Oblivion isn't a CRPG. It's a first-person shooter with some RPG-lite elements tacked on.
It's pretty much one of the most overhyped, boring games released of the current decade. You can be a warrior and progress to the head of the Mage's Guild without casting a single spell, or become the master of the arena at level 1...the game is just a ridiculous graphics demo.
Being 3D shrinks the world due to the increased hardware requirements, and it removes the amount of details that can be included. How many prefab broken down buildings were there in Fallout 3 that you couldn't go into? The reduced scale made it silly to know there was a town not too far from my own vault, and that the "wasteland" was something I could run across in real-time from one side of the other.
There was rarely a sense of an isolated wasteland like there was in the first game, where travel across the barren desert was portrayed as taking so long that it switched to an overhead map view with a dotted line showing your path. You could run out of water during the trip. Most of the tiles on the map were empty desert tiles with the occasional half-buried car tire or pile of debris.
More importantly than all of this is the fact that being in first-person 3D pretty much means the developers have to turn the game into a first-person shooter, which is what Bethesda did. They added a pointless, easy bullet-time feature to do headshots with, and now we get a bunch of stupid headshot videos on YouTube set to hip-hop music. None of this is what Fallout was about.
"Hey, don't sweat it! Your free ride isn't ending! We can continue to FUCK over the artists! Those big meanies who shut down the most well-known torrent tracker server for copyright materials aren't going to enjoy this victory for long!
Long live the leeches! FUCK artists, and FUCK their rights!"
Yes. All monopolies must be regulated because market forces do not apply. At the very least they should be monitored and there should be price controls.
Microsoft has been monitored for almost a decade now. There's a thing called innocent until proven guilty, and eventually the government will let up, only returning if there's a reason to.
By the way, did you actually use the term "M$" in 2009? You're completely biased and thus your opinion isn't worth paying attention to.
Oh, so we're back to Slashdot's old argument from 2000 that it's the individual infringer who should be legally pursued. Except that every time someone like the RIAA has done that over the years, Slashdot posts a negative article about it, and it's obvious you don't want them to do that, either.
My favorite thing is how the RIAA will use lists of IP addresses and prosecute them, and Slashdot will breathlessly post about how one in hundreds is some little girl or some grandma, as if the RIAA is supposed to stalk every person to find out their real identities.
The fact is that you don't want them to go after individual downloaders. That's just something Slashdotters say because they think it's logistically impossible, and you don't want the free ride to go away.
Google doesn't "provide essentially the same service." PirateBay WAS PROVIDING THE TRACKER SERVER for your client to connect to and exchange file chunks. People love to leave that part out.
Google has happily removed search results in the past due to legal request. PirateBay thought it was above morality and the law.
If Slashdot wasn't responsible for the comments that are posted on their servers, they wouldn't have been forced to remove a comment in the past due to legal threat from the Church of Scientology.
The name is cute but the site doesn't favor pirated content over legal content. I don't get it.
You seriously can't be this naive. I can't read your post without picturing you winking and nudging me. It's called PirateBay, their logo is a pirate ship, they have the support of a "Pirate Party," and they run a tracker server that facilitates the exchange of copyrighted materials.
Come on. This "outrage" over the verdict is stupid. PirateBay was ripping artists off. People only want to support it because they don't want to lose their free ride. It has nothing to do with "linking people and information." PirateBay could have done that without posting torrents for copyrighted materials.
You're forgetting that Slashdot is populated with a majority of people who are left-of-center, many of them stereotypical college students. Posting anything vaguely critical of Republicans generates page views and thus ad revenue.
However, I have seen a general shift toward the center lately as the disappointment with the Obama administration grows each day.
Whew, it's been a while since I saw a story on Slashdot that made me feel good about being a Democrat and patted me on the back for my beliefs. For a while, I almost started thinking for myself. I'm glad this got posted today (especially after the big blow to PirateBay that depressed me all morning...viva la piracy!).
Since Slashdot is coming alive today with goofy hippies and their piracy justifications because of the PirateBay verdict, I thought it would be interesting to read the opinions of artists themselves. You know, the people whose works you pirate and justify as a favor in the fight against the record industry. The people you speak for but never asked an opinion from. The people you're ripping off.
It's funny how different the opinions of the artists are from the selfish leeches who pirate their works. Again, these are the artists you pirates have, for years, claimed to be fighting for (don't ask me how pirating their work accomplishes that).
Some choice quotes:
Surely the copyright owners who had their property ripped off are the winners. Why is it 'bad news'?
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great imo!
"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that."
maybe not completely of course. but it's a start.
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i think piracy proponents are like the 21st century's hippies.
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This is Bloody FABULOUS News !
Dude, you're posting on a forum in which many professional artists and writers depend on the sales and returns from their music - most of which have dedicated their lives to learning, gaining talents, studying, being kicked down and struggling to get their music to the masses or to a level of professional acceptance. You are also surrounded by an even bigger group of people who want to make a career in music or music production in some form or another. Piracy via P2Ps is killing the future of many many careers and may if its left un policed make it almost impossible for careers in music to exist. I don't want a world full of thieves wrecking the oportunities for others and I don't think I'm alone in this thought either.
Grow Up !
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thats fantastic news. Have you checked out their site? total A$$-wipes
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what is really happening is that some people that have facilitated the theft of millions (billions?) of dollars of property have been found guilty.
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Good news, but these bastards are good at making themselves pass for martyrs in front of people...
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Piracy is theft - If songwriters, musicians, etc. get no money for their work there will be no good music. People have to live.
In the same way, where unscrupulous companies rip off other peoples equipment designs and have them made cheaply in the far east - it may benefit some people in the short term, but discourages anyone putting money into developing new and better products if they feel that they will not be able to get their investment back before someone rips off the design.
It all comes down to people wanting something for nothing and in the long run benefits no-one as everything goes down the pan.
Everyone deserves a fair days pay for a fair days work - piracy is just the same as stealing someones pay packet.
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Pirate bay was promoting themselves specifically as a website for committing crime, and I bet the vast majority of their traffic was crime. The same cannot be said for google, nor most ISP's.
Like most people, you completely ignore that PirateBay provides a torrent tracker server, which means it's facilitating the exchanging of file chunks between users. On top of that, it distributes the very torrent files that initiate the distribution of copyrighted materials using that tracker.
It's not like a Usenet binary search website that's providing NZBs that download files from some other newsgroup provider. PirateBay itself is providing the tracking and thus distribution of the file chunks via its tracker.
Trying to fight nature through establishing man made custom and laws is a waste of energy and it causes more harm than good on a psychological level. We human beings are copy machines with our mirror neurons, cameras, and computers (ctrl-c, ctrl-v).
This argument is as generic as stale chewing gum. Nobody is trying to fight nature. Nature is a give and take. It's survival of the fittest. When civilization advanced beyond tiny communal groups, money became important.
We have an innate desire to copy and pass on that which we find of value. Making a law to try to control this is not only futile but damaging to the health and well being of the individual.
We also have an innate desire to receive compensation and reward for our hard work. Your health and well being isn't damaged because you couldn't stroll into a theater and watch Dark Knight for free, you goofy hippie.
That which can be copied easily should be created for the love of creation, not for the purpose of making long term profit. If you can capitalize on it in the near term, great. But someone somewhere is going to copy it or re-invent cheaper and better.
Who are you to decide what somebody can do with something they made? What gives you the right over other people's decisions? That's incredibly arrogant of you, and it's also extremely naive. A painter has to sell his paintings to make a living. Giving away his paintings means he can't pay for the paint, and we get no more paintings.
Maybe I'm a hippie at heart
Gee, ya think?
but all man needs to survive is food, shelter, water, community and love
*facepalm*
My personal goal is to move into a communal situation where my family's basic needs are being taken care of for minimal effort, and then my free time can be invested into that which I have a joy for creating. If others copy my work it is because they perceive it as value and want to share that value with their peers. I personally do not want to do anything to prevent a broader reach of increased value in this world.
I'm sorry. This is just hilarious and slightly embarrassing to read.
Wanting to control others in their creative process is spiritually sick.
Yet, that is what you are doing by demanding they give away their cherished creations with nothing in return. You're stripping away the individual and removing all ownership they have. They become a generic unit in the collective, no better than anyone else and not experiencing any reward for their uniqueness.
Ultimately it stems from the fear of not being able to survive in the world without that degree of control. We could be living in utopia and in harmony with the life on this planet if we stopped trying to prevent the natural evolution of creative expression. Mimicry and Copy-Paste is a valid form of creative expression and a valid form of passing on what is of value.
Giving away your creations to increase the value in people's lives is more spiritually rewarding than trying make a buck off each person who views or uses your work. If your concern is about survival, then perhaps you should change your lifestyle and methods for surviving.
This is so silly to read. It's flowery and full of emotional buzzwords. We wouldn't suddenly be living in a utopia just because the latest Fast and the Furious sequel was handed out for free. Our spirits wouldn't suddenly be enriched, holding each other hand in hand as we danced around a rainbow, simply because the latest iteration of Halo was distributed for free to the public.
Everyone giving way their creations doesn't work in an advanced, thriving society. Communism constantly fails. Your final statement suggests you
I will give you several arguments I have heard that go beyond "we should get free stuff":
All of these arguments are old, tired, and wrong. They're part of a psychological mechanism that pirates employ to make themselves feel like good guys so that they don't lose their free ride. Humans are very selfish creatures. If they find an advantage, they'll fuck over other people to keep that advantage.
That is the case here. Pirates found a way to get music, movies, books, and software for free without having to pay the people who made those things. But they know it's immoral and wrong, so their psychological response is to paint other entities as the bad guys, such as the RIAA. This makes them feel less guilty.
Notice that in these arguments, the creators of the copyrighted materials are rarely mentioned. Seriously, just read the Slashdot comments to this article. You'll see a lot of talk about helping out PirateBay, and you'll see a lot of teeth-gnashing over the "RIAA/MPAA." You'll never see the artists mentioned. The developers who made the software. The authors who wrote the books. The people who you are purposely not paying and ensuring that they NEVER get paid by trading the materials with other people. These creators don't fit into the pirates' psychological equation of being a good guy and not a bad guy, so they're conveniently left out of the discussion.
1) Originally, copyrights were intended to inspire creative work (a public good) by protecting the creators rights to their produce and providing a financial incentive to create. However, in exchange for that protection, the idea was that the work would come into the public domain at the end of the copyright term - so the public was, in essence, buying the work and setting it free in exchange for those protections.
I find it fascinating that the same people who justify piracy by saying "times have changed" will also cite original copyright law from previous centuries.
Suddenly the original equation - we protect you so you can create and make a profit and we then get the work after some time - has now changed to you hold a copyright and you can sue into oblivion anyone who infringes on it, and the work will never, ever become public because the copyright duration will keep on being increased.
That's because, as you said, times have changed. Media wasn't as connected back then, and the formats for storing a product didn't last indefinitely. Now, people continue to make money off these works, and even after death, their families will also make a profit. Societies are willing to continue enjoying these things in new ways, in new formats, and so on. Nintendo will still be making money off of Super Mario Bros. decades from now, which is why the original concepts for copyright law don't apply in the modern era. Disney still makes profits from Mickey Mouse. As is their right, because it's their property, and people are still willing to pay money for it.
Like I said, people love to justify piracy by saying times have changed, and yet they'll cite old, outdated copyright law that assumed people wouldn't still be benefiting from their work after a certain period of time. The contradiction is amusing. This is just part of the psychological mechanism--you selfishly want the work for free, nothing more.
2) DRM, which is fairly widely used, has become a tax on legitimate users of the software and does nothing to curtail illegal use.
If it didn't curtail it to some degree, they wouldn't use it. Besides, DRM exists specifically because of your piracy. However, as part of their mental justification, pirates love to claim that piracy exists because of DRM. DRM exists as another convenient excuse to be immoral and pretend to be a good guy fighting back at the evil software publisher.
3) Times change, and businesses need to change with the
They did steal property--intellectual property. They prevented artists from receiving profits they were owed. Why do you think artists shouldn't be paid for their work? Because you have some baseless beef with the RIAA?
What about a software developer making a game? Are you saying he shouldn't be paid for his work because the game's ISO appeared on PirateBay?
You're just a leech trying to justify your immoral actions.
1- Will Google be sued next (filetype:torrent anyone?)
Well, if Google starts running a torrent tracker like PirateBay did, then yes, they will get sued. Why do people keep leaving out that PirateBay ran a tracker, which means they were facilitating the trade of copyrighted materials?
2- Where can we donate to help pay the fine?
Are you serious? You're willing to pay PirateBay but not the artists you're ripping off? Are you stupid?
Here's what's really going on. Slashdotters scapegoat the RIAA/MPAA as a psychological mechanism to absolve themselves of guilt. By painting other people as the bad guys, pirates make themselves appear as good guys. This way, everyone is distracted from the fact that they're ripping artists off for their work.
At this point, pirates usually bring up record contracts--ignoring the fact that PirateBay distributes much more than just music. Besides that, artists willingly sign their contracts, and ripping those artists off by not paying them anything doesn't help them with their bad record contracts. "Bad record contracts" are just an outdated meme used by pirates to justify their actions.
There is no justification for ripping artists off. Everybody defending the PirateBay in this article is a leech who has grown so used to getting stuff for free that they don't want to lose the free ride. And the people actually offering to donate money to the PirateBay have completely lost it--they're willing to pay criminals (this website has been flaunting its criminal activity for years--BRAGGING about it) money but not the artists whose work they're ripping off.
I repeat, the scapegoating of the RIAA/MPAA is just a psychological mechanism for making you feel like a good guy instead of what you really are--a leech ripping off other people and not paying them for their work. Slashdot over the years has become a haven for the pro-piracy agenda in which all piracy is good and any attempt to legally pursue copyright infringers--WHICH SLASHDOT ADVOCATED FOR IN 2000--is mocked and criticized by wannabe lawyers and dorm room hippies.
I will do ALL I CAN to avoid ever EVER paying for music and movies again.
Uh...why? You don't deserve somebody's else's work for free. You leech.
thank you mpaa/riaa. you've created more hate toward your 'companies'.
you reap what you sow.
even if I have money in my pocket, I'll pirate movies and songs from now on.
It has nothing to do with the MPAA/RIAA. You would have pirated regardless. You're a leech who wants other people's shit for free, and you use the MPAA/RIAA to justify it in your mind.
thanks for the kick in the pants. you created another life-long media non-buyer (me). have a good financial suing but I won't be buying your 'products' again.
You're ripping artists off. You're saying that artists are your slaves because you hate the idea of the RIAA--horror!--suing copyright infringers who are violating their rights.
the war is NOT over. its barely begin, in fact.
There is no "war." You've invented one to justify your piracy in your head and make yourself not feel guilty. By painting someone else as the bad guy, you make yourself forget that you're ripping artists off.
Who cares if they make "obscene profits?" There's nothing wrong with that.
Restrict and attack the rights of its customers? All they did was go after a website that was promoting itself as a place to commit crime. Did you seriously think that was okay? Are you actually surprised that they weren't legally challenged?
Have Slashdotters lost their common sense or something? Why are so many people opposed to artists making money? Is it because you just want shit for free?
It's fascinating how pirates are so willing to support the PirateBay founders (often with financial donations!) but completely willing to shit on people making a living through music, movies, books, and software.
Uh...why does it suck? A criminal website that existed solely to violate people's rights and make sure they don't get paid for their work has been punished.
Slashdotters fantasize about a legion of artists who are all in favor of the PirateBay. In reality, artists are happy over the verdict because this is how they make a freaking living:
Slashdot Mirror
Oblivion isn't a CRPG. It's a first-person shooter with some RPG-lite elements tacked on.
It's pretty much one of the most overhyped, boring games released of the current decade. You can be a warrior and progress to the head of the Mage's Guild without casting a single spell, or become the master of the arena at level 1...the game is just a ridiculous graphics demo.
Being 3D shrinks the world due to the increased hardware requirements, and it removes the amount of details that can be included. How many prefab broken down buildings were there in Fallout 3 that you couldn't go into? The reduced scale made it silly to know there was a town not too far from my own vault, and that the "wasteland" was something I could run across in real-time from one side of the other.
There was rarely a sense of an isolated wasteland like there was in the first game, where travel across the barren desert was portrayed as taking so long that it switched to an overhead map view with a dotted line showing your path. You could run out of water during the trip. Most of the tiles on the map were empty desert tiles with the occasional half-buried car tire or pile of debris.
More importantly than all of this is the fact that being in first-person 3D pretty much means the developers have to turn the game into a first-person shooter, which is what Bethesda did. They added a pointless, easy bullet-time feature to do headshots with, and now we get a bunch of stupid headshot videos on YouTube set to hip-hop music. None of this is what Fallout was about.
This article was posted to cheer up the pirates.
"Hey, don't sweat it! Your free ride isn't ending! We can continue to FUCK over the artists! Those big meanies who shut down the most well-known torrent tracker server for copyright materials aren't going to enjoy this victory for long!
Long live the leeches! FUCK artists, and FUCK their rights!"
Microsoft has been monitored for almost a decade now. There's a thing called innocent until proven guilty, and eventually the government will let up, only returning if there's a reason to.
By the way, did you actually use the term "M$" in 2009? You're completely biased and thus your opinion isn't worth paying attention to.
Breaking up the company would have been an insanely ridiculous overreaction that only out-of-touch Slashdotters would have cheered.
Oh, so we're back to Slashdot's old argument from 2000 that it's the individual infringer who should be legally pursued. Except that every time someone like the RIAA has done that over the years, Slashdot posts a negative article about it, and it's obvious you don't want them to do that, either.
My favorite thing is how the RIAA will use lists of IP addresses and prosecute them, and Slashdot will breathlessly post about how one in hundreds is some little girl or some grandma, as if the RIAA is supposed to stalk every person to find out their real identities.
The fact is that you don't want them to go after individual downloaders. That's just something Slashdotters say because they think it's logistically impossible, and you don't want the free ride to go away.
Google doesn't "provide essentially the same service." PirateBay WAS PROVIDING THE TRACKER SERVER for your client to connect to and exchange file chunks. People love to leave that part out.
Google has happily removed search results in the past due to legal request. PirateBay thought it was above morality and the law.
If Slashdot wasn't responsible for the comments that are posted on their servers, they wouldn't have been forced to remove a comment in the past due to legal threat from the Church of Scientology.
You seriously can't be this naive. I can't read your post without picturing you winking and nudging me. It's called PirateBay, their logo is a pirate ship, they have the support of a "Pirate Party," and they run a tracker server that facilitates the exchange of copyrighted materials.
Come on. This "outrage" over the verdict is stupid. PirateBay was ripping artists off. People only want to support it because they don't want to lose their free ride. It has nothing to do with "linking people and information." PirateBay could have done that without posting torrents for copyrighted materials.
Get real, Slashdot.
Isn't this the same Obama administration that recently defended warrantless wiretapping?
You're forgetting that Slashdot is populated with a majority of people who are left-of-center, many of them stereotypical college students. Posting anything vaguely critical of Republicans generates page views and thus ad revenue.
However, I have seen a general shift toward the center lately as the disappointment with the Obama administration grows each day.
Whew, it's been a while since I saw a story on Slashdot that made me feel good about being a Democrat and patted me on the back for my beliefs. For a while, I almost started thinking for myself. I'm glad this got posted today (especially after the big blow to PirateBay that depressed me all morning...viva la piracy!).
Since Slashdot is coming alive today with goofy hippies and their piracy justifications because of the PirateBay verdict, I thought it would be interesting to read the opinions of artists themselves. You know, the people whose works you pirate and justify as a favor in the fight against the record industry. The people you speak for but never asked an opinion from. The people you're ripping off.
It's funny how different the opinions of the artists are from the selfish leeches who pirate their works. Again, these are the artists you pirates have, for years, claimed to be fighting for (don't ask me how pirating their work accomplishes that).
Some choice quotes:
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And so on...
Like most people, you completely ignore that PirateBay provides a torrent tracker server, which means it's facilitating the exchanging of file chunks between users. On top of that, it distributes the very torrent files that initiate the distribution of copyrighted materials using that tracker.
It's not like a Usenet binary search website that's providing NZBs that download files from some other newsgroup provider. PirateBay itself is providing the tracking and thus distribution of the file chunks via its tracker.
Yeah, dude, pass the bong. I totally see the utopia and spiritual love, maaaaaan.
What a load of cliche, neo-hippie crap.
This argument is as generic as stale chewing gum. Nobody is trying to fight nature. Nature is a give and take. It's survival of the fittest. When civilization advanced beyond tiny communal groups, money became important.
We also have an innate desire to receive compensation and reward for our hard work. Your health and well being isn't damaged because you couldn't stroll into a theater and watch Dark Knight for free, you goofy hippie.
Who are you to decide what somebody can do with something they made? What gives you the right over other people's decisions? That's incredibly arrogant of you, and it's also extremely naive. A painter has to sell his paintings to make a living. Giving away his paintings means he can't pay for the paint, and we get no more paintings.
Gee, ya think?
*facepalm*
I'm sorry. This is just hilarious and slightly embarrassing to read.
Yet, that is what you are doing by demanding they give away their cherished creations with nothing in return. You're stripping away the individual and removing all ownership they have. They become a generic unit in the collective, no better than anyone else and not experiencing any reward for their uniqueness.
This is so silly to read. It's flowery and full of emotional buzzwords. We wouldn't suddenly be living in a utopia just because the latest Fast and the Furious sequel was handed out for free. Our spirits wouldn't suddenly be enriched, holding each other hand in hand as we danced around a rainbow, simply because the latest iteration of Halo was distributed for free to the public.
Everyone giving way their creations doesn't work in an advanced, thriving society. Communism constantly fails. Your final statement suggests you
All of these arguments are old, tired, and wrong. They're part of a psychological mechanism that pirates employ to make themselves feel like good guys so that they don't lose their free ride. Humans are very selfish creatures. If they find an advantage, they'll fuck over other people to keep that advantage.
That is the case here. Pirates found a way to get music, movies, books, and software for free without having to pay the people who made those things. But they know it's immoral and wrong, so their psychological response is to paint other entities as the bad guys, such as the RIAA. This makes them feel less guilty.
Notice that in these arguments, the creators of the copyrighted materials are rarely mentioned. Seriously, just read the Slashdot comments to this article. You'll see a lot of talk about helping out PirateBay, and you'll see a lot of teeth-gnashing over the "RIAA/MPAA." You'll never see the artists mentioned. The developers who made the software. The authors who wrote the books. The people who you are purposely not paying and ensuring that they NEVER get paid by trading the materials with other people. These creators don't fit into the pirates' psychological equation of being a good guy and not a bad guy, so they're conveniently left out of the discussion.
I find it fascinating that the same people who justify piracy by saying "times have changed" will also cite original copyright law from previous centuries.
That's because, as you said, times have changed. Media wasn't as connected back then, and the formats for storing a product didn't last indefinitely. Now, people continue to make money off these works, and even after death, their families will also make a profit. Societies are willing to continue enjoying these things in new ways, in new formats, and so on. Nintendo will still be making money off of Super Mario Bros. decades from now, which is why the original concepts for copyright law don't apply in the modern era. Disney still makes profits from Mickey Mouse. As is their right, because it's their property, and people are still willing to pay money for it.
Like I said, people love to justify piracy by saying times have changed, and yet they'll cite old, outdated copyright law that assumed people wouldn't still be benefiting from their work after a certain period of time. The contradiction is amusing. This is just part of the psychological mechanism--you selfishly want the work for free, nothing more.
If it didn't curtail it to some degree, they wouldn't use it. Besides, DRM exists specifically because of your piracy. However, as part of their mental justification, pirates love to claim that piracy exists because of DRM. DRM exists as another convenient excuse to be immoral and pretend to be a good guy fighting back at the evil software publisher.
They did steal property--intellectual property. They prevented artists from receiving profits they were owed. Why do you think artists shouldn't be paid for their work? Because you have some baseless beef with the RIAA?
What about a software developer making a game? Are you saying he shouldn't be paid for his work because the game's ISO appeared on PirateBay?
You're just a leech trying to justify your immoral actions.
Well, if Google starts running a torrent tracker like PirateBay did, then yes, they will get sued. Why do people keep leaving out that PirateBay ran a tracker, which means they were facilitating the trade of copyrighted materials?
Are you serious? You're willing to pay PirateBay but not the artists you're ripping off? Are you stupid?
Here's what's really going on. Slashdotters scapegoat the RIAA/MPAA as a psychological mechanism to absolve themselves of guilt. By painting other people as the bad guys, pirates make themselves appear as good guys. This way, everyone is distracted from the fact that they're ripping artists off for their work.
At this point, pirates usually bring up record contracts--ignoring the fact that PirateBay distributes much more than just music. Besides that, artists willingly sign their contracts, and ripping those artists off by not paying them anything doesn't help them with their bad record contracts. "Bad record contracts" are just an outdated meme used by pirates to justify their actions.
There is no justification for ripping artists off. Everybody defending the PirateBay in this article is a leech who has grown so used to getting stuff for free that they don't want to lose the free ride. And the people actually offering to donate money to the PirateBay have completely lost it--they're willing to pay criminals (this website has been flaunting its criminal activity for years--BRAGGING about it) money but not the artists whose work they're ripping off.
I repeat, the scapegoating of the RIAA/MPAA is just a psychological mechanism for making you feel like a good guy instead of what you really are--a leech ripping off other people and not paying them for their work. Slashdot over the years has become a haven for the pro-piracy agenda in which all piracy is good and any attempt to legally pursue copyright infringers--WHICH SLASHDOT ADVOCATED FOR IN 2000--is mocked and criticized by wannabe lawyers and dorm room hippies.
Uh...why? You don't deserve somebody's else's work for free. You leech.
It has nothing to do with the MPAA/RIAA. You would have pirated regardless. You're a leech who wants other people's shit for free, and you use the MPAA/RIAA to justify it in your mind.
You're ripping artists off. You're saying that artists are your slaves because you hate the idea of the RIAA--horror!--suing copyright infringers who are violating their rights.
There is no "war." You've invented one to justify your piracy in your head and make yourself not feel guilty. By painting someone else as the bad guy, you make yourself forget that you're ripping artists off.
You're an idiot. PirateBay calls itself PIRATEbay, their logo is a pirate ship, and they've repeatedly bragged about violating the law.
Most importantly, they run a tracker server. That means yes, they are tracking copyrighted materials for users to distribute. That's facilitation.
Who cares if they make "obscene profits?" There's nothing wrong with that.
Restrict and attack the rights of its customers? All they did was go after a website that was promoting itself as a place to commit crime. Did you seriously think that was okay? Are you actually surprised that they weren't legally challenged?
Have Slashdotters lost their common sense or something? Why are so many people opposed to artists making money? Is it because you just want shit for free?
It's fascinating how pirates are so willing to support the PirateBay founders (often with financial donations!) but completely willing to shit on people making a living through music, movies, books, and software.
You have a very skewed world view, man.
Uh...why does it suck? A criminal website that existed solely to violate people's rights and make sure they don't get paid for their work has been punished.
Slashdotters fantasize about a legion of artists who are all in favor of the PirateBay. In reality, artists are happy over the verdict because this is how they make a freaking living:
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/382706-pirate-bay-verdict.html
I'm sure they'll go bankrupt because of your boycott.