NinjaVideo.net Founder Gets 14 Months 239
angry tapir writes "A Virginia judge has sentenced Matthew David Howard Smith, a founder of the NinjaVideo.net website, to 14 months in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday. Smith was indicted along with four others late last year. The DOJ charged that they illegally provided copyright-protected movies and TV programs for download from the NinjaVideo.net website. The site operated from February 2008 until authorities shut it down in June 2010."
My mind is blown! (Score:5, Funny)
The ninjas were actually.... pirates?!
Re:My mind is blown! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My mind is blown! (Score:5, Informative)
had they been real ninjas, they would have never been found.
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Well, if we're going on this tour anyway.. has anybody checked if they happened to be robots too? Zombies? Hell.. dinosaurs? If the peg-leg didn't give it away, what would?
Man. Now I need to start a pira-... bittorrent site with a peg-leg in the logo.
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This could very well be the best first post EVER!
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It was pretty good, but IMHO this is the best first post in Slashdot history. [slashdot.org]
LK
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meanwhile: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:meanwhile: (Score:5, Informative)
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I rather abused the friend/foe feature for a while, but have more been removing people from the list lately when I see reasonable posts made by people I have as foes. Don't take it personally, I can't remember the reason and indeed, there may not have been any of particular note.
Anyway, I'm glad someone agrees with me, as at times I wonder if it is me or everyone else who is truly
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:meanwhile: (Score:5, Insightful)
$100 says that even if 100% of who is in office, flipped, it would not make a damned bit of diff.
people are people. the system allows people to join politics and get rich.
THAT is the problem.
nothing can be fixed until you fix that.
Re:shorter (Score:2)
You can't get too much shorter than the 2 years of a House Rep. If anything, there are commentaries that it's too short for good people to get stuff done.
But then, with all of the weasely ones in there, I'm vaguely glad it's that short, it's just tough to get it all turned around.
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That's stupid. If you want to get ten coins face up, you don't flip them all every time and hope for the best.
Flailing about in a rage won't accomplish anything. The only way to make things better is to actually do your homework and vote for the best person you can find each time.
Flawed logic (Score:3)
And really..... "The Other Guy"? Democracy shouldn't be about having to choose from two evils. There should be enough options to choose from. Maybe the state representatives are a bad way to have your vote represented in Washington. How about having at least congress voted for nationally? That way other views than straight democrat/conservative get a chance to actually get representation.
Re:meanwhile: (Score:5, Insightful)
Won't make a bit of difference as long as corporate money pays for our elections.
Who would ever say no to a corporation if they know that corporation can turn around and spend $100million on an ad campaign to destroy them, and do it anonymously?
We've had a coup and the corporations have taken over. Elections, congress, president...they're all just a reality TV show to keep the public occupied while the economy is looted.
Re:meanwhile: (Score:5, Insightful)
Karma suicide in 3, 2, 1...
We've had a coup and the corporations have taken over.
I know it's super cool on Slashdot to talk about how the US is the worst country in the world, it's a fascist dictatorship, all elections are run by corporations, Soylent Green is made by the Federal Reserve, etc. But honestly that is a very simplistic view of things that fails to account for the complex interlocking of interests that makes up US public policy.
If corporations really did "own" the US government...
The truth is that corporations or other interest groups that spend a lot on lobbying often get their way. But they don't always get their way or "own" the government - when enough people speak out against it, it does actually make a difference. We do have a democracy in the United States ... even if you don't like the outcomes sometimes. That means you should convince your fellow Americans to make smarter voting choices, not blithely dismiss the system as corrupt.
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Re:meanwhile: (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a graph [economist.com] that explains it for you.
So no, money alone does buy you your interests. There will obviously be counter-examples. But the policy decisions will largely prevail in your favour unless there is a large countervailing public opinion (as there was with all the examples you've provided). Basically, unless a large portion of the public decides it's an issue, the decision will go in favour of the wealthy.
Money in politics is the single biggest corrupting factor in politics. Remove direct money & indirect money & benefits will be the next biggest factor. & it'll keep going that way, but each time the totals will (in theory) keep decreasing so you're making a net positive change.
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Re: Don't Always get their way (Score:2)
You're right, it's not a 100% slam dunk situation yet.
Funny thing is, there seem to be weird swings, with the media lobbies and the OMG Terrorist lobbies somehow getting way more than their share of wins. Tobacco isn't (yet!) digitally reproduce-able, and the Terrorist is the Universal Boogeyman who can never be declared defeated.
So yes, we're not quite killing people for being atheists yet, but it's getting pretty bad.
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"Because the health-care industry spends more?"
Does it?
"Or, maybe it's because it's a cash cow like the alcohol industry?"
Is it?
"How much did the environmentalists spend lobbying against it?"
And what, the government though that it would eventually get more tax money from enviromentalists than from oil companies?
Sorry, I obviously missed the bus to your paranoid fantasy world because I don't see it.
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Somebody else spent more on lobbying.
Who? Seriously. Think about the parties involved. AT&T threw everything it had to get it to pass. Verizon sat on the sidelines, as did Google and the other big tech players. The only ones in really vocal opposition were Sprint and lots of consumer groups - are you really suggesting they out-spent AT&T?
Or is it maybe just possible that the US political system is not the simplistic "which corporations spent the most buying politicians" you seem to think it is? Can't you honestly just admit that someti
Re:meanwhile: (Score:4, Informative)
"giant friggin pipe cutting across the country"
Right across a primary groundwater source that runs from North Dakota to Texas. And much of the ground water source in Nebraska is near the surface. Care to guess how much of our food and agri-resources, for ourselves and sold to other countries, is produced by irrigation? Do you want the odds of all those fields across 9 states being sprayed with oil and made unproductive before the oil company admits there was a leak (or rupture) in a buried pipeline that no one will know about until it's to late?
Let us just place this pipeline there maintained by an industry that's got a history ignoring maintenance for profits. The very reason they want it there in the first place, profits from exporting the nastiest, most expensive crude made to international markets instead of local ones. Is it worth risking starvation? Oil is transitory and not necessary to survive, food is necessary to survive. How many disasters does it take before big oil, hell any business, is deemed untrustworthy in their decision making when it comes to the public vs profit?
So let them just transport the nastiest, dirtiest, crude oil en mass across much of our most productive agricultural land and over our largest underground aquifer that also services many central US cities. The whole thing managed by irresponsible oil conglomerates and local politicians who just see the tax dollars for the first decade until the pipeline depreciates out(no more taxes) and physically fails due to lack of oil company maintenance(plenty of citations). Guess those temporary jobs and few years of taxes will be worth the cleanup, starvation, and other hell, right?
Citation: I live here and am responsible for some of the very food and resources you consume.
This is not a worse case scenario just one based on previous and current behavior of the various participants.
This also assumes the pipeline will be built properly and not cost cut in the first place or specs ignored, see gulf disaster.
PS I'm actually surprised other countries aren't screaming bloody murder as many of them get food from the US as well.
Re:meanwhile: (Score:4, Insightful)
The TSA's jack-booted goons can steal $40,000 (real money, not imaginary money) from your luggage and only get 6 months for it.
Oh buh-ruther. The TSA doesn't have that much style. They probably wear cheap Chinese made oxfords with laces that break. But they work for *us* at a pay rate set by *us* under laws passed by legislators *we* elected. We're too chicken to accept that flying has *some* risk; too cheap to do anything about it; and so mentally indolent we let government vendors set security priorities.
There's nothing outstandingly evil about a man who can't resist the temptation of pocketing a huge wad of unguarded cash that passes through his hands. The wickedness in our character is too petty for us to be served by genuine, glamorous evil (the SS in their jackboots and Hugo Boss designed uniforms). No, we get a mirror of our national character. We get *venality*.
Re:meanwhile: (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, in this case their prison sentences seem to be somewhat proportional to the money they made from the site.
The site made a total of $505,000 in ads and donations in the approximate 2+ years that it ran.
Smith received 14 months and made $172,387 (I assume this is the amount he made, because in the case of Dedemko, the amount Dedemko was ordered to pay was the same as the amount he was supposed to have made)
Hana received 22 months and I believe made $210,000
Dedemko made $58,004 (and won't get sentenced until Feb)
And as to the two or three other ninja-pirates, the articles don't really say.
In the case of the TSA agents, the take was $40,000, but we should assume that they probably split the money between themselves so it's probably more like each got $20,000 and then each was sentenced 6 months of prison (along with 5 years of probation). Now this is not to say that the TSA agents didn't steal a lot more on other days (they probably did). And this is not to say that those TSA agents didn't abuse the special privileges they were given (which in my mind makes it a lot worse). Also, the original $505,000 figure I quoted for the ninja video site is probably misleading as well, since a video site like that will have significant expenses for the hardware they're using and the bandwidth they were consuming each month.
So I still agree that the TSA agents got off easy compared to the ninja-pirates, but at least in this case, it doesn't seem like the judge just pulled imaginary numbers completely out of thin air. The ninja-pirates did make some real money from their venture (at least two of them did). And unlike a site like Megaupload, they copied and uploaded 100% of the infringing videos themselves.
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And it was all for nothing....
http://ninjavideo.co/ [ninjavideo.co]
Meanwhile Goldman sachs (Score:2)
Sold derivatives to customers which they knew had inflated ratings, then shorted against their own product and did no jail time.
Re:meanwhile: (Score:5, Insightful)
USA, everyone knows it, is the land of freedom, right? At this point, it's going to be very difficult for the president to have human rights talks with countries like China. USA is not a good example any more, it's one of the worst.
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USA, everyone knows it, is the land of freedom, right? At this point, it's going to be very difficult for the president to have human rights talks with countries like China. USA is not a good example any more, it's one of the worst.
Absolutely! Just last week dozens of Occupy protesters were gunned down in a Bloody Sunday-like massacre by the US military, in much the same way as they have been in Egypt, Syria, and Libya! Worst of the worst, America is! Oh, and I heard that families of factory workers are being threatened just so the owners don't have to improve working conditions! Boy, I wish I lived in China where I can access only state sponsored media and speaking against the government gets you "disappeared".
Your groupthink mental
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most disappointing site ever (Score:4, Funny)
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ninjatune.net is awesome! (Score:2)
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I have to say, when I visit a site entitled "ninjavideo.net" I have certain expectations... and those expectations were not met by what I received!
I challenge you to try and photograph a ninja, let alone film one in action. UFO's, Bigfoot, and unicorn poop have nothing on these guys ability to never be seen.
Meanwhile... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news, no one involved in the massive fraud and graft that trashed the world economy has seen the inside of a jail cell.
Justice is served only to those who can afford it.
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:5, Interesting)
Incorrect.
From Politifact
"The highest-profile convictions we found were from Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, which was a mortgage lending firm based not on Wall Street, but in Ocala, Fla. Its former chairman, Lee B. Farkas, was convicted of directing nearly $3 billion in fraud that put thousands out of work and contributed to the collapse of Colonial Bank. The collapse was the sixth-largest bank collapse in U.S. history. A judge sentenced Farkas to 30 years in prison on June 30, 2011. Several other executives associated with the firm pleaded guilty in related cases. "
you realize one CDO could be a billion dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
the fraud perpetrated by Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, etc, in one single day dwarfed by a dozen fold the fraud this mortgage guy perpetrated in his whole career.
where do you think they sold all those fraudulent mortgages?
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Lehman et al aren't ratings agencies. It was the ratings agencies that vouched for those mortgages. Of course Lehman et al didn't trust those ratings and shorted most of the paper making billions.
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The way I understand it is that they never sold mortgages. They sold insurance (Credit Default Swaps) on the low end or per-packeged mortgage clumps, but unlike an insurance company they didn't have to have the requisite capital to enter these contracts... and when the mortgages went under they had to pay the mortgage holders the losses they took on that mortgage.
simplified, they gave insurance to banks who sold mortgages on houses... those mortgages went bust and thus they had to pay. But they didn't have
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Incorrect.
From Politifact...
Yes, "Taylor, Bean & Whitaker" are the ones who orchestrated and executed the whole thing.
Are you dumb?
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Farkas is currently serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Williamsburg, a facility in South Carolina that holds minimum and medium security inmates, and is scheduled for release in 2037
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nope, justice wasn't done to them either - justice would be them in prison too.
those who can afford it, choose to subvert and pervert it.
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In other news, no one involved in the massive fraud and graft that trashed the world economy has seen the inside of a jail cell.
Justice is served only to those who can afford it.
You mean:
Justice is served only to those who can not afford it.
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)
Separate from this is the racism that comes out about it. I've seen it blamed on black people. Those people should never have been allowed to own land, let alone have a government agency encourage it. And those poor white bankers ("poor" meaning "some of the richest people in the country") were taken advantage of by those shifty no-good negroids. "Sub-Prime" was the name for a crisis caused by rich white male bankers committing fraud when creating derivatives, but they are also the ones who got to name it, and rather than the "1%ers say, Fuck You America" crisis, it's the "minority caused sub-prime lending" crisis. The poor people didn't cause it. They didn't lie. Who did lie are the mortgage brokers and the bankers. And the rich white bankers blamed the poor blacks. And sadly, that's what the conservatives wanted to hear, so there's so much out there on the blacks causing the crisis by defaulting less than norms that the truth will be buried by the real criminals, like always.
If you want to blame a politician, blame Bush for deregulation that let the banks invent the fraudulent derivatives.
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AK Marc raged:
It wasn't the defaults that caused this, but the invented derivatives.
Separate from this is the racism that comes out about it. I've seen it blamed on black people. Those people should never have been allowed to own land, let alone have a government agency encourage it. And those poor white bankers ("poor" meaning "some of the richest people in the country") were taken advantage of by those shifty no-good negroids. "Sub-Prime" was the name for a crisis caused by rich white male bankers committing fraud when creating derivatives, but they are also the ones who got to name it, and rather than the "1%ers say, Fuck You America" crisis, it's the "minority caused sub-prime lending" crisis. The poor people didn't cause it. They didn't lie. Who did lie are the mortgage brokers and the bankers. And the rich white bankers blamed the poor blacks. And sadly, that's what the conservatives wanted to hear, so there's so much out there on the blacks causing the crisis by defaulting less than norms that the truth will be buried by the real criminals, like always.
It's actually worse than that.
It wasn't poor people who took out the majority of the loans that went bad when the market collapsed. It was speculators - people who bought houses and (especially) condominiums specifically to flip them. With mortgage bankers offering 0% down loans based on "stated income" (i.e. - "please lie to us about your income"), the industry practically got down on its collective knees and begged house flippers to abuse the system. And they did. In droves. That's why, toda
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No, the value of those loans was only a small fraction of the derivatives market. The fact is that even if every single one of those mortgages had gone tits up we would still have been in better shape than we are now had the bankers not been working on things.
I remember a wise saying, unfortunately, I forget who said it, the more clever the bankers investment tool gets, the further away you should keep your money.
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President Bush had tried to reform things
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'" - Yoda
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The problem is that these issues are very complicated and Fox News viewers are very, unintelligent. Fox News, the same network that went to court specifically to protect its right to make up lies.
More Forced Labor (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We possess the means to liberate ourselves. All that is left is to decide which ones we use. The court? The public square? Voting? The rifle?
Re:More Forced Labor (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's exactly what happens when YOU put absolutely no effort in.
Tell you what, you're good at making big noise on the internet... why don't you lead up the revolution? Grab your gun. We'll all be right behind you, I swear...
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Except that courts, the public square and voting aren't things that the folks with the rifles tend to use for that purpose. There's a correlation between voting for candidates that promise this sort of bad behavior and folks that insist upon owning firearms.
No implication of causation there, just a correlation worth considering when deciding which boxes are likely to get more thoroughly exercised and in what order.
where are you people for the Stephen Kim trial? (Score:2)
when they are locking up people on bogus Espionage Act charges, you don't seem to care... but take away your ability to get free porn and video games... omg they are worse than hitler.
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In a police state they'd have kicked your door in, clubbed you senseless, hauled you off never to be heard from again. Your family and friends wouldn't even ask about you for fear they'd be next. This site itself, silly as it is, would be taken over and it's management would be also hauled away. I don't like what's going on either but jeez! Get some perspective.
My tax money supporting the film industry (Score:5, Interesting)
I am upset that my taxes go to supporting the film industry's copyright policing like this.
Keeping a person in jail for a year costs between 25-50K not including court costs.
That's money that can be used for more worthwhile things. What it's being spent on will not result in any changed behavior or profits for the entertainment industry. It only drives things more underground and makes people become more sophisticated. The only people making money from this are the lawyers collecting paychecks and not producing anything of worth for society.
It's also exposes all the corrupt politicians and the justice system. While they have always been corrupt I would have been happier to live in ignorance than to have it exposed out in the open like this.
Copyright police? Censorship? The original politicians that started this country are turning over in their graves. This country was started as a backlash to self serving corruption like this.
Re:My tax money supporting the film industry (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:My tax money supporting the film industry (Score:5, Insightful)
heh no. They wanted to start their OWN self-serving corruption. They were tired of being at the bottom of someone elses totem pole
Obligatory Demotivational Poster (Score:2)
http://www.despair.com/corruption.html [despair.com]
"Authorities"? (Score:5, Interesting)
The site operated from February 2008 until authorities shut it down in June 2010.
Ninjavideo.net [ninjavideo.net] was among the first group [ice.gov] of sites seized by ICE [ice.gov] and their "authority" is questionable.
Interestingly, ICE have not placed a redirect to their Youtube video yet on any of the Ninja* sites (see TVshack.cc [tvshack.cc] for an example) so presumably the decision to steal/confiscate the site is still being contested by Matthew David Howard Smith or an associate.
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I get ICE, technically I'm sure some of those downloads were international. What I really don't get is why the DHS is involved in this at all.
Acronym Wars (Score:3)
is it just me or are the MPAA and RIAA and other acronyms doing just fine without their SOPA and PIPA?
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Same goes for the top 1%, they're doing just fine without their tax cuts. Doesn't stop the whining about how raising taxes on them or failing to renew tax cuts is going to kill American jobs though.
Proper response to piracy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Proper response to piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Many game developers are fed up with PC piracy and feel they are in a lose-lose situation and they don't want to choose between DRM-laden software or Internet activation... these companies (maker of Crysis comes to mind) vow to develop more heavily for the "console" platforms (XBox, etc.) because piracy is less common there. Of course, if Crysis 3 is console-only, people will probably go the extra mile and modify their boxes and pirate it anyways, but that's beside the point. The point is, game devs (along with authors and other artists) have manned up for ages and when piracy becomes an issue for them, they find a solution that doesn't involve hundreds of frivolous lawsuits that is harming everybody with its costs in tying up our legal system.
I wonder how Steam is... It should be tanking and going out of business with all this piracy...
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truth is, all game developers who come up with a really, really good game end up with gobs and gobs of cash.
just like it was in the c64 days.
just like it was in the amiga days.
just like it was in the 486dx with doom is the shit days.
piracy isn't the real problem for game developers, the "problem" is that they have competition from other game producers.
doj workers however don't have any other business than prosecuting people of course.
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The real issue was never piracy it's about dev's having a dumb captive audience that will pay for the same games over and over again. Any devs who whine about piracy when you look at sales numbers of skyrim of Call of duty are idiots.
proper response: make good games (Score:5, Insightful)
A matter of degree (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that include the Universal Musical Group who have broken contracts, put up hundreds of MP3s on download services without consent of the artists and then have gone out of their way to obfuscate the revenue collected?
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Does that include the Universal Musical Group who have broken contracts, put up hundreds of MP3s on download services without consent of the artists and then have gone out of their way to obfuscate the revenue collected?
Sure.
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Yep, thieves are thieves. Were it up to me, they'd all be in jail.
Not into letting some go because others get away with it. That's toddler logic.
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I knew one of you "it's not theft" language lawyers would show up. It's fucking theft. Period.
The guys at Megaupload made huge amounts of money facilitating theft. They flaunted it, lived like greedy mafia pigs, and here you are defending them.
As for the second point, that's just toddler logic. Some rich pricks get away with murder, rape, torture, and any number of other crimes. You want to stop prosecuting those crimes too?
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Way to change the subject. The case isnt about what UMG, North Korea, or Pol Pot has done, but about what the ninjavideos folks did.
Seriously, is this what passes for discourse now on slashdot?
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Not only that but you have them selling music that they do not legally own.
Artists makes music under contract. Leaves contract. Makes more under different name/likeness. Years later artist finds that old music company is publishing his new music and not paying him anything.
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So a thieve is someone who buy's a dvd and share's it with a friend? or someone who watches a tv series (free ota cbs grey's antomy for example), records it and share's it with a friend? or uses tivo to record 1000's of shows and share them with some one who responds in kind in life and shares them to another friend and on and on? Would you consider a close relative a thieve because they were on a party, popped their cell to record a baby laughing and there was some copyrigthed music on the background? Woul
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You sound like a thief.
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Remind me again what SOPA was needed for...? I forgot.
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So ... you liked piracy before it was cool?
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uhm, you mean like youtube? (Score:2)
if they wanted to stop piracy on youtube, they could just grep for "no copyright infringement intended" and "fair use", that would get about 500,000 hits and they could stop the "thing thats like Rhapsody only no commercials and you can play whatever song you want"
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I know plenty of people here who like to pirate because they DON'T want to pay for stuff. They'd rather download a movie in parts from a file download service (disconnecting from the internet every now and then to renew their IP address and jump the time limits) and spend days doing this rather than walking even 1 block to a video rental store and pay $2 to watch the movie.
This was true when internet was 512k and downloading a movie took more than a day.
There are people who just don't want to pay for stuff
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I know plenty of people here who like to pirate because they DON'T want to pay for stuff.
Of course, there are always going to be people who will be of that mindset.
There are people who just don't want to pay for stuff - sadly, this "conveniency" piracy makes it too easy for most people to think "this is how things should be", and convince themselves that "free" is the only acceptable price. Piracy here is the norm, not the exception. We have VOD services, and Netflix and most people I showed netflix to just laugh at you for paying $8 a month to watch movies "you can gef for free".
There always will be those who won't pay just because they can get it for free but if it's easier or just as easy to get it legitimately, even if that means having to pay, I'd say that would win a lot of people over, or would have if it were implemented in the early days.
I think it likely has something to do with the way convenience piracy got so widespread and accepted through the time when the RIAA/MPAA thought they really could c
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There's another angle to "convenience piracy" on music which is that the albums always leaks days or even weeks before you can legit buy them.
That's absolutely true and also applies to the artificial delay the movie industry places between the cinema release of a film and the release of it to VoD or DVD/Bluray. Not to mention non-worldwide releases of music and movies.
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>There's another angle to "convenience piracy" on music which is that the albums always leaks days or even weeks before you can legit buy them.
Good luck living in the US and trying to buy foreign media. Most of the time it's simply not available at all, even when you subscribe to things like the Shanachie newsletter and catalog.
So if it's not available, I pirate. Fuck 'em.
--
BMO
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I'm probably going to have to crack my steam games because I'm going somewhere that I'm not going to be able to connect to the internet regularly. Steam is a complete joke when it comes to offline mode. Sometimes you can be offline for months other times it decides that it needs to phone home after a few days.
Re:"What are you in for?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Fucking lucky not to be sent to Gitmo. They're starting to refer to copyright infringers as terrorists.
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They're probably all paedophiles too...and communists.
Re:"What are you in for?" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Copyright infringement."
...and they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
for those who don't get the reference (Score:2)
it's a quote from Alice's Restaurant Massacree by Arlo Guthrie (Arlo's minor crime is littering instead of copyright infringement)
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Why any site that allows users to upload any content at all would risk having equipment, staff, or customers inside the USA at this point is beyond me.
If I was running such a site I would make sure the DNS was under a non-us country code, all employees were located outside the USA (And knew not to travel there for any reason), the servers would be hosted outside the USA, and I would block any US IPs. Not doing this puts you at a HUGE risk that just isn't worth it. All it takes is a few users to upload thing
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14 months isn't reasonable, this should have been a civil matter, the parties that owned the copyrights are rich enough to be able to file suit. These aren't exactly independent production companies that genuinely can't afford to bring these things to trial, these are rich corporations that would have no problem whatsoever paying to protect their property. This isn't like somebody burgled their office which would be a legitimate reason for the authorities to handle it.
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You missed it.
Righthaven LLC is no more.
That website the grandparent posted was Righthaven's until it was auctioned off to pay the debt it owed. It sold for something like $3000. Up until the SOPA protest day, it had a logo, and on SOPA protest day, what you saw was the owner's protest.
The Nevada Bar is looking for sanctions against the lawyers that made up the now defunct Righthaven LLC.
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BMO