Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers 227
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store [to which links containing infringing material will redirect]. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material. Similar to many other companies that operate in the file-sharing business, Rapidshare often finds itself caught between two fires. On the one hand it wants to optimize the user experience, but by doing so they have to respect the rights holders to avoid being continuously dragged to court. To ease the minds of some major executives in the entertainment industry, Rapidshare's General Manager Bobby Chang has revealed an ambitious plan through which copyright holders could benefit from the file-hosting service. At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material — whom he refers to as criminals — more aggressively."
This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because pirates already *are* customers. Classifying the world into 'criminal' pirates and paying customers is idiotic
Exactly. They should be classifying them into paying customers and non-paying customers. Then they could gear their new store toward the paying customers in order to sales goals.
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This will fail (Score:4, Interesting)
That classification is also flawed. What if people sometimes pay, sometimes pirate? You can classify the activity, but not the person.
OK, paying customers, non-paying customers and occasionally-paying customers.
Trying to separate the activity from the person who performs the activity is disingenuous, IMHO. The activity will not occur on its own - it requires the person to perform it.
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok.. so what happens if you buy an MP3 from Walmart or Napster's store, and you now own the song
But you find you need an unencrypted MP3 file to be able to play it on your new MP3 player, and the DRM-laden file is useless.
Are you a non-paying customer if you go to rapidshare and download that file?
I say you are neither pirate, nor non-paying customer. You already bought a copy of that data, you paid for those bits, and the publisher already got their cut.
Now your only option to exercise your fair use right of playing the media is to actually go find someone who has altered the datafile to make it unencrypted.
That's because, it's illegal to exchange or sell 'copy protection circumvention' technologies that decrypt music. The only way you can legally remove DRM for a file is to download a file with the encryption removed from someone else who also legally owns a copy.
The bits are still the same, and the content is still the same (unmodified), you have just acquired an unencrypted version of a file you already own, through the assistance of a third party providing you the decrypted version of the bits.
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
If you buy a song on iTunes, delete it/lose it, and then want to redownload it from iTunes, are you able to? No.
I download a game from Steam (technically, I "subscribe" to that game - wording to get around the right of resale), and I reformat/delete it/lose it etc., I can always grab it again at no charge pretty much as many times as I need to.
iTunes treats purchases like physical items and Steam treats purchases as licenses.
The subscription/license on a per-item basis of digital purchases is probably the best for the consumer IMO. If you buy a song, $0.99 is ridiculous for the data itself. If it were $0.99 for a license to own a copy of that song, it would seem wholly less ridiculous.
I can redownload games on Steam if I have to, so I use Steam. (The DRM is also unobtrusive.) I can't redownload songs on iTunes without paying for them, so I don't use iTunes. Simple as that.
Doing it the "license" way would also render P2P and the like null and void. If I purchased a hard copy of the White Album (for the fifth time) and downloaded some lossless digital files, I'm considered a pirate. Hell, if I rip the files from the CD and put it on my cell phone I'm considered a pirate. You just can't win the way things are nowadays. No wonder people pirate. I get my ass taken to court for downloading the White Album? Whoops, I already purchased it and are therefore entitled to download it.
Sadly, I imagine it will be some time before the market and/or the law gets more in line with sanity.
The day that the *AAs either get their heads out of their collective asses or collapse under their own weight is the day that the music industry will be better for (almost) everyone: artists, producers, composers, songwriters, and most importantly customers. Sure, corporate lawyers and *AA management will get the shaft, but they deserve at least that for their nigh-criminal business tactics of that last 100 years.
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If you buy a song on iTunes, delete it/lose it, and then want to redownload it from iTunes, are you able to? No.
That depends. In some circumstances, you can get apple to reset it and let you re-download the file without paying anything more.
There's a reason for this. It costs something to pay for the bandwidth to download a file. And $0.99 per song gives them only a slim profit margin -- most of the money goes to music company, so if you downloaded several times, there would be no profit for Apple (du
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If they allowed free re-download, people would abuse it -- by installing iTunes on multiple of their computers, and using iTunes to download to additional computers at Apple's expense instead of syncing themselves.
Um, try open iTunes on multiple computers, sign them all into the iTunes store, then buy a track or video. Note that all of the computers start downloading it. I used to get pissed off at this behaviour when my laptop and desktop would both start downloading 1.7GB of TV program when I don't want it on the laptop.
Re:This will fail (Score:4, Informative)
Trust me, it wouldn't bring the iTunes servers to a standstill - iTunes songs are served by the same machines that serve Windows Update - the Akamai CDN. More bandwidth than Slashdot, SourceForge, and Youtube combined.
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If you buy a song on iTunes, delete it/lose it, and then want to redownload it from iTunes, are you able to? No.
Um, yes, yes you can. I lost my purchased audio to a dead harddrive, sent an email to iTunes, they flicked a bit that determined whether my purchases had been downloaded yet, and next time I connected to iTunes, they all came flooding down. I had to put up with a bit of backup tut-tutting in the email response from them, and they don't advertise it as a feature, but they'll let you do it without any dramas (as long, I assume, as you don't abuse it).
Re:This will fail (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that making backup copies of vinyl has always been impractical doesn't change the principle. Music has always been priced according to a formula that bears resemblance to (cost of physical pressing + distribution/shipping + studio time + artist cut + marketing + profit). If you already paid for the last five pieces, there's no reason why the sixth couldn't be considered separately. You paid for the record to be recorded, marketed, and for the artists and suits to support their coke habits. Just because the physical media was damaged doesn't negate that, so it's always stood to reason that one should be able to pay a significantly lower cost for a replacement physical media. However, up until the 80's it was highly impractical for people to do so, because a machine for pressing vinyl at home never really caught on in any meaningful capacity.
In the 80's, we had dual-deck cassette recorders, and that allowed us to make backups much more readily, but even that was hampered due to the requirement of real-time duplication. It was here, though, that the mixtape was born.
In the 90's, we had CD burners, and duping a CD took about 20 minutes at first...then 10...then 5...then 2.
People have always wanted the same thing - to buy music once and play it whenever they want. When personal duplication was impractical, it was never considered a desirable trait. Later, that ability was given to us, and now it's being taken away again.
Personally, I have never bought a song from iTunes whose first stop wasn't a CD-R for re-ripping. First, I simply appreciated the irony of iTunes wrapping the AAC file in DRM, then burning the song to disc in iTunes, then having iTunes volunteer to re-rip it for me. But second, it gave me both a physical backup of the song, as well as an MP3 that plays everywhere. No one is expecting Apple/EMI/Whoever to buy them new iPods or computers because it breaks. It's more like if a record refused to play without a specific needle, but could be altered to play with any needle, then the record self-destructing without being replaced.No one would have stood for that back then, but again, it simply wasn't practical.
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Sorry, but no. It's still piracy. You paid for a DRM-laden file, and a DRM-laden file is all you're entitled to. That's not to say that I would find the practice particularly objectionable, but just know, it's not supported by law.
The copyright-holder has the right to close off any distribution avenue they like for their work (to within fair use). You can reason this in terms of finance. Basically it undercuts their ability to sell a cheaper, inferior, D
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but no. It's still piracy. You paid for a DRM-laden file, and a DRM-laden file is all you're entitled to. That's not to say that I would find the practice particularly objectionable, but just know, it's not supported by law.
The copyright-holder has the right to close off any distribution avenue they like for their work (to within fair use). You can reason this in terms of finance. Basically it undercuts their ability to sell a cheaper, inferior, DRMed version, and a more expensive DRM-free version.
Nope, that's wrong. The DMCA has no fair use provision. Breaking DRM for any reason is illegal now. God bless America.
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It's more like: fanboys (or locked in victims) who will (or must) pay for everything, cheapskates who won't/can't pay for anything, and discriminating customers who only pay for quality.
The first category you don't have to worry about. These are the ones who will buy your DRMed crap as long as it;s released for their platform, and it has enough "buzz." (Or in the case of the locked-in victims, these are the ones you've already captured.) And really, the same goes for the second category - you don't have
Re:This will fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Classification has nothing to do with it. You do the crime, you do the time, regardless of how much time you've spent not committing crimes.
It's a moot issue anyway. Rapidshare has been copied so many times over that they have absolutely no pull to make this happen. If they interfere with the dissemination of illegal content their user base will drop like a lead balloon. Just by attempting to address the issue they've acknowledged that piracy constitutes a significant segment of their business. The whole idea is self-defeating.
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Way to completely not make a point at all, but sincerely feel like you have.
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Apart from the Slashdot crowd (and most people here comment against DRM just for the sake DRM with no intentions to actually buying the game) I don't really know anyone who would avoid their upcoming favorite game they've waited for so long just because it has that online DRM. If a game I want comes along with it, I will buy it because I want to play it, and thats from someone who actually understands the issues - most gamers don't.
The more online parts they integrate the harder it gets to crack. Parts of g
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Re:This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
I passed over both Assassin's Creed II and C&C 4 due to the DRM (both of which resulted in canceled preorders). After hearing the horror stories about the more recent DRM "innovations" the vast majority of my gamer friends have followed suit.
Personally I won't purchase Assassin's Creed II until a crack or patch is released that resolved the DRM problem. If that means waiting until the game is a $5 steam special I'm fine with that, I don't have to play a game the instant it comes out.
What is so annoying about this entire affair is that I am not a thief, pirate, rampant violator of intellectual property, etc. I just want to be able to use the software I purchase without my crappy Comcast connection compromising my single-player gaming experience. Is this too much to ask?
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Is this too much to ask?
That depends on who you ask.
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Correction: "The more online parts they integrate the worse the user experience gets. It's a lost battle for publishers."
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Hi.
While I didn't get to play the original Assassin's Creed until last year, it was definitely on my list of top 10 most enjoyed games of 2009, and quite possibly top 3. I'd been anticipating AC2 for months, and I actually went into my neighbourhood EB Games (GameStop for all you Americans) to preorder it, not doing so only because I couldn't preorder the limited edition for PC. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this: weeks after its release, I still haven't bought it because of the DRM, and now I'm
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Apart from the Slashdot crowd (and most people here comment against DRM just for the sake DRM with no intentions to actually buying the game) I don't really know anyone who would avoid their upcoming favorite game they've waited for so long just because it has that online DRM.
I'm one such guy. The game in case was NWN "premium modules" - a relatively early case of a paid DLC. It required Internet activation every time you start a new game, and also every time you load a game (single player in both cases). In my case, I first skipped on it because I was living in uni campus at the moment, and was behind a transparent HTTP proxy - and those idiots used UDP for activation, which, of course didn't work.
Fine, a year from then I look at it again, but then I realize that I'm playing NW
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I know Civilization V will be released next fall. I'm not checking every day if it still is so, but I'm nevertheless waiting for the game.
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People actually WAIT for games to come out? People who have real lives actually check every day or two, to see if the new version of their favorite game has come out yet? I mean, REAL people, who do things outside of their mama's basement walls? People who actually know members of the opposite sex, participate in some kind of sport now and then, people who pay their way through the world?
I find all of this hard to believe.
Gamers are people, too. At least that's what I read on the internet. Live and learn I guess.
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod +6, hilarious.
Having them successfully tighten their grip won't get you more quality games. It'll get you higher prices (supply and demand; the lack of a free substitute product) and more intrusive DRM.
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Don't be so sure. Some of the most financially successful games have also been the most widely pirated.
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What sort of silly straw man is this? Who said anything about "infinitely"? If eliminating piracy means that increasing prices will result in a higher profit-maximizing price (and unless you assume that paying customers never convert to pirates at any price, nor vice-versa, it will), then the companies will increase prices.
If you make the parenthesized assumption above, then pirac
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If there wasn't a way for pirates to pirate their game (like now with the Ubisoft always-online-DRM), that higher profit price point might also mean lower prices for everyone when more people would buy it, especially since the pc piracy rate is around 80-90%. If half of those bought the game, it would mean publishers could lower their price by 4 times ($50 -> $12.5) and they would still get the same profit.
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Your argument basically amounts to "reduced supply of substitute product results in increased deman
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especially since the pc piracy rate is around 80-90%
[Citation needed]
There's three types of lies:... Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
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I never said they would try to be fair. I said they would try to maximize the profits. By lowering your products price more people can/might buy it, especially now than there aren't pirates anymore. Some of those pirates don't have the money to buy the $50 game, but they might have for $15. If it's enough more people, then you're increasing your profits. Business ABC, really.
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Ok I'll play. Since piracy rates for console games are vastly lower than PC ones, how does your theory account for the fact that most console games are released at an even higher price point than PC games?
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Because console makers all get their share from game sales, hence publishers have to compensate that. With PC that part is cut out.
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The quality issue isn't about cash, it's about casual vs gamer and publisher vs devs.
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> Even World of Goo had piracy rate of around 90%
HELLO! Please stop it with your statistics already.
ANyone wiuth an IQ over 12 knows stats prove nothing.
You cannot measure the piracy rate.
Even your linked article says as much.
The other main factor around piracy is just the hording factor. Even back in the amiga days I knew people who just got pirated stuff to say they had it. They never used it, just had it. How is that harming anyone? (hey you could have put pics of a mokey's arese on a disk and told th
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Before Internet became the main vehicle for software piracy, counterfeit CD shops provided the same service, and it wasn't really all that harder to get.
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On the other hand, some people will buy it, get sufficiently annoyed at getting kicked out whenever the internet sneezes, reshrinkwrap the game at work so they can return it, then wait for the crack and buy it used to salve their conscience.
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"Oh, and that rapidshare guy should be careful calling his most active clients "criminals".... it's those criminals that put the ad dollar-powered dinner on his table.."
He's not the first guy to forget who feeds his chidren. We've already forgotten thousands of others!
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Explain how pirates are customers?
You see, it's like this:
* You ride in a cab and then jump out without paying once you get to your destination
* While you were in the cab you were a customer "Hey, don't take 22nd St, it's always a mess this time of day" (ie, the customer is always right)
* Once you jump out of the cab without paying you're a pirate "Argh, matey, try to catch me now, you scurvy dawg" (works with or without the eyepatch)
So you see, even if you are a pirate you can also be considered a customer.
Sorry the analogy sucks
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There are an infinite number of pirated copies that can be downloaded, and one person downloading it does not deprive another person the ability to buy it at the store.
The fact that they didn't deprive someone of something isn't the real point (though, in fact, they are depriving the artist/publisher/company that produced the product of their rightful revenue for the copy that has been pirated).
The pirate has taken something that wasn't theirs, that they didn't pay for and that has some measurable value to them or they wouldn't have taken it in the first place. Just because they don't think they've deprived anyone of anything doesn't mean that it's OK to just take it.
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In regards to your sig, I think we have another example here. I have no idea why my first post was marked troll. I thought it conveyed a rather imp
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Does this [guardian.co.uk] help?
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I'm not sure if this is what he was going for, frankly but I believe he's right.
Rapidshare is not in the business of selling copyrighted materials (or at least they weren't up until today). They are in the business of hosting file uploads which, admittedly, are used a lot (primarily?) to share copyrighted materials without license.
Rapidshare's customers are the people who view their ad impressions, or who literally pay Rapidshare to avoid the queuing system. Many of these customers are also pirates ba
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Its worked so well for the *AA to demonize ( and sue ) their customers.
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What are you talking about, faulty premise? That is not a 'premise' of this plan.
In fact, the distinction is not meaningful at all to this situation; you are quibbling over how people on Slashdot refer to varieties of Rapidshare users.
Rapidshare is going to start making taken-down warez link to an online store where people can buy it from the owner.
This does not rely on some distinction between "people who are pirates" and "people who are customers", it only distinguishes the act of someone trying to downlo
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Title is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this would have been more aptly named:
"Rapidshare Trying To GET RID OF their Customers who are Pirates"
instead of
"Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers" ..which is just...the opposite.
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Um, No? (Score:5, Funny)
The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store
If they are in fact pirates then trying to setup a store for them is probably a waste of time. Though I must commend them for nicely putting everything in one location and inviting pirates to come for a visit. Rocket surgery, indeed.
Say no to rapidshare (Score:5, Insightful)
You can use google docs to share large files.
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Really?
A friend of mine needed to download some files from my server and no matter what route we tried (https, http, ftp), he just couldn't get to the files without some manner of corruption of the files. So eventually I pointed to my free Dropbox Account so he could download from there. These were two files of 122.4MB and 137.3MB. He e-mailed a while later that he couldn't download the 30MB file; I already got the reason why in an e-mail from dropbox a bit earlier:
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Not the fastest in the world, unless you're on Free (the ISP)'s network, but by far one of the best. Files are limited to 1GB if you use the HTTP upload feature, or 10GB if you use the FTP upload feature. Files are retained for 30 days from last download, no download limit.
FTP requires valid email address (username), and temporary password (user defined) which creates a 48h "session", used for resuming the upload in case it fails initially. Once the upload is complete they send an e
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Ya know, there's nothing quite like the complaints of people getting something for free. It's what makes Monday feel like Monday.
Dude, I hate to break this to you but - your boss has been lying about the calendar to avoid paying you overtime.
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Every dayyyy is liiiike Monday.
Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a former "pirate" I do not think this will work. Most "pirates" just want free stuff.. they do not have any problems with movie/software/music industry! They just have gotten used to getting everything for free and see no reason to pay if it is available for free.
Now I do not download stuff anymore but I also do not buy it either. Most of that stuff just isn't worth the price being asked for IMHO.
Everyone still riding the freeloading bandwagon - try 'quitting' - you'll realize most of that stuff you never need or can live by without just fine.
Agreed, it won't work ... but 'former pirate"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll openly admit that by the twisted definition of "software pirate" in popular use today, I qualify. But the interesting thing is, I've bought quite a bit of software over the years too. In relation to my total income, I probably spend a larger percentage on "intellectual property" than the average "I don't pirate!" user out there.
The companies trying to rule with an iron fist of copy protection create much of the problem for those of us who have the means to buy software.
Here's just one recent example.
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Out of interest, what made you quit?
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As a former "pirate" I do not think this will work. Most "pirates" just want free stuff.
I disagree. As a former "pirate" myself, I think there are two types of pirates. There are those who'll try and collect every byte they can, and brag about their music collections, and there's those who actually want the content. I stopped when iTunes became just as, if not more, convenient to use than trawling IRC channels for FTP details (and when I found a reliable way to strip iTunes DRM as soon as I'd purchased a track).
Intent (Score:2)
Were Rapidshare, Mediafire, et al ever intended to be used for sharing illegal content? I would think they weren't, since Rapidshare removes copyrighted material when it finds it, along with some of the other file sharing hosts (SendSpace, Mediafire, etc)...
Lip service (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd say that is just lip service for the benefit of the content providers. A way of saying "see? we are doing things, and you can work with us (and pay us in the process)".
Basically, rapidshare doesn't know which content is copyrighted or not, as a good percentage of it is encrypted, and that percentage is sure to grow if any kind of countermeasure is tried. You have to manually search the blogs for the password to be able to know if the content is copyrighted or not. The economics of it is non-existent.
So the basic system of the storage-download sites have to change for it to reduce copyrighted works copying, and that's also unlikely except via legislation. I think this is just an attempt to move the legislation threat a bit further away in time.
Megaupload (Score:2, Insightful)
Megaupload is better for that sort of thing anyway.
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Those two sites are the best for free downloaders, but all the cool kids who want to make $$$ are using Hotfile (or SharingMatrix, where HF is banned).
Be a good uploader and use MU or MF, please.
Strategies. (Score:2)
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Web of trust has its own problems, best illustrated by the old Soviet jape:
When four men sit down to talk revolution, three are government agents and the fourth is a fool.
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The cell system of security, yes -- you can vouch for yourself and the 2 or 3 people you know, but you can't vouch for any of the 2 or 3 people each of your 2 or 3 contacts knows. The advantage is that if it's compromised and those members are removed, it immediately breaks at that point so most of the system remains safe. The disadvantage is that any single person can't know how much of the system is compromised *without* members being removed, nor how close he is to being betrayed.
So.. infiltrations don't
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Unfortunately that's how the current generation of management think -- they've got Ivy-League business degrees but have never actually BUILT a business from the ground up, so they only think of maximizing short-term profits. If that costs them a much larger long-term profit, or even kills the business, well, we got ours today, if the business dies tomorrow because we were so short-sighted, too bad! we'll move on to another business and gut it the same way.
It's not just the music industry that's afflicted wi
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Well, yes, I agree -- cutting copyright back to its originally intended period would largely uncouple it from corporate greed, since it wouldn't be worth protecting after a certain point anyway -- so they'd be more inclined to focus on new content instead of on old tired content. Which of course was the whole idea behind a LIMITED copyright period in the first place, to encourage new stuff and to enlarge the public domain.
As to stuff that's out of copyright, there's a good business printing classics and suc
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An AC recommends, "You should take a look at Friend2Friend systems like http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/ [washington.edu]"
Thanks, this looks like an interesting option.
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Something that ideally lets you put in a seed and that is your first connection and then web-of-trust from there!
A WoT sounds nice in theory, but has it ever worked out in practice? The problem is that you need lots of friends to make it work, but hardly anybody has enough friends for that, even less so trusted ones that also use the same software. And when you then fall back to friends you found on the Internet you are opening yourself up to untrusted people.
This just in... (Score:2)
Rapidshare has shuttered it's "windows" and gone out of business.
Old model? (Score:2)
From TFS:
At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material -- whom he refers to as criminals -- more aggressively."
I admit to not knowing a lot about this - but isn't the model of busting users, then deciding to bust the pushers because without pushers, there won't be users?
I've got neighborhoods in my town that suggest that attacking symptoms instead of root causes for problems will never work.
But as I said, I'm not terribly knowledgeable on this and I could applying the wrong simile.
You've got a nice IP library here Colonel. (Score:2)
People actually use RS for warez? (Score:2)
I don't get it, why would anyone use Rapidshare/Megaupload/whatever for warez when there are plenty of good solutions for sharing data that don't involve handing your files over to a third party (and thus requiring the use of proxy servers if you wish to keep a semblance of security and anonymity)?
I mean, sure, there were a bunch of warez websites back in the 90's that used various web storage/hosting sites to host rips of games and movies but I thought that had died out by 2000 or so...
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Explanation: it's because when you use P2P, there is a good 50% chance that you are tracked when you download a recent movie.
With Rapidshare/Megaupload, there is no such apparent tracking.
About uploading files, there are several multi-upload sites that allow to do that securely.
And, in my case, these hosting sites are much faster than BitTorrent, since I have a very slow connection.
Note also that there is a cool program to download queued files from most of the hosting sites, that bypasses the captchas and
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Private BT trackers with only people you trust, private FTP servers. Both of these are infinitely safer than "let's upload our files to some random website and hope the owners wouldn't rather save their own asses than turn over our info to the *AA".
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This will start a death spiral for Rapidshare. On to megaupload, depositfiles, mediafire, etc...
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You should have gone with usenet.
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Sounds like they need to sort themselves out. I get TV about 3 hours after it has finished broadcasting. By using an RSS feed the shows download automatically. Check out the pricing at http://blocknews.net/ [blocknews.net] if you are interested in paying per GB (it goes as low as $0.09 per GB) if you want pay per month unlimited then http://supernews.com/ [supernews.com] is cheapest at $9.99 per month. Both have around 400+ days retention.
It could be extortion (Score:3, Funny)
Hey copyright holders! Would you like to sell copies of your IP at our online store? You'll get a (small) cut, but at least you'll get something! And, if you don't play ball, maybe uploaded versions of your files take a few weeks to get deleted. Maybe they don't get deleted at all. You wouldn't want that to happen, right?
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Realistically, yes. If that's an outdated, unworkable model given current technology, let it die and something else replace it.
You can't lock down content, with everyone having high powered data copying machines in their living room, and many people having the skill to crack through even the most devious of lockdown schemes. And it only takes breaking it (or running it through the analog hole, or what have you), once.
They've tried with software. They've tried wi