But I've got an idea. Instead of arguing about this, because we can both argue this until the sun goes out, someone could, you know, ask them?
Actually, they do already answer in part: http://thepiratebay.org/donate.php says, quote starts, "Since we who work with the tracker have spent a lot of time, hardware and money out of our own pockets, donations are very appreciated. The donations are exclusivly spent on the tracker", quote ends. Granted, this does not imply that ad revenue is exclusively spent on the tracker as well. Stil, assuming greed would require to make hypotheses quite conflicting with their statement. Ergo, occam's razor says they don't profit.
Did it ever cross your mind that just maybe, there is no profit to be made here and the ads plus voluntary donations plus whatever the admins spend covers the hosting costs?
Uhm, yes, it did cross my mind, as reading the post you were replying to should have shown you ("Also, I doubt that ads can sustain the costs of TPB.") . But maybe you meant to address Reality Master 101?
You said 'numbers welcome' as an irrelvent point, because you know I can't provide them
I asked for hard numbers because I knew you couldn't provide them, granted. But that doesn't make my point irrelevant, quite the opposite in fact: it shows that you, as you so aptly introduced to formula, "pulled out of your ass" the idea that TPB balances their expenses with ads, although, from your own account, you know of no numbers. As you point out, neither do I; and I acknowledged this from the start. But I had sense enough to make a difference between my opinion and a fact, and you had not.
Nuff said.
BTW, I am not claiming, nor was I searching, victory; but thanks for recognizing that you were.:)
*Numbers welcome*, said I, and you conveniently forgot to quote this, and to provide any sort of numbers. Can you sustain your statement with cold, hard, numbers? Or should we cast a doubt as to whose ass exactly the evidence comes out of?
Funny, that: I see no ad on their pages currently.
But just to make sure, I visited the page on donating, and it states that donors get to have the ads removed--so, by all means if the ads annoy you, just donate: the ads will go aways and TPB won't profit from them any more.:)
Also, I doubt that ads can sustain the costs of TPB. Numbers welcome, of course.
Actually, knowing how hard it is for donation-only-fed activities to, hum, stay afloat, I'm pretty sure donations don't cover all of TPB, and they probably pay for part of it out of their own pockets. What's *your* theory, inuendos apart?
... Then I suppose hacking a lock down is quite a bit different from creating applications that interface themselves to a microsoft server and do something useful
Leaving aside this curious dichotomy which seems to imply that "hacking a lock down" would be useless, indeed "hacking a lock down" is quite different from using APIs for maintstream programming, in that mainstream programming requires one to understand what the API is supposed to do, whereas "hacking a lock down" requires understanding what the API actually does, and that is quite more difficult.
But for a guy who is able to hack locked-down networks in four days and can track down criminals by following their online scent, he sure seems to be giving up quite easily when claiming that Microsoft's manuals are "totally unusable" after four days of use.
Well, to me a guy who is able to hack locked-down without documentation seems quite able to not need more than four days to ascertain whether some documentation for some code is useable or not according to what was asked from MS by the EU.
... to access other formats, but not forced to. Anyway, this is one interpretation of a law still to be discussed by the senators, and even right now, the text isn't that clear.
Granted: unruly behaviour has to be defined according to current standards. Therefore, behaviour once deemed unruly might appear quite benign today, and contrarily, behaviour once harmless might be considered quite unacceptable today (think about cellphones or smoking as examples).
About the law's looseness: in France, there is a law about public defamation, which is pretty loose. This gives many opportunities for people to go to court (I wont use "sue" as this bears a different overtone), but it does so irrespective of the people's wealth or honesty: the truly defamed can defend as well as the crooked. And it provides countermeasures against those who file a defamation suit without merit.
As I said, there's free speech here too, although slightly narrower than in the US, and I agree that there has to be a balance between free speech and respect. Each country (and each period) might set its own standards; as long as defence of one's own reputation (both as a plaintiff, against defamation, and as a defendent, against defamations claims) is provided, I'll be ok with it.
Granted, the law considered in the./ article looks weird as far as *harrassing* is concerned, I'll agree with you analysis. The only point I'd raise on your comment is that the case differs when the harrasser takes aim at the blog's owner, who can hardly "leave the website".
There is no right to protecting your phone line from phone calls
Yes there is--well, in your country, I don't know, but in mine, one cannot harrass people on their phone lines because one cannot harrass people, period.
-- you don't need to have a phone line.
What does this statement aim at demonstrating?
Also, private companies will be cheaper that government.
You speak money instead of law, companies instead of country.
Will you pay a lawyer to sue the crank caller? No?
No need to, in my country at least: I would not need to pay for this.
You expect me to pay through my taxes, because you're cheap, lazy and irresponsible?
I expected you not to call people names just because they happen to disagree with you. And, BTW, we live in different countries, so what I expect my tax money to be spent on shouldn't bother you.
(No need to create anything, that law is already here)Unconstitutionally.
Not where I live, where harrassing and defaming are punished, because harrassing or defaming are a nuisance, however you would want to raise free speech.
So you don't respect the free speech that is protected in the Constitution,
Well, technically I don't have to respect the American Constitution. However I've got my own, slightly less permissive (e.g., praising nazism here is not allowed), that I do respect... And because I intend my fellows to respect it as well, I am against letting people who defame or harrass go unpunished.
but you do respect the ability to tax people who don't want to pay for something that doesn't affect them?
This is putting words in my mouth that I did not express--indeed, I did precisely express the opposite opinion on entirely another topic, that is: I expect people not to hape to pay a tax on something they don't use. But again, this is money talking. I have higher standards than money when it comes to my country's laws.
you want to control society.
If I wanted that, I'd go for politics. Or Oil business. Or both.
There is a big difference -- those who want to voluntarily cooperate (capitalism) and those who want to control (authoritarianism).
Funny how you try and tag cooperation, a social mechanism, with an economic word. Can you think outside of money?
You're asking for the use of force to stop something that can be fixed for a one time fee, usually.
I'm asking why I should pay private companies to be able to benefit from a right that I have.
You're asking to create government organizations covered in government red tape to make a law
No need to create anything, that law is already here.
so that if someone does break the law you still have to sue them or have government sue them.
I happen to live in a non-lawyer-happy land (so far), and I am not lawyer-happy myself. It's not about sueing, it's about respect to others, and law is, or should be, about respecting each other.
Rather than buy a cheap piece of techology, you want someone put in jail or fined rather than lock your front door yourself.
I could retort that rather than stop someone misbehave against you, you prefer paying the problem away. I'll stay with my position, if you don't mind, that I do not want to live isolated: I want to live in society.
We have Caller ID -- we can refuse to answer the phone. If crank calls were a major concern, you'd see market solutions to the problem. Companies would come up with "quiet time" phone features that would prevent any ring after a certain hour unless you coded it with numbers that were acceptable.
Just because there is a way not to be annoyed by some unruly behaviour does not mean that this behaviour should not be punished. People should not have to resort to technical measures in the first place.
Have to repeat that again... the amendement did *not* legalize P2P, only downloading would be forgiven. Uploading would remain counterfeiting. Oh, and copying your legally bought (including the right to view) DVD onto a legally bought (including private-copy compensation tax) DVD-R would be illegal too, because you'd bypass a TPM.
Reverse engineering hasn't been touched by the law project : it is still legal for interoperability purposes. However, if your reverse eng shows that the only way for you to make an OSS DVD reader is to bypass CSS, you're a counterfeiter as well.
That law is absolutely not in favor of user rights. It is in favor of right owners--well, unless we (French) users finally have our say.
Oh, and it was SNEP (phonogram editors association) and SNPP (phonogram producers association), not SACEM:) but the statements are truly those pronounced:( .
Granted, if placing and receiving calls is what distinguishes phones from one another, then the ROKR and RAZR are alike, and both are identical to, say, the Sagem MyX2. Or whatever happens to be a mobile phone. Now when you take one step back and look at the whole phone and not just its OS (and that means marketing as well) then the story is different. Yes, many (though not all) phones from the same manufacturer share the same OS. Yet manufacturers somehow manage to have a whole portfolio, because the OS just isn't the main feature of a phone. Form factor, color, hardware, connectivity, capacity, and yes, gadgets of all sorts come into play. When someone chooses a phone, the look and features will come first. The OS won't count. And then, the RAZR and ROKR are not alike in any way (which explains why the former sells well but not the latter which, if it was in any way similar, should sell as well).
Precisely: the operating systems are fairly similar whatever the phone. So What "makes" the RAZR is not its operating system, it's its form factor. And what "makes" the ROKR is not its operating system, it's its iTunes functonality, Apart from that slight detail, they're quite identical, if by that one means that theyr both are phones.
I fail to see how the ROKR is like the RAZR, but with iTunes compatibility, seeing as they don't have the same form factor at all to boot.
Re:It's more about global licence
on
Free P2P In France?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Debates might well end on jan 17, what with the government being in such a hurry that they formally declared urgency on passing this law. And while they're agreeing on creating a committee to study the problem, such a committee would be entirely on their side to boot.
However, there is a sligh chance that things turn out not so bad (1) if proponents of free software and of personal use voice their concern loud enough before jan 17, and chances still if they don't give up after jan 17.
(for the French ppl out there, I've started a french-language journal on users' rights (as opposed to authors' or publishers' rights). I won't publish its URL here because i) this might lead to./ing, which would hurt my website provider, and ii) this might lead to absolutely no hit increase, which would hurt my heart, si just send me an e-mail if you want the URL.
Albert.
(1) considering that the current amendments do not legalize P2P at all (only downloading) and that many others hurt personal use rights (copying your own paid DVDs for your own private use would be counterfeiting) as well as free software use (reading your own paid DVDs with VLC / Mplayer / whatever is available as source code would be counterfeiting as well).
Not sure about how faithful to the directive we need to be : it looks like our lawmakers and ministers sometimes think it is vital to follow directives, and sometimes not.
Anyhow, there won't be any later, since the government somehow thought that this law was urgent (1) so there will be no second vote. This leaves the Sénat. And this leaves some time for proponents of fair use à la française to lobby--only just as much as Virgin did, promise.
(1) I imagine that "urgent" here means "got to have it passed so that content providers can pump money between Xmas and New Year's Eve".
I've read the amendments and the law, and the minutes of the debates, and I'm even listening to the current debates right now (and yes, I'm French) and I am not sure at all that this legalizes file sharing. It might possibly make downloading licit, without doubt subject to the payment of a personal copy tax. However it does not legalize uploading at all.
Well, objectively speaking, it shows that 7-days old babies can hear and distinguish different sounds, and can express Pavlovian-like reflexes, which per se is good knowledge, mind you.
However, this does not allow concluding that they have any understanding of "up" and "down" other than "trigger to flex specific muscles", and we cannot infer any will to cooperate either (which does not mean there's none: ther may be a will to coopoerate, there probably is, but the above experiment alone does not prove it).
BTW as a father of almost 6 and almost 9 years old kids, I agree with the "never underestimate children" bit.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I asked for hard numbers because I knew you couldn't provide them, granted. But that doesn't make my point irrelevant, quite the opposite in fact: it shows that you, as you so aptly introduced to formula, "pulled out of your ass" the idea that TPB balances their expenses with ads, although, from your own account, you know of no numbers. As you point out, neither do I; and I acknowledged this from the start. But I had sense enough to make a difference between my opinion and a fact, and you had not.
Nuff said.
BTW, I am not claiming, nor was I searching, victory; but thanks for recognizing that you were.
*Numbers welcome*, said I, and you conveniently forgot to quote this, and to provide any sort of numbers. Can you sustain your statement with cold, hard, numbers? Or should we cast a doubt as to whose ass exactly the evidence comes out of?
Funny, that: I see no ad on their pages currently.
:)
But just to make sure, I visited the page on donating, and it states that donors get to have the ads removed--so, by all means if the ads annoy you, just donate: the ads will go aways and TPB won't profit from them any more.
Also, I doubt that ads can sustain the costs of TPB. Numbers welcome, of course.
Actually, knowing how hard it is for donation-only-fed activities to, hum, stay afloat, I'm pretty sure donations don't cover all of TPB, and they probably pay for part of it out of their own pockets. What's *your* theory, inuendos apart?
Well, I my world at least, when a hundred servers are running your site, you shell out money for them to. Talk about naive, now.
Probably you meant "images that would be useful for creating some families.
... to access other formats, but not forced to. Anyway, this is one interpretation of a law still to be discussed by the senators, and even right now, the text isn't that clear.
Plus, under the draft law as it stands uploading is illegal (well, it was before anyway). This is harldy a case of legalizing P2P.
Granted: unruly behaviour has to be defined according to current standards. Therefore, behaviour once deemed unruly might appear quite benign today, and contrarily, behaviour once harmless might be considered quite unacceptable today (think about cellphones or smoking as examples).
./ article looks weird as far as *harrassing* is concerned, I'll agree with you analysis. The only point I'd raise on your comment is that the case differs when the harrasser takes aim at the blog's owner, who can hardly "leave the website".
:)
About the law's looseness: in France, there is a law about public defamation, which is pretty loose. This gives many opportunities for people to go to court (I wont use "sue" as this bears a different overtone), but it does so irrespective of the people's wealth or honesty: the truly defamed can defend as well as the crooked. And it provides countermeasures against those who file a defamation suit without merit.
As I said, there's free speech here too, although slightly narrower than in the US, and I agree that there has to be a balance between free speech and respect. Each country (and each period) might set its own standards; as long as defence of one's own reputation (both as a plaintiff, against defamation, and as a defendent, against defamations claims) is provided, I'll be ok with it.
Granted, the law considered in the
Oh, and thanks for your well-mannered post.
Yes there is--well, in your country, I don't know, but in mine, one cannot harrass people on their phone lines because one cannot harrass people, period.
-- you don't need to have a phone line.
What does this statement aim at demonstrating?
Also, private companies will be cheaper that government.
You speak money instead of law, companies instead of country.
Will you pay a lawyer to sue the crank caller? No?
No need to, in my country at least: I would not need to pay for this.
You expect me to pay through my taxes, because you're cheap, lazy and irresponsible?
I expected you not to call people names just because they happen to disagree with you. And, BTW, we live in different countries, so what I expect my tax money to be spent on shouldn't bother you.
(No need to create anything, that law is already here) Unconstitutionally.
Not where I live, where harrassing and defaming are punished, because harrassing or defaming are a nuisance, however you would want to raise free speech.
So you don't respect the free speech that is protected in the Constitution,
Well, technically I don't have to respect the American Constitution. However I've got my own, slightly less permissive (e.g., praising nazism here is not allowed), that I do respect... And because I intend my fellows to respect it as well, I am against letting people who defame or harrass go unpunished.
but you do respect the ability to tax people who don't want to pay for something that doesn't affect them?
This is putting words in my mouth that I did not express--indeed, I did precisely express the opposite opinion on entirely another topic, that is: I expect people not to hape to pay a tax on something they don't use. But again, this is money talking. I have higher standards than money when it comes to my country's laws.
you want to control society.
If I wanted that, I'd go for politics. Or Oil business. Or both.
There is a big difference -- those who want to voluntarily cooperate (capitalism) and those who want to control (authoritarianism).
Funny how you try and tag cooperation, a social mechanism, with an economic word. Can you think outside of money?
I'm asking why I should pay private companies to be able to benefit from a right that I have.
You're asking to create government organizations covered in government red tape to make a law
No need to create anything, that law is already here.
so that if someone does break the law you still have to sue them or have government sue them.
I happen to live in a non-lawyer-happy land (so far), and I am not lawyer-happy myself. It's not about sueing, it's about respect to others, and law is, or should be, about respecting each other.
Rather than buy a cheap piece of techology, you want someone put in jail or fined rather than lock your front door yourself.
I could retort that rather than stop someone misbehave against you, you prefer paying the problem away. I'll stay with my position, if you don't mind, that I do not want to live isolated: I want to live in society.
Just because there is a way not to be annoyed by some unruly behaviour does not mean that this behaviour should not be punished. People should not have to resort to technical measures in the first place.
Have to repeat that again... the amendement did *not* legalize P2P, only downloading would be forgiven. Uploading would remain counterfeiting. Oh, and copying your legally bought (including the right to view) DVD onto a legally bought (including private-copy compensation tax) DVD-R would be illegal too, because you'd bypass a TPM.
:) but the statements are truly those pronounced :( .
Reverse engineering hasn't been touched by the law project : it is still legal for interoperability purposes. However, if your reverse eng shows that the only way for you to make an OSS DVD reader is to bypass CSS, you're a counterfeiter as well.
That law is absolutely not in favor of user rights. It is in favor of right owners--well, unless we (French) users finally have our say.
Oh, and it was SNEP (phonogram editors association) and SNPP (phonogram producers association), not SACEM
Granted, if placing and receiving calls is what distinguishes phones from one another, then the ROKR and RAZR are alike, and both are identical to, say, the Sagem MyX2. Or whatever happens to be a mobile phone. Now when you take one step back and look at the whole phone and not just its OS (and that means marketing as well) then the story is different. Yes, many (though not all) phones from the same manufacturer share the same OS. Yet manufacturers somehow manage to have a whole portfolio, because the OS just isn't the main feature of a phone. Form factor, color, hardware, connectivity, capacity, and yes, gadgets of all sorts come into play. When someone chooses a phone, the look and features will come first. The OS won't count. And then, the RAZR and ROKR are not alike in any way (which explains why the former sells well but not the latter which, if it was in any way similar, should sell as well).
Precisely: the operating systems are fairly similar whatever the phone. So What "makes" the RAZR is not its operating system, it's its form factor. And what "makes" the ROKR is not its operating system, it's its iTunes functonality, Apart from that slight detail, they're quite identical, if by that one means that theyr both are phones.
I fail to see how the ROKR is like the RAZR, but with iTunes compatibility, seeing as they don't have the same form factor at all to boot.
Debates might well end on jan 17, what with the government being in such a hurry that they formally declared urgency on passing this law. And while they're agreeing on creating a committee to study the problem, such a committee would be entirely on their side to boot.
./ing, which would hurt my website provider, and ii) this might lead to absolutely no hit increase, which would hurt my heart, si just send me an e-mail if you want the URL.
However, there is a sligh chance that things turn out not so bad (1) if proponents of free software and of personal use voice their concern loud enough before jan 17, and chances still if they don't give up after jan 17.
(for the French ppl out there, I've started a french-language journal on users' rights (as opposed to authors' or publishers' rights). I won't publish its URL here because i) this might lead to
Albert.
(1) considering that the current amendments do not legalize P2P at all (only downloading) and that many others hurt personal use rights (copying your own paid DVDs for your own private use would be counterfeiting) as well as free software use (reading your own paid DVDs with VLC / Mplayer / whatever is available as source code would be counterfeiting as well).
This is plain wrong. Any individual can use crypto in France, no matter how long the key (pardon my French, and happy babelfishing).
Anyhow, there won't be any later, since the government somehow thought that this law was urgent (1) so there will be no second vote. This leaves the Sénat. And this leaves some time for proponents of fair use à la française to lobby--only just as much as Virgin did, promise.
(1) I imagine that "urgent" here means "got to have it passed so that content providers can pump money between Xmas and New Year's Eve".
I've read the amendments and the law, and the minutes of the debates, and I'm even listening to the current debates right now (and yes, I'm French) and I am not sure at all that this legalizes file sharing. It might possibly make downloading licit, without doubt subject to the payment of a personal copy tax. However it does not legalize uploading at all.
Well, objectively speaking, it shows that 7-days old babies can hear and distinguish different sounds, and can express Pavlovian-like reflexes, which per se is good knowledge, mind you.
:)
However, this does not allow concluding that they have any understanding of "up" and "down" other than "trigger to flex specific muscles", and we cannot infer any will to cooperate either (which does not mean there's none: ther may be a will to coopoerate, there probably is, but the above experiment alone does not prove it).
BTW as a father of almost 6 and almost 9 years old kids, I agree with the "never underestimate children" bit.