Your description establishes a passive acceptance on the part of the "somebody" who develops that new technology. Megaupload's founders, on the contrary, actively and deliberately encouraged piracy.
Sorry to do this, but...
It's the difference between a car manufacturer developing a very powerful vehicle that becomes the favored tool of drug smugglers, and a car manufacturer that develops such a vehicle and then deliberately arranges meetings with drug warlords to promote that vehicle.
(Please, to anyone who responds, no irrelevant comments about the "war on drugs". That just means you have nothing to say about the topic on hand.)
Cut the Rope [android.com] is 99 cents with at least half a million downloads. There are two unknown factors - how many returns were there (downside) and how many over 500k are they (upside). So they've made around $500,000 on this app.
In revenue, yes. In profit? It's not free to write the game.
The big problem here is that piracy probably _was_ a huge part of megaupload.
And the people behind Megaupload *knew* about it and *encouraged* it.
Besides which, I haven't seen anyone claiming that Megaupload existed only for piracy, as the poster to whom you replied stated. It was just that there was a lot of piracy and everyone was pretty blatant about it - including the owners of Megaupload.
Except that he made most of his money from patronage. Every time this argument is raised on Slashdot ("we'd never hear anything by Mozart or Beethoven or..."), people always ignore that inconvenient factoid.
Now, that said, he was notoriously irresponsible with his cash and squandered it throughout his lifetime. By the time he reached his latter years (during which he was very unproductive due to his well known poor health) he was surviving mainly by sellling his works.
Off-topic, I know, but although I actually don't know what his financial state was upon his death, I do recall he had a pretty lavish funeral, suggesting it wasn't terrible.
Bummer. People on Slashdot would be screaming to high heaven about the travesty of justice if these were white-collar criminals/CEOs/basically anyone who'd been convicted of a crime that/. readers didn't approve of and was able to stay out of jail by skipping to a different country.
1. The article is talking more about physical products like plush dolls and t-shirts with Angry Birds brands. 2. They got people hooked by giving the original Angry Birds as a free app. The follow-up apps were what you had to pay for. And yes, pathetic, isn't it, that people would pirate something that only costs a dollar. Except that if you read one of the comments on the article, you find... 3.
Cheaper prices may help reduce piracy on SOME platforms, but not all. I've a friend who developed an iPhone game, it got into the top 10 downloaded charts, but it still got pirated to hell. And it was 69p. If people are willing to rip off a game that costs less than a cup of tea then there's no hope.
You're confusing "we recognize your sovereignty" with "we really don't care enough to give a toss, we're busy working on actual issues". The difference being that if they start to do things which are genuinely embarrassing/awkward/dangerous, the former will get you censured in the U.N. whereas the latter will just get you a night-time invasion.
* The bills are a symptom. * They only exist because of a cause. * The cause is illegal downloading. * So the answer to everyone whining here on Slashdot is to stop downloading illegally and these bills will disappear in a puff of impeccable logic.
And they even sent dozens of cops to arrest the fat, scared owner of the website
Forgive me if I somehow fail to see this guy as a scared, intimidated victim...
a self-styled âoeDr. Evilâ of file sharing......has made a career out of being larger than life, which seems appropriate for a six foot, six inch man......said he had hacked hundreds of US companiesâ(TM) PBX systems and was selling the access codes at $200 a pop, bragging that âoeevery PBX is an open door to me.â He also claimed to have developed an encrypted phone that could not be tapped, and to have sold a hundred of them...
In his 2001 interview with the Telegraph, he also claimed to have hacked Citibank and transferred $20 million to Greenpeace...
He also claimed to have hacked NASA and said that he had accessed Pentagon systems to read top-secret information on Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War.
He bought stolen phone card account information from American hackers. After setting up premium toll chat lines in Hong Kong and in the Caribbean, he used a âoewar dialerâ program to call the lines using the stolen card numbersâ"ringing up â61,000 in ill-gained profits.
set up a computer system for the uploading and downloading of pirated PC software, charging people for access.
And on, and on, and on. And all of this is stuff he brags about in interviews.
At least Facebook allows you to delete your account (keeping data around is another story). Slashdot doesn't even bother pretending.
How can I delete my account?
You can't. The system needs to keep track of the users, so accounts are permanent. Don't sweat leaving unused accounts hanging around. It doesn't hurt anything.
Aaand, bang, there goes the whole conversation. A flamebait comment that gets modded +5 insightful.
Good night, Slashdot. You've reached the point of being more trouble to read in the hopes of finding some genuinely interesting and insightful comments than is worth my time.
Close, but not entirely. But you do raise an interesting point.
Users who signed up agreed that they had no combacks if they lost data. Users bear all risks of data loss. It gets hairy because this isn't Megaupload deciding to stop operating (as described in that TOS); rather, it's someone else deciding on their behalf. But you're still on a sticky wicket if you already agreed that you shouldn't keep your sole copy on Megaupload and it's your fault if something happens to your data.
But I think that suing the FBI because you claim collateral damage as the result of a criminal investigation isn't likely to find much sympathy.
Fair enough, and in fact half of my post does talk about non-food items. But this person says it all very well.
Even Walmart's online search shows 335 items under men's shirts. But if you go to Walmart, you know what to expect - lowest possible prices. As the other poster says, there's more to it than just Walmart.
I do not know where you live or what your experiences may be, but they differ significantly from mine.
When I first came to the U.S. (consulting back in early 1998), I was amazed at how many different types of cereal there were on the supermarket shelf. I hadn't known that many existed. Same with soft drinks. Pastas. Bread. Everything. The amount of choice overwhelmed me, and it continues to do so.
T.V. - hundreds of channels on cable.
Go to a cooking store and have your breath taken away by the prices of high end Le Creuset pots, or Calphalon pans.
Walmart is a phenomenon in the U.S., but your anecdote doesn't extend. The typical supermarket will show you that consumers are spoiled for choice.
One thing I learned when I had been living here for a few years and been able to travel around the country for business - the country is so big and so diverse that no matter what stereotype you hold of Americans there'll be a group somewhere that fits it. Think how diverse the stereotypes that are put forth on/. tend to be - the yokel hick from Arkansas or Alabama, the fast talking high pressure businessman from New York or Boston, the slimy politician from D.C., the beautiful people on Malibu Beach, the surfer dudes, the hardworking farmers in the midwest, the everything-is-bigger-here Texan, and on and on. I've met all of them. They're all stereotypes, they're all very different, and they're all part of the same country.
Michael Geist has a full rundown on what is at stake
No, he doesn't. He rambles on about how it's controversial and terrible and stinky, but doesn't say why. He says India has raised concerns about how it interacts with TRIPS, but doesn't bother to say what TRIPS is, or even what the acronym stands for. (Neither does the linked article on indiatimes.com.)
If you don't already know exactly what ACTA is, then it's a waste of time reading it. Nowhere does he say what's at stake. He just says "here's how to contact someone about it, and you should because it's a bad thing (insert jedi hand wave))"
Wiki-leaks releases tons of information on the government and banks and they get punished for it, Mark Zuckerberg does the same thing to people and he gets praised.
REALLY? You're comparing a group that publishes illegally obtained secret documents that discuss high level sensitive international operations with a group that has information that people willingly give to them, signing an agreement that explicitly allows this, and that information consisting most of the time of innocuous Farmville status updates.
Yes, I sound cavalier, but I see so many people on/. blithely affirming that people should just know that what they put on the internet stays there forever, and should just know that their SSID is being broadcast and it's a good thing that it can be tracked and stored, and should be fine with people capturing anything whatsoever that's done outside the house, or in the house with the curtains open...
So I can't see that anyone on Slashdot has anything to complain about here. Or is it different because it's not Google doing it?
If you read everything this guy did, it'd be more like slapping you with a paternity suit if they found a list in your bedroom of the girls you wanted to sleep with, along with a USB stick that contained information on their regular schedules, addresses, phone numbers, and places of work, plus information on how to restrain someone who is violently resisting your advances, and a letter where you claimed you were ready to forcibly rape a girl.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite.
Your description establishes a passive acceptance on the part of the "somebody" who develops that new technology. Megaupload's founders, on the contrary, actively and deliberately encouraged piracy.
Sorry to do this, but...
It's the difference between a car manufacturer developing a very powerful vehicle that becomes the favored tool of drug smugglers, and a car manufacturer that develops such a vehicle and then deliberately arranges meetings with drug warlords to promote that vehicle.
(Please, to anyone who responds, no irrelevant comments about the "war on drugs". That just means you have nothing to say about the topic on hand.)
Cut the Rope [android.com] is 99 cents with at least half a million downloads. There are two unknown factors - how many returns were there (downside) and how many over 500k are they (upside). So they've made around $500,000 on this app.
In revenue, yes. In profit? It's not free to write the game.
The big problem here is that piracy probably _was_ a huge part of megaupload.
And the people behind Megaupload *knew* about it and *encouraged* it.
Besides which, I haven't seen anyone claiming that Megaupload existed only for piracy, as the poster to whom you replied stated. It was just that there was a lot of piracy and everyone was pretty blatant about it - including the owners of Megaupload.
If Beethoven were alive today he wouldn't understand this debate because he made almost all of his money from patronage!
Except that he made most of his money from patronage. Every time this argument is raised on Slashdot ("we'd never hear anything by Mozart or Beethoven or..."), people always ignore that inconvenient factoid.
Now, that said, he was notoriously irresponsible with his cash and squandered it throughout his lifetime. By the time he reached his latter years (during which he was very unproductive due to his well known poor health) he was surviving mainly by sellling his works.
Off-topic, I know, but although I actually don't know what his financial state was upon his death, I do recall he had a pretty lavish funeral, suggesting it wasn't terrible.
Bummer. People on Slashdot would be screaming to high heaven about the travesty of justice if these were white-collar criminals/CEOs/basically anyone who'd been convicted of a crime that /. readers didn't approve of and was able to stay out of jail by skipping to a different country.
1. The article is talking more about physical products like plush dolls and t-shirts with Angry Birds brands.
2. They got people hooked by giving the original Angry Birds as a free app. The follow-up apps were what you had to pay for. And yes, pathetic, isn't it, that people would pirate something that only costs a dollar. Except that if you read one of the comments on the article, you find...
3.
Cheaper prices may help reduce piracy on SOME platforms, but not all. I've a friend who developed an iPhone game, it got into the top 10 downloaded charts, but it still got pirated to hell. And it was 69p. If people are willing to rip off a game that costs less than a cup of tea then there's no hope.
You state yourself that as long as someone else doesn't come in and kick you out, you have sovereignty.
No, I don't. To claim I do is inaccurate.
Should you read your own posts [slashdot.org]?
Err, you link to a post by Sycraft-fu (314770). I'm Kiwimate.
You state yourself that as long as someone else doesn't come in and kick you out, you have sovereignty.
No, I don't. To claim I do is inaccurate.
that wouldn't change the fact that Sealand has operated as a sovereign territory for years.
It wouldn't change the fact that Sealand has claimed they've been operating as a sovereign territory for years.
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco. It's not a nation.
You're confusing "we recognize your sovereignty" with "we really don't care enough to give a toss, we're busy working on actual issues". The difference being that if they start to do things which are genuinely embarrassing/awkward/dangerous, the former will get you censured in the U.N. whereas the latter will just get you a night-time invasion.
Given that you can't construct a coherent sentence, it's probably not surprising that you also can't parse one.
It's also a great argument against Slashdot (non-grown-ups posting their rhetoric to engage in mutual onanism and accomplish zilch).
Yep. Here's the other biased way to describe it.
* The bills are a symptom.
* They only exist because of a cause.
* The cause is illegal downloading.
* So the answer to everyone whining here on Slashdot is to stop downloading illegally and these bills will disappear in a puff of impeccable logic.
Watch how quickly this gets modded down...
And they even sent dozens of cops to arrest the fat, scared owner of the website
Forgive me if I somehow fail to see this guy as a scared, intimidated victim...
a self-styled âoeDr. Evilâ of file sharing... ...has made a career out of being larger than life, which seems appropriate for a six foot, six inch man... ...said he had hacked hundreds of US companiesâ(TM) PBX systems and was selling the access codes at $200 a pop, bragging that âoeevery PBX is an open door to me.â He also claimed to have developed an encrypted phone that could not be tapped, and to have sold a hundred of them...
In his 2001 interview with the Telegraph, he also claimed to have hacked Citibank and transferred $20 million to Greenpeace...
He also claimed to have hacked NASA and said that he had accessed Pentagon systems to read top-secret information on Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War.
He bought stolen phone card account information from American hackers. After setting up premium toll chat lines in Hong Kong and in the Caribbean, he used a âoewar dialerâ program to call the lines using the stolen card numbersâ"ringing up â61,000 in ill-gained profits.
set up a computer system for the uploading and downloading of pirated PC software, charging people for access.
And on, and on, and on. And all of this is stuff he brags about in interviews.
The guy is not a victim.
And Slashdot is any better?
At least Facebook allows you to delete your account (keeping data around is another story). Slashdot doesn't even bother pretending.
How can I delete my account?
You can't. The system needs to keep track of the users, so accounts are permanent. Don't sweat leaving unused accounts hanging around. It doesn't hurt anything.
Aaand, bang, there goes the whole conversation. A flamebait comment that gets modded +5 insightful.
Good night, Slashdot. You've reached the point of being more trouble to read in the hopes of finding some genuinely interesting and insightful comments than is worth my time.
Close, but not entirely. But you do raise an interesting point.
Users who signed up agreed that they had no combacks if they lost data. Users bear all risks of data loss. It gets hairy because this isn't Megaupload deciding to stop operating (as described in that TOS); rather, it's someone else deciding on their behalf. But you're still on a sticky wicket if you already agreed that you shouldn't keep your sole copy on Megaupload and it's your fault if something happens to your data.
But I think that suing the FBI because you claim collateral damage as the result of a criminal investigation isn't likely to find much sympathy.
Besides which, as everyone on Slashdot knows, nothing "real" has been lost.
Fair enough, and in fact half of my post does talk about non-food items. But this person says it all very well.
Even Walmart's online search shows 335 items under men's shirts. But if you go to Walmart, you know what to expect - lowest possible prices. As the other poster says, there's more to it than just Walmart.
I do not know where you live or what your experiences may be, but they differ significantly from mine.
When I first came to the U.S. (consulting back in early 1998), I was amazed at how many different types of cereal there were on the supermarket shelf. I hadn't known that many existed. Same with soft drinks. Pastas. Bread. Everything. The amount of choice overwhelmed me, and it continues to do so.
T.V. - hundreds of channels on cable.
Go to a cooking store and have your breath taken away by the prices of high end Le Creuset pots, or Calphalon pans.
Walmart is a phenomenon in the U.S., but your anecdote doesn't extend. The typical supermarket will show you that consumers are spoiled for choice.
One thing I learned when I had been living here for a few years and been able to travel around the country for business - the country is so big and so diverse that no matter what stereotype you hold of Americans there'll be a group somewhere that fits it. Think how diverse the stereotypes that are put forth on /. tend to be - the yokel hick from Arkansas or Alabama, the fast talking high pressure businessman from New York or Boston, the slimy politician from D.C., the beautiful people on Malibu Beach, the surfer dudes, the hardworking farmers in the midwest, the everything-is-bigger-here Texan, and on and on. I've met all of them. They're all stereotypes, they're all very different, and they're all part of the same country.
Or a week of backhoe accidents
Nice. Really mature attitude, there.
And then you wonder why governments get heavy handed.
Michael Geist has a full rundown on what is at stake
No, he doesn't. He rambles on about how it's controversial and terrible and stinky, but doesn't say why. He says India has raised concerns about how it interacts with TRIPS, but doesn't bother to say what TRIPS is, or even what the acronym stands for. (Neither does the linked article on indiatimes.com.)
If you don't already know exactly what ACTA is, then it's a waste of time reading it. Nowhere does he say what's at stake. He just says "here's how to contact someone about it, and you should because it's a bad thing (insert jedi hand wave))"
Wiki-leaks releases tons of information on the government and banks and they get punished for it, Mark Zuckerberg does the same thing to people and he gets praised.
REALLY? You're comparing a group that publishes illegally obtained secret documents that discuss high level sensitive international operations with a group that has information that people willingly give to them, signing an agreement that explicitly allows this, and that information consisting most of the time of innocuous Farmville status updates.
So what?
Yes, I sound cavalier, but I see so many people on /. blithely affirming that people should just know that what they put on the internet stays there forever, and should just know that their SSID is being broadcast and it's a good thing that it can be tracked and stored, and should be fine with people capturing anything whatsoever that's done outside the house, or in the house with the curtains open...
So I can't see that anyone on Slashdot has anything to complain about here. Or is it different because it's not Google doing it?
Wee bit more than that.
If you read everything this guy did, it'd be more like slapping you with a paternity suit if they found a list in your bedroom of the girls you wanted to sleep with, along with a USB stick that contained information on their regular schedules, addresses, phone numbers, and places of work, plus information on how to restrain someone who is violently resisting your advances, and a letter where you claimed you were ready to forcibly rape a girl.