Why Web Pirates Can't Be Touched 402
gwoodrow writes "Forbes has a brief article about, essentially, the ultimate futility of fighting online pirates. From the article: 'As the world's largest repository of BitTorrent files, ThePirateBay.org helps millions of users around the world share copyrighted movies, music and other files — without paying for them ... That's illegal, of course — at least it is in the U.S. But when Time Warner's (nyse: TWX — news — people ) Warner Bros. studio accused them of breaking U.S. copyright law in 2005, the pirates gleefully reminded the movie company that they didn't live in America, but rather in the land of vikings, reindeer, Aurora Borealis and cute blond girls.' The article also touches on the many YouTube clones and AllofMP3.com."
Article is flawed. (Score:5, Insightful)
$1.65 tillion? (Score:2, Insightful)
How on earth can these people justify that figure? It's just insane, I hope the shit goes hard in the bastards
Re:Please everyone: (Score:1, Insightful)
Suppose I decide not to buy a CD, but a DVD instead. My decision has deprived the CD manufacturer of money. Have I stolen anything? No.
Suppose I decide to produce a CD of my own. Many people choose to buy my CD instead of somebody else's. I have deprived that other CD manufacturer of money. Have I stolen anything? Again, no.
There are many ways to deprive people of money. Not all of them are stealing. Not all of them are even illegal.
Exsqueeze me? Baking Powder? (Score:5, Insightful)
From June to October 2006 alone, the Recording Industry Association of America says that 11 million songs were downloaded from the site. AllofMP3 claims those sales adhered strictly to Russian law, but that doesn't satisfy the RIAA; the record labels have launched a lawsuit, asking for $150,000 for each stolen file, totaling $1.65 trillion.
I'm sorry, did they say $1.65 trillion? The RIAA is off their rocker for sure. That much money is going to have to involve a war.
Re:Please everyone: (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't take this the wrong way (Score:5, Insightful)
Please cite your references and explain any statistics quoted in your explanation. Please also quantify how much money the **AA have been deprived of by TPB. Please do this so that we can forevermore trust that the **AA member companies declining revenues and train-wreck-about-to-happen business model is doomed because of TPB and others like them.
If you can prove that this is driving the **AA member companies out of business beyond any doubt, I will start downloading music and movies illegally to help ensure a quick end to the **AAs of the world.
Thank you
The land of the free. (Score:2, Insightful)
(note to those who refer to the USA as America. America is not a country)
Cause and no-effect. (Score:1, Insightful)
So basically pirates will never suffer the "effects" (as in cause and...) of their actions. How about the "effects" as it relates to the innocents caught in the cross-fire?
Re:Please everyone: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please everyone: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Exsqueeze me? Baking Powder? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please everyone: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this concept so beyond otherwise intelligent people? because they will rationalise any bullshit if it lets them take stuff for free.
Be honest. Your taking stuff and not paying for it, because you think you wont get caught. Any other debate on the issue is just window dressing.
@#$% stock symbols (Score:3, Insightful)
But when Time Warner's (nyse: TWX -- news -- people ) Warner Bros. studio accused them...
It's annoying enough to trip over them when reading mainstream US news sites. Can we please keep them away from Slashdot? If I need the stock symbol for a company I either already know it because I'm an investor and it's my job to be elbow-deep in such arcana, or I can Google for it. If you really want to add it, use a bloody hyperlink instead of making the text unreadable with parenthesised shit.
Go RMS on them. (Score:4, Insightful)
So: It is NOT theft, or stealing. It is copyright infringement.
Re:Cause and no-effect. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:can't the submitter (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, they left in the unlinked link data. I don't mind that it shows the stock symbol, but then it says "news -- people". These must have been links in the copied text.
Seriously, guys. Seriously.
typo? (Score:5, Insightful)
you typed this:
you probably meant to type this:
it's a pretty common mistake, those keys are so close together. i accidentally type that all the time.
Re:That's because... (Score:2, Insightful)
I know lots of people who go to movies all the time so in a sense supporting it then if its one they like they download it for future use.
I understand loss in business, but most of the people who use torrents are younger and students who couldn't afford or wouldn't buy it anyways.
On the other hand i think most IT students use software to learn it and better them selfs in the industry, If no-one could get it for free and learn on their own, how think how useless they would be going into a job and using it on a professional level! So you could argue that it should be acceptable as long as they arnt using it for profits.
Re:Article is flawed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, the US's version of copyright is more the exception than the rule.
Secondly, The *IAA is an American organisation but not all its members are in fact American Corporations. Fair use in Germany (where Sony BMG is based) is much more genuinely fair than in the US, BMG has never managed to change that.
Thirdly, if you want to examine legal parallels for international Internet law then you should look at the development of international Maritime Law. After millennia of shipping technology being available, and the finest legal minds in history having examined the problems, there is no international standard Maritime Legal system.
Yes, there is broad agreements and treaties between many countries, but there are just as many disagreements and disputes. There are rogue nations, and there is still real piracy.
The *IAA needs to understand that while the preposterous US copyright laws protect them in that country, they have already lost the War pretty much most other places. And those of you who are American here, need to wake up and realise that your laws are designed to protect you and your interests, not just your country's business interests. You need to take your country back from the Corporations. Your Founding Fathers were wise people with a pretty good understanding of human nature. 14 years is enough copyright for anyone.
The DMCA, is a law that steals from most American citizens, and penalizes no-one outside your borders. The DMCA hinders your economy, because without it your *IAA industries would need to adapt to survive - and they do have the means and technology to successfully adapt and survive in a manner that allows you value and fair choice.
Re:Biased article, but what can you expect from Fo (Score:4, Insightful)
Artists are really caught in the middle at this point. The organizations that claim to represent their interests have violated the public trust and the public interest, by extending copyright into perpetuity. They have thus destroyed the basis on which copyright is granted in the first place. The social contract is broken, and thus, natural rights take over. The natural right of free speech. This is not a case of not liking their distribution license, they have cast off the right to even bargain such points. Artists must (and many are) divorce themselves from the organization that have created this situation if they wish to regain legitimate right to copyrights. For it is now broken.
Re:The land of the free. (Score:3, Insightful)
And just in case you were confused, the common usage of "Americans" refers to citizens of the United States of America, not the entire population of North and South America.
As much as I want to believe this to be true, I've been told that if you're in Central America or South America and say to a native (who speaks Spanish), "Soy americano", the reply might be, "Sí? Yo también!" Or at least said a Spanish teacher I had who was a native of Colombia.
I'd be pleased to hear if this was perhaps a bit of truth stretched thin.
Re:Please everyone: (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not pseudo intellectual. Theft requires you to actually take something from someone, and deprive them of the use of that thing. "Piracy", as it is today online (and perhaps incorrectly termed), is making an exact copy (or, frequently, an inferior copy; if it was superior I think that's called "competition") of something.
Now, let's use the slashdot car analogy. If you made a car, and then I came along with a technology that can exactly (or almost exactly) produce a copy of that car by pointing a little device at it, result would be that you have a car and I have a car that looks almost, if not exactly, like your car. I haven't deprived you of anything, so it isn't theft.
This is of course why the legal fiction of "intellectual property" has become such a hot topic in the last 10 years or so. The feeling is that if I made something, under the "old" commercial system, in order for someone else to get that thing (during the tenure of my patent or copyright), someone must pay me for it since I am the only one who knows how to do it, has the equipment to do it, employ the people who have the knowledge to make it, etc. But now with digital things, anyone with the proper tools can make a copy and not have to pay me for it. Now, while that must suck, I've yet to understand why people feel entitled to make money from "stuff" they have. Enter DRM, which attempts to make people unable to make their own from "my" original. The result of this is the folks that put images on public webpages and then get mad when people copy them straight from the webpage (now, the cases where someone takes a piece and represents it as their own original work fall under copyright, which I tend to be more sympathic to, but wish the Sonny Bono Act never happened; plus that's just lame), leading to all those silly Javascript tricks on images to try and prevent right-clicking.
Sure, in an ideal world we'd all make little things and buy them from each other, and all would be well. However, that's not how it works in the world of digital stuffs. The artificial scarcity that makes physical goods producers able to (to an extent) manipulate their asking prices is, by the nature of the medium severely limited. Yet, online content producers find ways to make respectable livings without silly DRM schemes. The key is, of course, to offer something people want at a price they are comfortable paying. There's lots of ways to do this. However, pricing Photoshop at $700 for a single license (and wondering why everyone and their brother copies it instead of buying it) probably isn't the best way to do it (for one example).
In short, no, it isn't theft unless you change the meaning of the word. Like the pony express, if a company can't adapt their business practices in the face of new technology, they're gonna go out of business. No one is entitled to a profit.
Re:Please everyone: (Score:3, Insightful)
let me guess, you dont care, because like most copyright infringers, you dont make creative content for a living, and are just loving the excuse to take other peoples work for free arent you?
Re:Please everyone: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that there is absolutely no proof that file-sharing decreases revenue at all. Rolling Stone published an article that showed those who file share are more likely to spend the most money on music (not CDs in particular, but concerts, band t-shirts, etc.). I, for one, would not be such a huge Dream Theater fan if my friend hadn't of burned me a copy of Train of Thought to introduce me to the band. I downloaded a few songs off their CDs and now I am a proud owner of every single album and anxiously awaiting Systematic Chaos. There are tons of bands that people have introduced to me this way and I have spent tons of money on music and I'm sure I will continue to do so. And yes, I encourage people to buy music or attend concerts if they like the band.
Re:The land of the free. (Score:2, Insightful)
Last I checked, Brazil referred to a country ONLY, and there was no continent named Zimbabwe. However, we have not one but three continents named "America" (North, Central, South)
The poster's point was simply to avoid ambiguity. When there are three continents and a country, all of which go by the same name (not to mention all the Other things named America [wikipedia.org]) it's simply sensible to specify that you're talking about the United States of America. Remember that not all of Slashdot is from the USA, so not everybody is likely to immediately think of Mom, Apple Pie and the Statue of Liberty when they hear "America".
Re:The land of the free. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the point - the continents are "North America" and "South America", or "The Americas"; nothing but the country is every referred to simply as "America".
Also, "Central America" is not a fucking continent!
Re:Please everyone: (Score:2, Insightful)
It takes time and money to create the "stuff" in question.
While some people do it purely for the fun/love of doing it, even many of these also have to invest significantly to produce a quality, desirable result.
There are very, very VERY few "free" movies worth anything. There are a few Star Trek fan mini-movies that are almost watchable, usually about on par with the original (cheesy, campy) original ST series. Otherwise, that's it.
But, introduce money into the equation, and suddenly you get watchable, interesting content. So if we don't provide some mechanism to fund the creation of these valuable works, what do you suggest we do to encourage their creation?
Oh, that's right - you figure it all should be free, and you should have an unlimited right to take it, under the misguided notion that whether or not copyright infringement is stealing involves the other consumer?
Idiot. "Copyright infringement" is theft (directly or indirectly) from the producer of the copyrighted work! Even the beloved "super free" GPL only works in the presence of strong copyright law! I say that we let the producer decide how he/she/they want(s) to get compensated, and let the marketplace decide the best formula.
Unauthorized Copying Is Not Piracy (Score:4, Insightful)
What is piracy? Piracy is when someone takes goods, that are legally protected by property rights, and that are being transported from one place to another, without authorization from the owner of the goods, depriving the owner of those goods from their use and economic value.
What is unauthorized copying? Unauthorized copying is taking a pattern of information that is legally protected by copyright and is fixed on a physical substrate, and creating a similar or identical pattern of information on another physical substrate, without permission of the copyright holder, in a manner that does not have a statutory exemption from copyright protection. (Whew!)
As you can see, these things are quite distinct from one another. I don't believe that they are even comparable. The use of the term "Piracy" to describe "Copying a protected work without permission of the copyright owner" is misleading, pejorative and dishonest.
Whether or not you support actual physical piracy (yarrrr, matey) and whether or not you support unauthorized copying, if you want to have an honest debate you should use correct terminology.
Re:Please everyone: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even better: Pirates should just confess to attempted murder. They're trying to kill off the entire commercial music industry.
Oh, wait, that would be really fucking stupid.
Theft and copyright infringement are different offenses and should be handled differently just as property rights and copyrights are handled differently.
Calling copyright infringement stealing is simply a means for copyright holders to frame the debate in such a way that they can more easily claim more power for themselves. If you assume the two are equivalent, then many of the arguments against increased intellectual property protections start to sound absurd. Should my neighbors have fair use rights to my bicycle? Should my car enter the public domain and be free for anyone to use after a certain amount of time? Of course not.
But if we call it stealing, then we the people are put in a position where we have to justify what we do with the copyright holders' "property", when instead it's the copyright holders who should have to explain why the government should send people with guns and badges to arrest people for copying a computer file.
Re:Please everyone: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather you didn't take it. That would be stealing.
However, if you come by and wave a magic wand and create yourself exact duplicates, it wouldn't bother me.
If only information were like manufacturing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Manufacturing has always been plagued by scarcity. For instance, in the US and Canada and Europe, there's a scarcity of cheap labour. So stuff that can be sent overseas is sent overseas. But overseas, there's a scarcity of knowledge in areas of research, development, automation, and quality control. So anything that is heavy on those things either have a heavy knowledge and personnel export, or they are kept at home.
My background is manufacturing in Canada, and I can tell you this: typical tool and die, mould-makers and other rather simple (comparatively) stuff is going to China and India, and complicated, highly technical, highly automated products like aerospace are staying here. In fact, traditional trades are slowing right down, but aerospace is absolutely booming in Ontario.
The problem is that information has no such scarcity and flows easily away. Whether this information is media or trade knowledge. While we may have the cultural upper hand right now, and while we may have the automation and quality control upper hand right now, information like that won't take long to get to China and other low-wage regions.
So in all their wisdom, our lawmakers have collectively decided to stop that flow as best they can. Whether they can stop it is yet to be seen, but from what I can see, it's doomed to fail. Or, put another way, artificial scarcity is just that: artificial and easily overcome.
They arent 'online pirates'! (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats like holding Ford liable beacuse they sell cars, that could be used in a hold up, or to run someone over.
Re:Article is flawed. (Score:3, Insightful)
It assumes that copyright law around the world will not eventually be in line with U.S. copyright law as per the wishes of the *AA
I disagree. The author (Andy Greenberg) is assuming, or hoping for anyway, the exact opposite. In fact, that is the point of this article, to raise public awareness of how much money is being lost due to other nations not getting their copyright laws "in line". The hoped for result is more pressure on foreign governments to do something. Think of the article as "lobbying" rather than "journalism".
"Repository of BitTorrent files" ?? Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:typo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember the stupid guy (Score:2, Insightful)
And with that the entire market for people trying to sell their work goes down the drain. The value of software is not defined by its scarcity (as it has none). Its value is determined by a) how much it will help you and b) and cost of development, support, infrastructure, salaries, etc.
If you want his product then it has value to you. If something has value to you then you are willing to barter for it or will take it. Your morals will dictate which path you choose.