By reducing consumption, demand goes down, thereby reducing production.
This assumes that a substantial amount of child porn is made because people request or otherwise demand it. Whether or not that's true, it shouldn't be blindly taken as fact. It's just as possible that most child porn is created simply because the creator has the urge to make it.
Personally, I think the above is just an excuse with little to no basis in reality.
Usually, a content provider (Youtube for example) is obligated to take down infringing content on request, or otherwise to make a counter-argument against the take-down notices. They can't just say "we aren't responsible for the content." Now, you may argue that because it's just a tracker, they aren't trafficking in infringing content. But in reality, there isn't that much separation. They are facilitating the downloading of that content.
I think the distinction between YouTube and a BitTorrent tracker is fairly substantial. YouTube actually hosts the infringing content on its website. With BT, it's the users that are doing the hosting. The tracker can't take down any content, nor can they remove infringing torrents (as you later said), because it's not a hosting service. They can't tell what's copyrighted and what's not any more than other software can; all they have are file names and hash values.
In other contexts, similar actions would definitely be illegal. For example, one person walks up to another person and says "Hey, I want to murder Bob Jones, but I don't know where he lives, can you help me?" and the second person says "Yeah, he lives at 123 Fake Street, here's copy of his house key. By the way, here's where you can get a really nice shotgun which would be a really effective murder instrument to use."
Then the second person is knowingly aiding and abetting a crime. A tracker doesn't do this when it connects peers, because again, it doesn't know what is legal and what isn't.
That's pretty unconvincing. They all say that. Words are cheap, actions matter more. If they were actively removing infringing torrents, that would be another matter.
Regardless of how cheap the words are, I would imagine the notice would give them some protection against the "aiding & abetting" accusation. But you're right; actions do matter more. And they're not taking steps to block infringing torrents (because I'm sure we both understand that such steps would take an ungodly amount of the owners' time, and would ultimately be futile anyway), but they're also not encouraging infringement or profiting from it. This makes me see OBT as a "dumb" tracker, sort of like how BitTorrent itself is a "dumb" protocol for file transfer. Its purpose is to move the files, not to care about what the files are.
OpenBitTorrent is just a tracker. That's all; not a torrent indexer like TPB. They are not responsible for whatever people choose to use their service to download or distribute. I'd also imagine they can't do anything about what people move through their service.
They don't condone piracy; in fact, their website asks that users not illegally distribute copyrighted material with the tracker. This, combined with the fact that OBT is non-profit (as far as I know) means that they aren't profiting from infringement and they aren't condoning or aiding infringement.
Finally, even if it gets shut down, the project is open-source. It won't take long at all for one or two or a dozen clones to pop up.
Except... that comic is compare two unrelating things like if doing one would have affected the other, which it wouldn't.
You're missing the point. Beardy McNerdy is the sort of guy who reads Slashdot and worries about these sorts of things: open standards in the case of the.doc part, and 3vil social networking sites abusing their power and position. Sticky non Techie, on the other hand, is your average condescending person who sees all of it as pointless and just wants to read about the new iPhone release. The comparison is between two forms of 3vil perpetrated by a corporation: the former is Microsoft's strategy of locking users into their products by disallowing open standards, and the latter is Facebook's recent big privacy fuck-ups. (Could also be argued that Facebook employs vendor lock-in by keeping their platform closed and not allowing others to facilitate communication through it. Yes, this doesn't apply to IM, so I refer to profiles/groups/everything else.)
In both cases, Beardy McNerdy is your average geek, trying to warn others about the perils of big corporations in the online and personal computer worlds. The irony is that in one case, Sticky non Techie is fine with the 3vil, but in the other, he's actually running to Beardy McNerdy with the news, alarmed.
People don't give a shit about nerd turf wars over document formats, what they have WORKS for them and everyone else
Except when people get macro viruses from.doc files.
According to Wikipedia, Twitter is based in California. Why is the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatening Twitter's higher-ups with arrest? There must be something here I don't know.
I don't think this would apply to OSS. Reason one:
'Pursuant to the Sale of Goods Act 1979, a term is to be implied into the contract that Entirety would be fit for the purpose for which it was bought,
Granted, you can sell open source software, but I bet the vast majority of OSS is given away freely. It would therefore not count as a sale.
Reason two: As an example, doesn't the GPL state that the software comes with no warranty? I'd think that would free the creators from liability issues with regards to bugs or functionality.
+1. I've been using StartPage for a while, which is run by ixquick. Admittedly, it sometimes doesn't give me what I'm searching for, but it usually does, and they do not record your IP address at all. Very privacy-oriented.
Being a Slashdot reader, I haven't actually read the article, but this line from the summary bugs me:
'We are committed to being transparent with our users about the information that we collect when they use our products and services, why we collect it, and how we use it to improve their experience.'
Google doesn't collect peoples' information for the happy, innocent purpose of improving their experience. They collect peoples' information to make money. Why can't they be honest about that?
Right, and you've brought up one of the few good things about the DMCA. Unfortunately, this and its other positive benefits do not justify all the other negative crap that went into that law.
When internet connections are high enough bandwidths and low enough latencies, you will only have video transferred to you, all game assets will be entirely stored and run on their hardware, never will anything be stored on YOUR end that you will can manipulate.
At which point prices will have to drop significantly because you're no longer selling a game; you're selling a subscription to a game.
Has it occurred to you that the EFF is, for several very good reasons. in favor of weaker copyright laws, under which "piracy" happens to be a non-issue?
In that context, you accuse them of steering the discussion, but you're no better when you say they're "pro-piracy" in an attempt to invalidate everything they say.
A few times in copyright threads, while alluding to the insanity of the media corporations, I have testified that one of my big paranoid fears is legislation that requires content filtering software on all computers and related devices. Fine and dandy for Windows and Mac, but implementing that for all the Linux distros would be ridiculously hard. The solution? Outlaw Linux. "It's just a hacker's tool anyway."
This doesn't really affect me as I hardly ever search Twitter. The rare exception is when I want to follow someone and don't already know their username. I also use Twitter from a client instead of my browser- and on that note, TFA mentions that they may be adding support for Promoted Tweets to appear in third-party clients in the future, which makes me unhappy. I'm only following a handful of people (mostly friends and maybe two well-known/famous people) and if I started getting ads in my tweet roster from corporations I don't care about, I'd abandon Twitter in a heartbeat.
However, although I dislike advertising, this doesn't seem so bad. Only one Promoted Tweet per page, and only in search results, it's clearly marked as an ad, and they have to meet a popularity threshold in order to stay. If all online ads were like that, I'd be less inclined to block them.
First off, anyone under 30 that has ever downloaded music or a movie is never going to accept anything that forces them to pay for crap.
Generalization. I can just as easily say that most people who use p2p regularly are more active collectors who are more likely to buy something, despite the fact that they can get it for free, because they know that creators have to eat too.
On a tax basis if everyone universally stops paying for media, there will be a huge hit in revenue collected by governments.
Nope. If someone downloads a movie, the money they could have spent on it is more likely to go somewhere else than just sit in their wallet. Net financial effect: Zero.
The rest of your post is pretty much invalidated by the above.
Not EVERY download is a lost sale but prove to me that there isnt a significant group that would buy it otherwise but get it for free?
That group exists. Nobody can prove that it is or is not significant.
People need to be honest why they download stuff. Many say 'oh I want to try it before I buy it' LIAR. I know my reasons. I wanted to play free games.
People say 'they wouldnt buy it anyway'. LIAR. I know my reasons. I wanted to play free games.
People say 'I cant get the game anymore'. LIAR. You can get a copy of just about every game out there with a little bit of looking. I know my reasons. I wanted to play free games.
Nice unfounded generalizations cast on everyone who uses p2p.
Nobody can prove anything about the motives and capabilities of everyone who uses p2p. That's the point. Which means the question is:
Given that there is no effective way to stop copyright infringement that respects fair use, along with more fundamental rights (such as privacy and presumption of innocence), and given that there is an unknown percent of p2p users who would buy if they couldn't download, is converting that unknown percent of users into paying customers worth the cost (both in terms of finances and peoples' rights) of draconian anti-piracy measures?
Governments are supposed to implement the least restrictive laws and policies possible to achieve a goal. It makes far more sense to tell Big Media to shut up and innovate than to try to force unreasonable, not to mention ineffective, copying controls on the entire world.
Slashdot Mirror
By reducing consumption, demand goes down, thereby reducing production.
This assumes that a substantial amount of child porn is made because people request or otherwise demand it. Whether or not that's true, it shouldn't be blindly taken as fact. It's just as possible that most child porn is created simply because the creator has the urge to make it.
Personally, I think the above is just an excuse with little to no basis in reality.
That link requires iTunes and I'm on Linux, you insensitive clod!
Usually, a content provider (Youtube for example) is obligated to take down infringing content on request, or otherwise to make a counter-argument against the take-down notices. They can't just say "we aren't responsible for the content." Now, you may argue that because it's just a tracker, they aren't trafficking in infringing content. But in reality, there isn't that much separation. They are facilitating the downloading of that content.
I think the distinction between YouTube and a BitTorrent tracker is fairly substantial. YouTube actually hosts the infringing content on its website. With BT, it's the users that are doing the hosting. The tracker can't take down any content, nor can they remove infringing torrents (as you later said), because it's not a hosting service. They can't tell what's copyrighted and what's not any more than other software can; all they have are file names and hash values.
In other contexts, similar actions would definitely be illegal. For example, one person walks up to another person and says "Hey, I want to murder Bob Jones, but I don't know where he lives, can you help me?" and the second person says "Yeah, he lives at 123 Fake Street, here's copy of his house key. By the way, here's where you can get a really nice shotgun which would be a really effective murder instrument to use."
Then the second person is knowingly aiding and abetting a crime. A tracker doesn't do this when it connects peers, because again, it doesn't know what is legal and what isn't.
That's pretty unconvincing. They all say that. Words are cheap, actions matter more. If they were actively removing infringing torrents, that would be another matter.
Regardless of how cheap the words are, I would imagine the notice would give them some protection against the "aiding & abetting" accusation. But you're right; actions do matter more. And they're not taking steps to block infringing torrents (because I'm sure we both understand that such steps would take an ungodly amount of the owners' time, and would ultimately be futile anyway), but they're also not encouraging infringement or profiting from it. This makes me see OBT as a "dumb" tracker, sort of like how BitTorrent itself is a "dumb" protocol for file transfer. Its purpose is to move the files, not to care about what the files are.
OpenBitTorrent is just a tracker. That's all; not a torrent indexer like TPB. They are not responsible for whatever people choose to use their service to download or distribute. I'd also imagine they can't do anything about what people move through their service.
They don't condone piracy; in fact, their website asks that users not illegally distribute copyrighted material with the tracker. This, combined with the fact that OBT is non-profit (as far as I know) means that they aren't profiting from infringement and they aren't condoning or aiding infringement.
Finally, even if it gets shut down, the project is open-source. It won't take long at all for one or two or a dozen clones to pop up.
I pray the Swedish judge has an ounce of sense.
Does it run Linux?
Except ... that comic is compare two unrelating things like if doing one would have affected the other, which it wouldn't.
You're missing the point. Beardy McNerdy is the sort of guy who reads Slashdot and worries about these sorts of things: open standards in the case of the .doc part, and 3vil social networking sites abusing their power and position. Sticky non Techie, on the other hand, is your average condescending person who sees all of it as pointless and just wants to read about the new iPhone release. The comparison is between two forms of 3vil perpetrated by a corporation: the former is Microsoft's strategy of locking users into their products by disallowing open standards, and the latter is Facebook's recent big privacy fuck-ups. (Could also be argued that Facebook employs vendor lock-in by keeping their platform closed and not allowing others to facilitate communication through it. Yes, this doesn't apply to IM, so I refer to profiles/groups/everything else.)
In both cases, Beardy McNerdy is your average geek, trying to warn others about the perils of big corporations in the online and personal computer worlds. The irony is that in one case, Sticky non Techie is fine with the 3vil, but in the other, he's actually running to Beardy McNerdy with the news, alarmed.
People don't give a shit about nerd turf wars over document formats, what they have WORKS for them and everyone else
Except when people get macro viruses from .doc files.
According to Wikipedia, Twitter is based in California. Why is the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatening Twitter's higher-ups with arrest? There must be something here I don't know.
Way back when I had XP SP2, installing SP3 borked my machine. Had to do a System Restore.
Just sayin'.
This will be great for my download/upload ratio!
'Pursuant to the Sale of Goods Act 1979, a term is to be implied into the contract that Entirety would be fit for the purpose for which it was bought,
Granted, you can sell open source software, but I bet the vast majority of OSS is given away freely. It would therefore not count as a sale.
Reason two: As an example, doesn't the GPL state that the software comes with no warranty? I'd think that would free the creators from liability issues with regards to bugs or functionality.
+1. I've been using StartPage for a while, which is run by ixquick. Admittedly, it sometimes doesn't give me what I'm searching for, but it usually does, and they do not record your IP address at all. Very privacy-oriented.
'We are committed to being transparent with our users about the information that we collect when they use our products and services, why we collect it, and how we use it to improve their experience.'
Google doesn't collect peoples' information for the happy, innocent purpose of improving their experience. They collect peoples' information to make money. Why can't they be honest about that?
It doesn't even make it okay to do both.
Right, and you've brought up one of the few good things about the DMCA. Unfortunately, this and its other positive benefits do not justify all the other negative crap that went into that law.
The ACTA will do that anyway.
"Hello, 911? I just tried to toast some toast, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
At which point prices will have to drop significantly because you're no longer selling a game; you're selling a subscription to a game.
Absolutely. Now the government can actually respond to any claims that their security is so bad, even a nine-year-old could hack their systems.
But what protects that same guy from the RIAA/MPAA/**AA bankrupting him and ruining his life for (maybe) sharing a few songs?
That's more important to you than your civil liberties?
Has it occurred to you that the EFF is, for several very good reasons. in favor of weaker copyright laws, under which "piracy" happens to be a non-issue?
In that context, you accuse them of steering the discussion, but you're no better when you say they're "pro-piracy" in an attempt to invalidate everything they say.
And if they successfully legislate their survival?
A few times in copyright threads, while alluding to the insanity of the media corporations, I have testified that one of my big paranoid fears is legislation that requires content filtering software on all computers and related devices. Fine and dandy for Windows and Mac, but implementing that for all the Linux distros would be ridiculously hard. The solution? Outlaw Linux. "It's just a hacker's tool anyway."
*shakes head*
This doesn't really affect me as I hardly ever search Twitter. The rare exception is when I want to follow someone and don't already know their username. I also use Twitter from a client instead of my browser- and on that note, TFA mentions that they may be adding support for Promoted Tweets to appear in third-party clients in the future, which makes me unhappy. I'm only following a handful of people (mostly friends and maybe two well-known/famous people) and if I started getting ads in my tweet roster from corporations I don't care about, I'd abandon Twitter in a heartbeat.
However, although I dislike advertising, this doesn't seem so bad. Only one Promoted Tweet per page, and only in search results, it's clearly marked as an ad, and they have to meet a popularity threshold in order to stay. If all online ads were like that, I'd be less inclined to block them.
First off, anyone under 30 that has ever downloaded music or a movie is never going to accept anything that forces them to pay for crap.
Generalization. I can just as easily say that most people who use p2p regularly are more active collectors who are more likely to buy something, despite the fact that they can get it for free, because they know that creators have to eat too.
On a tax basis if everyone universally stops paying for media, there will be a huge hit in revenue collected by governments.
Nope. If someone downloads a movie, the money they could have spent on it is more likely to go somewhere else than just sit in their wallet. Net financial effect: Zero.
The rest of your post is pretty much invalidated by the above.
That group exists. Nobody can prove that it is or is not significant.
Nice unfounded generalizations cast on everyone who uses p2p.
Nobody can prove anything about the motives and capabilities of everyone who uses p2p. That's the point. Which means the question is:
Given that there is no effective way to stop copyright infringement that respects fair use, along with more fundamental rights (such as privacy and presumption of innocence), and given that there is an unknown percent of p2p users who would buy if they couldn't download, is converting that unknown percent of users into paying customers worth the cost (both in terms of finances and peoples' rights) of draconian anti-piracy measures?
Governments are supposed to implement the least restrictive laws and policies possible to achieve a goal. It makes far more sense to tell Big Media to shut up and innovate than to try to force unreasonable, not to mention ineffective, copying controls on the entire world.