And if you're saying that $180 per month would cover TV, photography, music, internet, etc., that's a beautiful thing. Can we throw in a VOIP line and my mobile phone too? Currently, I pay $90 for television (some 80 channels and 50 HD channels, and and and), $65 for Internet (600KB/s down, 50KB/s up), $70 for my mobile phone, I go to a few movies each month for around $50, and rent on-demand one or two, and I purchase some photography now and then.
$180 a month would only cover your right to download TV, photography, music, etc. You'd still need to have a cable subscription, because your internet connection is limited to 10GB a month, and watching 50 HD channels will eat up that quota pretty fast. Plus, if your internet connection is 600KB/s down and 50KB/s up, I don't think you can watch HDTV, talk on VoIP, download music and browse the web at the same time. At $180 a month, you get the right to do it, but not the capacity.
not really- that $5 is buying you the right to download music just as other taxes buy the rights to other services, just because you don't go to a park or use the library it doesn't meant that you shouldn't be taxed for it.
Will iTunes let me download that music for free then, since I already got a licence to download?
It's Canada. They pay for national healthcare whether or not they go to the hospital and use it.
But you never know when you're actually going to need the healthcare in an emergency. That's the good of it. An accident or emergency won't cost you squat. However, I don't think I'll ever be in a situation where I urgently need to download music in a life or death situation.
...just so long as it stays a $5/month tax. What's to prevent tax creep such that it becomes $30/month.
The problem isn't that this one tax will creep up to $30/month, it's that once the music industry gets its $5/month, the movie industry will want to get its own $5/month tax too, then the software industry will want its own $5/month, then the book publishing industry will want is own $5/month, then... then... then...
It would set a very bad precedent, and if this keeps up, an simple internet connection will cost $150/month: $20 for the service and $130 in taxes, and iTunes will still sell songs at a buck each.
Shops and bars take the cost of stolen goods into account when they price stuff, as they know that glasses will be stolen, things will break, etc. Why can't the entertainment industry realize the same thing? It will be more profitable for them to sell digital music with or without DRM and cost it with "wastage" included and expect piracy, then to hinder it continuously with law suites and such.
They already price it with "wastage" included, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to stop piracy. Bars price their drinks expecting some glasses to be broken, but that doesn't mean the bartender won't call the cops on you if you break stuff on purpose.
as for morality, what is moral or immoral about sharing files? someone "owns" them? oh really? their "ownership", unlike say, their ownership of a house or a car, is an abstract legal notion, derived from a business model that is now defunct in the age of the internet
Your ownership of your house or your car is just as abstract as my ownership of my copyrighted work. I could pack my things and come live in your house, but I can't because the law doesn't allow for that. Just as the law doesn't allow you copying my work. Law (abstract legal notions) is what protect property, be it physical, intellectual, or land. Either we deny the existence of those abstract legal notions, in which case he-who-has-the-biggest-guns gets your house, or we accept the fact that "abstract legal notions" exists and are valid, and we have a working society.
Which abstract legal notion is good or bad is up for debate. The fact that we need laws isn't.
Price the content based on quality, and make it convenient. People prefer convenience.
People won't bother to steal if there's a quality, low-cost solution they could just pay for.
Pricing based on quality only works for shitty stuff. People don't want to pay a fair price based on quality, they want to pay as little as possible no matter the quality.
High-quality means high-price
Low-cost means low-quality
When people are faced with a choice between pirating a higher-quality and higher priced software, and paying for a low-cost and lower-quality equivalent, most people will opt for "casual piracy".
You make a good point that a lot of people miss. We are quite content to pay for things that we perceive as having value. We do it all day, everyday. The problem with digital media is that a lot of people do not think they are getting a fair deal anymore, hence the rise in "casual piracy".
The problem with digital stuff is that copying it is so easy that people can't perceive the real value of the work that a lot of people put in making that digital stuff, and therefore feel ripped off by the retail price, and prefer downloading while chanting their mantra "Copyright infringement is not theft! Copyright infringement is not theft! Copyright infringement is not theft!".
Software companies invest several million dollars in R&D, yet the "customers" consider $400, or $200, or $100 is too much. That's ridiculous. You want to use Photoshop but consider $650 is too much? Great, make one yourself IN LESS THAN 26 HOURS (assuming you're paid $25/hour). When you're done, you'll realize the huge amount of work the people at Adobe put in the software. Replace Photoshop by MS-Office or any other piece of software that is often casually-pirated and the same logic still holds. Software often costs upwards of $100 (or even $500) because it is worth as least as much.
Disclaimer: I write proprietary software for a living and hate so-called "casual pirates". Everything I have at home (music, video and software) is 100% legit (most of it is Free too).
Can we send them the Worst Website Ever award from Slashdot?
Nope... that award still goes to the Time Cube for use of an ugly background, random font sizes and random font colors, as well as the layout (centered text in a narrow column spanning well over 25 pages), and I'm not even talking about the content of the site here...
For starters... Please quit conflating the act of infringement with "theft" or "murder".
You missed the point. I didn't conflate those acts, I was just asserting the "wrongness" of the attempt no matter if the act was performed or not. Attempted wrongdoing isn't less wrong than actual wrongdoing. Attempted copyright infringement isn't less wrong that actual copyright infringement.
And, it's not you, if you're making it available, that is actually doing the act of infringement, [...] Anyone making copies of the protected work are the actual infringers per the law the way it's currently written.
I think this is still up for debate though. Who actually makes the copy? If person A puts the file in a folder that is configured in such a way that its content can be accessed "on demand" by other computer users, and person B wants a copy of that file, who makes the copy? Is it :
B sends a request to A's computer, A's computer makes the copy, sends it down the wire, B receives it and saves it on his computer (A made the copy/infringed the copyright)
B gets into A's computer across the network, B grabs the file, makes a copy and takes it home (B made the copy/infringed the copyright).
I believe putting a file in a shared folder is more akin to the first situation. It's like posting a sign that reads "Send me a request and I will make a copy of this file and send it to you", and thus the infringement is made by who shared/uploaded the file, not by who downloaded it.
Morally wrong doesn't make it illegal unless there's a law that backs that position up- sorry, things
just don't work that way.
And this is where copyright law steps in. Copying a file/song/movie/etc and send it to someone else on request is not fair use. However, I will reverse what you said and admit that legally wrong doesn't necessarily make it immoral.
You're letting them get away with their "making available" argument and be able to level charges without any real evidence of a crime taking place. Just because it is in a shared directory does not constitute actual sharing. It may just be there for display purposes, a way of showing people what he has, for braggadocio. Until someone tries to download it, no illegal copying takes place (unauthorized !(always)= illegal). And until someone tries, you can't know whether anyone could actually succeed.
The fact that the file didn't get copied is totally irrelevant as to whether making it available is wrong. Attempted murder is still a crime even though no murder took place. Attempted file-sharing is wrong even though no sharing took place (please note here that I am *not* saying it is a crime, just wrong).
Attempted murder, now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? -- Sideshow Bob
For me, part of the thrill of dating was the risk that something might fail. If I had a relationship with a robot, I'd be taking the robot for granted, because I know there would be no need to be nice and attentive, because the robot would surely be programmed to do whatever I want, and never protest.
Every mechanical device fail eventually. The only variables are when and how painful...
Sorry. My point was extremely badly made. What I wanted to say was: Content providers have an interest that conflicts with the ISP's. Content Providers want to deliver content in the form that they have designed, because that design is the template that the use to sell their advertising space. If the ISP's start to tamper with their content (as has been demonstrated)they effect they value of the Content Providers end product (read possible lawsuites in the making). However to combat this, they can easily turn on an encrypted content stream using HTTPS:// which will foil this irritating attempt by ISP's to hijack content.
Unfortunately, some content providers are already having a hard time surviving a slashdotting on a regular unencrypted connection. If those servers had to suffer the CPU cycles required to encrypt everything they serve, they would melt.
Honestly, if the choice was between "Should" and not referencing it, I'd go for the latter. I deal in construction contracts and specifications, and if there's a word that has done more damage than "should", I'm not aware of it.
Isn't this something should have been found in, oh, I dunno....beta testing?
Oh, but it was found, by several beta testers. However, since none of those beta testers had a functioning computer after the test, they were all unable to send a bug report. Not having received any bug reports, the developers simply assumed that there were no bugs.
It's not just some random website, it's a Merriam-Webster dictionary.
until our dear media companies started using it as a synonym with copying and it still seems to be only those have a secondary financial gain (of an original product) using it in that manner.
Nope. From MW's definition (emphasis mine) :
2 a : the unauthorized copying, distribution, or use of another's production (as a film) esp. in infringement of a copyright <software piracy>
You don't need to be seeking monetary advantage to be infringing copyright. Downloading Photoshop from a website with the intent of simply using it is copyright infringement, and so it is piracy.
A single word may have several meanings. There are many words in the English language (and other languages too) that have more than one meaning, and the context in which the word is used is usually sufficient in letting the reader know what meaning the word has. When using the word piracy in a context where we are talking about software, licensing and copyright, one can expect the word to not mean robbery on the high seas. In this context, piracy is about people taking copyrighted stuff from the Internet without paying for it.
Piracy is both theft and stealing. Copying is not stealing, theft, or piracy. It can be cheating as in being the 5th Ace of Diamonds in a pack of cards, but that is about it.
But copying a proprietary application without authorization is piracy.
Definition of piracy :
2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.
Now as I said, I find the violation of copyright for the purposes of distribution reprehensible, I think it is probably more serious than 'stealing' (although less serious than piracy), but I would deem ripping a song so that it can be used on an MP3 player, or backing up DVD's so that they can be recovered if your 3 year old trashes them as reasonable acts (you would presumably consider both as stealing).
Ripping a song to put it on an MP3 player is fair use. You have (implicit) permission to do so, and is therefore not stealing. Same goes for backing up stuff to keep the original away from your 3 year old.
However, let's not divert this conversation towards music, because music is not what this is about. The topic at hand here is software and piracy. There is no such thing as "fair use" when downloading a copy of Windows, or Photoshop, or what-have-you with the intent of using it for what it was designed.
You download Windows/Photoshop and use it without a license? Then you took something to which you are not entitled, you stole a copy of Windows/Photoshop, it doesn't matter whether Microsoft/Adobe is deprived of the copy or not.
If you have a file I can see on the network and I copy it you will probably never know it happened. Therefore, no theft has occurred.
I have never mentioned theft. "Stealing something" and "theft" aren't synonyms, no matter how hard you wish for it to be. Stealing something is taking something that you shouldn't. Theft is depriving someone of something he owns.
Piracy is not theft. Piracy is stealing. Learn what words mean.
Okay, now you refer to copying a file as "stealing". Therefore you are probably delusional due to your irrational faith in capitalism and there is no point trying to discuss this with you. What can I say? Game over, get well soon.
I'm sick and tired of people trying to argument that pirating is not stealing. Get real, copying a copyrighted file for which you do not have a license is stealing. Let's have a look at the many definitions of the verb "to steal" and see if one of them apply:
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force.
Will ya look at that. The very fucking first definition. Pirating is taking a intellectual property and copying it without permission. Case closed.
I never really considered it that much of a buzz-word, but just more as a particular way to group together all the newer consoles. What other word would you have used? "The new consoles"?, "The next consoles"? I guess you could call them the current consoles, but sort of coming back to the point of the article, the PS2 is just as much a current console, because there are tons of them sitting in living rooms .
next gen is relative, and loses meaning as time passes. The absolute term to talk about the Xbox 360/PS3/Wii is seventh gen.
Rarely do you ever see anything come out of a class action lawsuit. The first judge has to let that case through to start, and even then, that's no guarantee of seeing anything returned to you to recoup your excess charges.
Rarely do you ever see anything out of people sitting on their ass and just waiting. I don't care if I can recoup the excess charges. I'll just be happy if the carriers get fined a whole lot of money and then stop their shady practices. It might not right the past wrongs, but it will make the future righter.
Two answers- either they have a stockpile (not likely considering stores have been empty for almsot a year) - OR - they DIDN'T sell 350 000 units in the previous weeks.
Or maybe, just maybe, Nintendo knows November is a great month in North-America compared to Europe or Japan, and they decided to ship a little more to the US and a little less everywhere else for that month. I think the US is about the only (big) country to massively buy and give gifts in November, most of the world waits till December.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. A tax is a tax, and should be paid by all no matter your situation. What if I don't have kids. Do I still need to pay the school tax?
$180 a month would only cover your right to download TV, photography, music, etc. You'd still need to have a cable subscription, because your internet connection is limited to 10GB a month, and watching 50 HD channels will eat up that quota pretty fast. Plus, if your internet connection is 600KB/s down and 50KB/s up, I don't think you can watch HDTV, talk on VoIP, download music and browse the web at the same time. At $180 a month, you get the right to do it, but not the capacity.
Will iTunes let me download that music for free then, since I already got a licence to download?
But you never know when you're actually going to need the healthcare in an emergency. That's the good of it. An accident or emergency won't cost you squat. However, I don't think I'll ever be in a situation where I urgently need to download music in a life or death situation.
The problem isn't that this one tax will creep up to $30/month, it's that once the music industry gets its $5/month, the movie industry will want to get its own $5/month tax too, then the software industry will want its own $5/month, then the book publishing industry will want is own $5/month, then ... then ... then ...
It would set a very bad precedent, and if this keeps up, an simple internet connection will cost $150/month: $20 for the service and $130 in taxes, and iTunes will still sell songs at a buck each.
They already price it with "wastage" included, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to stop piracy. Bars price their drinks expecting some glasses to be broken, but that doesn't mean the bartender won't call the cops on you if you break stuff on purpose.
Your ownership of your house or your car is just as abstract as my ownership of my copyrighted work. I could pack my things and come live in your house, but I can't because the law doesn't allow for that. Just as the law doesn't allow you copying my work. Law (abstract legal notions) is what protect property, be it physical, intellectual, or land. Either we deny the existence of those abstract legal notions, in which case he-who-has-the-biggest-guns gets your house, or we accept the fact that "abstract legal notions" exists and are valid, and we have a working society.
Which abstract legal notion is good or bad is up for debate. The fact that we need laws isn't.
Pricing based on quality only works for shitty stuff. People don't want to pay a fair price based on quality, they want to pay as little as possible no matter the quality.
High-quality means high-price
Low-cost means low-quality
When people are faced with a choice between pirating a higher-quality and higher priced software, and paying for a low-cost and lower-quality equivalent, most people will opt for "casual piracy".
The problem with digital stuff is that copying it is so easy that people can't perceive the real value of the work that a lot of people put in making that digital stuff, and therefore feel ripped off by the retail price, and prefer downloading while chanting their mantra "Copyright infringement is not theft! Copyright infringement is not theft! Copyright infringement is not theft!".
Software companies invest several million dollars in R&D, yet the "customers" consider $400, or $200, or $100 is too much. That's ridiculous. You want to use Photoshop but consider $650 is too much? Great, make one yourself IN LESS THAN 26 HOURS (assuming you're paid $25/hour). When you're done, you'll realize the huge amount of work the people at Adobe put in the software. Replace Photoshop by MS-Office or any other piece of software that is often casually-pirated and the same logic still holds. Software often costs upwards of $100 (or even $500) because it is worth as least as much.
Disclaimer: I write proprietary software for a living and hate so-called "casual pirates". Everything I have at home (music, video and software) is 100% legit (most of it is Free too).
Nope... that award still goes to the Time Cube for use of an ugly background, random font sizes and random font colors, as well as the layout (centered text in a narrow column spanning well over 25 pages), and I'm not even talking about the content of the site here...
You missed the point. I didn't conflate those acts, I was just asserting the "wrongness" of the attempt no matter if the act was performed or not. Attempted wrongdoing isn't less wrong than actual wrongdoing. Attempted copyright infringement isn't less wrong that actual copyright infringement.
I think this is still up for debate though. Who actually makes the copy? If person A puts the file in a folder that is configured in such a way that its content can be accessed "on demand" by other computer users, and person B wants a copy of that file, who makes the copy? Is it :
I believe putting a file in a shared folder is more akin to the first situation. It's like posting a sign that reads "Send me a request and I will make a copy of this file and send it to you", and thus the infringement is made by who shared/uploaded the file, not by who downloaded it.
And this is where copyright law steps in. Copying a file/song/movie/etc and send it to someone else on request is not fair use. However, I will reverse what you said and admit that legally wrong doesn't necessarily make it immoral.
The fact that the file didn't get copied is totally irrelevant as to whether making it available is wrong. Attempted murder is still a crime even though no murder took place. Attempted file-sharing is wrong even though no sharing took place (please note here that I am *not* saying it is a crime, just wrong).
Attempted murder, now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? -- Sideshow Bob
Every mechanical device fail eventually. The only variables are when and how painful...
Unfortunately, some content providers are already having a hard time surviving a slashdotting on a regular unencrypted connection. If those servers had to suffer the CPU cycles required to encrypt everything they serve, they would melt.
Have you tried going to https://www.google.com lately? Does it work? How about https://slashdot.org?
HTTPS only works if the server supports it. The client can't force it.
Repeat after me:
Should != Shall
Oh, but it was found, by several beta testers. However, since none of those beta testers had a functioning computer after the test, they were all unable to send a bug report. Not having received any bug reports, the developers simply assumed that there were no bugs.
I think the tag you are looking for here is [Citation needed], but let me whip out the bibliography then...
piracy. Dictionary.com. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. Merriam-Webster, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/piracy (accessed: December 06, 2007).
It's not just some random website, it's a Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Nope. From MW's definition (emphasis mine) :
2 a : the unauthorized copying, distribution, or use of another's production (as a film) esp. in infringement of a copyright <software piracy>
You don't need to be seeking monetary advantage to be infringing copyright. Downloading Photoshop from a website with the intent of simply using it is copyright infringement, and so it is piracy.
A single word may have several meanings. There are many words in the English language (and other languages too) that have more than one meaning, and the context in which the word is used is usually sufficient in letting the reader know what meaning the word has. When using the word piracy in a context where we are talking about software, licensing and copyright, one can expect the word to not mean robbery on the high seas. In this context, piracy is about people taking copyrighted stuff from the Internet without paying for it.
But copying a proprietary application without authorization is piracy.
Definition of piracy :
2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.
Ripping a song to put it on an MP3 player is fair use. You have (implicit) permission to do so, and is therefore not stealing. Same goes for backing up stuff to keep the original away from your 3 year old.
However, let's not divert this conversation towards music, because music is not what this is about. The topic at hand here is software and piracy. There is no such thing as "fair use" when downloading a copy of Windows, or Photoshop, or what-have-you with the intent of using it for what it was designed.
You download Windows/Photoshop and use it without a license? Then you took something to which you are not entitled, you stole a copy of Windows/Photoshop, it doesn't matter whether Microsoft/Adobe is deprived of the copy or not.
I have never mentioned theft. "Stealing something" and "theft" aren't synonyms, no matter how hard you wish for it to be. Stealing something is taking something that you shouldn't. Theft is depriving someone of something he owns.
Piracy is not theft. Piracy is stealing. Learn what words mean.
I'm sick and tired of people trying to argument that pirating is not stealing. Get real, copying a copyrighted file for which you do not have a license is stealing. Let's have a look at the many definitions of the verb "to steal" and see if one of them apply:
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force.
Will ya look at that. The very fucking first definition. Pirating is taking a intellectual property and copying it without permission. Case closed.
next gen is relative, and loses meaning as time passes. The absolute term to talk about the Xbox 360/PS3/Wii is seventh gen.
Rarely do you ever see anything out of people sitting on their ass and just waiting. I don't care if I can recoup the excess charges. I'll just be happy if the carriers get fined a whole lot of money and then stop their shady practices. It might not right the past wrongs, but it will make the future righter.
Or maybe, just maybe, Nintendo knows November is a great month in North-America compared to Europe or Japan, and they decided to ship a little more to the US and a little less everywhere else for that month. I think the US is about the only (big) country to massively buy and give gifts in November, most of the world waits till December.