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How Verizon's 'Six Strikes' Plan Works
An anonymous reader writes "With the 'six-strikes' anti-piracy plan set to begin in the U.S. soon, TorrentFreak has gotten its hands on a document showing how Verizon in particular will be dealing with copyright-infringing users. For your first and second strike, Verizon will email you and leave you a voicemail informing you that your account is involved in copyright infringement. For your third and fourth strikes, the ISP will automatically redirect your browser to a page that requires you to acknowledge receiving the alerts. They'll also play a video about the dangers of infringement. For your fifth and sixth strikes, they give you three options: massively throttle your connection for a few days, wait two weeks and then throttle your connection, or file an appeal with an arbitration service for $35. TorrentFreak points out that the MPAA and RIAA can obtain the connection information of repeat infringers, with which they can then take legal action."
If everyone runs their WIFI AP's open.
Aren't there only 3 strikes in baseball?
Can I place copyright infringements with Verizon to get people blocked? We all know that the MPAA and RIAA use their internet connections for infringement, so it should be no problem for us to throttle their access.
Somehow I bet that only a select anointed few will be allowed to make these evidence-free complaints against the rest of us.
So, basically, Verizon is saying if some kids go there and hack my wireless router, they'll shut me down forever?
Seriously?
Good thing I encrypted it ... but most people don't know how to do that.
Is a strike an accusation of copyright infringement? Or does it need to be proven?
They should be reporting you to the police at the first notice of copyright infringement.
why you would use torrent freak when there is Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, and dozens of other ways to get video online.
unless you are trying to find some hard to find video -- (like Aleksandr Ptushko's 1972 Russian fantasy film, Ruslan and Ludmila?.. oh wait, thats on fucking youtube for free) -- what is the point of "avoiding paying for" transformers 3 or harry potter? I mean can you not afford the massive 4 dollar price or whatever that they charge you to watch this stuff online? Is 5 bucks going to break you?
I wonder what they are getting out of this deal???
Karma: Bad
As a longtime Verizon customer I can see a problem here. Verizon is not known for its customer service - I think they have people in India reading scripts. So if you collect strike two or four, and want to dispute it or get an explanation of what it's about, you're probably out of luck. Strike four (or maybe strike two?) means it's time to find a new ISP because if you stay with Verizon you're going down.
Deep packet inspection, volume of data, targets and returned IP addresses... will a securely tunneled and encrypted connection to a proxy service thwart this monitoring - or will they simply use such as indirect evidence of torrenting, since the standards of such evidence are set by the MPAA/RIAA?
As for commercial proxies - how probable is it that such services are more-or-less instantly compromised - as in a visit from FBI agents conscripted to work for movie companies ? Whom do you trust to manage connections?
How does one pay for such connections, if the act of using a credit card automatically locks down your identity? Does the use of pre-paid money cards such as Vanilla work (if you buy them from someone who doesn't care much about taking your real name down)? I understand that many say they do not, but other posters have mentioned that one merely has to provide Vanilla a zip code on the registration page to make them usable to pay online services.
I'd do all the above just to watch Netflix. I'm that much of a bastard. We managed to use the postal system and phones for over a hundred years without a spy system reading our every word and listening to every call, and I don't see why we need to start now. Especially now that ATT is about to shut off the old phone system and go completely IP, which means the old laws mean nothing.
And for the generation who never knew privacy, I preemptively say: yes, it matters. It is sad you may never care or even understand why it does. Your are happy goldfish, exhibits in a zoo. Think about who is outside your bowl, watching. You've spent your lives being told to be afraid of strange adults and white vans - yet you let actual, secret versions of those kinds of people follow your every move and listen to your lives? Think about it. The creeps you've been told to fear your entire lives aren't really real, for the most part. The creeps who are locking down human existence, building the last and only secret police the world will ever need - they are real and they are here and you need to fight them.
Little weasels...
I noticed that there is no mention of a complete disconnection--leaving the door open for continued billing even though you have an almost useless connection for two weeks. Me thinks Verizon is afraid they will start losing customers permanently if they disconnect them, even for a short time. There is no discussion of a 7th strike, or an 8th...what happens then? You get another two weeks of shit connection. Will they charge you less? Doubtful.
Make their fears a reality.
The solution is to drop them the moment they throttle you...and never come back...and NEVER COME BACK. Trust me--when they start seeing ANY loss of revenue, they will rethink this. Verizon is obligated, by law, to act in the best interest of their shareholders--how long do you think shareholders will put up with lost revenue?
Wow. And to think we still have people that don't think Net Neutrality legislation is necessary. When carriers link up with trade industry groups to unilaterally dictate what you can and can't send over public networks, we have a problem. If you don't think this (and systems like it) will be be abused to stifle competition and censor speech.. Well, let's just say I have a bridge to sell you.
Libertarians/shills about post some angry screen about the govt picking winners:
Stop. Just stop. The adults are talking now.
Which generation would that be, exacty?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Does most of YouTube qualify?
I like what you have to say. I'm a male.
wait until the ISPs that are also content owners or carriers get in on this (ie. comcast and AT&T)
.iso s and other homegrown or otherwise free legitimate content and then homogenous corporate media will have won....
there won't be a Chinese wall in the world big enough to keep the isp departments from ratting you out to their big content departments and to the MAFIAA
and they will probably use this to crack down on Linux
-I'm just sayin'
Just more evidence that these regional monopolies could use a dose of heavy regulation.
Internet, like water or electricity, should be a utility, and not subject to arbitrary and reckless slowdowns or shutdowns to meet the concerns of an unrelated third party. We'd look at it as reckless and stupid if they could cut off the electricity to a house for watching pirated movies, right? (Yes, yes, Internet's not -quite- as important as electricity, except perhaps when it's necessary for work, banking, school, tax filing, etc.)
Hopefully people are looking for an alternative to their ISP on the very first "strike", and loudly complaining if there isn't one. Unless they're paying the bill there's no reason for copyright interests to have any say whatsover in how ISP service is delivered. Seriously, these ISPs need to remember who their customers are.
Is there anything in there saying you will be told exactly what caused their system to flag your account? I mean in detal such as what a firewall log might show, not some general "infringing activity" at such and such a time crap.
If, say, six Verizon employees cut-and-paste web images into corporate PowerPoints, will Verizon go by the book and shut itself down?
After few notices they will make sure that dl'ers are not found dl'ing any illegal stuff. For example by using vpn's.
The current one. And the next one.
Schools are basically jails, and train kids to accept prison conditions - look at it objectively. Tracking devices in the phones. Recorded calls, recorded messages, emails. Soon, tracking built into the computers in cars, unkillable. Ebooks recorded, times, dates. Anything that flows in packets, recorded. Your movements, recorded, even if you ditch a phone and a car, 'cause cameras will watch you - and listen, too. The cameras and trackers and mics are shrinking, and with zero societal will to stop it, will be everywhere.
Yes, this generation. It starts in the schools, the acceptance of strip searches, phone tracking, drug searches, notebooks with cameras that watch the student... come on, the new crop of adults have been in jail since they were born, figuratively, and have been trained to accept it.
The next generation? Just keep exponentially increasing the surveillance, and the acceptance. Police states are not, historically speaking, unwelcome. People trade freedom for safety all the time, always have, if they are scared properly. The few who become bullied and targeted by the people behind the cameras and trackers are not interesting to people. "They" are by definition criminals, anyway.
I ain't afraid of evil bastards half as much as I am afraid of a population that doesn't understand what freedom actually means, and what they give up to be "safe". They has been zero effective backpush against this era, and it will get worse.
How to stop piracy: 1 Create great stuff 2 Make it easy to buy 3 Same day worldwide release 4 Fair price 5 Works on any device Either do that or go after your customers and threaten them with a lawsuit. See how much they like being your customers after that.
Just run some blocklist software and keep yourself out of their radar.
I have a "One Strike" plan. If an ISP threatens to interfere with my use of the Internet without illegal activity on my part having been proven under due process, then I will never, ever do business with them.
The list of corporations to whom I pay no mind continues to grow, apace.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Just fuck them. The universe doesn't and shouldn't fucking revolve around them.
... if you can't do the time. Don't do it!
the world is rofl at you.
This does mean they're giving up their common carrer status and are now legally liable for any criminal activities their network is used for, right? Right?
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Verizon are combining baseball with homosexuals in the military. Operation Fudgeball, you could call it.
Do they even make DVDs of talk shows like Real Time with Bill Maher?
If it's your local team, then why aren't the games available over rabbit ears?
I wish my dialup was 256kbps
for my torrents and i already use encyrption on my usenet. BTGuard is quite slow, but I'm apparently safe. Thinking of maybe going VPN instead of BTGuard, but I need to find one that is fast, and doesn't keep records.
So I'm paying an extra $6 a month to be safe, seems fine to me.
Be seeing you...
Worse yet. If you decide to take legal action against the ISP for unfairly throttling your connection down the evidence will come from them, their registers, over which they have complete control and can easily tamper with. So basically you can't win.
True, for non-interactive video, the obstacles to "works on any device" are business rather than technical in nature. But how is it possible to make and publish a video game that "works on any device"? How would a single video game, for example, work on a Windows Phone 7 phone, a Chromebook, and a PlayStation 3?
If an ISP threatens to interfere with my use of the Internet without illegal activity on my part having been proven under due process, then I will never, ever do business with them.
Once both the cable company and the phone company have interfered, enjoy your dial-up.
I don't know much about the Canadian television market other than that each station has a Canadian content quota. But in the United States, the big three professional sports (baseball, basketball, and American football) are routinely shown on free television. Hockey is often relegated to cable, but that's because hockey is in fourth place in the United States. Is hockey also in fourth place in Canada?
They don't broadcast it locally unless the game is sold out.
The NFL has the same policy, but very rarely does a game fail to sell out. Half of the NFL has consistently sold out for over the past decade, and only five teams have failed to sell out even once in the past two NFL seasons.
It's a death rattle. This is the bed you made for yourselves.
Will watching the video they supply for srikes 3 and 4 constitute strikes? Will watching the video require one to download and install Flash?
Is this perhaps a 2 strike tax on people with Flash installed?
The worst part about this is that they will spy your internet usage to find out about it.
Look. It's simple. Stop talking all sorts of hype and bullshit and then dumping the MPAA/RIAA a shit load of money to go see Hobbit in the theater and buy your fifth iteration of special boxed blu-ray LOTR movies. I got tired of their shit in the 90s and have not gone to see a movie or bought a CD since X-Files in 1998. You're not fucking helpless. It's just fucking movies and there are other (even legal) ways to still be entirely entertained. Your life won't end because you didn't see Looper the month it came out.
Stop willfully being someone's bitch while whining about being their bitch.
First, their profit is maybe 10% of their expenses. Because one torrent is the size of 4,000 web pages, torrents etc. make up maybe 10%-15% of their bandwidth and therefore total expenses. (About the same dollar amount as their profit.) So eliminating illegal use of their network would roughly double their profit.
Secondly, when content creators repeatedly notify the ISP that a particular customer is using their network for digital theft over and over again, the ISP is complicit in the unlawful activity if they continue to allow their network to be misused. Imagine if a neighbor loaned a crowbar to a crook to use to break into your house. They KNEW the crowbar was being used to break into houses and they KEPT letting the crook use it to break into your house. Wouldn't you want that guy held responsible for helping the crook break into your house? That's the ISPs - once they know you're using their service for unlawful taking of my property, they had better do SOMETHING about it. Otherwise, I'm coming after THEM for helping to take food from my baby's mouth.
Jails for some, yes - but they were designed to prepare people for working in factories.
But factory work isn't that much in demand any more - creative work is.
Say I have evidence that someone on a Verizon connection is violating my copyright, can I send a notice to Verizon and cause that person to have a "strike" added or do I need to be a big powerful media company to do that?
i really wish people would just get on with it and do the open mesh thing already. this is retarded.
If i have to move to Timbuktu to do it.
I am going to be held responsible for what others do on my network but they are not held responsible for what others do on theirs.
I can no longer in good conscience give them my money.
A big part of the loss of privacy you cite centers on cellphone/mobile usage. That isn't trading freedom for safety. Its trading freedom for convenience. There is a big difference.
The only connected mobile device I carry is a disposable Tracphone. I "hook in" when I like using my Galaxy Tab or iPod Touch over wifi, and thus seldom feel disconnected.
People for the most part don't need to be immediately reachable 24/7 and people will figure that out if/when it becomes important to them.
How do they know what you are downloading is is pirated? I agree that people should buy their media.
The secret to a police state is keeping it out of the public eye. If you make it unpleasant for them they will go around you. End to end peer encryption sounds like a viable solution. And when they block that then we move to spread spectrum frequency hopping radio internet. They are better off monitoring us than blocking us.
Really guys? Do we REALLY need weekly posts about the RIAA/MPAA and all other censors and inquisitors?
Seriously?
If you didn't know, there have been cryptographically strong and extremely resistant networks in operation for years.
You can publish and consume all you want with them. No one can find you.
All you have to do in return is run a node giving back as much bandwidth as you consume, multiplied by the network hop count.
http://i2p2.de/
http://torproject.org/
http://code.google.com/p/phantom/
There are more, just look around.
Go ahead and try that in court. The judge is going to scratch his head and not understand what you're talking about and find you guilty.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
How does this make the US safer from Terrorists?
Digital theft? What is that?
That's when I work 60 hours a week to make cool stuff for you, then you, being a complete scumball, steal it rather than paying the damn $3. So I go out of business and have to go work for Homeland Security. You're a pitiful excuse for a human being and THAT is why we can't have nice things.
Your delusional excuses make about as much sense as NAMBLA's and deep down you know that. You just don't want to admit to yourself what a steaming pile of dogshit you are, thief.
EVERYONE on Verizon start pirating. Six strikes later, Verizon has no customers left. Next...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Why are the ISP's being so accommodating of everything the MPAA/RIAA want? Given safe-harbor rules, it's not like there is any legal reason they have to do this is there?
Go on and live in your paranoid prison school world where the teachers are out to eat the demons in your teeth, the rest of us will worry about actual problems, like global climate change, net neutrality, and the Breaking Bad finale.
Another way to solve the problem - stop being a scum sucking thief.
come on. we all know about media corps but ... you're sure what they do is actually *stealing*?
that's a stretch. they simply make astonishing loads of money out of the ignorance of consumers and creators. that's not stealing! they're not to blame for ignorance, after all. hey they didn't even invent it. ignorance was already there and they just profit from it.
however, sometimes they actually bully people, invade their privacy, spy on them, sue them with false claims based on felonies they manage to squeeze into law whith all that money they make. well yes, that's mean. but ... stealing? come on. be nice. do some more cool stuff for us. we desperately need it. homeland security will be allright. oh wait ...
"Another way to solve the problem - stop being a scum sucking thief."
since when is sharing stealing. you need to be one helluva PR department psychopath to make that connection.
"I worked 60 hours a week to make cool stuff for you,"
cool stuff? Before filesharing, hollywood was OK with really crap movies, the music industry, the same repetative shitty music, with these artists with outsized egos.
Then comes down to $10 to see a movie, after being gouged with ridicolous snack prices, and yet somehow the rest of us who do real productive work are the problem, and not some asshole celebrities who make an easy 1/3-1/2 of the movie's production cost of over $100 million.
Your on slashdot with a bunch of nerds. We made the technology that makes the internet go. You couldn't go five seconds without shit we made, I could go forever without seeing another MPAA movie, or listening to another shitty RIAA artist. Go a week without using Free software.
Here is a hint, get the fuck off the internet, because not only do most webservers run linux, Windows uses the IP stack from BSD, and OSX uses the same stack, and goes further, using the same "networkmanager" program to manage internet, originally part of the gnome project written by Red Hat, licensed under the GPL.
I could easily go without hearing britney spears or justin beaver.
"Their delusional excuses make about as much sense as NAMBLA's and deep down they know that."
you don't like someone they are both mentally ill and a pedophile? makes perfect sense.
Take a fucking hint and no one likes you, and we'd all be much happier if you were pennieless and broke living under a bridge somewhere.
Will it only apply to torrent users, or will they be going after usenet users, too?
I already paid for this content, I pay for Netflix, I pay for Verizon Fios Cable and Internet, I pay for HBO, Showtime, I pay for all of that content to be sent to me. I just want to watch it on my schedule. Explain to me why that should cost an extra five dollars per movie or show when I'm already paying over two hundred. I know the question wasn't directed at me, but I'm in the same boat as a lot of people, I'm paying for all of the content and I'm even using their distribution methods when possible, but frankly I get better quality consistently than streaming provides by downloading episodes and movies instead of streaming. So no, it isn't about being entitled to anything, it's about getting what I'm already paying an obscene amount of money for.
Creative work is not in demand. Unless you mean what business drones consider "creative".
since when is sharing stealing
Everyone on Slashdot seems hung up on this idea that because it's not a physical good, redistribution means nothing. That's just not true.
Let me try a different analogy...let's say my job is doing really awesome SAT (or whatever) training courses. I have spent a long time developing the course so I can deliver you a two-hour course that will help you ace your upcoming exam, and as a benefit I record it so that you can watch it again after I leave. You think it's a great course. You turn around and, because you think other people will want it, you send the video I gave you to all your friends in high school.
Did I lose any physical goods as a result of your "sharing?" Nope. Can I still give my course? Yep. Were some of your friends never going to sign up for my course? Absolutely! But were there some of your friends who might have taken my course if you told them it was great, but didn't send it to them for free? Yeah, probably. And that's where "sharing" becomes "theft" - if I wanted my training to be free, I would have made it free. It's my training and I should be able to say what it costs, whether it's a physical good or not.
"95% of all Slashdot
Because
a) not every piece of video is on those services. Often, stuff just isn't for sale by the "distributor" since they can't make enough money by selling it. Disney Vault?
b) not everyone can order those. True, in the USA you probably could, but there are more countries on the planet and a lot of what you name just isn't available to the rest of the world and even if the services are, the content often isn't.
c) There's more on BitTorrent than just video's you can watch on a streaming service. There are plenty of books and music albums you just can't buy anywhere any more, to name some examples.
d) Stuff your government or another government outlaws. WikiLeaks publications are quite a good example why using BitTorrent in the USA (or anywhere) should not be forbidden.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
If I'm going to be sodomized by Verizon no matter what I do, at least it'll be over quick! ..wait. "strikes" not "strokes"??
My bad.
Super troll is super troll.
It would not surprise me if multiple providers were going to make similar announcements. If Comcast does this, I think a valid tactic against them would be filing antitrust complaints with the FTC because Comcast owns Universal Studios, and would then be an owner of a member of the MPAA.
Just curious what time frame do you have to get six strikes in? Infinity? What if a person gets two strikes right away then nothing happens for a year? Then they get three, then a year later they get four? Also will they reduce their fees for the time they throttle you? I'm sure several State Attorney Generals would not particularly like that. BTW one way of protesting the policy is after the third or four strike, simply call them up and say "I didn't realize that downloading stuff was bad. Now that I do I won't do it anymore. Oh and since I won't be downloading, can you reduce my account to the slowest one you have?" Before any one assails me with complaints about how they are now working for Homeland Security because no one would pay for the workproduct of their 60 hour weeks, I would like to point out that I generally do not believe in downloading stuff that I do not have permission to download from the copyright holder. I also am a realist and recognize that it is almost impossible to stop people from copy and redistributing a bunch of electonic ones and zeros, and I object to schemes which cannot work while making life more inconvenient for me.
Only thing I use Verizon for is my MiFi and I don't do anything infringing on it (and it is password protected). But at home on Comcast I've had AirVPN for months now.
But I'll still be able to buy an AR15, right?
The entertainment industry bought this law specifically to make it guilt by accusation. No trial, no rights. It's an attempt to build the digital middle ages where there are the privileged few and the unwashed masses who must both serve and pay.
Had you not included "recorded it onto a video", and left your hard work as "developed a really good curiculum", your analogy falls apart. In fact, other than recorded content (video, slides & documents), anyone can copy what-ever they want (methods, curiculum, style, content, etc) of your "really good coriculum" and there would be shit all you could do about it.
So what happened to fair use? If I want to rip all my dvds and blurays and store them on a box on my network so I can stream them from anything on my network....WHY, WHY, WHY is shit like Cinavia allowed? I have a Samsung Bluray player hooked to a flatscreen for this very purpose and it has fucking Cinavia on it! It doesn't even advertise it ANYWHERE like on the box! HOW the fuck is that legal????
If they are going to play dirty, they best not expect their customers(aka EMPLOYERS) to play fair. There is no legal ground here and yet they still stand....
You rock, buddy! I appreciate the insight you have provided.
"I worked 60 hours a week to make cool stuff for you..."
Oh, wow. How's it I didn't even notice?
C'mon. Keep your cool stuff all to yourself. I don't know what it is nor do I want to.
And for goodness sake can someone please just kill 3D already.
Close one eye. Problem solved.
1. Advertise top speeds and possibly (formerly?) even unlimited bandwidth
2. Slap a presumption of guilt on those who actually use what they paid for
3. Demand a ransom from anyone who cares to clear their names lest they be ratted out to the MAFIAA (and lose the access promised for their fees)
4. Profit?! (At least because networks will never need to be built out again, at forced ever-declining usage...)
Different in which way exactly from a racket scheme?
The problem with your analogy is that you are making false assumptions concerning morality.
The first false assumption is that because you spent a lot of time or money on something you have to right to profit from it. Ergo, if someone else takes any action that cuts into your profit margin, said action constitutes "theft".
Secondly, you are assuming that someone can "own" an idea. Imagine what a hindrance on progress it would have been if Sir Isaac Newton could have acquired a copyright for his ideas (Calculus, among others) and charged royalties for anyone wanting to utilize them.
To put these two false assumptions into perspective, imagine that child A wants to earn some summer cash and comes up with a business plan to do so. He decides to invest some of his money (as well as time) learning magic tricks with the intentions of putting on neighborhood magic shows shows and charging a modest admittance fee, thereby earning a profit. After buying several books on magic tricks he becomes proficient enough to begin putting on magic shows, even coming up with several of his own unique tricks. After the first show he begins to recoup his initial investment. However, child B cleverly figures out how to perform all of child A's tricks (even the ones child A came up with himself). child B loves illusions and decides to put on a nearly-identical magic show of his own. However, child B is not motivated by the prospect of earning money and allows free admittance to his shows. This action puts child A out of business before he was even able to recoup his initial investment (to say nothing of his the time he spent).
Child B is not in the wrong for taking action that eliminated child A's prospects of earning a profit as no one has the "right" to earn profits in the first place. If you have an idea that is economically viable you might earn a profit, but you never have the right to earn a profit. Furthermore, Child B did not "steal" child A's tricks because no one can own an idea. By not telling anyone you can possibly keep an idea to yourself, but never can you own it. Did Daniel Bernoulli own Bernoulli's Principal? Did David Hughs own the radio? Did Einstein own the theory of relativity? Would we owe royalties to their families for building an airplane, or using wireless communication or nuclear energy? Certainly not. Such a system would absolutely stifle progress. Civilization, as we know it, is possible because of building off of the ideas of others. As such, theft can only apply to tangible objects and not to concepts or profits. The problem with stealing is not that someone gains something, but rather that someone loses something.
You derived your SAT training course from tests produced by the SAT Board. Those tests are copyrighted, you thieving whore!
But were there some of your friends who might have taken my course if you told them it was great, but didn't send it to them for free? Yeah, probably.
Actually NONE of my friends were going to use your course, because they didn't know about it. Thanks for stealing the revenues I could have made off my friends for referring them to your course, you thieving whore! And that's where "sharing" becomes "theft" - if I wanted my social network and charisma to be free, I would have made it free. It's my social network and charisma, and I should be able to say what it costs, whether it's a physical good or not.
Your corporate masters, RIAA/MPAA --- who pay for you to schill --- expect that the distribution network WHICH *I* PAY FOR should be available to them exclusively for their use, while I am not allowed to use a connection to the distribution network I pay for myself because the industry is worried *I* am getting something for less than the price they wish to set ?!?!? YOU THIEVING WHORES!
Some people still don't get it. Many wont. Remember when an album had to be good for people to buy it? Then they started putting crap out with only one to three good songs on each album and still charged up to $26 bucks for their crap! Well we fixed that with file-sharing. Recently there was another problem us computer guise were facing having to do with money. And we are working on that one with BTCs.
It is *not* stealing when you are arguing potential. Theft is taking someones physical possessions. You are talking about losing potential profits, and that is not theft in any definition of the term.
The problem is you are trying to limit the distribution of knowledge. It is the 21st century, and information transfer and replication is now free. Decades ago "pirates" would have to go out of their way to burn film to disk and redistribute it. That takes human effort and money. Seeding a copy of a movie costs a pirate effectively nothing besides minute amounts of electricity they willingly give to just pass around their music collection. Copyright works when the redistribution has an inherent cost, and it works to prevent others from redistribution it at a lower price while still profiteering off others work.
But piracy is not stealing in any form, unless the accuser can point to the physical good they are no longer in possession of because someone else took it. Because physical goods and information are completely different, one is tangible and one is intangible. One is physical objects, and one can be represented as a number you own. The fact we have technology to reinterpret information as something useful to us as moving lights and sound waves is only a testament to modern innovation.
and yet the idiots on Slashdot will talk about anything BUT the Jews who cause all this in the first place. The Jews who never do manual labour, and instead print money from nothing and then expect us, their 'cattle', to work for the rest of our lives to keep THEM from doing manual work. How kind of them.
Who runs the Federal Reserve, and almost all the banks? Who tells Congress what to do? Which country tells the United States what to do? Why, it's 'precious' Israel, isn't it.
The JEWS are the problem.
www.jewishproblem.com
Had you not included "recorded it onto a video", and left your hard work as "developed a really good curiculum", your analogy falls apart. In fact, other than recorded content (video, slides & documents), anyone can copy what-ever they want (methods, curiculum, style, content, etc) of your "really good coriculum" and there would be shit all you could do about it.
In what way he could prevent copying is not the issue. He was trying to demonstrate that somebody who provides a legitimate service that has nothing to do with 'evil studios and record lables' or 'evil software giants' can suffer real damage from piracy even though the material being copied is not a physical good. The fact that he might have gone bankrupt because of his inability to do 'shit all' about copying was kind of a the central point in his argument. Course providers already heavily rely on electronic material because it is a powerful teaching tool but you have to be careful how you used it. Let us for example assume that you hire a number of people at a certain monetary cost to your self to create practice exams. If somebody, despite all your precautions, copies your tests and makes them publicly avaliable for the benefit of the wider pirate community before you have recouped your investment by selling access to those practice test you have suffered a monetary loss. Nobody is going to pay you for accessing your tests anylonger when they can download them off bittorrent for free. The only way to guard against this is to do teaching the good old analog way teacher+blackboard+(hefty hourly fee) which means greater expense for the consumer. I know all of this because a friend of mine who runs a tutoring service tried going electroinc. After watching his material hit the torrents hours after the first courses were held and his business plummeting he concluded that he was better off organizing teachers and private courses with as much paper material as possible. You can't bittorrent a teacher and pile of corse material on paper, you can bittorent a video of him teaching and the eletronic course material.
So, really, it should be up to the court to prove that any / all of the people who "stole" your course were actually able and willing to pay for it to prove a financial loss.
Do all you guys really think that people who download something for free would actually have the means and the desire to buy it had the download not been available? Even if you did think that, could you prove it?
Yeah, you can say it "costs" something, but you shouldn't legally be allowed to treat losses that don't exactly equate to a real loss as if they were a real loss. It's a logical fallacy. What if some guy who's broke but really wanted your course just downloaded it? Where's the loss? If the download wasn't available, you'd be in the exact same position you are now. Hell, you wouldn't even know. And when you found out, how the hell do you prove a loss? The guy had no money, he would never have purchased it, but you can still run to the court and say "yeah, I lost money when that guy downloaded it because he didn't pay."
Am I the only one that sees the obvious glaring stupidity in this logic that (obvious virtual property peddlers) keep spewing over and over?
Maybe he didn't pay because he can't afford it and the only other option besides downloading it for free is to not take it. Sure, some people will download it who can pay for it but don't want to, but it should be up to the petitioner to prove that's the case, rather than assume it's always the case.
This is all very well and good, but you still didn't NAME THE JEW. The JEW is responsible for all of this. Who is it who lives among us, uses us as their slaves, and is desperate to stay hidden, in case we find out who is responsible for our slavery? The eternal JEW.
www.jewishproblem.com
But piracy is not stealing in any form, unless the accuser can point to the physical good they are no longer in possession someone yook it
I'm no longer in possession of my house because 34,000 assholes like you took my software without paying your share of the cost, $3 each.
Five friends go out to lunch. The bill is $25. Four of the friends leave without paying their $5 share of the cost. Someone haas to pay that $20 cost, either the friend who was left, or the owner of the restaurant. They've just stolen $20 by not paying their share. That's software and media theft - when a scumball doesn't pay their share of the cost, someone else has to.
If it cant technically work on a device I don't see anyone pirating it to play it on said device as it doesn't work.
That depends on what advances in emulation and high-level emulation happen between the release of the game for one device and five or ten years later when the platform is emulated. Nintendo 64 games were not playable on a PC until the release of UltraHLE.
You were doing fine till the Yeah, probably part. You just assumed that people will not sign up because they saw the video. Completely ignoring the fact that the opposite will also be as probable.
Some people will join your course because they saw your video.
The huge question is if there are more or less people that will subscribe after seeing the video? No matter what the outcome, now that your video is out and you know others will get out as well, you must adapt your business plan.
Instead of looking it as lost revenue, look at it as a profit center and even free advertisement.
You just concentrate on the few who will not take up your course because they saw the movie. Why not concentrate on the many who previously never heard of you and are now interested.
Sure, if your video shows how you keep kicking people in the groin to motivate them and that is the reason they do not want to join, then perhaps it is GOOD they were warned.
What if it is not a practical but a theoretical course in say perl or C++. I come to your course and take my own notes and you learn me everything you know. I now start my own course with YOUR knowledge. Would that be ok? What if I memorize your course and give it word by word? What if I videotape it? What if you videotape it?
At what point does it become theft?
It is very had to argue and no matter where you draw the line, it will be discussable. The reason is that it is not really theft. It is copyright infringement and because it is different, it is treated different.
Just like there is a difference between murder and manslaughter, there is a difference between theft and copyright infringement.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
> I'm no longer in possession of my house because 34,000 assholes like you took my software without paying your share of the cost, $3 each.
Perhaps it wasn't worth $3? Of course you could have taken a job where payment was more certain, but you gambled on developing your own software and you lost.
> They've just stolen $20 by not paying their share.
In this case the restaurant was actually deprived of resources. If five friends go out to lunch, one pays $5 for some food, and the others (either through magic or some technology) copy his lunch, did they steal from the restaurant?
The problem is you are trying to limit the distribution of knowledge. It is the 21st century, and information is now free
No, people who create knowledge and entertainment are trying to create it and maximize distribution. Pirates limit it, by not doing their part. To seek out great talent, hire the best sound engineers, produce a hit song, and popularize it so you know about it costs about $3 million. Your share of that cost as a listener is $1. One measly dollar. By refusing to pay your $1 share, it's you breaking the system and reducing production.
I spent $80,000 creating some cool software. At least 34,000 people downloaded it. I wanted more people to download it, I want to increase distribution, not limit it. Problem is, exactly ONE person paid their share of the cost, $5. Software is NOT free in the 21st century, it cost me $80,000 to produce. Since you guys refuse to pay your $5 share of the cost, I can't create cool new software anymore. Now I have to create stuff for Homeland Security instead in order to eat. I'm just one more programmer no longer making cool shit for you because you won't do your part, pay the $1 or $5 or whatever your share is. Software isn't free, and I can't pay the $80,000 to make you more, so no new software for you leaches. Now DHS gets the software I write.
Ps - I'm also a Linux kernel contributor, and an Apache contributor. The private sector and OSS lost a pretty decent programer by refusing to pay the $3 and $5 share so I wouldn't have had to go work for the government.
Feels a bit like corporations doing end runs around some laws in order to take advantage of other laws...
It's my training and I should be able to say what it costs, whether it's a physical good or not.
Substantiate this assertion.
Whatever value you added to the training was miniscule compared to the boost that you yourself got from society, in which you learned the material you covered in your training, learned how to present the material, and made use of literally millions of technological innovations in order to create a video recording and distribute it to others.
You have a fundamental -- common, but fundamental -- misunderstanding of the purpose, meaning and origin of copyright. There is no natural right of ownership of ideas or expressions. None. And there never has been. Ideas are for all of us. You can, of course, keep an idea to yourself. That indeed is your right, because the right of free speech includes the right not to speak. Therefore, you can decide who you share it with and under what circumstances. But once you share it, it becomes equally the property of whoever you shared it with, and if it's sufficiently valuable will eventually become common knowledge of society as a whole.
And that's a good thing. In fact, it's the thing which makes civilization possible, and it's the thing which -- in countless ways -- made it possible for you to produce your SAT training video.
That is the natural state of affairs with respect to intellectual property. It's not like physical property, which is naturally scarce and must be defended. Knowledge is naturally abundant.
Copyright and other IP laws have as their fundamental goal not to restrict but to expand the sharing of ideas and expression. To increase the flow of knowledge into the public domain, in service to society as a whole. The mechanism we use to increase the flow is to temporarily restrict it; granting to creators a limited and temporary monopoly in order to motivate them to create and publish.
In an ideal world, every creative work would be given just enough protection in order to ensure its publication and eventual release to the public domain, and no more. In many, many cases, this would mean no protection at all (c.f. much of the content on the Web). In some cases, for example a movie that costs $200M to make, there has to be a pretty high assurance of protection so the moviemaker can recover costs and profit.
In reality we can't set protections on a per-work basis, so we have to set general rules. Those rules should be set to maximize the flow of useful material into the public domain (which is not what they currently do, BTW).
The key point is that your intellectual work does not belong to you, not once you decide to share it. We have a legal structure in place that encourages you to share it by giving you a modicum of (unnatural) control over it, but that doesn't mean it's yours.
You're probably saying at this point that I'm splitting hairs, saying that it isn't yours but that you have the legal right (for some years) to control copying and distribution, which appear to amount to the same thing. In practice, somewhat. But your choice of words indicates a belief in some fundamental ownership of your intellectual work which does not exist. Society has chosen to give you temporary and unnatural control.
Now, feel free to make your arguments about how it's to the benefit of society that you be able to control the reproduction and distribution of your training video. But don't try to claim that it's yours, because it's not, not once you share it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
prq has their best quarter in history!
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
And once I took your course, and learned all that it contained, and then sat down and started teaching it myself, what then?
Same fucking deal. I get to teach the same course, with the same knowledge and courseware (remember, I kept my books or files - so I can just read from them to other people or casually re-word things so not complete word-for-word copying)...
That's how ideas are not property, once shared, both sides own it.
So go fuck yourself and your course, it's probably crap anyway if you think that way.
Software X costs money.
You are in possession of Software X.
You didn't pay for Software X.
You are guilty of theft. Period.
Physical tranfer of a good is an line of thought that is outdated in the context of virtual goods, yet being used by many slashdotters to excuse theft.
It is theft. Period.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Actually, they're guilty of antidisestablishmentarianism.
Since we're changing definitions, I figured I would go with something that sounds much cooler. Also, I get paid by the letter, so there's that.
I spent $80,000 creating some cool software.
This isn't that file renaming program, is it?
But were there some of your friends who might have taken my course if you told them it was great, but didn't send it to them for free? Yeah, probably.
"Probably"? You're basing your argument on the guess that "probably" someone who was going to buy your course ...didn't?
What if I don't share your course, I just tell everyone it's crap? And because of that, someone doesn't buy it? Is that "theft", too? Same outcome- someone who was going to buy didn't buy.
And that's where "sharing" becomes "theft"
Nope. That's where it's a Copy Right violation.
There is a conflict of interest in mode of operation of ISPs -- they owe their successful business and soaring subscription rates to nothing more but the fact that users use their service to.... PIRATE ! Yes, everyone knows that.
Yes, the emperor has no clothes.
Some people will join your course because they saw your video.
Why would they do that? They already saw it.
"95% of all Slashdot
"I'm no longer in possession of my house because 34,000 assholes like you took my software without paying your share of the cost, $3 each."
Did we steal your house?
No.
" Five friends go out to lunch. The bill is $25. Four of the friends leave without paying their $5 share of the cost. Someone haas to pay that $20 cost, either the friend who was left, or the owner of the restaurant. They've just stolen $20 by not paying their share. That's software and media theft - when a scumball doesn't pay their share of the cost, someone else has to."
Bad analogy.
Here is a better one
Five Friends go out to lunch, they eat, and pay $25 dollars.
The next week they go to one of their homes because one of the friends learned to cook the same dish. They don't pay the restaurant $25.
" To seek out great talent, hire the best sound engineers, produce a hit song, and popularize it so you know about it costs about $3 million"
I know many quality bands that record great albums for $25, a case of beer and a carton of smokes.
I don't care how much Justin Beaver or Britney Speared pays her sound guys to make her voice sound good.
It does NOT cost $3 mill to make any album most of us want to listen too.
Automobile costs X money
You are in possession of X car
You didn't pay for X car.
You are guilty of theft.
lot of blanks there dude. sorry.
That's why so many training courses are only delivered in-person. Yes, even in this day and age.
But what did you "lose"? You have to "lose" something you had before for it to be theft. And losing something you didn't have (future profits) isn't a loss. If you go to the store and they are sold out of milk, can you have them arrested for stealing your milk because you had a future desire for milk? Does it matter if you had a reasonable plan to obtain that milk, and they interfered with your plan?
Learn to love Alaska
Five friends go out to lunch. The bill is $25. Four of the friends leave without paying their $5 share of the cost. Someone haas to pay that $20 cost, either the friend who was left, or the owner of the restaurant. They've just stolen $20 by not paying their share.
Who stole what? If the meals were all exactly $5, the last one there can drop a $5 bill on the table and walk away. The 4 friends who left each stole $5 worth of food. They took $5 of physical food with them when they left that they didn't pay for. That's an actual loss by the restaurant owner. He can point to the empty spot where the lima beans were before they were eaten. He has to buy more to sell them to the next person.
I think you don't understand the issue, and are assuming the friend left will pay for his "friends" and write off the loss as "bad sharing" but that's not the only solution, and even if it was, it's still not "theft" or "stealing." "Lets all go to Bob's Beans and Peas." "OK, we'll each pay 20%." When the friends walked out, they broke a verbal contract. It's a contract violation. If the remaining friend pays, he should pick new friends and sue the old one to pay for his loss.
The RIAA model is "lets change the law and call it "restaurant rape" and anyone stuck footing the bill can call 911 and have their friends arrested for restaurant rape and thrown in jail." I'm not saying the first case is good, but the latter is silly, stupid and about the worst possible solution.
Learn to love Alaska
If no one wants to listen to the content then it wouldn't be pirated. The disconnect occurs when people want to listen to the content, but doesn't want to pay the for the real and actual costs of production
How much did the entertainment industry bribe the major ISPs to implement this?
I charge forward recklessly, leaving chaos in my wake.
You can't bit-torrent a teacher and pile of course material on paper, you can bit-torent a video of him teaching and the electronic course material.
You completely missed my point. There are 2 different scenarios. A) Teacher makes a very good program and records it on tape, tape is then "pirated" and uploaded on mega-sharing-service-2.0. B) Teacher makes a good program and DOESN'T record it, program itself is stolen and the details posted on a student's blog for other people to learn from directly.
Now explain why scenario A makes people dirty rotten pirates and scenario B doesn't. In BOTH scenarios the teacher is potentially losing customers (be they video sales or student fees). In fact, I'd feel more sorry for the second because at least they are getting off their fat ass and teaching the material over and over again instead of recording it once and living off the royalties for 70+ years until they die then having their children and great grandchildren do the same thing.
Maybe if there was a free market in telecommunications in the united states, this might be defensible.
But it's not, as this Diane Rehm show from Thursday discusses:
The U.S. has long been a world leader in technology innovation. Finding ways to profit from the Internet has been no exception. Think Amazon, Facebook and Google. But the next Google will not come from the U.S. Or so argues the author of a new book on the communications industry. She says we've allowed a handful of cable companies to become monopolies that stifle competition and innovation. Their monopoly status is also why Americans pay more money for worse Internet service than consumers in most other developed nations. Diane speaks with a communications policy expert about who controls Americansâ(TM) access to the Internet and why.
it fits in line with the morals and ethics of the artists producing it.
Or mabey you mean to say the "pirates" didn't cause enough physical violence, or coerce enough women to have sex with them to earn it.
Substantiate this assertion.
Whatever value you added to the training was miniscule compared to the boost that you yourself got from society, in which you learned the material you covered in your training, learned how to present the material, and made use of literally millions of technological innovations in order to create a video recording and distribute it to others.
Wow, people are stil aruging "you didn't build that". By creating the course material he added value (assuming his course was good, as judged by others). When I create somehting that others genuinely find valuable, I've contributed to the community and the community owes me for that. That's the basis of all economics, once you get past simple face-to-face barter,
And the "toolchain" you describe - the people who got him far enough to add this value by making this course? They too deserve to be paid, and likely were.
His course (asuming people desire to take it) benefits society. Society therefore benefits from providing an incentive for him to do that work. Until you can propose a concrete, proven alternative to compensate him for his work, we're going to have to stick with the awkward, ill-fitting idea of copyright - because it's better than nothing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
While I do virtual things for a living (software, books and courses), there is one failed premise in that typical argument: that you have a right to make money. Identical examples can be made on other fields that follow your same logic and the answer to them is usually "tough luck, not our problem". Copyright is not a natural right, is a fairly NEW tradeoff between society's right to do whatever they want with you talk after they listen to it, against society's interest in providing incentives for more culture for everyone. It's not about your talk. It's not about you as an individual. It is NOT.
Now, there is ambiguous evidence on the fact that copyright works as intended, clear signs that culture will be fine without it, massive interest of society to share and clear benefits to sharing those things that give value and can be copied for free. If that is not enough reason to rethink society's agreement, here are others: the law has been hijacked to benefit the interest of a few, give incentives to dead people, make most of the worlds population into criminals and risk huge damage to the culture it is supposed to benefit by limiting the ability to base new culture on previous culture and by risking loosen thousands of orphaned works.
Clearly, a serious fix is needed here. But while we wait no copyright is IMHO clearly better than the current one (maybe a few less works, but x1000 access).
People seem to be forgetting something on both sides of the piracy argument.
Aren't we supposed to follow the Free Market? Wasn't that supposed to determine the value, cost, of all things?
Well, if you really want to follow the Free Market, it seems to me that it is saying that people are sick of paying for things. In fact. Seems to me that money if not well liked in the Free Market if it can be gotten for free. So doesn't that mean we should be following the lessons of the Free Market and away from a pay for economy.
What you describe isn't theft. In much the same way that Amazon is not robbing Barnes and Noble when they offer me a better deal on a book I was going to buy.
Theft is losing possession of something that you definitely had. You are describing losing out on the potential to have something. Which is not an argument you should enter in to. Copyright law is (now) in the business of making sure that the general public loses out on the potential to have quite a lot of somethings. Your argument makes the government the biggest thief in the country.
Apparently you didn't read my post.
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You didn't lose money because 34000 people decided not to pay for your program, you never had that money in the first place. There is exactly no difference in terms of money between 34000 people taking your program but not paying, and 34000 people not taking your program at all. And your second example hardly relates. When buying food, it costs the restaraunt owner per meal, so someone actually is losing money if its stolen. With software, it only costs to make it once, and then there is no cost for the creator to make additional copies. And I'm fairly certain that if you were only charging people $3 per copy, it didn't cost you nearly enough to make it to lose your house even if NOBODY bought it.
Doesn't matter, if people "didn't want to listen to it" then no one would pirate it. Obviously the music (regardless of your or my opinion of it) has value to some people, or they wouldn't be pirating it. They are taking something which they "value", but not contributing to the real costs of producing said content. Now you can debate what a fair price for the content is, or how it should be distributed, or how you should be free to device shift, or what fair use consists of, but content is not "free" even though digital distribution makes the costs of DISTRIBUTION nearly free, it doesn't make the costs of PRODUCTION free. Just because you disagree with the "morals and ethics" of Exxon, doesn't mean you can knock over a gas station.
Software X costs money.
You are in possession of Software X.
You didn't pay for Software X.
You are guilty of theft. Period.
Sex costs X money from the pimp down the street
You had sex
you didn't pay for sex
some pimp wants to kick your ass.
sounds the same?
How does this not have any mod points? This is the most reasonable explanation of copyright I've seen on Slashdot.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
That these copyright cartels, have repeatedly for decades ripped off artists...
But where is our 6 strikes law for them?
6th time you rip off and swindle an artist, you lose ALL your copyrights and they all return to the original authors. Sounds good to me.
I pay for my software. I just bought some for $40. Sorry you have to work for the man to get paid.
At the very least, "you" (who received the sample video) agreed not to share it as a condition of receiving it. So I don't mind that the copyright owner comes after "you" for breach of contract (terms of use or end user license).
What I mind is when the MPAA (not the owner) goes after someone who downloaded the video who was not really a party to the contract. That's just not realistic. People could, for example, put copies of those videos on their enemy's computer then rat them out. No, maybe a warning for having an unlawfully copied video, but go after the one who violated the contract/license/terms.
We don't want to turn our countries into more fascist, absolutist police states than they already are. (It's happening in most countries with any sort of economy and legal system.)
The other part of this is the nonsense about how many sales the owner "lost" because of copies that were made. Just because someone got a copy of it for free doesn't mean she represents a lost sale. Sure, some sales were lost, but the MPAA/RIAA always exaggerate to ridiculous lengths, so it is perfectly reasonable to deny the lost sales completely until they come up with a more reasonable and realistic estimate of their loss. Still, the infraction is "copying" or "breach of contract", so the person who actually did breach the contract should bear some responsibility. Just not "loss of billions of dollars in sales" that would never have happened.
And the "six strike" process better not rely on analysis of internet traffic patterns. Just because I have a steady stream of encrypted traffic flowing through my account doesn't mean that anyone should assume I am breaking a law. If the ISP can identify a particular file I am sharing illegally, by all means send a warning; but otherwise, leave me alone. Or perhaps change the terms of use for my connection to say I can't have a steady stream of encrypted data flow through it (so I get a different one that does), but don't say that it proves that I am breaking some law or violating some property owner's rights because they can't review the data that is flowing there..