Pirate Bay owners sentenced to prison

Remove all ads!

Thank you, Monty

That was 1841. The 'culture of entitlement' is a direct consequence of the copyright laws. The corporate lobbyists got their unreasonable restraints; the public is now pillaging and defrauding.

Who could have seen it coming?

 

I see piracy of downloadable content more in a Thoreau's Civil Disobedience way. I pirate because I see the entertainment industries as unjust and my only way to fight them is by piracy. If I thought a movie was worth seeing on the big screen or paying for the extra features on a DVD, I would pay them. If a game is worth buying in order to avoid cracked annoyances (and/or customer service), I'll buy the game. I don't download music much anymore, but I hardly feel 99 cents is worth the price of a song I can listen to on pandora or youtube whenever I want. If there was an option to pay a monthly or yearly fee for all of this material I'd pay it. Oh wait I do, its called my cable/internet bill. Also for the record I do use Netflicks, but sometimes their online selection bad and I don't feel like arguing with the roommates on what 3 movies we should have at one time. When companies stop charging way too much for their products, which I feel should be released solely to be enjoyed not profitable anyways, I'll start paying for everything I want to watch, listen, or play.

 

I wonder where our fearless leader/admin falls on this scale...

Anyway, I think that actual jail time is absurd. Because of this "victory", there are going to be a lot more scare tactics where the MPAA and RIAA target a few people and either sue them for 100000x the value of what they stole, and/or they will press criminal charges. So a few 4 minute songs will get a few people a few years in jail and cost them a few hundred thousand dollars...while the rest of the world will quickly forget about the latest scare tactic and continue downloading stuff like nothing ever happened.

 

WTF?

 

I prefer to protest high prices by simply not buying or using the item until it's at a lower price. I have never paid full price for a game, but I have also never pirated a game.

 

I think I need to restate my case.
These numbers are just an example of what I'm talking about. I have in no way researched this fully to have every statistic needed, but I think the point gets across.

In 2005, Drew Barrymore pulled in $22 million, Tom Cruise $31 million, Jennifer Lopez $17 million and those aren't even the highest paid. Sure they have some talent, but not $20+ millions worth.
Titanic has made $600,788,188, Dark Knight $533,184,219, and Star Wars: IV $460,998,007 all time domestic (USA+Canada). Sure, I liked Dark Knight and saw it in theaters twice and Star Wars is well Star Wars, but Titanic? Come on!

There is no reason any film, actor, or production company needs to gross that much money, ever. Not when the average income in the United States is only $50K a year (and I'm sure its much lower in less prosperous nations).

I'll give you video games, I don't even play anything that's post 2003-4 anyways, much less download them. If I'm downloading a video game chances are its something old school because I can't get my hands on a SNES or Sega Genesis and I have to emulate them anyways. But the main reason I don't try out anything recent is because including inflation $60 is way too much for a game that chances are it will suck.

Like I said Music is pretty much free through Pandora.com or Youtube.com so its not even worth discussing.

By this I meant: Come on people, evolve with the times. We're in the Youtube age. Millions of people produce material by the bucket loads for anyone and everyone to enjoy SOLELY for people to enjoy it. Half the stuff out there is better than most of the stuff that comes from Hollywood anyways. If they are making money, then they do it through advertisement which are advertising solid, tangible items in the first place. As I see it, I pay a fee to see this material, its just too bad that my internet company is receiving the profit instead of whoever you think should be getting the money. Maybe I'm an idealist, a communist, or a pirate, but until society changes to how it should act, nothing's going to change. Just because a law is in place doesn't mean I have to sit back and wait for it to change.

That said, I almost only download tv shows and movies. I download movies because there's only been about 10 in the past decade that are worth the $10 to see in a theater or buy the dvd. I watch the movie once and normally delete it afterwards. I only download tv shows because CBS is behind the times and refuses to stream episodes online like the other broadcast channels.

 

Well, no argument there, but I have to say that I have less problem that than I do with so-called top executives making similar money where those execs have only their own self-interest at heart. At least entertainers are entertaining.

While I see what you're saying, music on youtube exists only because the copyright owners allow it to exist. And they allow to exist because they feel that, in the long run, they'll make money as a result. People have a right to make a living, and expecting them to give their talents away is unrealistic, at least in a western society.

 

Lawful vs. chaotic

What did I miss? I must´ve been hibernating...
Are you talking about the pre-9/11 world? Yeah it was awful back then.

This illustrates what it boils down to: differences in perception. Lawful vs. chaotic.

I hate to get philosophical (coz i'm not that good at it), but you guys force my hand.
Any product of humanity, even as innocuous as entertainment, is meant to be enjoyed by people. Some entitled owners feel that their product should be enjoyed only by those who pay. That excludes the people who can't afford it, as well as those unwilling to pay. This is detrimental to society, because the access to information is restricted.
The lawful viewpoint is one of prioritizing those entitled, allowing them to enforce their decision.
The chaotic viewpoint is one that considers the benefits to society as a whole, weighing it above the will of the owners.
Chaotic viewpoints are hard to defend by lawful reasoning, you can try, but will probably fail.

In my socialist country, I was able to complete a universitary study, because arrangements were made for the state to fund my study. So, despite coming from a relatively poor background, I now have academic credentials that compare to someone with a family that paid for it (they get partial funding). Some may see that as fair, others as unfair. But the fact is, that my study has enriched me, and as a result, the society I live in.
It seems silly, but freely available entertainment also enriches society. This is always how I will see it. Laws exist to serve society, and when they don't, they need to change. And I can only hope that they will, otherwise society will deteriorate into...

No, the opposite of that.

soo
a relatively anarcho-capitalist/reactionary bubble of the first order!

 

"It's worthless to prove what everyone knows" and a link to an encyclopedia that anyone can edit with sources that aren't exactly reliable and reputability problems regarding lack of accountability.

Your knowledge of law internationally is unfortunately lacking sufficiently that you're just plain lying.
Downloading became a crime in Finland in 2006, no earlier.

Broken window fallacy.

I cannot put it better than that - my earlier tirade about non-commercial copyright infringement gains an additional justification.

Lawyers can confirm subjective moral opinions now?

I don't even listen to the pope, why should I consider you a supreme moral guide?
And it looks like you're going against a large group of other people, as well. "twisted" is such a subjective term when applied to morality.

Ad hominem does not an argument make; neither does broken window.


Just a few points I found slightly objectionable.

 

Priceless

Laws change when the system doesn´t work. Your morality will change as a result in a decade or so, because you´re devoutly lawful.
An example: The mortgage and banking system scewed up recently, and now more government regulation is advised. Before this, you probably wouldn´t dream of supporting gov´t control of the economy, preferring to trust in the self-regulation of the system.
Illegal downloading is a symptom of a failing system. You advocate a crackdown on piracy, a very american response. I prefer to support alternatives that work to remedy the situation. By buying merchandise from a free online webcomic (OOTS) for example.
Artists can always earn enough revenue to fund their business, but in the future, revenues won´t be as exorbitantly high as they are now. Which means less for record companies and the like.

 

And being a lawyer isn't needed for the argument - nor does it really lend it any weight. It's an appeal to authority through and through.

I sleep pretty badly, but I assure you, this issue isn't one of those keeping me awake at night. No moral quandary whatsoever.

 

There's a problem with your metaphor, the way they prosecute most illegal downloading would be more akin to underage drinking. Its against the law and for a good reason. But no matter how moral that reason is, there are way too many underage drinkers constantly breaking the law that the police don't do anything about it and if they could they just don't care. They only bother trying to crack down on the HOW those underagers illegally obtain their alcohol and even then they do a poor job at it. If you live in a country outside of the United States, you may have trouble understanding that analogy, but its much closer to the truth of what downloading piracy is than outright stealing a tangible object.

 

When I worked for Circuit City Stores (RIP) he came into one of our stores in LA and saw that a sales guy was using "Top Gun" to demonstrate a big screen TV. Cruise demanded that everytime a CC sales guy used one of his movies in any of our stores to demo a TV that he should receive compensation. There was an open copy in our video department as well, including about 15 other different movies they used, and they had to remove any movie of his from the department, including the computers, where I worked.

I never used one of his movies to demo playback on a PC, since I used "Toy Story" at the time of the big "Cruise Crisis" instead. Circuit is no longer, but the movie industry could go out of business the same way and I would not shed a tear or give a flip in the least (if we were that lucky). Good riddance to those guys.

The gaming industry, the music biz, Reailty TV, the "Movie" corporations - all these jokers are affiliated in some way regardless. 90 percent of what they "produce" is crap anyway and they know it - It's worthless as it is. Most of it's not worth the price of a blank DVD or the time to copy it. It's even amsuing that they refer to it as "intellectual propety." That's just my opinion.

 

First off, it's not a metaphor, it's an analogy.

Secondly, your own analogy about underaged drinking has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

I agree with coin that the current system of crackdowns isn't going to have any real impact. That doesn't take away from the illegality of piracy, though.

 

Which does nothing to address, let alone rebut, the point. Unreasonable restraints were in place long before peer to peer networks were developed. The restraints only became more unreasonable with the hilariously named Sony and Bono Copyright Term Extension Act

And the difference between actual theft and copyright violations is that in the former, the perpetrator is inflicting actual harm on an actual person (or corporation, but whatever). The victim is being deprived of something. That is simply not true for copyright violations.

I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about the software I pirated--like a Somali, but different--back in high school. Because I didn't cause any harm to anyone. Which an actual thief cannot say. Oh, and I already spent all the money I could spend on games, so there wasn't even a loss potential of sales. The stuff I downloaded and didn't purchase wouldn't have been purchased anyway; I simply didn't have the money. And, of course, I did purchase a number of the titles I downloaded. You'll have a difficult time convincing me I should feel guilty about having committed a crime that was victimless and could not have been other than victimless.

Likewise, I don't feel guilty about having downloaded all five season of Babylon 5 because they weren't available on DVD when I did so--and when they were available, I bought them.

You may not agree with or share the sense of morality, but what's so incomprehensible about it?

 

I wrote more about software piracy here and here.

I agree with AMaster to a great extent, especially as far as copyright laws are concerned. They reach their high (or rather, low) point when you have games like Mass Effect that allow you just three installations on different systems before the game won't work any more. Of course I can understand the reasoning of that contract, but that are end user agreements forced down the customer's throat that don't reflect a reasonable understanding of what rights come with a purchase and property (i.e. do as you please). I have bought the game, but I gather a pirate doesn't have to bother with such idiocies, and indeed, should I upgrade my comp two more times and still want to play Mass Effect, I retain for myself that option, because it is is unreasonable to expect me in that case to buy the game twice.

I pirated some of the games I played. The good ones I later bought as a matter of principle. I pirated some for the simple reason that the German translations were so poor, that I wanted to play the English version. I am replaying KotoR 2 now, in German, and to bring just one example: A text passage of a dialogue of the main char with Atton that must have been "Did you change your mind?" in English was translated into German as "Hast Du Deinen Geist verändert?" which again roughly translates back into English as a distorted "Did you change your ghost/spirit?", in a context of Jedi Powers. It is so obvious that from the distorted German text I can easily deduct what the original text must have been in English, and that there is a difference. Just one example of many. In such cases, I get an inferior product when purchasing the German version. In such cases I usually bought the German version and played a pirated English one. The availability of language options in game installation has severely reduced the need to revert to such measures of interest protection.

I then didn't have a credit card enabling me to purchase an 'untainted' copy of the game, say in Britain. Games were not available in English in Germany, and if so, only at steeply inflated prices, like 25% up for a game that already sells at 45 Euro. I remember that I once had to send my rest of British currency to a board user in Britain, so he could purchase IWD-2 for me, and send it to Germany. Worked (h/t to Wildfire). I now have found a solution in buying games later, and/or on Amazon.co.uk (and through sorcerers), and when they are cheaper.