So essentially you don't care about any issues that don't affect you directly, and you're willing to buy the recording industry's propaganda as long as you continue to get your fix of music. You don't think there's anything wrong with copyright law, you don't think there's anything wrong with funding abusive and greedy record labels, and you somehow believe that you're protected from an infringement lawsuit simply because you don't pirate. You either cannot or refuse to see the basic problem with restricting the transfer of information from one computer to another via copyright law. In fact, you did a brilliant job of completely missing my point about artificial scarcity of information. You have faith in the magical forces of free market capitalism to fix the problems inherent in the entertainment industries, when the same industries will blame any lack of sales due to boycotts or people choosing to buy something else on piracy, and receive what amounts to a taxpayer bailout from governmental enforcement of their "intellectual property rights." And yet you will get onto your high horse and talk about people being honest, as though we are obligated to protect an out-of-date business model against technological progress, when it is against the public interest to do so. Have you even considered the fact that it's completely inappropriate for the music you mention, from the 70s and 80s (between 20 and 40 years old) to still be under copyright? Do you refuse to see how ridiculous the copyright circus has gotten under management of the media corporations, so that you might continue to be their customer and look down on anyone who decides that those corporations are no longer fit to control the world's media?
You're a perfect example of how apathy, ignorance, and knee-jerk reactions to corporate BS are killing our society.
Personally, I don't see any problem with the existing music business model.
Fundamentally it's based on artificial scarcity of something that can be endlessly copied for virtually no cost. You do not see a problem with this?
If you make a decision to try to make a living from your music then as far as I'm concerned it's a case of getting a good lawyer & negotiating your record company contract.
So let's see. Joe Startup Artist is supposed to try to negotiate with Big Music Corporation, which has dozens of new artists just like him lined up outside the door for the chance to throw themselves at the very contract he's trying to negotiate. Big Music Corporation has every reason to tell Joe Startup Artist to piss off if he doesn't like the abusive terms of the contract. Considering that a lawyer good enough to solve this problem would likely cost more than Joe Startup Artist makes in six months at Wal-Mart, how exactly do you suggest that he gain some leverage against Big Music Corporation?
After that, if you still feel you're being screwed by the record companies, then maybe you're not good enough to be making money from your music - so go train to do something else.
Dude, if I were a musician, I'd be extremely pissed at you for saying that. You're saying that the only people who are good enough to make money from their music are those that manage to wrestle it from their predatory record label. Never mind the fact that that particular attribute cannot be used to judge music quality.
Thirdly, people that justify music piracy are too stupid to realise that the music is there to be had in the first place because enough honest people like me go out and buy it the first place. Therefore, people like me subsidise their music habits and if we all chose to pirate music, then none of it would be made and they'd have nothing to download. Which is where the whole piracy argument falls flat on its face.
Bull fucking shit. You're asserting that without copyright protection everyone would just download music and therefore no music would ever be made. Bull, fucking, shit.
The bottom line is that when I buy the CD, the musician *may* be getting something whereas when you pirate the music, the musician is *definitely* getting nothing for their work.
When you buy the CD, the vast majority of what you pay goes towards the record labels and lets them fund continued multi-thousand-dollar lawsuits against casual music sharers, as well as continued lobbying of governments for harsher copyright law and more invasive enforcement. Kind of cuts away your moral high ground.
I would have to disagree here, the lost sales don't come from Indie music, it comes from when you hear a song and instead of buying the CD, you go and torrent it.
If I choose to buy independent music over music published by an RIAA label, then the RIAA just lost a sale.
This isn't a RIAA vs. Indie argument, as an Indie musician only gave away their music they'd make less money than if people bought their music.
You mistakenly assume that the indie musicians who gives out their music for free won't see any revenue from their fans.
""It's absurd to expect ordinary members of the public to think "
Really?
Nice out-of-context quote. -1 troll.
How? A ban on liquor is equated to a making music copying illegal?
Yes. Antipiracy laws make illegal a behavior that pretty much everyone is doing anyway, and that is just about impossible to stop. Fighting the War on Piracy is a waste of time just like the War on Booze was- and here's a hint: the feds gave up on the War on Booze.
If significantly fewer people are illegally downloading music it's not because of the RIAA's scare campaign. When Napster came out, music was the only thing that was widely shared; in fact, as far as I know, it's exactly what Napster was built for. Everyone connected via dial-up at the time, so comparatively smaller music files were the only things worth sharing. After Napster's collapse came broadband Internet and therefore the ability to efficiently share much larger files on peer-to-peer networks. This, of course, laid the foundation for the sharing of movies, video games, and other software. All of these tend to be rather large in size (well, there's big software downloads, so you get my point) and so people had more with which to occupy their bandwidth.
Also, with the growth of the Internet has come an increased pool of independent music sources like Jamendo. For some people (such as myself), free music licensed under Creative Commons licenses has largely replaced nonfree music pulled from p2p networks. All other things being equal, I'll support the independent, public-friendly artist over the big corporations that sue college students for thousands of dollars for sharing a few songs.
Finally, let's not forget that with the RIAA's sue-'em-all campaign came a storm of bad publicity. A lot of people see the RIAA for exactly what they are: a bunch of greedy scumbags. I would not be surprised in the least to learn that some people became pissed off enough at the RIAA following the lawsuit campaign to download and distribute their music just out of principle. This sort of unintended consequence of the lawsuits would offset the gains from scaring off potential pirates.
You seem pretty angry about "theft" when you have no way of knowing whether you would have had more than 400 sales if people hadn't been able to pirate it. Maybe you just wrote a shitty app.
The case in which someone uploaded autopsy pics of two dead children to the site and they refused to take them down on principle? Yeah, I was asking for something about peoples' personal information. That isn't what I asked about.
The "community" in question is merely a group of opportunistic* users who come to TPB for downloading free stuff.
There is also a decent number of users who are essentially top uploaders (think trusted/VIP users) and that are kinda important to the site. A great deal of them are, for example, active on TPB's forums. If many of them decided to leave TPB, it would be rather detrimental to the overall community. Remember, for BitTorrent (or just about any peer-to-peer network) to work, you need good seeders as well as downloaders.
Thank you, Mr. AC! Mod this one informative. I've been unable to browse teh pronz for the past couple of days as I can't log in, but you've given me new reason to live again.
Collage's success lies on a censor's unwillingness to block large quantities of legitimate content.
As we all know, the definition of "legitimate" varies from totalitarian regime to totalitarian regime, and also depends on what the leaders want the public to see and how badly something like this needs to be blocked.
Which again would make their actions hypocrisy, especially when they in turn laugh and try to ridicule people who ask them to remove such info from the site.
[citation needed]. Show me one event in which The Pirate Bay refused to remove a torrent for the personal, private information of an individual or a large group of individuals.
Why shouldn't the information be put up as a torrent and distributed via Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks? Is it not hypocrisy otherwise?
In that case you'll excuse me while I break into your computer/smartphone/$device and all your online accounts, harvest as much personal information as I can, and release it on TPB and Wikileaks.
After all, there's no difference between publicly released copyrighted works and private information, right? And it'd be hypocrisy to complain about the distribution of this information, right?
The Pirate Bay no longer operates a torrent tracker. All they offer is a torrent indexing service (this is not necessarily a torrent hosting service, either, thanks to magnet links) that is indifferent to what the users choose to do with it (except for fakes and malware).
If a torrent for the users' info appeared on the site and the admins ignored a community demand to take it down, you bet that community would ditch the site and TPB would die. It's in TPB's best interest to keep user information secret; I do not understand why this is hard to grasp.
One, TPB isn't a tracker, it's an indexer. Two, you don't have to register for it; you can download torrents without an account. You only need an account for uploading, posting comments, and viewing/downloading porn torrents.
Because it's professional to kick someone who is telling you about a security breach in your product because you don't like the way that they type.
Are you saying that they should have taken him at his word, right off the bat, that he's a serious journalist? If someone walked up to you on the street in a fancy business suit but started speaking Pig Latin, would you take them seriously?
Then why do they ask for them? And why are they storing them?
Many of the things you consider private, you also share with other people, likely because they agree to use that information in a way you agree with. Is that not the exact same as what intellectual property issues come down to... the owner of the information will let you use it, but only if you use it the way they accept.
No, it's not the exact same. Private information (ie, name, address, medical records, SSN) is meant to be inclusive in that only certain people get to know about it. Copyrighted works, on the other hand, are supposed to be seen, consumed and known of by as many people as possible (in theory). You're comparing apples and oranges.
Actually, they do interfere with the service, insofar as they remove fake torrents and ban the people who upload them. Why would it be inconceivable for the site to act in its own self-interest, along with the interests of its users, and take down a torrent that included the private information of its users?
Slashdot Mirror
So essentially you don't care about any issues that don't affect you directly, and you're willing to buy the recording industry's propaganda as long as you continue to get your fix of music. You don't think there's anything wrong with copyright law, you don't think there's anything wrong with funding abusive and greedy record labels, and you somehow believe that you're protected from an infringement lawsuit simply because you don't pirate. You either cannot or refuse to see the basic problem with restricting the transfer of information from one computer to another via copyright law. In fact, you did a brilliant job of completely missing my point about artificial scarcity of information. You have faith in the magical forces of free market capitalism to fix the problems inherent in the entertainment industries, when the same industries will blame any lack of sales due to boycotts or people choosing to buy something else on piracy, and receive what amounts to a taxpayer bailout from governmental enforcement of their "intellectual property rights." And yet you will get onto your high horse and talk about people being honest, as though we are obligated to protect an out-of-date business model against technological progress, when it is against the public interest to do so. Have you even considered the fact that it's completely inappropriate for the music you mention, from the 70s and 80s (between 20 and 40 years old) to still be under copyright? Do you refuse to see how ridiculous the copyright circus has gotten under management of the media corporations, so that you might continue to be their customer and look down on anyone who decides that those corporations are no longer fit to control the world's media?
You're a perfect example of how apathy, ignorance, and knee-jerk reactions to corporate BS are killing our society.
Fundamentally it's based on artificial scarcity of something that can be endlessly copied for virtually no cost. You do not see a problem with this?
So let's see. Joe Startup Artist is supposed to try to negotiate with Big Music Corporation, which has dozens of new artists just like him lined up outside the door for the chance to throw themselves at the very contract he's trying to negotiate. Big Music Corporation has every reason to tell Joe Startup Artist to piss off if he doesn't like the abusive terms of the contract. Considering that a lawyer good enough to solve this problem would likely cost more than Joe Startup Artist makes in six months at Wal-Mart, how exactly do you suggest that he gain some leverage against Big Music Corporation?
Dude, if I were a musician, I'd be extremely pissed at you for saying that. You're saying that the only people who are good enough to make money from their music are those that manage to wrestle it from their predatory record label. Never mind the fact that that particular attribute cannot be used to judge music quality.
Bull fucking shit. You're asserting that without copyright protection everyone would just download music and therefore no music would ever be made. Bull, fucking, shit.
When you buy the CD, the vast majority of what you pay goes towards the record labels and lets them fund continued multi-thousand-dollar lawsuits against casual music sharers, as well as continued lobbying of governments for harsher copyright law and more invasive enforcement. Kind of cuts away your moral high ground.
The Internet, and therefore the issue of file sharing, wasn't around back then. Try again, please.
It's not hard to remember, but it's also unjust. We have fair use for a reason, including format-shifting and creating backups.
If I choose to buy independent music over music published by an RIAA label, then the RIAA just lost a sale.
You mistakenly assume that the indie musicians who gives out their music for free won't see any revenue from their fans.
Nice out-of-context quote. -1 troll.
Yes. Antipiracy laws make illegal a behavior that pretty much everyone is doing anyway, and that is just about impossible to stop. Fighting the War on Piracy is a waste of time just like the War on Booze was- and here's a hint: the feds gave up on the War on Booze.
If significantly fewer people are illegally downloading music it's not because of the RIAA's scare campaign. When Napster came out, music was the only thing that was widely shared; in fact, as far as I know, it's exactly what Napster was built for. Everyone connected via dial-up at the time, so comparatively smaller music files were the only things worth sharing. After Napster's collapse came broadband Internet and therefore the ability to efficiently share much larger files on peer-to-peer networks. This, of course, laid the foundation for the sharing of movies, video games, and other software. All of these tend to be rather large in size (well, there's big software downloads, so you get my point) and so people had more with which to occupy their bandwidth.
Also, with the growth of the Internet has come an increased pool of independent music sources like Jamendo. For some people (such as myself), free music licensed under Creative Commons licenses has largely replaced nonfree music pulled from p2p networks. All other things being equal, I'll support the independent, public-friendly artist over the big corporations that sue college students for thousands of dollars for sharing a few songs.
Finally, let's not forget that with the RIAA's sue-'em-all campaign came a storm of bad publicity. A lot of people see the RIAA for exactly what they are: a bunch of greedy scumbags. I would not be surprised in the least to learn that some people became pissed off enough at the RIAA following the lawsuit campaign to download and distribute their music just out of principle. This sort of unintended consequence of the lawsuits would offset the gains from scaring off potential pirates.
You seem pretty angry about "theft" when you have no way of knowing whether you would have had more than 400 sales if people hadn't been able to pirate it. Maybe you just wrote a shitty app.
The case in which someone uploaded autopsy pics of two dead children to the site and they refused to take them down on principle? Yeah, I was asking for something about peoples' personal information. That isn't what I asked about.
There is also a decent number of users who are essentially top uploaders (think trusted/VIP users) and that are kinda important to the site. A great deal of them are, for example, active on TPB's forums. If many of them decided to leave TPB, it would be rather detrimental to the overall community. Remember, for BitTorrent (or just about any peer-to-peer network) to work, you need good seeders as well as downloaders.
Great, we got trolled by a moderator who decided it would be fun to mod all the top posts Redundant. =/
What about i2p? I think you can use it to route just about any traffic, from web browsing to email to IM to IRC.
Thank you, Mr. AC! Mod this one informative. I've been unable to browse teh pronz for the past couple of days as I can't log in, but you've given me new reason to live again.
As we all know, the definition of "legitimate" varies from totalitarian regime to totalitarian regime, and also depends on what the leaders want the public to see and how badly something like this needs to be blocked.
[citation needed]. Show me one event in which The Pirate Bay refused to remove a torrent for the personal, private information of an individual or a large group of individuals.
In that case you'll excuse me while I break into your computer/smartphone/$device and all your online accounts, harvest as much personal information as I can, and release it on TPB and Wikileaks.
After all, there's no difference between publicly released copyrighted works and private information, right? And it'd be hypocrisy to complain about the distribution of this information, right?
Given your other posts I would assume that by "pirates" you meant to say "people who disagree with me about copyright law."
The Pirate Bay no longer operates a torrent tracker. All they offer is a torrent indexing service (this is not necessarily a torrent hosting service, either, thanks to magnet links) that is indifferent to what the users choose to do with it (except for fakes and malware).
If a torrent for the users' info appeared on the site and the admins ignored a community demand to take it down, you bet that community would ditch the site and TPB would die. It's in TPB's best interest to keep user information secret; I do not understand why this is hard to grasp.
One, TPB isn't a tracker, it's an indexer. Two, you don't have to register for it; you can download torrents without an account. You only need an account for uploading, posting comments, and viewing/downloading porn torrents.
The only personal info in question are IP addresses and email addresses. Not that high on the Identifiability scale.
Are you saying that they should have taken him at his word, right off the bat, that he's a serious journalist? If someone walked up to you on the street in a fancy business suit but started speaking Pig Latin, would you take them seriously?
Account verification and password changing. Duh.
No, it's not the exact same. Private information (ie, name, address, medical records, SSN) is meant to be inclusive in that only certain people get to know about it. Copyrighted works, on the other hand, are supposed to be seen, consumed and known of by as many people as possible (in theory). You're comparing apples and oranges.
Actually, they do interfere with the service, insofar as they remove fake torrents and ban the people who upload them. Why would it be inconceivable for the site to act in its own self-interest, along with the interests of its users, and take down a torrent that included the private information of its users?
Evidently enough to DoS the hacker.