Yes, Content is King. The broadcasters (and I suppose that really means Clear Channel these days) need to realize that it's not the medium, it's the business model. Clear Channel broadcasting in digital quality is still the same business model with less static. And it's not the static that's driving people away.
I'm no expert, so I welcome correction by better informed people. From what I understand of the radio industry, it basically works on a version of the Payola scheme modified to have enough layers of indirection so that it's not illegal. A station has a playlist, and record labels pay to get songs on that playlist. As a result, most DJs are terribly limited as to what they can play. The songs that get the most play time are those from the acts that a label is most willing to invest in.
The important thing to note is that the listener is not involved in this process.
I remember when I was a kid I could call up the local radio station, talk to the actual DJ, and request a song. Try that sometime with your local pop station, see how far you get.
Some stations seem to be catching a clue and adapting. But you know the industry is in trouble when a station can differentiate itself by advertising that it doesn't work from a playlist.
The popular theory seems to be that it's OK for MS to lose billions if it means the XBox gets a place at the center of the home entertainment system. But where's the profit in that? Is it really that profitable being the living room's control center? If they bump Sony and Nintendo out of the console market, they still have to deal with every other vendor who wants to be the control center. The cable companies aren't going to sit by idly while MS takes over the TV.
It's possible, likely even, that there are people at MS far smarter than I who have thought through the business case and determined that there is money to be made. But to my untrained eye, this looks a lot like the dot-com business plan of old where a company would spend millions building mindshare, but never figure out how to convert that into money.
They're buying time. It's just FUD to suck the wind out of the push to move to open formats.
Remember, we've seen this headline before: Microsoft Ends Era Of Closed File Formats.
Remember when Yahoo reset all of their users' spam preferences? Heck, a few stories up from this one you can read about how AOL just automatically added two bots to all the AIM users' buddy lists. Sure these are both things that are easy for the user to fix, but it demonstrates that, if the price is right, these companies would rather ask for forgiveness than permission. Lack of consideration for the user's personal preferences is pretty much the problem when it comes to annoying software installs.
What we have here is a group of companies that don't really have a great track record in respecting the wishes of their customers. Why should we believe that things will be any better now that they're colluding to set standards?
I write this as a 'Merkin, so forgive if I don't fully "get" UK law, but...
It took me a while to parse that sentence, primarily because:
merkin: A merkin (first use, according to the OED, 1617) is reported to be a pubic wig, worn by prostitutes after shaving their genitalia to eliminate lice or to disguise the marks of syphilis...
Once you get the mental image of a crotch toupee for diseased hookers in your mind, reading and comprehension skills quickly degrade.
From what I've heard, when a movie goes into the famed Disney Vault, it stays for at least ten years. In that time, how many people have entered, then left the market? How many will simply borrow the DVD from a friend? How many will copy it or download it? How much profit have they transferred to EBay auctioneers? How many will just rent them? How many will buy another movie because they have kids now but probably won't by the time Disney rereleases "Pinnochio"?
All of these things eat into money that could be going into Disney's pockets. They're giving up profits for control. They have a massive library of copyrighted works that are engrained in American culture. They've already been produced and paid for, the characters have widespread recognition, and just about everyone in the country who has a kid will pony up the money to buy these movies. It's not quite like printing money, but it's damned close. To me it looks like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.
I'm no expert on such things, but doesn't it seem like nobody at Sony even did the most cursory analysis of the costs and benefits of implementing this feature? Let's assume for a moment that they weren't aware of the damage that could be caused by thsi software. Here's my quick "let's pull some bullet points out of my ass" evaluation of this.
Costs:
Licensing or purchasing the DRM software
Running a support line for handling uninstall requests. I'm betting that a single call to this line wipes out the profit gained from selling several CDs
Various indirect costs through bad press, annoyed users, and loss of future business. This software will convert a certain number of paying customers into pirates not just out of anger, frustration, or revenge, but because black market music is safer
Benefits:
People who buy the CD can't make copies easily.
Unless the damage done by casual pirates is greater than the cost of implementing this DRM scheme, it's a stupid idea.
The RIAA is notorious for releasing inflated numbers about the cost of piracy, but actions like Sony's seem to indicate that the member companies actually believe that these losses are real. I can't think of any other reason why a company would expend so much to plug what seems to be a tiny hole. Maybe they're thinking that if you can't rip the CD, you'll buy the song again from an online service.
You're correct, the author presents no evidence or anecdotes that indicate OSS on Windows, or even DotNetNuke in particular, get not respect. But let me tell you why I have not respect for them.
The blog page doesn't display properly in FireFox. IE seems to work just fine.
I wanted to check out the software, but it requires that I register at the site. Sorry, you lost me.
Lack of techincal specifics. One of the first questions incoming potential users will ask is "What do I need to run this?" I couldn't find a FAQ, and I wasn't able to locate a list of techinical requirements. Sure, I could just assume that since it's "DotNetNuke" it requires IIS, but what version? What databases does it support? Maybe I need to register to get anything more specific than "built on Microsoft technology."
And in general, what makes them think OSS on Windows gets no respect? Granted, we're all too willing to accept without question the suggestion that there are some zealous assholes in the OSS community pissing on Windows software, but aside from the grumblings from DotNetNuke, is there any evidence of this being a widespread attitude? Swing by SourceForge and count how many of the most active and most downloaded projects are Windows only (I counted 4 and 8 respectively in each of the top ten lists).
So my message to Mr. Walker: There is no widespread bigotry against open source on Windows. The snubbing you're getting is directed at DotNetNuke in particular. You suck, deal with it.
My refrain to the copyright holders: The people being hurt by this DRM software are people who have already communicated their intent to do the right thing by purchasing the CD. Sony has just guaranteed that a lot of people will never make that mistake again.
Welcome to a Brave New World: People who pay for their music get viruses, while people who download it at no cost from illegal sources get clean MP3s that they can freely copy and use on whatever devices they own.
Another reason to back OpenOffice: Google's main business is search, and right now I imagine it's a royal pain in the ass to try to index all of the various documents out there locked up in proprietary formats. Microsoft can change the format for MS Word at any time and not tell anyone. At that point, Google's Word parsing functionality breaks and they have to reverse engineer it. And now that MS has declared war on Google this is a big deal; they'll be fighting in a where MSN will always be able to index.DOC files, and Google won't.
Now, imagine all of those MS Office files are replaced by files that store their data in an open and documented file format. Suddenly one of Google's potential blind spots in search, and one of MS' biggest potential advantages goes byebye. It is very much in Google's best interests for everyone to manage their data using free open source software.
Do you think your PC has better firewalling than Google's servers? Do you think your workstation is better protected from viruses than Yahoo's servers? Do you have a more robust backup and recovery plan than MSN? Is your hardware more reliable than what you'll find in a typical datacenter? Do you have 24/7 support? Do you have spare systems readily available? For > 99% of PC users, the answer to all of these questions is a big, freaking NO.
Take a look at web mail for a good example. Who do you think has a more reliable email client, the people who use GMail, or those who use Outlook?
It's like the relationship vehicles and highways have. Everyone owns their own vehicle, and they're responsible for the good running condition of that vehicle, and the highway facilitates the usefulness of that vehicle.
This is great analogy. Imagine Google came along and said, "Hey, we have this fleet of shuttles that'll take you anywhere you want to go, just pay us a fare every time you ride." You think about it. Because of the scale of their operations, they could be a lot more reliable, but you wouldn't actually own a vehicle, there would less choice and flexibility, and those afternoon drives along the coast would come to an end.
Now imagine that your car crashed as often as your PC. Vandals routinely tagged it, punks would take it for joyrides, and it gets recalled several times a year to fix some flaw. Even worse, the manufacturer wants to track where you're going, limit what you do, and charge you whenever you play the radio.
Microsoft has done wonders to reduce the value of actually owning a PC. If the trend continues, then there will still be plenty of us who own machines, developers, designers, gamers and the like. But for your basic office applications, it's entirely possible that people will get frustrated enough that they'll turn over the headache of software maintenance to someone else.
To: RIAA
From: Concerned Citizen
CC: The Horse You Rode In On
It has come to my attention that the various companies represented by the Recording Industry of America sell, promote, and distribute music that contains material of an objectionable nature which may encourage listeners to commit various criminal acts.
I demand that you immediately cease the sale, promotion, and distribution of any and all music which could be interpreted by your audience (and audience which includes impressionable young listeners) as endorsing, encouraging, and/or glorifying any of the following activities:
Murder
Assault
Rape
Theft
Slander
Drug Use
I thank you in advance for your prompt action in this urgent matter.
So, if this flagging is so robustly implemented that it can be triggered by noise, how long will it take for someone to create a filter to eliminate that "noise"?
Egad, I can see it now: "With our innovative new filter, not only will your shows look clearer, they'll last longer!" Except I won't be laughing at that ad.
I'd like to point out that stoves have been blowing up houses for years without any assistance from ethernet.
Powerline broadband may be widespread in the future, but the cell phone network gets pretty good coverage right now. Your garbage disposal could have a cell phone build into it. Your toaster could be network aware right now. How would you know? Widespread WiFi presents the same problem.
If someone wants to get you by turning your appliances against you, they can. They don't need powerline broadband to do it.
Actually, this is a much bigger problem with closed source software. Dev team quit? Well then I guess you're screwed until the copyright holder rehires. If they rehire.
In the case of Mambo you have several other options available because the software is GPL:
Maintain the code in-house
Hire someone to make any changes.
Carry on business as normal. The Mambo team quit Miro, but they'll still be working on the code.
So it looks like nothing much will change for people who use the software. If anything, this incident is an example of why you want your business-critical software to be open source. You're not necessarily screwed when somethign like this happens.
As a counter example: as the tech market was fixing to implode, the VC funding one of our vendors decided that the company would be mroe likely to sell if they used an ASP service model instead of selling software. So they stopped selling their software. There would be no more upgrades and no more licenses; the only option offered to us was to move to their hosted solution. Basically we were screwed. If the software were GPL, we wouldn't have been.
That's easy: Massport knows that the Logan reps are filthy fucking liars making a financially expedient but logically inconsistent argument in order to take out the competition. Proceed to Step 3.
The type of behavior really disgusts me.
I suggest making things really ugly: Sue the airport for putting its passengers at risk. Performing functions that are critical to security using equipment that can be made to malfunction by interference in an unregulated spectrum is clearly negligent for an airport. Their statement to Continental Airlines regarding their secuirty concerns is proof that they're aware of this risk but have no intention of correcting it. If Continental's wifi system represents a security risk, then so does anyone with a laptop or PDA equipped with a wifi adapter.
True enough. But I was focusing on what I thought was the innacurate portion of the review. The drive was generally described as "quiet, reliable, and fast." As I was using it, it was quite reliable and fast, but not quiet.
However had I been using the drive in the unplugged configuration it certainly would have been quiet and reliable, but I would have posted complaining that NewEgg's reviews were inaccurate regarding the drive's speed.
Here's a test I use on any site that posts customer reviews: I check out the reviews for products that I already own. I love NewEgg for the prices, selection, and service, but their customer reviews are crap.
I saw several reviews that described a hard drive I own as "quiet" among other things. It isn't, not by any stretch of the imagination that can be achieved without the use of mind-altering drugs. And anyone who owned on, or even read the drive's specs could tell this. After reading a number of NewEgg's review's I concluded that many people writing them were either on drugs or just filthly liars.
It's happening. Contrary to what many on slashdot think, the *AA orgs employ some pretty clever people, and the pirate networks are far more vulnerable than is often assumed. Check out the comment threads on some new releases at one of the torrent sites, and you'll see that a number of spoofing tactics are in use:
Fake files. This is clearly a more primitive tactic and can be thwarted by clients that can be set to download the first parts of a file first.
Incomplete files. The seeder reports having the entire file, but will never deliver certain parts of it. Thus, downloaders get stalled at 98.5%. And it's amazing how long people will wait for that last bit.
Fake seeds. Haven't confirmed how this one works, but sometimes you'll see a torrent with an improbable number of seeders (e.g., 300 seeds and 100 leechers for a fairly new torrent). Lots of seeds attract more people.
Timing. For example, demand for a movie will rise in the days shortly before its release. If you get your fake tracker up and running during that critical time before there's a real pirate version out, then you'll attract downloaders and waste their time. And there's a snowball effect: when people go to download from BT, all of things being equal they usually go for the tracker that has the most people on it.
Combine the tactics, and you've got a serious problem. Every user adds to the strength of the distribution network so tying up one client with a fake not only prevents that client from getting the material, it also keeps that client from helping others get it as well.
If you're patient, persistent, and knowledgeable, you can avoid or minimize the impact of these spoofing tactics. But patient, persistent and knowledgeable don't really describe the average pirate (or just about anyone else, for that matter). The dedicated pirate simply won't be stopped, and the content producers know this.
Like you, I once assumed that the various forms of moderation on the torrent sites would mitigate this. But the countermeasure are slow to work, as I've seen fake torrents stay up for weeks. It's easy to post multiple new fakes. And users are incredibly clueless. I have, on several occasions, seen comment threads where several people will post "This is a fake, don't bother," but the torrent will still have thousands of people downloading and the very next comment will be something like "I've been stuck at 99% for three days, will somebody fucking seed this!!"
Remember, the goal isn't to elimiate the network. The goal is to make it so untrustworthy and unreliable that it's too much trouble for Joe User and he'll go to the theater instead.
It gets even better than that. They also claimed that compliance with CAN-SPAM not only made their spam legal, it also made blocking that spam illegal (emphasis added by me):
The company argued that the university violated its constitutional rights by filtering out 59,000 e-mails in 2003. White Buffalo also claimed a federal act that allows certain e-mails superseded the university's anti-spam policy.
The 5th Circuit panel found that the federal anti-spam law, CAN-SPAM, does not pre-empt the university's policy and that the policy is permissible under the First Amendment.
Now that chutzpah. Must be fun being White Buffalo's lawyer, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Content is King. The broadcasters (and I suppose that really means Clear Channel these days) need to realize that it's not the medium, it's the business model. Clear Channel broadcasting in digital quality is still the same business model with less static. And it's not the static that's driving people away.
I'm no expert, so I welcome correction by better informed people. From what I understand of the radio industry, it basically works on a version of the Payola scheme modified to have enough layers of indirection so that it's not illegal. A station has a playlist, and record labels pay to get songs on that playlist. As a result, most DJs are terribly limited as to what they can play. The songs that get the most play time are those from the acts that a label is most willing to invest in.
The important thing to note is that the listener is not involved in this process.
I remember when I was a kid I could call up the local radio station, talk to the actual DJ, and request a song. Try that sometime with your local pop station, see how far you get.
Some stations seem to be catching a clue and adapting. But you know the industry is in trouble when a station can differentiate itself by advertising that it doesn't work from a playlist.
The popular theory seems to be that it's OK for MS to lose billions if it means the XBox gets a place at the center of the home entertainment system. But where's the profit in that? Is it really that profitable being the living room's control center? If they bump Sony and Nintendo out of the console market, they still have to deal with every other vendor who wants to be the control center. The cable companies aren't going to sit by idly while MS takes over the TV.
It's possible, likely even, that there are people at MS far smarter than I who have thought through the business case and determined that there is money to be made. But to my untrained eye, this looks a lot like the dot-com business plan of old where a company would spend millions building mindshare, but never figure out how to convert that into money.
They're buying time. It's just FUD to suck the wind out of the push to move to open formats. Remember, we've seen this headline before: Microsoft Ends Era Of Closed File Formats.
Remember when Yahoo reset all of their users' spam preferences? Heck, a few stories up from this one you can read about how AOL just automatically added two bots to all the AIM users' buddy lists. Sure these are both things that are easy for the user to fix, but it demonstrates that, if the price is right, these companies would rather ask for forgiveness than permission. Lack of consideration for the user's personal preferences is pretty much the problem when it comes to annoying software installs.
What we have here is a group of companies that don't really have a great track record in respecting the wishes of their customers. Why should we believe that things will be any better now that they're colluding to set standards?
I mean, what asshat would grab some open source code and not adhere to the license?
The same asshat who writes software that violates the property and privacy rights of paying customers.
It took me a while to parse that sentence, primarily because: Once you get the mental image of a crotch toupee for diseased hookers in your mind, reading and comprehension skills quickly degrade.
But does this actually increase profits?
From what I've heard, when a movie goes into the famed Disney Vault, it stays for at least ten years. In that time, how many people have entered, then left the market? How many will simply borrow the DVD from a friend? How many will copy it or download it? How much profit have they transferred to EBay auctioneers? How many will just rent them? How many will buy another movie because they have kids now but probably won't by the time Disney rereleases "Pinnochio"?
All of these things eat into money that could be going into Disney's pockets. They're giving up profits for control. They have a massive library of copyrighted works that are engrained in American culture. They've already been produced and paid for, the characters have widespread recognition, and just about everyone in the country who has a kid will pony up the money to buy these movies. It's not quite like printing money, but it's damned close. To me it looks like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.
Costs:
- Licensing or purchasing the DRM software
- Running a support line for handling uninstall requests. I'm betting that a single call to this line wipes out the profit gained from selling several CDs
- Various indirect costs through bad press, annoyed users, and loss of future business. This software will convert a certain number of paying customers into pirates not just out of anger, frustration, or revenge, but because black market music is safer
Benefits:Unless the damage done by casual pirates is greater than the cost of implementing this DRM scheme, it's a stupid idea.
The RIAA is notorious for releasing inflated numbers about the cost of piracy, but actions like Sony's seem to indicate that the member companies actually believe that these losses are real. I can't think of any other reason why a company would expend so much to plug what seems to be a tiny hole. Maybe they're thinking that if you can't rip the CD, you'll buy the song again from an online service.
And in general, what makes them think OSS on Windows gets no respect? Granted, we're all too willing to accept without question the suggestion that there are some zealous assholes in the OSS community pissing on Windows software, but aside from the grumblings from DotNetNuke, is there any evidence of this being a widespread attitude? Swing by SourceForge and count how many of the most active and most downloaded projects are Windows only (I counted 4 and 8 respectively in each of the top ten lists).
So my message to Mr. Walker: There is no widespread bigotry against open source on Windows. The snubbing you're getting is directed at DotNetNuke in particular. You suck, deal with it.
My refrain to the copyright holders: The people being hurt by this DRM software are people who have already communicated their intent to do the right thing by purchasing the CD. Sony has just guaranteed that a lot of people will never make that mistake again.
Welcome to a Brave New World: People who pay for their music get viruses, while people who download it at no cost from illegal sources get clean MP3s that they can freely copy and use on whatever devices they own.
Another reason to back OpenOffice: Google's main business is search, and right now I imagine it's a royal pain in the ass to try to index all of the various documents out there locked up in proprietary formats. Microsoft can change the format for MS Word at any time and not tell anyone. At that point, Google's Word parsing functionality breaks and they have to reverse engineer it. And now that MS has declared war on Google this is a big deal; they'll be fighting in a where MSN will always be able to index .DOC files, and Google won't.
Now, imagine all of those MS Office files are replaced by files that store their data in an open and documented file format. Suddenly one of Google's potential blind spots in search, and one of MS' biggest potential advantages goes byebye. It is very much in Google's best interests for everyone to manage their data using free open source software.
The guys at Penny Arcade have already taken a swing at this one: "SEE THE NEW SHAPE OF FEAR!
Do you think your PC has better firewalling than Google's servers? Do you think your workstation is better protected from viruses than Yahoo's servers? Do you have a more robust backup and recovery plan than MSN? Is your hardware more reliable than what you'll find in a typical datacenter? Do you have 24/7 support? Do you have spare systems readily available? For > 99% of PC users, the answer to all of these questions is a big, freaking NO.
Take a look at web mail for a good example. Who do you think has a more reliable email client, the people who use GMail, or those who use Outlook?
It's like the relationship vehicles and highways have. Everyone owns their own vehicle, and they're responsible for the good running condition of that vehicle, and the highway facilitates the usefulness of that vehicle.
This is great analogy. Imagine Google came along and said, "Hey, we have this fleet of shuttles that'll take you anywhere you want to go, just pay us a fare every time you ride." You think about it. Because of the scale of their operations, they could be a lot more reliable, but you wouldn't actually own a vehicle, there would less choice and flexibility, and those afternoon drives along the coast would come to an end.
Now imagine that your car crashed as often as your PC. Vandals routinely tagged it, punks would take it for joyrides, and it gets recalled several times a year to fix some flaw. Even worse, the manufacturer wants to track where you're going, limit what you do, and charge you whenever you play the radio.
Microsoft has done wonders to reduce the value of actually owning a PC. If the trend continues, then there will still be plenty of us who own machines, developers, designers, gamers and the like. But for your basic office applications, it's entirely possible that people will get frustrated enough that they'll turn over the headache of software maintenance to someone else.
From: Concerned Citizen
CC: The Horse You Rode In On
It has come to my attention that the various companies represented by the Recording Industry of America sell, promote, and distribute music that contains material of an objectionable nature which may encourage listeners to commit various criminal acts.
I demand that you immediately cease the sale, promotion, and distribution of any and all music which could be interpreted by your audience (and audience which includes impressionable young listeners) as endorsing, encouraging, and/or glorifying any of the following activities:
I thank you in advance for your prompt action in this urgent matter.
So, if this flagging is so robustly implemented that it can be triggered by noise, how long will it take for someone to create a filter to eliminate that "noise"?
Egad, I can see it now: "With our innovative new filter, not only will your shows look clearer, they'll last longer!" Except I won't be laughing at that ad.
I'd like to point out that stoves have been blowing up houses for years without any assistance from ethernet.
Powerline broadband may be widespread in the future, but the cell phone network gets pretty good coverage right now. Your garbage disposal could have a cell phone build into it. Your toaster could be network aware right now. How would you know? Widespread WiFi presents the same problem.
If someone wants to get you by turning your appliances against you, they can. They don't need powerline broadband to do it.
So it looks like nothing much will change for people who use the software. If anything, this incident is an example of why you want your business-critical software to be open source. You're not necessarily screwed when somethign like this happens.
As a counter example: as the tech market was fixing to implode, the VC funding one of our vendors decided that the company would be mroe likely to sell if they used an ASP service model instead of selling software. So they stopped selling their software. There would be no more upgrades and no more licenses; the only option offered to us was to move to their hosted solution. Basically we were screwed. If the software were GPL, we wouldn't have been.
The Infocon is intended to measure change. We can't stay on yellow for ever.
Excellent observation. Now when will the Department of Homeland Security figure this out?
That's easy: Massport knows that the Logan reps are filthy fucking liars making a financially expedient but logically inconsistent argument in order to take out the competition. Proceed to Step 3.
The type of behavior really disgusts me.
I suggest making things really ugly: Sue the airport for putting its passengers at risk. Performing functions that are critical to security using equipment that can be made to malfunction by interference in an unregulated spectrum is clearly negligent for an airport. Their statement to Continental Airlines regarding their secuirty concerns is proof that they're aware of this risk but have no intention of correcting it. If Continental's wifi system represents a security risk, then so does anyone with a laptop or PDA equipped with a wifi adapter.
True enough. But I was focusing on what I thought was the innacurate portion of the review. The drive was generally described as "quiet, reliable, and fast." As I was using it, it was quite reliable and fast, but not quiet.
However had I been using the drive in the unplugged configuration it certainly would have been quiet and reliable, but I would have posted complaining that NewEgg's reviews were inaccurate regarding the drive's speed.
Here's a test I use on any site that posts customer reviews: I check out the reviews for products that I already own. I love NewEgg for the prices, selection, and service, but their customer reviews are crap.
I saw several reviews that described a hard drive I own as "quiet" among other things. It isn't, not by any stretch of the imagination that can be achieved without the use of mind-altering drugs. And anyone who owned on, or even read the drive's specs could tell this. After reading a number of NewEgg's review's I concluded that many people writing them were either on drugs or just filthly liars.
- Fake files. This is clearly a more primitive tactic and can be thwarted by clients that can be set to download the first parts of a file first.
- Incomplete files. The seeder reports having the entire file, but will never deliver certain parts of it. Thus, downloaders get stalled at 98.5%. And it's amazing how long people will wait for that last bit.
- Fake seeds. Haven't confirmed how this one works, but sometimes you'll see a torrent with an improbable number of seeders (e.g., 300 seeds and 100 leechers for a fairly new torrent). Lots of seeds attract more people.
- Timing. For example, demand for a movie will rise in the days shortly before its release. If you get your fake tracker up and running during that critical time before there's a real pirate version out, then you'll attract downloaders and waste their time. And there's a snowball effect: when people go to download from BT, all of things being equal they usually go for the tracker that has the most people on it.
Combine the tactics, and you've got a serious problem. Every user adds to the strength of the distribution network so tying up one client with a fake not only prevents that client from getting the material, it also keeps that client from helping others get it as well.If you're patient, persistent, and knowledgeable, you can avoid or minimize the impact of these spoofing tactics. But patient, persistent and knowledgeable don't really describe the average pirate (or just about anyone else, for that matter). The dedicated pirate simply won't be stopped, and the content producers know this.
Like you, I once assumed that the various forms of moderation on the torrent sites would mitigate this. But the countermeasure are slow to work, as I've seen fake torrents stay up for weeks. It's easy to post multiple new fakes. And users are incredibly clueless. I have, on several occasions, seen comment threads where several people will post "This is a fake, don't bother," but the torrent will still have thousands of people downloading and the very next comment will be something like "I've been stuck at 99% for three days, will somebody fucking seed this!!" Remember, the goal isn't to elimiate the network. The goal is to make it so untrustworthy and unreliable that it's too much trouble for Joe User and he'll go to the theater instead.
Now that chutzpah. Must be fun being White Buffalo's lawyer, though.
I guess someone finally figured out a surefire way of opting out of future mailings.