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Why Web Pirates Can't Be Touched
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu May 17, 2007 01:44 PM
from the except-by-elliot-ness dept.
from the except-by-elliot-ness dept.
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."
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That's because... (Score:5, Funny)
Article is flawed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Article is flawed. (Score:4, Funny)
Put down the bottle, man. What the hell does Alcoh...al..alcho...boozers anoni...anon..an...dammit, what dows AA have to do with copyw...copir...copyrit...that stuff anyhow?
No they don't. (Score:5, Informative)
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:typo? (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Article is flawed. (Score:4, Informative)
No, that's untrue. Intangible properties are common.
For example, if you own a share of stock in a company, that share is intangible, and represents a fraction of the company (many of the assets of which are also intangible), but it's certainly property. Another kind of intangible property would be a debt. For example, if you deposit $1 with your bank, the bank now owes you a debt of $1. That debt can be transferred to someone else without having to withdraw the dollar.
The test for whether or not something is property has three parts, and is as follows: 1) The thing must be capable of being used or enjoyed in some manner by the owner; 2) The owner must be able to lend the possession of the thing to another whilst still retaining his ownership of it, and must be able to force it to be returned, and; 3) The owner must be able to dispose of the property by selling it, giving it away, destroying the thing, etc.
A parcel of land satisfies all three tests. So does a brick. So does a share of stock, or a debt.
In the copyright debate, there are three distinct things that we often talk about: creative works, copies, and copyrights.
A creative work is like a story, or music, or a movie. It is the intangible thing that is what the author created. While there might be only one instance of it, it is possible for a single work to simultaneously exist in multiple instances, often millions. For example, there are many books in which 'Macbeth' is printed, but there's only one story involved, and they all just contain an instance of it.
A copy is a tangible object in which a work is fixed. For a story, it might be a book, e.g. a paperback or a hardcover. For a movie, it might be a reel of film or a DVD. For a song, it might be a page of sheet music, or a CD. A copy of a work isn't the same as the work itself; destroy one copy of Macbeth and that copy itself might be gone, but the story still exists.
And a copyright is an artificial legal right which pertains to creative works and copies thereof. It is not the same as either a work or a copy; many works and many copies exist without copyrights related to either. When a work passes into the public domain, the copyright dissolves, but the work and its copies are unscathed.
A creative work isn't property (it fails the second test and usually fails the third). A copy is certainly property. A copyright is arguably property, but could perhaps be construed in a different fashion.
obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
Where? (Score:4, Funny)
North Korea?
can't the submitter (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (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.
Re:can't the submitter (Score:5, Funny)
Just wait (Score:3, Interesting)
huh? (Score:5, Funny)
....
Should I point out thepiratebay doesn't really host any copyrighted material or did that argument get old already?
Re:huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Have you ever been to Minnesota? It's not like they have anything going on at the moment. I heard they were planning to invade Wisconsin, but then someone mentioned a problem they had with lactose, so it was called off in favor of a quilting bee and a curling contest.
Minnesota, more Canadian than Canada.
Readable version (i.e., no obscene amount of ads) (Score:5, Informative)
"Printer friendly" version [forbes.com].
It's also much more eyeball-friendly.
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Exsqueeze me? Baking Powder? (Score:4, Informative)
Interestingly, the estimated GDP of the entire Russian Federation in 2006 was $1.727 trillion using the purchasing parity power scale; nominal GDP is even less at $979 billion in 2006 [1] [wikipedia.org]. Somehow, even if they win, I don't think the RIAA is going to be collecting on that bill anytime soon.
I'm moving (Score:5, Funny)
I'm moving. Vikings, blonde girls, AND pirates? Irresistible!
Biased article, but what can you expect from Forbe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Biased article, but what can you expect from Fo (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Biased article, but what can you expect from Fo (Score:5, Informative)
No. It's not. In Russia, the law allows allofmp3.com to operate by making use of a compulsory licensing scheme, not unlike what the copyright board wants to foist upon internet radio (though, in that case, the costs are absolutely outrageous, and intended to shut operators down). So, allofmp3.com pays some fee to the Russian copyright whozits, and thus they are allowed to operate legally. Calling this "stealing" or "copyright infringement" is plain and simply wrong, and author of the article is clearly showing their bias by reporting it as such.
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:Biased article, but what can you expect from Fo (Score:4, Informative)
Just because your record label doesn't want to pay you the royalties AllofMP3 has collected on your behalf that doesn't mean they don't give you 'jack shit' for your music, it just means you are either too dumb to collect the check or more likely you hired a RIAA member to act as your agent and they are not collecting the money for their own reasons. It is also quite likely that you aren't talking about your music at all, but a recording whose copyright you sold to an RIAA member, in which case you have a contract dispute with them, not a dispute with AllofMP3.com
But all this aside, AllofMP3 is a good lesson in why we can't continue selling copies of music. What they are doing is selling music at prices that make sense in their economy, actually they are a bit pricey for Russia. What they are doing is practicing arbitrage. Arbitrage is the what drives the global economy and trying to stop it is a fools errand (see DVD region codes and various other failed schemes attempted in the last 500 years).
So what to do? Well we can differentiate the product line, sell cheap and expensive versions of the same thing, Tide comes in bags in third world countries and bottles in first world countries. It's the same stuff, but if our local Stop-n-shop started selling Tide in bags you would expect to pay less. This can only account for a 25-30% markup in the rich countries, and the income differential is more like 1000%, so to maximize your income you price for the rich countries and sales in the rest of the world go to a very tiny market segment. BTW This is basically how textbooks work today, they are printed only in paperback in some countries and only in hardback in other countries. But with things as easily and cheaply copied as music we won't be able to keep it out of poor childrens hands like we do textbooks (Try to convince someone living on a $2 a day that they are an evil pirate and should pay $25 for each CD, the $0.25 they do pay is a major outlay.) At my local deli all the detergent bottles have Spanish directions and the batteries are from Israel (Duracells, shipped from here to the Middle East and back).
We can try to attach a social stigma to buying things cheap, "Oh, you have the J.C. Penny Madonna? I have the Gucci Madonna!" This only goes so far.
We can sell everything close to 3rd world price, say $0.50. I don't imagine this would be popular with most copyright holders.
We can move to a donation model. I've considered this myself and from what I can gather from the stats you can expect to get about 10% buy in if you can hold their attention. Your market expands maybe 4x, and you can't increase the donation amount much above current sale price, so your take falls to about 50% of current take. Plus there is the business risk of trying this out, what if everyone just listens to your particular album a couple times and then toss it, they may not give you a donation. And there is a fairness issue, I don't mind people paying less because they have less, but I do mind the millionare moocher.
We can move to a survey based royalty system. You could keep payments to artists about the same as they are now and increasing each year as the music "buying" world gets bigger. In this system each government would pay the artist on a local scale based on the number of people listening to the artists music in that country. This would have to be paid out of taxes, perhaps CD-ROM and internet connection taxes, perhaps just the general fund. This would be the fairest system to artists and consumers alike, but would be opposed because of the 'taxes are evil' growd and because in this scheme the artist gets the royalty and pays it to the label
Thank you! (Score:5, Funny)
How does Forbes get away with it? (Score:5, Interesting)
@#$% 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.
There are places where RIAA shit does not pass (Score:3, Interesting)
not only every country's representatives are presold suck-ups to big buck. surprise, surprise, RIAA member crooks, you might have bought laws in united states for harassing "the people", who are the reason united states was founded for, but, look, your walled does not leverage any weight in many other countries. oh you poor riaa crooks you.
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.
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Go RMS on them. (Score:4, Insightful)
So: It is NOT theft, or stealing. It is copyright infringement.
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please everyone: (Score:4, Interesting)
I personally make a lot of creative content, preform publicly and even market my works all without requesting any monetary contribution.
I realize that others may be profit motivated, but a lot of musicians simply play for fun.
There wouldn't be any lack of music or a lack of films if the MAFIAA closed tomorrow and the studios closed their doors.
If that were to happen you may indeed see a cultural revolution of sorts where Britteny Spears and Spiderman 4 are replaced with actually creative works.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Please everyone: (Score:5, Interesting)
Gotta love frothing rants in response to well-reasoned arguments, but I'll respond in spite of it.
I suspect that you've deliberately misunderstood and are intentionally misrepresenting my statements, since I didn't write that. However, if you make paper airplanes and try to sell them, should no one else be able to make copies of your paper airplane?
Because by and large consumers like to pay for the Real Thing. This is the idea behind the Windows Genuine Advantage bit, though obviously it was clumsily implemented. If you have a shitty product, no one is going to buy it. Should we be also legally guarantee that if someone makes something, they will get revenue from it, even if it sucks?
Lord of the Rings cost a ton to make, but also made a hojillion dollars in merchandising, home video releases, etc. Why? Quality product and merchandising that consumers wanted, and it was all sold at a price they wanted to pay. Photoshop may indeed cost a lot to make, but it's obviously not sold at a price consumers want to pay. Adobe's answer to this, it seems, was to make Photoshop Elements. PSE is up to version 4.0 I think, so it at least hit some sort of pricing sweet point.
Ahh, strawmen. I make plenty of creative content. Don't make much money from it, but I do make it. But let's apply this to a well-known set of intarwebs content creators: Gabe and Tycho of Penny-Arcade. They're on record (as a matter of fact in writing at the back of their first hardcopy collection, of which there are 3 so far, and I've bought all 3 because of the added value in buying them at a decent price) as saying that hiding your content from your users because you're afraid they'll take it is kinda silly (which I tend to agree with, and why I think the subscription based Modern Tales group goes about the whole thing the wrong way - and why I think PVP's add-on animated subscription featurettes are a great idea; you get the meat for free, and if you want the dessert you shell out a little cash for it). PA was once in dire straits due to the ad network collapses and the loss of revenue thereof. They didn't have the financial resources to go down the failing route of the RIAA and MPAA, instead they adapted and are thriving to this day. None of their strips require you to pay for them, and there's no silly DRM preventing you from doing Save-As on a strip. Even so, people pay cold hard cash to get their books and their merchandise. Why? Cuz they know how to make what their target audience wants and what price their audience will shell out for extra stuffs.
Re:Please everyone: (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to be a person who has a hard time controlling their temper. Unfortunate.
Your reasoning is questionable. By that same thought process, I can argue that competition is theft, since they take away the potential profits of a creator. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft would like this to be true in, say, the realm of IIS vs Apache.
Re: (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-
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
America = United States of America
China = People's Republic of China
Sweden = Kingdom of Sweden
Germany = Federal Republi
Re: (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 i
Re:The land of the free. (Score:4, Informative)
Being Brazilian, I would say this holds for Spanish-speaking countries in Central/South America: they mostly refer to someone from USA as estadunidense (something like "unitedstatesian"), and to the country itself as Estados Unidos (they don't say "America")
For us, Portuguese-speaking Brazilians, someone from USA is americano (but some communists-wannabes insist on estadunidense) and the country is Estados Unidos.
For the same reasons posted elsewhere in this thread, I prefer "american" over "unitedstatesian". Usually there will be enough context to tell USA from the American Continent, e.g. "Americans wages war against Iraq": we ALL know we're talking USA govt here. Another similar example is United Arab Emirates. "Unitedarabs"? "Emiratians"? "Emirarabs"? I'd stick with "Arabs", even thou it would conflict with other Arab nations.
Language's choices of words sometimes depends more on "soundness" than accurate semantics. That's why we say "South-Korean" instead of "Korean-republicans" and "North-Korean" instead of "Korean-democratic-republicans". I'd also guess there's a good bit confusion regarding demonyms for French Guyana and Guyana, but I lack precise information.
Re: (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,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)