P2P Piracy is Alive and Growing, Research Suggests (torrentfreak.com) 104
From a report: In recent years Hollywood and other entertainment sources have focused their enforcement efforts on pirate streaming sites and services. According to several reports, streaming sites get more traffic than their P2P counterparts, with the latter being almost exclusively BitTorrent related. While the rise of online streaming sites can't be denied, a new research report from anti-piracy outfit Irdeto shows that P2P remains very relevant. In fact, it's still the dominant piracy tool in many countries. Irdeto researched site traffic data provided by an unnamed web analytics partner. The sample covers web traffic to 962 piracy sites in 19 countries where P2P was most used. This makes it possible to see how P2P site visits compare to those of pirate streaming sites.
Anyone shocked? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anyone shocked? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
My uncle has a streaming device, that no-one knows about
He says it used to be legal, before the Data Law
And on Sundays I elude the ‘Eyes’, and hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire, where my white-haired uncle waits
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Jump on the couch as the microwave heats my pizza pie
Monitor on, as excitement shivers up and down my spine
On the LAN my uncle preserved for me an old machine
For fifty-odd years
To keep the kernel updated has been his dearest dream
Re:Anyone shocked? (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html [gnu.org]
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I doubt you have any evidence to back that up, but even if you turn out to be right, you know what will happen.
If I'm not allowed to use "the" Internet then I'll just have to use some other Internet (with blackjack and hookers).
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Photo ID to get an approved cell phone that will work?
The tracking is in place.
VPN use can be tracked by the security services. Bullrun (decryption program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Police and security services do not want to ban what was onion routing and have a great ability to find users when needed.
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A few years ago we used to have a private LAN in our apartment building. It was connected to several other similar LANs in other buildings nearby. The whole thing spanned a city, with optic fiber between the different residential areas. Part of this eventually became the peer "ring" of the several ISPs.
I can easily see it coming back if the gubbermint presses for too much "intellectual property".
And there is jackshit the government can do about these dark networks.
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> And there is jackshit the government can do about these dark networks.
I'll forgive your ignorance since Slashdot is explicitly US-centric (and maybe you missed the required reading of "1984"), but anyone living in a country currently governed by a totalitarian government or even recently governed by one can tell you: there's a lot that the government can do. Idea #1: pay people money to "turn in" their fellow members.
Got it?
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What good is money if you don't live long enough to spend it?
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And they do that by recording the MAC address, which can be easily spoofed.
There's no way of restricting access to a network that can't be bypassed, other than by making the network so restricted as to be entirely useless. For an example, look at gaming consoles, where Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony try to limit network access to only approved (un-rooted) devices, that can only run approved software. Have they succeeded? Nope.
Oh,
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Re: Anyone shocked? (Score:2)
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... not politically feasible.
I would say it is more feasable in the USA than it is for the rest of us. You have a sizeable demographic that feels that to disagree with what the corporations want will cause the death of capitalism or something.
Re: Anyone shocked? (Score:2)
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Eventually all software will be rented and media will be streamed to approved devices. Only approved devices will be allowed to connect to the Internet.
I second that. It's headed there now. Windows as a subscription,, applications as a service.. chromebooks.. yadda yadda .. However, as long as one doesn't connect to the internet and the second hand stores are still allowed to sell used computers (none in my area are allowed to anymore.. instead they're all shredded) then there's still freedom. Sadly, where I live computer shops won't sell anything older than a windows 7box, and that's becoming diffuicult to find as well. Macs? Intel only, unless you get l
Re:Anyone shocked? (Score:4, Informative)
Netflix, having shown how to make a viable competitor to casual downloading, has give up that game and seems to want to sit with the old media folks. The VPN/geoblocking restrictions was the biggest move, but now also we see the limited introduction of geoblocking on their "own" programming (i.e., CBS deal for ST), and the nerfed access to higher quality levels for devices without hardware DRM - or, most egregiously in the case of 4K, even when all technical DRM instruments are in place it won't stream 4K without the particular device also being certified by Netflix. It's getting harder to watch something without it being better quality being sourced by other means.
Throw on top of that the effective removal of the recommendation system, the demotion of anything not Netflix created, and constant wobbling about of the UI (at least on devices). The ability to raise content to the surface, put you in easy touch with something you'll want to watch next - that value-added sort of service was not something easily replicated by your own ripped DVD collection, or "pirate" sources. Now it's half-gutted, and getting worse. There is little compelling reason anymore to use Netflix as an interface to access something, where available elsewhere.
Netflix, at $8 (or a fraction of that when shared), demonstrated how media could be distributed in such a manner as to make piracy essentially irrelevant. Just needed to keep adding that content.
Now, looking at $14 or whatever for Netflix's top tier, need to scroll through a half-dozen full-screen auto-playing standup comedy specials which have no relation to viewing history before finding something you'd be looking for.. the value proposition is lost. Just wondering when the ads will start.
Re: Anyone shocked? (Score:2)
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Personally, I wrote a piece of code which perio
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Somebody. Not you, but somebody. Different people have different tastes.
This is only due to their lack of standards. If the service and the client were independent, you would probably see an explosion of media players. Oh wait, you do see an explosion of media players, but they don't work with any of the proprietary streaming
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In New Zealand we get even less content of value on Netflix. On top of that the Android app I use on my media player has no decent filtering ability and the Netflix listing seems to be at least 50% non-English language, with no indications of this until you have loaded and started playing a video.
When you just want to sit down and get some quick entertainment this is a real downer. Some times I'm just not in the mood to read subtitles while trying to watch the action.
On top of that I have the nasty feelin
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Agreed. Although it is actually worse then 5% !
Here is a list of ALL [wildaboutmovies.com] the movies that came out in 2017. Out of the 704 movies released in 2017 only ~14 were good IMHO. That is, 100 * 14 / 704 = 1.988%
And that IS including the dumb, dormulaic, mindless-action, pop movies:
- Cars 3
- Despicable Me 3
- Dunkirk
- Guardians of the Galaxy 2
- Thor Ragnarok
- Wonder Woman
Roughly ~2% of movies are good, the rest are garbage.
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This should be tattoo'd backwards across the foreheads of people like Les Moonves for CBS All-Access, and Bob Iger for Disney's pending streaming service. And I'm sure a few more. I could forgive Netflix and Amazon Prime video.
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EmuParadise just got nuked, they've removed all ROMs from their site, and will now focus solely on emulators and discussion, no game downloads.
I guess people will simply move back to torrenting ROMs.
Re: Competing with free (Score:1)
This
I made the mistake of buying a couple ebooks from Amazon. It took me a half hour to figure out how to download them and convert to a format that I could read on my phone. I'm sure it would have been easier and faster to just pirate them.
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This
I made the mistake of buying a couple ebooks from Amazon. It took me a half hour to figure out how to download them and convert to a format that I could read on my phone. I'm sure it would have been easier and faster to just pirate them.
You could always check with your local library.
Most offer e-book loans for free.
functionality to read the books is built into free apps like Aldiko
If you're interested in older books pr magazines, check out Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive.
Some libraries offer free movie and television show downloads as well, or DVD and Blu-Ray loans....
Re: Competing with free (Score:1)
Pirating is so much easier than drm crap, i can never get that shit to work.
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You could always check with your local library.
Most offer e-book loans for free.
I bought a Kindle e-reader. Not because I was interested in Amazon's collection, but because it seemed to be the best hardware. Our library, like many, use Overdrive for e-books, with uses Adobe Digital Editions DRM locked ebooks. Unfortunatly they are epub, which is compatible with every other ereader except Kindle, and Amazon has no interest in interoperability. Plus Digital Editions is a pretty terrible program.
So to read library books on my Kindle, I have to download and load the book into Digital Editi
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You could always check with your local library.
Most offer e-book loans for free.
I bought a Kindle e-reader. Not because I was interested in Amazon's collection, but because it seemed to be the best hardware. Our library, like many, use Overdrive for e-books, with uses Adobe Digital Editions DRM locked ebooks. Unfortunatly they are epub, which is compatible with every other ereader except Kindle, and Amazon has no interest in interoperability. Plus Digital Editions is a pretty terrible program.
So to read library books on my Kindle, I have to download and load the book into Digital Editions, then use DeDRM to load them into Calibre, to convert to mobi to load on the Kindle.
Install aldiko ebook reader on the kindle. It directly supports overdrive downloads/loans.
there's (an older) free version in the amazon app store:
https://www.amazon.com/Aldiko-... [amazon.com]
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Install aldiko ebook reader on the kindle. It directly supports overdrive downloads/loans.
Thanks but I have an e-ink style Kindle, not a rebadged Android Kindle Fire, so I can't install apps.
Re:Competing with free (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the problem with content: People care mostly about convenience.
You know what caused the switch from Piratebay to Netflix? Convenience. Nobody gives a fuck about 10 bucks a month, what they care about is ease of use. Click it and it works. Netflix managed to be more convenient than TPB. That's all.
That's also the reason that certain content gets copied like crazy. Not even, but especially when prohibitive DRM is in place. You might notice that those always-online games are among those that get copied the most. Why? Convenience. If I buy a game that I then cannot play because the activation server is overloaded, tinker and toy for a few hours until I give up, download it from TPB and just play it.
Next time I omit the step that is of no use to me.
eDonkey! (Score:2)
When I want the download of a single song to take a week, it's eDonkey FTW!
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I gave up on that network when I saw the queue was over 6000 and running at dialup speeds.
Re: eDonkey! (Score:2)
Wrong. P2P is NOT (at least usually) "piracy"!!! (Score:5, Informative)
"Copyright piracy" is a legal term that has been around for about 150 years. Though some copyright owners (I'm looking at you, Disney) certainly want to make people think it means something else. That's why they call everything piracy.
But actually it refers to people who make unauthorized copies and distribute them, usually for personal gain (like profit).
In other words, "piracy" basically means people who make copies and sell them.
Piracy is a crime. But just downloading -- if that's all you're doing -- is NOT piracy, and is not a crime. It is a civil violation, comparable to making a personal copy of a videotape.
People who upload videos to torrent sites might be pirates -- if they do it for some kind of personal gain -- but not people who just download.
Having said that: many (but not all) torrent programs force you to upload at the same time you are downloading. Technically, that might be considered piracy in some cases, but usually isn't. It's a pretty damned hard case to make in court.
Also, there does exist software that does not force you to upload when you download. Though you might have to look hard to find it.
Re:Wrong. P2P is NOT (at least usually) "piracy"!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you drunk or high or something?
"Copyright piracy" is a legal term
No. Never has been.
In other words, "piracy" basically means people who make copies and sell them.
Bullshit. It's been known as "pirate copying" and "pirate copies" since we were trading floppies in the school yard 30 years ago, obviously completely non-commercial. You just made up your own terms, your own definitions and is going on a rant because nobody gets it "right" even though you're the one trying to redefine everything.
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Grand parent is absolutely right. Piracy used to be the unlicensed distribution of unlicensed copyrighted material, while unlicensed copies for private use were just mere infringements. Noone would ever call the creator of mix tapes a pirate, when he only gave them to his friends.
Interestingly, the cambridge dictionary sticks with the old definition, while the RIAA already got to merriam webster
cambridge dicitonary [cambridge.org]
Merriam-webster [merriam-webster.com]
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Bullshit. It's been known as "pirate copying" and "pirate copies" since we were trading floppies in the school yard 30 years ago, obviously completely non-commercial. You just made up your own terms, your own definitions and is going on a rant because nobody gets it "right" even though you're the one trying to redefine everything.
Because you were progagandized into believing it. Not my problem, ace.
30 years isn't much compared to about 150. And your misuse of a legal term is not my problem.
Here are some citations from around 1900. [scielo.org]
In 1852 France accused the US of wanton "copyright piracy".
You really shouldn't open your mouth when there are no facts in the brain driving it.
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What is "piracy" anyway?
"the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea."
When children in school are accused of being a cross between Henry Morgan and Jack Sparrow, you know that the RIAA, MAFIAA etc are full of s**t. It may, or may not be theft. I think it is but it is not, by any stretch of the imagination anything like what still happens off the Horn of Africa!
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Accusing kids in school of being Jack Sparrow is maybe not what the MAFIAA wants to do, especially when at the same time depicting him as a hero and overall cool guy...
Kids just might get that wrong.
The REAL Piracy (Score:1)
Moreover, the real piracy is the copyright lawyers denying access to the public domain. When the copyright MONOPOLY rule was established, it was a deal: A LEGAL MONOPOLY for 14 years, in exchange for the work reverting to the PUBLIC DOMAIN after that.
Today the lawyers call the LEGAL MONOPOLY "intellectual property", implying it is perpetual, and they have indeed made it so.
This is the piracy, not some bloke downloading bits off the Internet.
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But just downloading -- if that's all you're doing -- is NOT piracy, and is not a crime.
That's why they sue people for distribution. P2P platforms rely on you not only downloading but redistributing the content.
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I already said it.
And they can only sue for distribution if there is intent to gain personally... i.e., piracy.
Well... to clarify, they can sue, but they probably have no chance of winning unless they can show that your motive was personal gain.
Distribution per se is no crime. Only unauthorized distribution with an intent of personal gain.
If you let me copy your DVD, you haven't "distributed with intent of gain", unless I pay or trade you something for that DVD.
Streaming services too expensive (Score:2)
Re:Streaming services too expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, nope.
Here in my country, east of the Iron Courtain, Netflix is 7 bucks a month, cheapest tier. Tidal is 5 bucks a month. Same with Spotify.
They're not too expensive.
Geolocking does exist as a matter of fact, and it's one of the main reasons piracy still exists.
We (my people) have been treated a second class people for far too long , and we won't have it anymore. So when Netflix comes and says "you can't have this content that others do because $bullshit_reason*", we don't like it, and stop using it.
*$bullshit_reason could be, for example, a certain movie or TV series had their broadcasting rights sold to some asshole local company which sits on them trying to boost prices, or to an actual broadcaster which is only interested in maximizing profit. This results in many, if not most good movies or TV series being unavailable in my country. Anecdotal evidence: 10 of my top 10 preferred moviesw ere unavailable on netflix for my country (or at all!) due to broadcasting rights or movie owner not wanting to sell rights to Netflix. Hulu isn't available in my country, at all. Tidal has a "hip-hop problem", pushing their own music agenda despite the fact that I am a metalhead and for months I have only listened to metal on their platform. Yet, every fucking time I open Tidal, the main page and all their recommendation revolve around "JayZ's Playlist" and "Nicki Minaj" and other crap I simply DO NOT WANT. I perceive that behavior as being disrespectful - so I cancelled my subscription.
The pirate alternative: Torrent websites (private trackers):
- have a much wider selection of content
- have HIGH QUALITY content (Blu-Ray, 4K, etc)
- Are very fast (5-10 minutes) to download pretty much anything (local peers abound)
- Don't push their own agenda
- Have most content available IMMEDIATELY after release (especially music and TV series; for movies you generally need to wait a month or so for highest quality)
- Have a large variety of good subtitles in a myriad languages, readily attached to movies and series
- Do carry obscure and "rare" content (which I can't legally buy, stream or rent from anywhere)
I am all for legal methods of consuming content, and I am ready to pay for it. But when, for example, the FIFA World Cup 2018 took place this summer, I was unable to find an easy way to legally livestream matches. I was ready to pay-per-view or subscribe to bundles, but none were available for my country. The official broadcaster for my country had horrible service, thir website was down or locking up most of the time, it was unusable. And there was no alternative... except watching pirate livestreams which worked perfectly.
Life finds a way... so does consuming media content in a timely manner.
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I'm well aware that Eastern European countries are well behind Western European countries in terms of development. However, people are people wherever they are. There's a difference between being behind economically and being treated like a half-animal.
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I already own all of them. It was never about that. It was about the ability to watch them from any device without having to set up my own streaming server and infrastructure.
You don't "shop" at Netflix, you pay a subscription for a library, it's a service, not a store.
Most shows still aren't for sale at any price (Score:1)
Duh? The files still aren't for sale, even in 2018. You can wave your money in their faces but you cannot force the video industry to take it.
So for most shows, if you want to watch it on standard equipment, piracy is the only option. Your money is unwelcome.
I just want to actually -OWN- what I buy (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't own anything anymore. You can only purchase access to view/listen/use it through some service... services aren't always available, and even when they are, the internet isn't always available, and even when it is, your hardware might not be up to snuff.
With my personal collection, barring some out-of-left-field tech issue, I know it's going to work every time and be right there where I want it.
With online services, the price might increase, there might be updates or patches that force you to cough up personal information.
It's like, no... I just want to give you money, and then you give me a product, and we part ways. Not, I give you money, and then you keep spying on me and sending me ads and essentially "following" through the cloud.
Wow this rant went all over the place, but seriously, for all it's advantages, I'm fed up with streaming anything.
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Call it free anti virus support by the "free" OS but every user file gets a unique number.
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You want control.
They want to keep it.
If your device/service has to ask permission to begin, you don't own shit, you have conditional functionality. Does a confirmation? Phones home? Conditional functionality, and they weren't your conditions.
See you in the terrafoam, boys.
Data (Score:3)
Message to content owners (Score:2)
It's true that many pirate videos and music because they don't want to pay. But it is also true that many, probably many more, do so because piracy (e.g ThePirateBay.org) is a very convenient way of getting the material; sometimes the only way. Content owners insist in making it difficult to access the material, in curtailing where it can be played, in creating artificial scarcity, in treating consumers, first and foremost, as potential thieves.
Content owners, make the material, all the material, available
yeah (Score:1)
and (Score:1)
Re:theft (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright violations are not theft. When you steal something, you deprive the owner of the presence or use of that thing.
E.g., if you stole my TV, I would no longer have it and not be able to use it.
When you copy a videotape or CD or DVD, you don't deprive either the copyright holder, or the person who owned the original you copied, of anything. Anything at all.
Further, multiple studies have shown that copying nearly always occurs in situations in which there would not have been a sale anyway. (I.e., person does not have the money to buy the CD, or a movie ticket.)
So usually, it isn't even depriving the copyright holder of any theoretical profit.
Copyright violations are NOT "theft". It's a completely different area of the law.
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On the other hand, "copyright theft" does actually exist. It happens when someone (usually a MAFIAA member) takes something from the author then makes a fraudulent takedown request, thus depriving the copyright holder from his work.
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Re: theft (Score:2)
Re:theft (Score:5, Interesting)
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Here is a (hex) number:
A9C120EDFD186901C9DBD0F660
It is ALSO a copyrighted program (*) since I just wrote it.
1. Do you steal a number??? Hint. YOU CAN'T and don't since I STILL have it if you "steal" it.
2. If you copy that program you have committed piracy (since I never game permission for you to use it.) So copying numbers are now illegal ???
Yes, according to current idiotic, archaic, law. It is called "Copyright Infringement"
It doesn't matter if numbers represent data such as audio, video, text, etc.
Saying it is illegal to copy a number is still stupid.
(*) It a 6502 program (*) that prints the letters A-Z on an Apple ][.
--
Only children censor
Adults communicate and even laugh at taboo subjects.
Re: theft (Score:3)
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I assume you're right but it is a very good explanation as to why it is still piracy when you download (and upload small bits) of a copyrighted movie using bit torrent technology.
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> Your program does not meet the criteria to be copyrightable
Which is what exactly ... ? Chapter and Verse of the U.S. Code, Title 17, please.
Also, please define "original work of authorship"
TIA.
Re: theft (Score:5, Informative)
Uncopyrightable procedure, process, system, or method of operation [cornell.edu].
Specifically, in this instance, something covered by merger [paulweiss.com]. There are no expressive elements to the program. It is merely the simplest, most mechanical way of getting a 6502 CPU to produce that entirely non-expressive output.
Signed,
Actual IP attorney
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Agreed.
You man enjoy N. Stephan Kinsella's book -- a patent attorney of many years' experience who is Against Intellectual Property [amazonaws.com] -- IMHO it should have been titled "Against Imaginary Property"
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You're really bad at this, aren't you? "Subject to the provisions of this title, patents shall have the attributes of personal property." [cornell.edu] Quod erat demonstrandum.
But feel free to explain how the law does not define property, whereupon I shall be freed to appropriate that vehicle that you use to get to work.
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/whoosh
It's called Imaginary Property to show the absurdity of how broken the current legal system is.
Due to your profession's excessive greed you guys are even patenting Math [uspto.gov] !?!?!?! Worse, the fucking algorithm is even named, Carmack's Reverse [wikipedia.org], after the person who independently [archive.org] discovered and shared it. Yet assholes like you think it is OK that a company can "own" another man's original and independent thought -- preventing the idea from being implemented.
The fact that you defend patents proves that
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Yes, that's totally what it shows.
He's free to think it,
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Context and intent actually matter in court cases. You can't copyright a number, but you can copyright something that can be represented by an otherwise huge, random number.
Consider yourself lucky. If it was possible to claim a copyright on such a tiny program, you'd likely get sued by someone else who already wrote it before. 8)
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By your logic if I *borrow* a book or CD from the library then "I'm depriving the author from a sale" ??? (You are *assuming* I was going to buy it in the first place.)
When I buy a BluRay and DVD and my *entire* family watches are "the rest of my family depriving the author from a sale" ??? No, because in this instance they weren't going to buy it in the first place.
Pull your head out of your ass. There are LEGAL ways to obtain the information WITHOUT paying for it.
Stop trying to justify your failed mark
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I wish I had mod points to mod you offtopic...
What does the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it have to do with copying stuff?