods is a punishable criminal offense.
- The government has shown they can force you to purchase whatever the hell they want if they choose to do so, and on their terms. When the government is controlled by the lobbyists of the RIAA/MPAA/others, they now control what you must purchase and how it is purchased.
When you purchase a DVD/CD/software/etc, you are purchasing a license, not the actual songs. With that license, you are legally bound to only use the items this license applies to in ways that the license permits you to do. If you buy a CD, you may only use the contents of that disk the way the license says you may, at the whim of the record company, which means you may only play the cd in a cd player. You cannot rip the songs to your MP3 player, or back up the disk to your computer, or share the contents with your friends, whether you loan the disk to them or upload MP3's to the web for them to acquire at their convinence, or even have the DJ play the contents at your birthday party. Same thing with DVD's as well as software. This is where they get you, this is how they win, and they are within their legal rights. This does not mean the system is not broken, because it is.
In reality, most artists don't make anything off of record sales, so truth be told, they probably don't give a flying fuck what you do with the CD/DVD after you buy it. Their money comes from touring. Even with software, Adobe doesn't exactly actively pursue random schmucks over pirated versions of photoshop, namely because nearly all pirated copies are in the hands of people who are using the software to make memes or do other generally dumb and/or harmless stuff. Adobe makes their money off of graphic designers who actually use the software to make a profit. This is a good example of 'doing it right'.
People pirate movies because of 2 things: one, they're tired of taking out a second mortgage to go see something in the theater; two, they're tried of all of the crappy, poor quality, and just generally bad movies and don't want to pay for crap any more.
What it comes down to is LEGALLY, they are in the right and pirates are in the wrong, and as long as there is profit to be made and control to be had, it will stay that way. Until there is a mass boycott of ALL products that the RIAA/MPAA are responsible for, and for a long enough period of time to do enough damage that it nearly bankrupts them all, all at once. All consumption must stop, pirating included, in order to send a big enough 'fuck you' to the fat cats in Hollywood and Capitol Hill.
Lets theorize about a food replicator that can only copy food, it can not create new food. Kind of like a copying machine, it cant create new pages with text on them, only copy pages that already have text on them. So if you were a grocer and you sold food, people could come in and make copies of the food in your store without paying anything. By your analogy that should be perfectly legal, they haven't stole anything, you still have the food in your store. How long would you be in business if you never sold anything? Why would you stock anything if it did not sell? A physical is object is easy to comprehend, even a child can understand. Digital and the ability to easily copy something is a tougher concept. You are not stealing and object, just removing the potential to make money from an object. It is a poor business model to make products for free.
When I type "appropriate" into Google to get its definition, it doesn't say anything about depriving the original owner.
in a lot of cases , musicians do only sell their music once .... to a record-label ( yes yes publishing too, thats twice then , but i imagine in most cases its a single sale incorporating both rights )
On the other hand, people who bought a product tend to justify their purchase by highlighting the positive aspects of a purchase, a known phenomenon. But that is off-topic, of course.
They want captive audiences. Maybe I had an advantage seeing through the nonsense after spending so much time in Texas.
When oil prices are high, the oil executives chant "Free Market! Laissez-faire!" When oil prices drop, they demand the government step in to protect their profits, claiming that the government had a duty to protect national infrastructure from the vagaries of the market, that it would be wrong for the government to "Free-market them to death." (Good grief, how I miss Molly Ivins.)
The people in charge in this country believe in nothing but their own bank accounts, and will only wrap themselves in a flag or an ideology when it suits their purposes. This is much to the sorrow of Tea Party/Ron Paul supporters who just fell victim to the rule change that allows Mitt Romney to replace their grass-roots delegates with his wealthiest campaign supporters.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Actually, under English law, at least, that would still be theft; destroying something is sufficient to count as stealing it from them (as you are appropriating it, intending to permanently deprive them of it). It would probably be arson as well, though.
However, with a better analogy, your point stands.
What you take away from me by copying is my legal right to control my own creations.
What legal right to control your own creations? That's not what copyright is, nor what it is supposed to be. Copyright is about encouraging creativity, not granting control. One of the major problems with changing terminology over the last 30 or so years is that it has encouraged people to think of "owning" everything they "create", such as the idea of sliding-to-unlock a phone, or the idea of a flat, rectangular computer with rounded corners.
Once you start talking about ownership or possession (or control) of ideas, you are necessarily limiting their dissemination and placing barriers to development - less information going around, fewer ideas being spread, and so there is an overall loss to society.
But hey, maybe some people will make some extra money out of it so it is all ok...
lol you crazy asshole. "fundamentally unethical"? Comedy gold right there. There may be a few ethics experts who disagree with your perverted imperial ideas.
It's been a while since I was an undergrad, but I just finished up a master's this summer. Some profs are getting wise to all that textbook churn-for-the-sake-of-profit shit. At least at the graduate level, I found that most were more than accommodating for multiple versions including international editions of textbooks. The days of playing games with annualized textbook editions are numbered.
One of my friends is a department chair and he had a former student return as a textbook rep. He told the poor guy that he was on the wrong side of history.
The official word from the pirate bay is that the VPN does not belong to them, it is a third party service that they are promoting
you ought to - the 'proprio-' bit of the word comes from the latin for self, it it taking for oneself, not dividing or sharing.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Just because they will be providing VPN support, doe not mean that they are doing something illegal.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The author of DeCSS could presumably use it personally, and anyone else could presumably do it with their own work.
Im not defending the law here, but OP was incorrect in her statement
In what way was girlintraining incorrect more than the margin of rounding error? Under your interpretation, format-shifting DVD or Blu-ray video isn't categorically illegal, but it's illegal except in one edge case (computer scientist capable of cryptanalyzing the entire system with no help) that's so remote that it economically need not be considered. Therefore it's illegal far more often than not, which rounds to illegal.
Ill also note that DeCSS etc are only necessary for formatshifting from DVD or BluRay.
Other decryption programs are necessary for format-shifting other copy-protected formats, and as far as I can tell, major studio motion pictures are lawfully available only in copy-protected formats.
Too bad there isnt an OSX client.. Id like to give this a spin.
If you come up with an idea and someone "steals" it, everybody knows that that person didn't physically steal your tangible idea.
Same with stealing software.
Only you groupthink slashtards don't get it.
Not everybody on slashdot is actually a lawyer, even if they all think they are.