It's unclear to me why it's not "financially viable", when it's possible for other people to do it for free (both downloading entire files, and streaming).
I don't think he's claiming he has a right, he's just pointing out that he does download, and explaining why he does so. The closest he gets is blaming "the system", but that's a different thing. He then asks for what he's looking for, and would be willing to pay for, but that's not demanding a "right", that's just him telling companies what he'll hand over money for.
Another option is to download, but still pay them, e.g., by still paying for a TV service.
Yet despite the fact that the companies will benefit from this option, where as they won't with your option of doing nothing, this option is treated as being as illegal as those who download without paying anything.
I'll remember this post for the next time someone complains that a company doesn't release a Mac version. It's not their fault that Mac users choose to run an incompatible OS, right?
Fringe? Well in that case, now you see how it looks when Mac users complain that something only runs on Windows. By your logic, there's no point supporting fringe OSs.
Mods on crack, saying why he doesn't like something is not flamebait.
And I do agree - in my humble opinion, Quicktime has a poor interface, doesn't even support basic functionality such as full screen mode (unless you pay, IIRC), and it is more annoying than most other players in terms of having stuff run at startup. I prefer players that Just Work, and have a good UI.
(I remember some time ago on Slashdot someone was claiming that Apple "Just Works" and Windows is always "distracting" him by getting in the way somehow. I said I didn't know what he was on about. Funningly enough, I concede that later that very day I did get distracted by something getting in the way of what I was doing on Windows. What I was trying to do was watch a Quicktime movie in fullscreen...)
Apple's iTunes rental plan, meanwhile, sits at the other end of the spectrum: It offers a wide selection of new releases that go for $3 or $4 each, but it's crippled by a surfeit of restrictions. After you press play, you've got just 24 hours to watch the full film, and new releases tend to disappear off the virtual shelf after a few months as they enter a new circle of Hollywood's contractual purgatory.
And how many TV shows does Itunes have?
In addition, "a hefty monthly fee" suggests he would rather a flat rate - as I would. I currently pay about £380 a year to TV companies (compulsory licence + cable fees), which gives me access to hundreds of channels. That's £380 that I could be paying to a legal online service, if someone would offer it. Unfortunately one off purchases rather than a flat rate can quickly add up to be very expensive when you're watching TV shows with 20+ episodes a season.
We hear hype about "on demand" from TV companies, but it's typically a limited selection, and technology that's way behind what we already have here and now in the form of Bittorrent. (Note that I do still pay money to the TV companies, even though I almost get it via downloading rather than watching the TV, as I still feel I should pay for it - however, greedy actions such as the recent Pirate Bay ruling make me wonder if I should just keep my money, since they seem to happily be able to get the money by suing people instead, and in their eyes I'm breaking the law whether I pay or not.)
Thanks for the info - were "links" to copyrighted material "obviously illegal" under Swedish law, or did this only become apparent with this new ruling?
TPB did neither, and in addition went on record stating that their intent was copyright infringement.
I think that's a very funny example of how ineffectual it is anyway - Google do all they have to do to remain legal, but you can clearly easily search for the torrent.
And that's for a major mainstream movie that was leaked before it's release. They can't stop something major like that with takedown notices, so for most music, films and TV, even if every torrent search engine in the world obeyed takedown notices, I can't see it having much effect at all...
According to Swedish law, the notification need not have any special format, nor contain any references to Swedish law. The law only talks about "awareness of obvious copyright infringement". This can be abused, but the service provider has another line of defence: They must be found to purposefully aid in the infringement.
The court found that since the torrent file, after having been uploaded and stored on TPB, is an accessory of the crime of illegal copying, TPB must take down the torrent file.
But was this clear in the way the law was written? If not, I think that's worrying. If they knew they were supposed to honor takedown requests not just for copyrighted material, but also any kind of "link" to a copyrighted work, then I guess they should have known it was illegal. But if not, they're being convicted - including prison and millions of dollars in fine - based on an interpretation of the law that does not seem at all obvious.
For future sites though, I don't think this is too much of a problem. Even if a site did honour takedown requests of torrents, I imagine most people would still be able to download whatever - firstly, things like TV shows are usually downloaded quickly, and TV companies would have to be very quick with the requests to stop them. Secondly, you only need to find a torrent once, on some website, and then you can download or seed for as long as you want, even after the torrent is taken down. They could only remove access to a file if they issued requests for a given torrent to all torrent search engines world wide simultaneously, and even then, it's only good until someone reuploads it again.
This isn't comparable to say copyrighted material on YouTube, where (a) the site needs to be up all the while you download/watch, and (b) there aren't many well known video sites besides YouTube.
If you link to a YouTube video of a shaky camcorder movie of a Balkan wedding, you can reasonably claim that you had no idea that this was the greatest summer hit of 1933 in Kazakhstan, and just wanted to show what a Balkan wedding looked like. But if you link to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", with the text "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!" you can't claim that you had no idea what it was.
Neither of which is what TPB did. A better analogy would be that you create a website saying "Link to copyrighted video", but it's the webhost you used that gets fined millions of dollars, and the owners sent to prison, because they didn't micromanage all the millions of user sites on their servers.
And similarly, the answer to "Why Google, and not the downloader?" would be "Because Google is in breach of the law".
Of course, we can't be sure until they're taken to court too - but the question is what is the difference between a legal search engine and an illegal one under Swedish law.
Well YouTube is "opt-in" too in the sense that someone has to upload the file, but with both YouTube and TPB, it wasn't the copyright owner who opted in. So the more useful thing from the copyright owner's point of view is being able to opt out.
I know that Swedish law is different to US law - but I'm curious how one could run a legal bittorrent site at all, either in Sweden after this ruling, or in the US under the DMCA.
Is the problem simply that TPB ignored "opt-out" requests (I don't know if they did or not) (in which case, it wouldn't be so bad if a site could be ran legally so long as you honoured those requests - as you note, the takedown notices would be of little use, and this would be especially true on bittorrent - people downloading TV shows soon after they air would still do so before they probably get round to issuing a request, not to mention that the torrent file would propagate to other sites). But if any torrent site would be ruled illegal in Sweden, even if they honoured takedown requests, I think that's an even more worrying thing.
And your act of copy right violation does not adversely affect not only the artist, but the whole army of people who bring the CD to the shelf?
The act of copying itself doesn't affect anyone. I'm not saying that makes it right, or that it should be legal, I'm just pointing out a basic fact. What do CDs and shelves have to do with anything? You're missing the whole point, this is copying files, not taking CDs off shelves.
I am in favour of some copyright laws, but when people conflate copyright infringement with things that it is not, or make false claims about it, I would say that harms the argument for copyright laws (if copyright infringement is bad, there should be no need to pretend it is something else).
Which copyrighted works did TPB guys distribute, OOI?
Somehow I don't think they'd have been going after TPB if all the works on the site were legitimately being shared.
Leaving aside the issue that no works were "on the site", what proportion has to be legitmate to be legal? There's a lot of copyrighted material on YouTube, but I doubt the owners are at risk of prison sentences.
There are many different voting systems, all with different advantages and disadvantage, and almost all of them are far superior to FPTP that is sadly used in most countries.
My pet theory on that is that people want a simple choice, one or the other. When you give them a complex choice, they get frustrated.
I don't know if that's true or not, but the problem is that FPTP voting is inherently flawed with more than two choices. It's got nothing to do with the mindset of the voter.
For example, if I ask what people's favourite music is, and the poll options and results are:
* Electronic music : 35% * Heavy metal : 25% * Death metal : 20% * Thrash metal : 20%
Then under FPTP, electronic music wins. But clearly, people favour metal to electronic by 65% to 35%! The problem is that if there are multiple similar options, the vote gets split between them.
Well, all countries - even the US - are socialist "to some degree", as they have things such as welfare, and Government funded services such defence, education, transport and in some cases health.
But I wouldn't refer to European countries as socialist, anymore than I would say the US is a socialist country.
Indeed - as much as the DMCA sucks, it does at least provide a way for websites to run legally. Sites like Slashdot or Youtube don't have to worry about copyright infringement in material that's posted, so long as they take it down when asked.
So how does this work for site like TPB, that contain links to Torrents? Put it another way - if I wanted to run a legal bittorrent search engine (because there are after all legal uses), how could I go about it?
Was the problem in TPB case that they failed to remove links when asked? Or is any bittorrent site at risk of prosecution? (Of course I realise that Swedish law is different to the US, but I'd be curious to know how this might work in either country.)
I agree. I just download TV these days - but I'm still paying £140 a year as compulsory TV licence to the BBC, and about £240 on top of that in cable fees. I watch the same shows that are produced by the BBC or show on the channels I pay for, it's just that it's easier to get them via a different route (not having to remember when it's on, or be in when it's on, not to mention the problem that shows often show months later in the UK than in the US).
Indeed, if bittorrent ever goes down the tubes, then I'll be downloading less, but will be less likely to return to normal TV - that in turn will make me rethink why I'm paying money. End result will be the TV industry loses £360 a year from me.
Even though I never directly compared stealing music with stealing cars
Of course you did:
The reaction I get from a lot of the people who still download a lot of music from TPB and other places is "$1 is too much for a song!" So what? I think $80,000 is too much for a car, which is why I don't own aa $80,000 car. Not liking the price is NOT justification for taking it anyway.
If this was honestly meant to be an incidental comment about your buying preferences, then why did you mention it as part of your post?
you grabbed that strawman and tore right into him
It's not a straw man when you're making that argument. If you knew my point was coming, why on earth did you make such a poor argument, anyway?
All I said was I don't buy cars I think are too expensive.
And all I said was pointing out a difference between taking cars and duplicating thing. Even if your post wasn't making any points at all as you just decided to inform us on your car buying habits for no reason, my point is still true.
Um, I'm not the original person who made the argument. I'm merely pointing out that his argument wasn't about "taking" things like cars.
If you want to argue that wanting something they can't afford, and doing so in a way that involves duplicating the original, is still wrong, then feel free. All I'm saying is that there's no need to conflate the issue with bad car analogies. (And if they're both just as bad, then that's all the more reason that there's no need to conflate the issues.)
Looks like I have to spell it out to the cowardly mods who like to avoid metamods - when I say:
You have a method of duplicating cars at no cost, but you just choose not to because you can't afford to pay the price that the original one had? Well, that's very nice of you, but perhaps you could share this revolutionary invention with the rest of the world?
My point is the difference between "taking a car", and having something without affecting the original.
Firstly, the BBC can and do report on their own news.
Secondly, I'm confused as to your logic - are you really saying that the BBC can't do anything that would be "newsworthy", because they might get into some circular-metajournalistic-tangle over whether to report it or not? Either they'll report it, or they won't, but it would be ludicrous to suggest they were prevented from being able to carry out the action itself, whether or not it gets reported.
Your argument could be applied to all sorts of laws with equal validity (i.e.: none). I mean, murder laws are just an attack on my ability to use my privately-owned gun to shoot people!
A poor analogy, since the act of murder clearly adversely affects someone else.
A better example would be laws on gun ownership - the act itself is not inherently adversely affecting anyone, but there are arguments in favour of having such laws. Similarly, there are legitimate arguments against them. Tarring people who oppose as being comparable to murderers (or thieves, as is the common label using for copyright infringement) does not add anything useful to the debate.
(For the record, I am in favour of some form of copyright law, albeit not as excessive as the very and increasingly excessive laws we now have.)
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It's unclear to me why it's not "financially viable", when it's possible for other people to do it for free (both downloading entire files, and streaming).
Where does he say he has a right?
I don't think he's claiming he has a right, he's just pointing out that he does download, and explaining why he does so. The closest he gets is blaming "the system", but that's a different thing. He then asks for what he's looking for, and would be willing to pay for, but that's not demanding a "right", that's just him telling companies what he'll hand over money for.
Another option is to download, but still pay them, e.g., by still paying for a TV service.
Yet despite the fact that the companies will benefit from this option, where as they won't with your option of doing nothing, this option is treated as being as illegal as those who download without paying anything.
I'll remember this post for the next time someone complains that a company doesn't release a Mac version. It's not their fault that Mac users choose to run an incompatible OS, right?
Fringe? Well in that case, now you see how it looks when Mac users complain that something only runs on Windows. By your logic, there's no point supporting fringe OSs.
Mods on crack, saying why he doesn't like something is not flamebait.
And I do agree - in my humble opinion, Quicktime has a poor interface, doesn't even support basic functionality such as full screen mode (unless you pay, IIRC), and it is more annoying than most other players in terms of having stuff run at startup. I prefer players that Just Work, and have a good UI.
(I remember some time ago on Slashdot someone was claiming that Apple "Just Works" and Windows is always "distracting" him by getting in the way somehow. I said I didn't know what he was on about. Funningly enough, I concede that later that very day I did get distracted by something getting in the way of what I was doing on Windows. What I was trying to do was watch a Quicktime movie in fullscreen...)
RTFA:
Apple's iTunes rental plan, meanwhile, sits at the other end of the spectrum: It offers a wide selection of new releases that go for $3 or $4 each, but it's crippled by a surfeit of restrictions. After you press play, you've got just 24 hours to watch the full film, and new releases tend to disappear off the virtual shelf after a few months as they enter a new circle of Hollywood's contractual purgatory.
And how many TV shows does Itunes have?
In addition, "a hefty monthly fee" suggests he would rather a flat rate - as I would. I currently pay about £380 a year to TV companies (compulsory licence + cable fees), which gives me access to hundreds of channels. That's £380 that I could be paying to a legal online service, if someone would offer it. Unfortunately one off purchases rather than a flat rate can quickly add up to be very expensive when you're watching TV shows with 20+ episodes a season.
We hear hype about "on demand" from TV companies, but it's typically a limited selection, and technology that's way behind what we already have here and now in the form of Bittorrent. (Note that I do still pay money to the TV companies, even though I almost get it via downloading rather than watching the TV, as I still feel I should pay for it - however, greedy actions such as the recent Pirate Bay ruling make me wonder if I should just keep my money, since they seem to happily be able to get the money by suing people instead, and in their eyes I'm breaking the law whether I pay or not.)
Thanks for the info - were "links" to copyrighted material "obviously illegal" under Swedish law, or did this only become apparent with this new ruling?
TPB did neither, and in addition went on record stating that their intent was copyright infringement.
Do you have a quote/link OOI?
I think that's a very funny example of how ineffectual it is anyway - Google do all they have to do to remain legal, but you can clearly easily search for the torrent.
And that's for a major mainstream movie that was leaked before it's release. They can't stop something major like that with takedown notices, so for most music, films and TV, even if every torrent search engine in the world obeyed takedown notices, I can't see it having much effect at all...
According to Swedish law, the notification need not have any special format, nor contain any references to Swedish law. The law only talks about "awareness of obvious copyright infringement". This can be abused, but the service provider has another line of defence: They must be found to purposefully aid in the infringement.
The court found that since the torrent file, after having been uploaded and stored on TPB, is an accessory of the crime of illegal copying, TPB must take down the torrent file.
But was this clear in the way the law was written? If not, I think that's worrying. If they knew they were supposed to honor takedown requests not just for copyrighted material, but also any kind of "link" to a copyrighted work, then I guess they should have known it was illegal. But if not, they're being convicted - including prison and millions of dollars in fine - based on an interpretation of the law that does not seem at all obvious.
For future sites though, I don't think this is too much of a problem. Even if a site did honour takedown requests of torrents, I imagine most people would still be able to download whatever - firstly, things like TV shows are usually downloaded quickly, and TV companies would have to be very quick with the requests to stop them. Secondly, you only need to find a torrent once, on some website, and then you can download or seed for as long as you want, even after the torrent is taken down. They could only remove access to a file if they issued requests for a given torrent to all torrent search engines world wide simultaneously, and even then, it's only good until someone reuploads it again.
This isn't comparable to say copyrighted material on YouTube, where (a) the site needs to be up all the while you download/watch, and (b) there aren't many well known video sites besides YouTube.
If you link to a YouTube video of a shaky camcorder movie of a Balkan wedding, you can reasonably claim that you had no idea that this was the greatest summer hit of 1933 in Kazakhstan, and just wanted to show what a Balkan wedding looked like. But if you link to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", with the text "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!" you can't claim that you had no idea what it was.
Neither of which is what TPB did. A better analogy would be that you create a website saying "Link to copyrighted video", but it's the webhost you used that gets fined millions of dollars, and the owners sent to prison, because they didn't micromanage all the millions of user sites on their servers.
Because TPB is in breach of the law?
And similarly, the answer to "Why Google, and not the downloader?" would be "Because Google is in breach of the law".
Of course, we can't be sure until they're taken to court too - but the question is what is the difference between a legal search engine and an illegal one under Swedish law.
Well YouTube is "opt-in" too in the sense that someone has to upload the file, but with both YouTube and TPB, it wasn't the copyright owner who opted in. So the more useful thing from the copyright owner's point of view is being able to opt out.
I know that Swedish law is different to US law - but I'm curious how one could run a legal bittorrent site at all, either in Sweden after this ruling, or in the US under the DMCA.
Is the problem simply that TPB ignored "opt-out" requests (I don't know if they did or not) (in which case, it wouldn't be so bad if a site could be ran legally so long as you honoured those requests - as you note, the takedown notices would be of little use, and this would be especially true on bittorrent - people downloading TV shows soon after they air would still do so before they probably get round to issuing a request, not to mention that the torrent file would propagate to other sites). But if any torrent site would be ruled illegal in Sweden, even if they honoured takedown requests, I think that's an even more worrying thing.
And your act of copy right violation does not adversely affect not only the artist, but the whole army of people who bring the CD to the shelf?
The act of copying itself doesn't affect anyone. I'm not saying that makes it right, or that it should be legal, I'm just pointing out a basic fact. What do CDs and shelves have to do with anything? You're missing the whole point, this is copying files, not taking CDs off shelves.
I am in favour of some copyright laws, but when people conflate copyright infringement with things that it is not, or make false claims about it, I would say that harms the argument for copyright laws (if copyright infringement is bad, there should be no need to pretend it is something else).
Which copyrighted works did TPB guys distribute, OOI?
Somehow I don't think they'd have been going after TPB if all the works on the site were legitimately being shared.
Leaving aside the issue that no works were "on the site", what proportion has to be legitmate to be legal? There's a lot of copyrighted material on YouTube, but I doubt the owners are at risk of prison sentences.
FPTP is inherently flawed, and leads to people just voting for one of the two popular choices. In Sweden however, they use a system of proportional representation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Sweden#Seat_allocation
There are many different voting systems, all with different advantages and disadvantage, and almost all of them are far superior to FPTP that is sadly used in most countries.
My pet theory on that is that people want a simple choice, one or the other. When you give them a complex choice, they get frustrated.
I don't know if that's true or not, but the problem is that FPTP voting is inherently flawed with more than two choices. It's got nothing to do with the mindset of the voter.
For example, if I ask what people's favourite music is, and the poll options and results are:
* Electronic music : 35%
* Heavy metal : 25%
* Death metal : 20%
* Thrash metal : 20%
Then under FPTP, electronic music wins. But clearly, people favour metal to electronic by 65% to 35%! The problem is that if there are multiple similar options, the vote gets split between them.
There are many other kinds of flaws that can occur in different systems - e.g., take a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Criteria_in_evaluating_single_winner_voting_systems .
Well, all countries - even the US - are socialist "to some degree", as they have things such as welfare, and Government funded services such defence, education, transport and in some cases health.
But I wouldn't refer to European countries as socialist, anymore than I would say the US is a socialist country.
(Not that I agree with the OP in any way.)
Indeed - as much as the DMCA sucks, it does at least provide a way for websites to run legally. Sites like Slashdot or Youtube don't have to worry about copyright infringement in material that's posted, so long as they take it down when asked.
So how does this work for site like TPB, that contain links to Torrents? Put it another way - if I wanted to run a legal bittorrent search engine (because there are after all legal uses), how could I go about it?
Was the problem in TPB case that they failed to remove links when asked? Or is any bittorrent site at risk of prosecution? (Of course I realise that Swedish law is different to the US, but I'd be curious to know how this might work in either country.)
I agree. I just download TV these days - but I'm still paying £140 a year as compulsory TV licence to the BBC, and about £240 on top of that in cable fees. I watch the same shows that are produced by the BBC or show on the channels I pay for, it's just that it's easier to get them via a different route (not having to remember when it's on, or be in when it's on, not to mention the problem that shows often show months later in the UK than in the US).
Indeed, if bittorrent ever goes down the tubes, then I'll be downloading less, but will be less likely to return to normal TV - that in turn will make me rethink why I'm paying money. End result will be the TV industry loses £360 a year from me.
Nice straw man. No one is talking about stealing anything (well, except perhaps the millions of dollars now being taking from these people...)
Even though I never directly compared stealing music with stealing cars
Of course you did:
The reaction I get from a lot of the people who still download a lot of music from TPB and other places is "$1 is too much for a song!" So what? I think $80,000 is too much for a car, which is why I don't own aa $80,000 car. Not liking the price is NOT justification for taking it anyway.
If this was honestly meant to be an incidental comment about your buying preferences, then why did you mention it as part of your post?
you grabbed that strawman and tore right into him
It's not a straw man when you're making that argument. If you knew my point was coming, why on earth did you make such a poor argument, anyway?
All I said was I don't buy cars I think are too expensive.
And all I said was pointing out a difference between taking cars and duplicating thing. Even if your post wasn't making any points at all as you just decided to inform us on your car buying habits for no reason, my point is still true.
Um, I'm not the original person who made the argument. I'm merely pointing out that his argument wasn't about "taking" things like cars.
If you want to argue that wanting something they can't afford, and doing so in a way that involves duplicating the original, is still wrong, then feel free. All I'm saying is that there's no need to conflate the issue with bad car analogies. (And if they're both just as bad, then that's all the more reason that there's no need to conflate the issues.)
Looks like I have to spell it out to the cowardly mods who like to avoid metamods - when I say:
You have a method of duplicating cars at no cost, but you just choose not to because you can't afford to pay the price that the original one had? Well, that's very nice of you, but perhaps you could share this revolutionary invention with the rest of the world?
My point is the difference between "taking a car", and having something without affecting the original.
Firstly, the BBC can and do report on their own news.
Secondly, I'm confused as to your logic - are you really saying that the BBC can't do anything that would be "newsworthy", because they might get into some circular-metajournalistic-tangle over whether to report it or not? Either they'll report it, or they won't, but it would be ludicrous to suggest they were prevented from being able to carry out the action itself, whether or not it gets reported.
The property they "stole" was imaginary, but the money they have to pay has to be real.
It's a shame they can't just let the movie companies photocopy some banknotes that they own. I mean, it's the same thing as taking the money, right?
Your argument could be applied to all sorts of laws with equal validity (i.e.: none). I mean, murder laws are just an attack on my ability to use my privately-owned gun to shoot people!
A poor analogy, since the act of murder clearly adversely affects someone else.
A better example would be laws on gun ownership - the act itself is not inherently adversely affecting anyone, but there are arguments in favour of having such laws. Similarly, there are legitimate arguments against them. Tarring people who oppose as being comparable to murderers (or thieves, as is the common label using for copyright infringement) does not add anything useful to the debate.
(For the record, I am in favour of some form of copyright law, albeit not as excessive as the very and increasingly excessive laws we now have.)