This really makes me question my vote for the pirate party. I really like them, as a voice for freedom on the internet and beyond, and would really like them to lay of the pirate propaganda and start preaching the gospel of freedom instead. Perhaps I bet on the wrong horse all along. Unfortunately I don't know what the right horse is.
They do "preach the gospel of freedom". If you e.g. have a look at their press releases, you'll see that very few of them are about copyright. But these don't make it very far across the Internet and with obscurity as their greatest threat in the upcoming elections, this kind of "propaganda" is necessary. Also the current issues regarding the pirate bay isn't about copyright as such, but instead about where liability stops.
From a branding perspective I think you're right. Corporations have been far too effective at using loaded words like piracy and intellectual "property" as a way to frame the argument.
"This really makes me question my vote for the pirate party. I really like them, as a voice for freedom on the internet and beyond, and would really like them to lay of the pirate propaganda and start preaching the gospel of freedom instead. Perhaps I bet on the wrong horse all along. Unfortunately I don't know what the right horse is."
I would vote for them as long as "freedom" doesn't mean the ability of anyone to download/share commercial software, music, and movies with no legal consequences.
I don't think piracy is such a bad thing. Imaging there's a gigantic library that has every music title, movie, TV show, book and software made by man in their shelfs and everybody has free access. Sounds like a desirable thing.
Now the problem of course arises when content creators don't get paid anymore and therefore content creation becomes unprofitable or the quality of the products diminishes. But neither of these things seem to be happening. Not even in the slightest. Entertainment is booming, movies and games reach new heights of invest and profit each year and despite having now a generation of children that probably never bought a music album in there life, Apple will tell you the music industry is far from dead.
So it actually seems you can have both - a highly profitable digital content industry, while having said content available for free to everybody.
That's kind of missing the point. The content isn't 'free to everybody' because there is always the spectre of getting caught and sued hanging over people's heads.
If the authors/content owners themselves said, "Here's this place where you can get all my content for free, legally, but still buy my albums from the store if you want to support me," then we could have a debate about the results of that.
So your disagreement with the status quo is the current brand of legal consequences being used? What do you propose instead that will have the effect of limiting downloading and sharing of the above, since that's what you seem to be after?
"What do you propose instead that will have the effect of limiting downloading and sharing of the above, since that's what you seem to be after?"
That people respect the wishes of the content providers by not going around them and downloading their content for free. Since it's obvious this isn't going to happen, it's going to have to happen by force.
I hear so many arguments on this site about respecting your fellow man when it comes to health care and paying your fair share of taxes. Yet, when it comes to someone selling software online, they don't deserve the money. It just seems very hypocritical to me.
If those are the issues you're concerned about then I don't think a Pirate Party is actually helpful.
But it's an interesting question: if you want a certain type of political change are you better off forming a crazy extremist group or a modest mainstream one?
I think the extremists are more effective. While people don't take them as seriously, they do move the balance of the discussion. It's like a see-saw {balance}. Where do you put a limited weight to have the maximum effect. Groups like The Sierra Club were ignored or seen as pretty fringe, until groups like Earth First came onto the scene.
Good thing you can't find copyright files to download via Google search. Otherwise it would be as bad as The Pirate Bay!
Enabling someone to break the law doesn't make the enabler culpable. We apply this standard to manufacturers of lock picks, crowbars, physical key-loggers, books detailing the security of computers, etc. I'm curious why you feel a different standard should apply to someone who provides hosting for torrent files. The onus is on the criminal, not those who provide tools which may or may not be used in a crime.
"We apply this standard to manufacturers of lock picks, crowbars, physical key-loggers, books detailing the security of computers, etc. I'm curious why you feel a different standard should apply to someone who provides hosting for torrent files. The onus is on the criminal, not those who provide tools which may or may not be used in a crime."
If I had a website setup exclusively for sharing valid credit card numbers (and yours was on my site), would you want my site taken down?
After all, the credit card number itself is just data (nothing is actually taken from the original owner when it is shared) and my site isn't actually doing charging anything to the cards.
As someone who just cancelled a CC after 2 transactions done by scummers, I find your example silly. I'm responsible for keeping my CC with me and the bank is responsible for providing on-line security. If a CC info was stolen from a shop's database, and then shared on some website, it doesn't matter that you can take that website down. Just cancel the CC and let the numbers rest forever.
Stealing a credit card is stealing in itself, you don't actually have to charge anything. The analogy isn't valid. The correct analogy is the fact that you can use Google to find numbers that look like credit card numbers. Similarly, hosting a copyrighted file is illegal. But providing the means in which to find said file is not.
There's a reason why the world should work this way. I can use a wide array of objects as a lock pick (i.e. a banana). To prosecute me for walking down the street with any of these objects (including actual lock picks) is just ludicrous. Hence why the law says that I actually have to demonstrate the intention to use a tool to steal something in order for it to be a crime. And in any case, the took maker is usually never liable.
It's a very simple idea. Prosecute the criminals, not the people who provide tools which might be used in a crime. Obviously there's an upper limit. For example, a grenade is a pretty unambiguous, single-use tool. That's why selling one is illegal. But most tools have many uses, some illegal and some not. It's an impossible task to go after the tool makers, so just go after the criminals.
"There's a reason why the world should work this way. I can use a wide array of objects as a lock pick (i.e. a banana). To prosecute me for walking down the street with any of these objects (including actual lock picks) is just ludicrous. Hence why the law says that I actually have to demonstrate the intention to use a tool to steal something in order for it to be a crime. And in any case, the took maker is usually never liable."
"Hence why the law says that I actually have to demonstrate the intention to use a tool to steal something in order for it to be a crime. And in any case, the took maker is usually never liable."
If you sell knives, you won't be prosecuted for murder. However, if you have a website detailing exactly how to kill someone, their schedule, and sell knives along with this guide, you probably will be held liable.
"It's an impossible task to go after the tool makers, so just go after the criminals."
It's not impossible to go after the tool makers. By going after TPB, they can potentially stop millions of downloads per day in one shot.
This is not what TPB is doing though: they provide a .torrent file that someone else hosts that could potentially contain credit card numbers (for example).
Now, if TPB had things plastered everywhere saying "20th Century Fox Movies," "Paramount Movies," and "Warner Bros. Movies" and all of these linked to illegal movies that none of those companies agreed to have up there for free.... Yeah, that might be bad.
Go to their site and look for something pushing illegal content. Their name contains pirate - that's a stretch. The mention they have music, movies, games, and software but these are not illegal in themselves. That's about as far as the rabbit hole goes.
"Go to their site and look for something pushing illegal content. Their name contains pirate - that's a stretch. The mention they have music, movies, games, and software but these are not illegal in themselves. That's about as far as the rabbit hole goes."
Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. TPB changes their main search graphic to various copyrighted books, software, and movies to flaunt it in the faces of the content creators.
I've never seen that, but if you have a source other than your mouth I'd love to see it. I've seen them change the graphic, but never to copyrighted works. Oh, and I wasn't saying that to "[make myself] feel better," I was saying it because it is true afaik.
This is assuming the Pirate Bay et al. are exclusively set up for sharing copyrighted information, when this not the case. You can find credit card numbers through Google as well. Anyway, the example just seems really silly, and as a previous commenter noted, whether your site is taken down or not doesn't matter: the card number is leaked (which has nothing to do with your site), I'm canceling it anyway.
The easier it is to find "stolen" credit card numbers, the easier it is for legitimate services to protect against their misuse (analgous to vulnerability disclosure).
But if someone takes money from your credit card then that amount is not there anymore, whereas if I download and watch a movie it does not diminish anyone's chance of watching it.
Now I might become less likely to pay for the movie after I downloaded it for free, but if that likelihood was zero already then where is the harm caused?
"But if someone takes money from your credit card then that amount is not there anymore, whereas if I download and watch a movie it does not diminish anyone's chance of watching it.
Now I might become less likely to pay for the movie after I downloaded it for free, but if that likelihood was zero already then where is the harm caused?"
We aren't talking about the act of charging money on the card (which technically, is still just a bunch of 1s and 0s being transferred from one place to another). We are talking about the act of sharing the card info (just like sharing torrents, my site isn't doing the illegal activity, only facilitating it)
@tsally but Google does not profit nor market itself directly or indirectly from copyright infringement. The Pirate Bay does markets itself and profits(in the millions) from facilitating and the inducement of copyright infringement.
I use to download but grew tired of hoarding content and then hard drive crashes. Thankfully the content creators created Hulu and other legitimate ways to consume their content online. Maybe those who upvoted this live outside of the US?
This argument doesn't apply. The things that you listed all have legitimate, non lawbreaking uses. For instance, security books can help you keep your computer more secure, lockpicks can help you understand your house security, and so on.
A torrent containing a link to a file that is illegal to copy has no legitimate non lawbreaking use case. There is no legal way to use a torrent of Portal. I notice you mentioned in a separate comment that some items, like grenades, can only be used in illegal ways. This is true also of torrents that the Pirate Bay hosts.
Yes, it is true that legal torrents exist; however, the Pirate Bay distinguishes itself as having both legal and illegal torrents. That's what the difference is.
As you say, legal torrents exist (indeed, many open source projects rely on torrents because they can't afford the bandwidth costs of direct download). Therefore, a torrent tracker has both legitimate and illegitimate uses. Similarly, I can find legal and illegal content via a Google search.
There isn't any ambiguity here. Torrents and web search are both multi-use technologies. In the case of multi-use technologies, we should prosecute the criminals based on their use of the technology in question.
I have downloaded many copyrighted works that I own physical media for as a convenience, since ripping them can be such a pain and kids are hard on little plastic discs. Courts have held that this copy is a legal copy.
To say there is no legitimate non-lawbreaking use is incorrect.
Yes, but I guess when you use Bittorrent for this purpos, you have to make sure that you are not sharing your legal copy with other people, who may not have purchased the work.
It is not my job to police them. Given I am utilizing the BT ecosystem to receive the copy, I share in return as payment. I do not share movies forever, but that is really just to keep my bandwidth from being saturated. If I just leach, then I won't have an opportunity in the future to have this convenience.
Would I prefer that they not pirate the stuff I download? Yes, I would. Content creators absolutely deserve to be paid for their efforts.
If content publishers would give me the convenience of a non-DRM infected digital copy (or the ability to easily rip a disc), I would not ever need to use BT. The digital copies of disks some publishers provide is close, but not good enough.
I was talking about the legal situation. Downloading of stuff you own may be legal. Sharing (even while you download) is not legal, if the license does not permit it.
> That talk about freedom of speech is a nice way of defending large-scale copyright infringement.
Copyright laws exist to restrict people's rights to free speech and freedom of communication. And in the age of the internet, business models based on scarcity of copies are obsolete; they cannot be propped up except by restricting the utility of the internet.
The copyright cartels (RIAA, MPAA, etc) want every computer to be a DRM-crippled locked down device like the iPad, and for themselves to have the power to kick anyone off the internet by merely accusing them of copyright infringement. If you don't want that future, it's time to support the Pirate Party.
"Copyright laws exist to restrict people's rights to free speech and freedom of communication. And in the age of the internet, business models based on scarcity of copies are obsolete; they cannot be propped up except by restricting the utility of the internet."
Businesses were never based on scarcity of copies, but scarcity of creation. The latest version of Photoshop can't be created with once click of a button. It takes many programmers and designers thousands of hours. Copying the bits is the easy part. When anybody can create (not copy) photoshop in their homes, I will agree with you.
"The copyright cartels (RIAA, MPAA, etc) want every computer to be a DRM-crippled locked down device like the iPad, and for themselves to have the power to kick anyone off the internet by merely accusing them of copyright infringement. If you don't want that future, it's time to support the Pirate Party."
There was an app designer awhile back that posted his sales numbers on reddit. He had 80% more sales on the iPhone. The reason? Android made it very easy for people to download his app and share it (and not pay) (he had the ability to see the people that pirated his app).
I wonder what would happen if I came out with the piratebay2 and claimed I was thepiraebay.com. If I made it look like the piratebay owned the site and I hurt their reputation in some way through disparaging comments. Would they (thepiratebay) come after me? After all, I'm not "stealing" anything. It should be fine, right?
My problem is that it has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Thepiratebay supporters want the ability to freely download commercial applications with no repercussions. I don't agree with this. If you don't want to buy a commercial application, that's fine (it's your right). But you shouldn't be able to download it for free without the owner's permission.
I also don't think many people realize what a world with no copyright would be like. Once a company got big enough, they would easily be able to take ideas from smaller companies just starting out. The smaller companies would have little legal recourse or enough resources to defend themselves.
Maybe your app developer should seek other ways of getting money out of his app. Not for this specific case but "in app purchase" and ads in apps are two great ways of earning money.
"Maybe your app developer should seek other ways of getting money out of his app. Not for this specific case but "in app purchase" and ads in apps are two great ways of earning money."
So instead of dealing with the actual problem (people pirating). He should just give it away for free with ads?
Well, i don't see it as a problem. All I say is try to adapt to the current situation, don't try to impose rules on people so that your way of seeing things continue. If people prefer to watch movies at their home w/out paying for it, what the movie industry should do is to find other ways of making money, becuase bannign things is not going to work.
"Well, i don't see it as a problem. All I say is try to adapt to the current situation, don't try to impose rules on people so that your way of seeing things continue. If people prefer to watch movies at their home w/out paying for it, what the movie industry should do is to find other ways of making money, becuase bannign things is not going to work."
By adapting, they are showing people that it's okay. It's not. Rules are imposed by most stores/companies. When you go to a store and take something off the shelf, you are required to checkout and pay for it. If everyone in a particular store felt that they could just leave without paying, should the store just work this into their business model?
Your line of thinking is a growing entitlement problem. People (especially younger than 30) feel entitled to software, music, and movies on the Internet.
One of the main arguments is that it's not stealing because revenue is not lost (like a physical item). My argument has always been that over time, the perceived value of the items would go down (because more and more people would expect to get it for free). Many of the posts in this thread are proving my point.
> One of the main arguments is that it's not stealing because revenue is not lost (like a physical item). My argument has always been that over time, the perceived value of the items would go down (because more and more people would expect to get it for free).
I can see that, but I suppose I see the first one as a natural sort of property right, and the second one not. The right not to have someone come into your house and physically remove things from it seems like something reasonable for the government to protect. But the right not to have those things lose value? If someone can make items in my home worthless without actually entering my home and taking them, e.g. by finding a way to make cheap copies of them easily, then I don't see that as a property-rights issue.
I do think encouraging innovation and creation is a worthwhile social goal, but it's different from the idea of protecting property imo. It might be done via quasi-property sorts of temporary monopolies (like patents and copyright), or through government subsidy of the arts and sciences, or both, but it's basically social engineering either way, and which mixture of approaches we take should be based on some analysis of what benefits we get out of each.
I think the idea here is that if society is moving away from a situation where knowledge/information is scarce and its distribution is costly, then businesses should find a way to profit under the new scenario, rather than trying to enforce old methodologies.
Fair enough, but the current problem is that it's hard to make money creating content without spending a lot of time learning to be a publisher. Sure, you can blog, but what if your thing is writing novels or paintings in some obscure artistic style?
The disruption of the old publishing ecosystem has created many new opportunities, but also undermined many specialized niche markets. In other cases, content has become more accessible in one context but unaffordable in others. The loss of income from recorded music is one factor in the increasingly high cost of concert tickets, so it's a lot more expensive to go see your favorite band than it used to be, and the higher revenue stream from established acts makes it more difficult for new ones to get in front of a larger audience.
Not exactly, but I guess I didn't explain it very well.
The thing is internet distribution is very high volume and low margin. That's a better deal for the consumer if they want something popular or amateur (in the sense of something created for love rather than profit). But as it's become the dominant model (and as it was preceded by big-box discount stores, particularly in the book trade), publishers focused on a smaller number of big selling authors, and there was correspondingly less cross-subsidizing of niche or starting authors that didn't have as much mass appeal, at least in the short term.
It's harder for a new or specialized writer to get into print than it used to be, because publishers can no longer afford to front the cost of keeping their books in print while waiting for them to gain traction based on an editor's instinct about literary quality. Not that I think there's anything wrong with publishing on the internet, or that making money is the only valid metric of an author's quality, but while some writers develop more slowly than others they still need to pay the bills. I like science fiction, for example, and over the last 30 years the variety and quantity of writers and subjects on the shelves has declined as publishers prefer their established moneymakers, or stories that can be marketed as trilogies, and so forth. Thanks to the success of that Twilight series, for example, my local Borders seems to have devoted a good quarter of the sci-fi/fantasy section to books about young vampires in love.
I'm just saying that a lot of niche-specific marketing and editorial infrastructure has fallen apart as the industry has shifted course, and made it more difficult for some producers and consumers to find each other. That publishing infrastructure looked superfluous from a business perspective and so many large publishers cut those departments to remain competitive, but business is notoriously focused on the short term. MBA logic would argue against committing resources to publishing, say, the first novel of a contemporary Burroughs or Joyce.
I don't mean this is a disaster of course - real talent will usually get noticed, and as mainstream publishers become more conservative (in the sense of preferring material with mass market potential) there are disruptive opportunities for small publishers and the book business in particular has been through such cycles before. Amazon is effectively the bookstore with infinite shelves so publications of minor interest aren't crowded out by flavor-of-the-month writers the way they are in bookstores. I have no wish to turn the clock back, I just don't think the disruption of the old paradigm an automatic win for consumers in every respect.
Copyright laws exist to incentiveize creation of works and help creators make money from their works.
If you don't like DRM, fine, neither do I when it keeps me from watching movies I've paid for or time- and media- shifting content that I've bought. Go join the EFF then, not The Pirate Bay. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Without copyright, how creators make money on content? By locking it in DRM boxes. TPB is on the wrong side in this fight.
"That talk about racial equality is a nice way of saying you just want a better seat on the bus." -- talking heads, 1955.
I don't think you get it. The question is whether copyright is morally right. Rosa Parks sat on the back of the bus. The Pirate bay moves their servers into parliament. People have always protested laws they feel are unjust and you clearly you don't seem to realize that. These guys have suffered considerable persecution for what they are doing so to frame it like "well they just want free copies of Toy Story 3" is bullshit.
Rosa Parks was engaging in civil disobedience, and the point of civil disobedience is that you demonstrate the unjustness of a law by openly breaking it and accepting your punishment. The unjustness of the punishment you receive will raise attention about the unjustness of the law.
Whatever the Pirate Party is engaging in, it's the complete opposite of civil disobedience, since they're trying to avoid getting punished for breaking the law.
