Or one of the many torrent sites that'll turn up when you type in BitTorrent.
Getting a bittorrent client working is a challenge for most people. They've no idea what a port is, yet they've got to set up port forwarding on their router, and probably set up a rule to bypass their firewall.
Nor do they know what a keygen is.
You have to appreciate that many people don't even understand URLs and bookmarks. They go to their homepage, (Google or Yahoo, perhaps) and search for the page they want. even if they visit it ever day. That's the level of the typical member of the public.
My local library has a class to teach computers. And it's open plan, so you see what's going on if you're in the library. They're teaching people how to click with the mouse. And you might have thought that's just for senior citizens. No, they have adults of all ages in there.
OK, so I'm not saying everybody is down at that level. But the things you're talking about: torrents (which implies setting up ports), cracks and keygens, are beyond most people. And then there's quite a lot of people that are techy enough enough to work their way through it with a bit of googling. But they are scared off by the perceived risks - malware and legal.
A song can be written and recorded in a day. Some take longer than that, but still, they are relatively quick. That's why they can sell it for 99c. And because it's only 99c, for anyone that's not impoverished, there's little incentive for pirating it.
What's true of pop songs isn't necessarily true of other, larger, more expensive works such as books, movies and software.
Then explain the Pirate Bay. Explain the case against MegaUpload.
You didn't seem to understand my point. Read it again.
The existence of Torrent sites is in no way evidence that DRM doesn't increase the number of copies of a work over what would otherwise be sold. They are entirely different things.
Meanwhile, anyone that cares to can download anything they want.
Most people are not like people on slashdot. Go out, meet some of them some time.
Your proposition is that there is more people that buy a product twice because of DRM, than there are people who buy because DRM has made it too difficult for them to pirate.
Unlikely.
(It's still unlikely after someone replies to this with an anecdote.)
People have disposable income now and have had for quite some time. An artist that dies in poverty today means there was no market for what he was creating, or he or she wasn't clever enough to discover them.
True. But the comment was about copyright. Without copyright if there's any market for what he's creating, then other people will flood it with their copies of his creation, at a lower price.
The claim that "There is a significant band in the middle of people who will pirate if it's easy and buy if it's not" is pure Hollywood Media Cartel Propaganda Bullshit.
No, it's reality. Lots of people are like that. You probably know a few, if you're honest with yourself.
People who are willing to buy your product will buy it. People who are not willing to buy your product will either copy it from somewhere, or, simply ignore it and go on their way without it.
Black and white thinking. People don't fit into two simple categories.
Most creative workers are still not paid enough to live on, and must maintain "day jobs" just to make ends meet.
Absolutely true. It's a function of supply and demand. There's a one-to-many relationship between creators and consumers of a product, so the market can only support a tiny number of creators. Piracy makes that problem worse, not better. So don't pretend it's only hurting The Man.
"There is a significant band in the middle of people who will pirate if it's easy and buy if it's not."
Multiple studies have shown that the most prolific "illegal" downloaders are the same people who spend the most on media: music, movies in theaters, and DVDs.
What you said and what I said are not incompatible. My comment explains the observation you've echoed.
There's also the band of people who will pirate to try before they buy.
There are indeed some people a bit like that that. Hardcore fans of a band are often a bit like that. They want everything - bootlegs and official. They'll download music if it escapes before the official release day, then buy the proper release.
Difference is they're not trying before buying. They're just impatient to get stuff before it's released.
I'm sure there are some that try before they buy. But I'm doubtful it's a significant number. It seems more of a way for someone that's pirating to pretend it's legitimate. I doubt many of them do go on to buy, even when they've enjoyed the pirated item.
I didn't take any stand whatsoever on the people who do or don't pirate and as such anything you said doesn't rebut what I said: the people who pirate aren't limited by DRM and the people who don't are.
This advice is condescending and stupid.... Stupid people usually have the least creative insults.
Hoist on your own petard. Idiot.
I haven't been "lucky". I have a reputable ISP. I've had the service I can reasonably expect. Now of course it is possible to be unlucky, and get blocklisted. But not to be unlucky and get blocklisted as a regular occurrence, as the original poster had.
If you've also been as "unlucky" as him, then you also have a shit ISP. And it may be making you cranky. Or perhaps considering this: "or somebody who reflexively reports all spam because they're, you know, pathetic and obsessed" you are a spammer yourself, and that's why you're being a jerk.
You have to understand that DRM only makes this more difficult, not impossible, and once the DRM has been broken it no longer limits anyone but the legitimate users.
It's not black and white. There aren't two distinct camps: those that always legitimately purchase, and those that always pirate. There is a significant band in the middle of people who will pirate if it's easy and buy if it's not. Non-perfect DRM still performs it's function of increasing the number of people who pay for the product.
it takes a powerfully broken worldview to even begin to think that people only do create stuff so that they'll get paid.
Of course some stuff is created without thought to getting paid. But those things are less likely to use DRM anyway.
But you're going to cut down creation to a fraction of what it is if there's no profit motive. Say goodbye to feature films and big FPS games for example.
I never understood this argument. It is more evil to show me adverts for things I might be interested in, than to waste time and bandwidth advertising stuff I have absolutely no use for?
That's because your statement isn't the same as the thing I pointed out as evil.
You might as well say you don't understand why pointing a camera in the girl's locker room is evil. It's better than taking photos of men.
I know it's not soluble for this reason: The human brain is highly specialised at the task of recognising other people. Like many vision and AI based tasks it's in a different league to computer software. And even it has trouble identifying people from security cameras, even after a computer has filtered the most likely matches from a database.
This advice is condescending and stupid. The problem isn't the provider: They're using shared IPs for hosted accounts, just like everybody else on earth.
Then why, in the last 15 years of having a domain, have I never been blocked, hmm? When he's been blocked multiple times. Don't have an answer for that, do you? Idiot.
BTW, this insult is such a given, that I expect Google will change the name of the product before it's public release. They'll say that "Google Glass" was only a codename.
But that still won't be enough to prevent it's use as a term of abuse.
When did Google cross over to the Dark Side (TM)? Does anyone know?
1st April 2004.
It was when GMail launched. The first system that read your private email in order to advertise at you.
They took it up a notch when they started storing every search you make, in order to profile you.
Then 1st March 2012 is when they completed their move to the dark side. When they changed their privacy policy so they could combine everything they know about you from all services: GMail, YouTube, Blogger, Shopping, News, Maps, Books, Google+.
Slashdot Mirror
Or one of the many torrent sites that'll turn up when you type in BitTorrent.
Getting a bittorrent client working is a challenge for most people. They've no idea what a port is, yet they've got to set up port forwarding on their router, and probably set up a rule to bypass their firewall.
Nor do they know what a keygen is.
You have to appreciate that many people don't even understand URLs and bookmarks. They go to their homepage, (Google or Yahoo, perhaps) and search for the page they want. even if they visit it ever day. That's the level of the typical member of the public.
My local library has a class to teach computers. And it's open plan, so you see what's going on if you're in the library. They're teaching people how to click with the mouse. And you might have thought that's just for senior citizens. No, they have adults of all ages in there.
OK, so I'm not saying everybody is down at that level. But the things you're talking about: torrents (which implies setting up ports), cracks and keygens, are beyond most people. And then there's quite a lot of people that are techy enough enough to work their way through it with a bit of googling. But they are scared off by the perceived risks - malware and legal.
A song can be written and recorded in a day. Some take longer than that, but still, they are relatively quick. That's why they can sell it for 99c. And because it's only 99c, for anyone that's not impoverished, there's little incentive for pirating it.
What's true of pop songs isn't necessarily true of other, larger, more expensive works such as books, movies and software.
Then explain the Pirate Bay. Explain the case against MegaUpload.
You didn't seem to understand my point. Read it again.
The existence of Torrent sites is in no way evidence that DRM doesn't increase the number of copies of a work over what would otherwise be sold. They are entirely different things.
Meanwhile, anyone that cares to can download anything they want.
Most people are not like people on slashdot. Go out, meet some of them some time.
Blimey, we found the one person on Slashdot that never watches movies.
Your proposition is that there is more people that buy a product twice because of DRM, than there are people who buy because DRM has made it too difficult for them to pirate.
Unlikely.
(It's still unlikely after someone replies to this with an anecdote.)
People have disposable income now and have had for quite some time. An artist that dies in poverty today means there was no market for what he was creating, or he or she wasn't clever enough to discover them.
True. But the comment was about copyright. Without copyright if there's any market for what he's creating, then other people will flood it with their copies of his creation, at a lower price.
The claim that "There is a significant band in the middle of people who will pirate if it's easy and buy if it's not" is pure Hollywood Media Cartel Propaganda Bullshit.
No, it's reality. Lots of people are like that. You probably know a few, if you're honest with yourself.
People who are willing to buy your product will buy it. People who are not willing to buy your product will either copy it from somewhere, or, simply ignore it and go on their way without it.
Black and white thinking. People don't fit into two simple categories.
Most creative workers are still not paid enough to live on, and must maintain "day jobs" just to make ends meet.
Absolutely true. It's a function of supply and demand. There's a one-to-many relationship between creators and consumers of a product, so the market can only support a tiny number of creators. Piracy makes that problem worse, not better. So don't pretend it's only hurting The Man.
"There is a significant band in the middle of people who will pirate if it's easy and buy if it's not."
Multiple studies have shown that the most prolific "illegal" downloaders are the same people who spend the most on media: music, movies in theaters, and DVDs.
What you said and what I said are not incompatible. My comment explains the observation you've echoed.
There's also the band of people who will pirate to try before they buy.
There are indeed some people a bit like that that. Hardcore fans of a band are often a bit like that. They want everything - bootlegs and official. They'll download music if it escapes before the official release day, then buy the proper release.
Difference is they're not trying before buying. They're just impatient to get stuff before it's released.
I'm sure there are some that try before they buy. But I'm doubtful it's a significant number. It seems more of a way for someone that's pirating to pretend it's legitimate. I doubt many of them do go on to buy, even when they've enjoyed the pirated item.
I didn't take any stand whatsoever on the people who do or don't pirate and as such anything you said doesn't rebut what I said: the people who pirate aren't limited by DRM and the people who don't are.
To repeat what I said in a different way: that's a false dichotomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
Also, do notice that you're just assuming
I'm not assuming anything. DRM isn't a theoretical proposition. It's still used, despite the complaints, because it works.
This advice is condescending and stupid....
Stupid people usually have the least creative insults.
Hoist on your own petard. Idiot.
I haven't been "lucky". I have a reputable ISP. I've had the service I can reasonably expect. Now of course it is possible to be unlucky, and get blocklisted. But not to be unlucky and get blocklisted as a regular occurrence, as the original poster had.
If you've also been as "unlucky" as him, then you also have a shit ISP. And it may be making you cranky. Or perhaps considering this: "or somebody who reflexively reports all spam because they're, you know, pathetic and obsessed" you are a spammer yourself, and that's why you're being a jerk.
You have to understand that DRM only makes this more difficult, not impossible, and once the DRM has been broken it no longer limits anyone but the legitimate users.
It's not black and white. There aren't two distinct camps: those that always legitimately purchase, and those that always pirate. There is a significant band in the middle of people who will pirate if it's easy and buy if it's not. Non-perfect DRM still performs it's function of increasing the number of people who pay for the product.
If copyright did not exist, people would STILL pay for art. It just wouldn't be the guaranteed monopoly protection.
History is against you. Most artists died in poverty.
If your art is easily reproducible, then it wasnt all that unique to begin with.
Spoken like someone who never created anything worthwhile in his life.
it takes a powerfully broken worldview to even begin to think that people only do create stuff so that they'll get paid.
Of course some stuff is created without thought to getting paid. But those things are less likely to use DRM anyway.
But you're going to cut down creation to a fraction of what it is if there's no profit motive. Say goodbye to feature films and big FPS games for example.
I never understood this argument. It is more evil to show me adverts for things I might be interested in, than to waste time and bandwidth advertising stuff I have absolutely no use for?
That's because your statement isn't the same as the thing I pointed out as evil.
You might as well say you don't understand why pointing a camera in the girl's locker room is evil. It's better than taking photos of men.
I know it's not soluble for this reason: The human brain is highly specialised at the task of recognising other people. Like many vision and AI based tasks it's in a different league to computer software. And even it has trouble identifying people from security cameras, even after a computer has filtered the most likely matches from a database.
This advice is condescending and stupid. The problem isn't the provider: They're using shared IPs for hosted accounts, just like everybody else on earth.
Then why, in the last 15 years of having a domain, have I never been blocked, hmm? When he's been blocked multiple times. Don't have an answer for that, do you? Idiot.
It's because somewhere along the line, you didn't get the skepticism gene.
You clearly haven't read many of my posts.
I don't wear tin foil hats though, so maybe that's your source of confusion.
Happily, the people most likely to have a clumsy moment are the people wearing Google Glass.
If texting on a mobile phone can make you tune out of your environment this much...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbJJ2Mfx5Pg
BTW, this insult is such a given, that I expect Google will change the name of the product before it's public release. They'll say that "Google Glass" was only a codename.
But that still won't be enough to prevent it's use as a term of abuse.
Calling the people that use them "Glassholes" will be even more effective.
It already happened.
http://wearcam.org/mcdonalds/eyetap_blogspot_mcdonalds.pdf
Anyone who thinks they won't be violently assaulted if they wear one of these things is already shown to be wrong.
When did Google cross over to the Dark Side (TM)? Does anyone know?
1st April 2004.
It was when GMail launched. The first system that read your private email in order to advertise at you.
They took it up a notch when they started storing every search you make, in order to profile you.
Then 1st March 2012 is when they completed their move to the dark side. When they changed their privacy policy so they could combine everything they know about you from all services: GMail, YouTube, Blogger, Shopping, News, Maps, Books, Google+.
"Don't be Evil" is a distant memory.
Schmidt reminds me of those people that complained about wind farms because they were ugly, but are now proponents of fracking.