Homeland Security Seizes Dozens of Piracy Websites

[Gindil]

There went internet neutrality. Next step is giving the net to the big companies.

Honestly, if you want to increase net neutrality, you need to make the broadband companies compete. This whole idea of rules for the internet that they need to adjust to really won't fly unless they're faced with a strike to their income.

I don't want anyone having direct control that is the whole idea of a free open internet. When someone starts controlling it, it becomes a problem.

True. But think about what's been happening. Who do Americans have a choice between right now?

AT&T, Verizon, TWC, and maybe one more for broadband internet service. Imagine what would happen if ONE company decides to break net neutrality or anything else (AT&T right now). Now think about what would happen if more companies could make that service and you got to switch your service to one of 50 different companies. Would they fight hard for you to stay with them? As it stands, I think people lose sight of what the true goal of "net neutrality" is. It's about your choice in who you want for your service, not being at the mercy of these corporations. Increased competition = net neutrality.

 

[Snotnarok]

There went internet neutrality. Next step is giving the net to the big companies.

Honestly, if you want to increase net neutrality, you need to make the broadband companies compete. This whole idea of rules for the internet that they need to adjust to really won't fly unless they're faced with a strike to their income.

I don't want anyone having direct control that is the whole idea of a free open internet. When someone starts controlling it, it becomes a problem.

True. But think about what's been happening. Who do Americans have a choice between right now?

AT&T, Verizon, TWC, and maybe one more for broadband internet service. Imagine what would happen if ONE company decides to break net neutrality or anything else (AT&T right now). Now think about what would happen if more companies could make that service and you got to switch your service to one of 50 different companies. Would they fight hard for you to stay with them? As it stands, I think people lose sight of what the true goal of "net neutrality" is. It's about your choice in who you want for your service, not being at the mercy of these corporations. Increased competition = net neutrality.

My worry is ,companies get a hold of the internet and now it's all regulated and censored. I hate censorship and I want people to post what they want. That's my biggest worry.

 

[Mysnomer]

COICA actually hasn't passed, the senate hasn't even voted on it yet. It has to pass in the Senate and House, then go to the President. Anyone that knows anything about piracy knows that there are a ton of websites that offer easy access to pirated content and they stay in operation because they're on foreign soil. The language of this law makes it appear that a website has to be "dedicated to infringing content," not just host an infringing video from time to time like YouTube. Will the law get abused and is it a slippery slope? I don't really know. I do think that something has to be done about piracy though... whether it's COICA or not is unsure.

So, how are they acting on this law if it hasn't been passed? Doesn't that bother you? Isn't that, oh, I don't know, illegal? If you want to fight piracy, there are better ways to do it, and the true power to fight it comes from the people who create the product, not these heavy-handed government powers.

Snip

Thanks for an enlightening post.

 

[Gindil]

COICA actually hasn't passed, the senate hasn't even voted on it yet. It has to pass in the Senate and House, then go to the President. Anyone that knows anything about piracy knows that there are a ton of websites that offer easy access to pirated content and they stay in operation because they're on foreign soil. The language of this law makes it appear that a website has to be "dedicated to infringing content," not just host an infringing video from time to time like YouTube. Will the law get abused and is it a slippery slope? I don't really know. I do think that something has to be done about piracy though... whether it's COICA or not is unsure.

So, how are they acting on this law if it hasn't been passed? Doesn't that bother you? Isn't that, oh, I don't know, illegal? If you want to fight piracy, there are better ways to do it, and the true power to fight it comes from the people who create the product, not these heavy-handed government powers.

Snip

Thanks for an enlightening post.

They actually have a few other laws they're using right now.

Link [http://hotair.com/archives/2010/11/27/doj-seizes-domain-names-of-more-than-70-websites-suspected-of-piracy/]

 

[underattack86]

Neither requires a victim, only the appropriation of unlawful goods.

How can anything be an act of theft without a victim? Theft is the taking of property, and property can only belong to individual people, therefore an act of theft without a victim cannot be theft.

We can talk abstractly about how big or small certain industries are, ignoring the various other factors involved, but without demonstrating how specific individuals have been deprived of property you cannot define these individuals as victims of theft, and to suggest an entire industry as victim is just absurd.

If there's a leach its the thieves themselves. They don't produce, they don't contribute, and they don't pay for what they take. They sit there "feeding off the productive members of society like leeches", and then crying every time they're faced with the prospect of actually paying for what they steal.

Again, "steal" implies loss of property: no such event occurs in the sharing of data, where a sharer consensually gifts data to a recipient. If the sharer does not charge a cost, then rightly the recipient should not "pay for what they take"... that's why it's called sharing. Government agencies can be proven to be parasites: they exist only because the money used to pay for their "services" is stolen from the citizen, in the form of actual theft that we call "taxation". When taxes are levied, property is wrongfully taken from a victim: this is a crime. It's nature is in stark contrast to data sharing, where two people can exchange 1's and 0's without anybody ever being deprived of property.

You can't steal shit and say it's free speech.

Not stealing; sharing of data. Big difference. And freedom of speech is absolutely absolute! Making certain types of free speech illegal does not stop each individual from having an absolute right to say whatever they like.

Which is well and good when the sharer in fact owns the copyright. But, when the sharer is a 13 year old in New Jersy, you cannot convince me he owns the rights to The Godfather.

He doesn't need to own "the rights" to anything except his hard drive and the data he intends to share. The data is his; the fact that the order it occurs in will, once translated into video, recreate a movie produced by somebody else does not change the fact that the data belongs to him. Copyright is meaningless: nobody can own an order of data, since the concept of order is abstract and therefore cannot be scarce, a necessary condition for defining property.

In short, when you buy something that is copyrighted, it does not become your work.

It becomes your property, and that is enough. And even if the buyer were bound by some unsigned contract not to copy the material (unsigned contracts obviously being an invalid concept), once they shared it with a second agent that agent would have every right to distribute the data however they desired without being attacked as some sort of criminal.

Merely writing that one has a right to copyright does not make it so, even if it's written in the Constitution. Frankly, the Constitution is wrong on this matter.

By the logic that, if one cannot sell their intellectual work, then why do so? As a society. Some individuals will always be driven to create, but for the rest, we would be a far poorer and more boorish society for it.

That doesn't demonstrate a right to demand copyright, only a desirability as a matter of opinion. It doesn't give a creator the right to use violence to attack their imitators.

So giving the CD to another is an act of theft? But as I already made clear, the CD is mine. I bought it as a blank CD from a store. So when is the creator deprived of any property which is rightfully theirs?

No, you're talking property need not be scarce. Economics dictate the allocation of scarce resources. But these two things are not automatically interconnected.

Explain to me how non-scarce, immaterial, non-physical "property" can exist, then.

Actually there are many. But let's start with the first. Let's say you work for years slaving away on a book. By your logic, the moral thing for me to do is beat you over the head, take it down the street and have it published in my name.

That's a strawman, I said no such thing. That would a be physical act of theft, and also an act of fraud against those you sold it to since you would be misrepresenting my work as your own. However if you were to wait until my book was published, then duplicated it and gave it to your friends, how would this be a criminal act against me? I've lost no property! No act of theft can possibly be said to have occurred!

Now, go look up your state's statute for theft or larceny. Go on, do it, now, I'll wait.

I like to base my understanding of morality on what's rational, rather than what's written by the criminals in positions of power. The state can write whatever it likes.

Weird lil' insult with the "within your capacity to do so" jab, by the way. Do I strike you as dumb? Or are you just conditioned to insult those who contradict you on the internet?

Actually it does. With the recipe? It's only a crime if you don't own it and someone else has a copyright for it.

But I own the information which exists in my own mind, or on paper I own, or on a computer I own. How can anybody else possibly claim to own my data, physical or mental?

You seem to be relying a lot on the idea that anything which the state declares illegal becomes immoral, without having a rational justification for this judgement. Should we also agree that aiding escaping slaves was immoral, since it was against the law? I don't care if the state tells me I can't share a movie, or nuclear launch codes. It's my data, and my right to share it. That's called freedom of speech, and since it originates exclusively from within me and since my body is exclusively the property of my self, then yes, it IS absolute.

Care to demonstrate how "freedom of speech" is not synonymous with "freedom to share"? Can you enunciate the difference? Or are you just asserting that the two are different without rationally understanding why you believe this?

Let me know how that works out for you, if you would be so kind?

Perhaps I should also go negotiate with the Mafia, or Al-Qaeda? I've intelligence enough not to aggravate the criminal class, thank you. I'd rather just sit here and commit my perfectly moral acts of sharing.

 

[Mysnomer]

Pirate Bay isn't just a website. Pirate Bay is an idea, mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.

The reference is entirely necessary as this garbage shows it could get that bad. It's as though some governments look at fictional works to reference with pointers for their regime.

Rather, those stories aren't so much wild fiction, but insightful truths wrapped in a fictitious veneer. Kinda' like hiding vegetables in chocolate.

Let's tone it down, child-pornography is illegal so yes that should be shut down.

Piracy is illegal, too.

On a civil level. CP is a criminal offense. Piracy is not worthy of the resources they have devoted to it.

These sites do not only provide links to illegal content, a large portion of what they link to is legal.

In fact, some of these sites have done wonderful things to improve P2P technology and keep the internet a free, interesting, and useful place. Take Isohunt and Vuze for example, both legal websites that do great work improving the technology of file-sharing. They do great work and they receive monetary reward for this. However their work is used for illegal file-sharing, despite their efforts. Do they deserve t be shut down, and have their intellectual property taken from them by the government?

Just because they do some good stuff doesn't mean they get off the hook for violating the law.

If I burned down houses for fun, but also volunteered at a homeless shelter, does that mean that I shouldn't go to jail?

This comparison does not hold water at all.

Many of the sites are not perpetrating anything, there is no intent to a criminal act (unlike arson). They create a script that searches for torrents, and some of those torrents will be illegal. Logically, they would not be expected to moderate the entirety of the internets, so the burden is with copyright holders, who must inform them of infringing torrents and request their removal. Then the site owner must comply, or face legal ramifications (in a civil court, I might add).

The DHS has cut out that middle segment that allows for human error, without any consideration but for their own ends. The government is not striding into the lawless west with the intent of cleaning up the town. They are pissing all over an established system that doesn't suit their needs. To extend the metaphor, they are more of a desperado than any pirate or torrent distributor.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

This, this is a much better way of attacking piracy than sueing thousands of end users, cheaper too. If they can do this consistently they might have a chance at reducing piracy in the Usat least, making torrents a pain in the ass to find will do more than attacking a few end users at any rate.

Guess someone never learnt the point of the old fable about the Hydra...

You kill the Hydra with fire, not by cutting off it's head.

For God's sakes don't tell them about killingthe Hydra!

Close. You cut off the head and then keep it from regrowing with fire!

 

[Starke]

You can't stop people from getting digital products.

It's not the getting of digital products that anyone wants to stop. It is the theft of other people's stuff, which is then defended in idiotic ways, like claiming that it can't be stopped.

Now, by that logic someone could march into your home, torture and murder your family one member at a time, but because you can't stop them, it's not a crime? Sorry, I'm not buying it.

*sigh* One of those people. Alright.

Yes, I must confess, I am an adult. My halcyon days of moochin' off my parents are long gone. A kid, a job, and back to school for a bachelor's and I have become, horrifyingly, a responsible adult. But, it's okay, I'm sure you'll get there someday yourself.

Let's look at this for a second. In the ten years of the DMCA, has it stopped the sharing of data at all?

At all? Yes. Completely? No. Console piracy rates aren't much lower than their PC counterparts because people don't like gaming from their couch.

Has the DMCA stopped people from sharing songs on Youtube, Grooveshark, or LiveStream?

Again? Yes. Not completly, but it has impeded them.

Has the suing of individuals by the RIAA or the Copyright Group stopped people from using Bittorrent or LimeWire?

No, but suing Limewire did stop people from using it further. And it did provide (in theory) a disincentive for others.

Now, did the primary infringement suits stop people from pirating content? That's a tough question, and one I know for a fact you cannot answer in the definite. What is the precise effect of deterrence? Has it stopped some people? Almost certainly. Has it stopped everyone? No. How many has it stopped? I don't know, and neither do you.

Oh and just another thing. Link [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373091,00.asp]. Even when they bow to the "greedy corporation" overlords, there's still crazy demands made of them.

Oh, one of those people. Don't worry, there is free psychiatric help out there.

Now, the RIAA can't stop the newest interation of Limewire who obviously won't work with them to make money.

Then again, it's not like Limewire was ever working with anyone to reimburse artists. In fact, Limewire was specifically designed so that they couldn't police their own content. They then tried to use that as their defense they failed. It seems that, in order to be eligable for safe harbor protections, you need to actually have control over your own network. If you don't have control, then it's just being irresponsible. And being irresponsible isn't a credible legal defense in a secondary infringement case.

Napster tried to work with the RIAA and look what happened. Sued to oblivion.

Really? Then what is this site I see here? http://www.napster.com/index.html

Okay, so here's the thing, Napster did negotiate a settlement. Not only are they still around, but you can actually buy their points cards in Best Buy and the like. I haven't heard how well they're doing, but they've become a legitimate distribution service, like the iTunes Store. And if you listened to the chatter back when the case first started up, this was always planned to be Napster's long term business model. (Maybe not the prepaid cards at retail, but the whole paid digital distribution service.)

The game of whack a mole continues. Logic overcomes emotion once you look at the facts.

Logic is great, if you understand the data and can divorce it from your own personal biases. To claim that no one is harmed by this crime indicates a serious deficiency the data you've examined.

And yes, we should keep the Logical fallacies [http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-fear.html] out of our arguments.

Yeah, that's not what I was aiming for. An illustration of the logical failures of your argument on the other hand... if the use of second person pronouns offended your sensibilities, then in that, and only in that, you have my apologies.

With the advent of the internet and all of the ways to get movies, music, programs, communications, etc., it's a lesson in futility in thinking that any one corporation or government can truly stop people from doing so.

Except it isn't one corporation or government. Nor has it been for some time.

Put it this way, people said sixty years ago that we could never eradicate small pox, no single government or corporation could eliminate it. Now, smallpox is effectively extinct, what makes you think that a couple greedy little kids in their parent's basements are better at survival than a virulent disease that was with us for centuries?

Uhm... We can still get chicken pox? Though I'm puzzled how a disease can be equivalent to filesharing...

So you died from your case of chicken pox? I didn't know. Small pox was a lethal disease. It killed people. From a pathological standpoint the only corollary today would be Malaria.

Anyway, it's relevant because nothing is impossible if people work together. Including shutting internet theft down.

Now, with all of this legalizing force, can you truly make MONEY on the internet? With more authors making comics, movies, music, for FREE? It seems we are shifting to this so called sense of entitlement era you love so dear.

You seem to be able to. Pirate Bay was making goddamn bank off of piracy for years. And as someone else mentioned earlier, advertising does make money. People have based their livelihoods off of people who pirate content.

That, is an outright lie. Links [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/02/pirate-bay-big-revenue-claims-fabricated-by-prosecutors.ars]

You'll have to forgive me for looking at what pirate bay is claiming with a grain of salt. The numbers that were claimed are consistent with advertisement revenue for a site which was consistently in the top 10 sites globally.

And, in point of fact, you can. Look at the site you're posting on. You think this is a volunteer organization? Get fucking real. This is a business. It makes money. If you want to know exactly how much you'll need to ask the staff. Pirate Bay was a business. It was in business to make money. Not to provide a service out of altruistic motives. If you have any doubt of that, I'd suggest you review your comment on emotion and logic.

What you've yet to factor into this equation are things that are needed to keep a website up and running. Namely, server upkeep, customer service, programming hours, man hours, etc. Seeing just the final results without any of the work is like talking about how you make $100K a year before you're taxed to ~$60-$70K.

Funny thing about that. A lot of non-profits maintain their status by paying out all their income to their employees.

Now, that said, yes, it does take money to run and maintain a website. I'm aware. I'm also aware that even with massive bandwidth it isn't that expensive. You're looking at anywhere from under a hundred a couple of grand a month in maintenance as opposed to serious money.

Finally, other, smaller authors are embracing the internet and not worrying about piracy. Just like Steve Lieber here [http://www.undergroundthecomic.com/2010/10/pictures-help-us-learn/]. Don't take my word for it.
No. Look, something you should understand is, I have no problem with someone putting something out there for public consumption. And if that's their choice, that's fine. AVG provides a good free anti-virus option, for instance. They choose to do that, and legally that's their choice. That isn't theft. It is theft when someone else chooses for you, that they will share your work. How you choose to respond to that is again, your choice, not theirs. So Steve doesn't care, great, that's him exercising his right to choose. But, that doesn't make people taking his work without his permission legal. That also doesn't mean, by extension that Steve Lieber speaks for anyone else. He has no authority to speak for me or for you to decide if you or I are offended if our work is pirated.

On the subject of violation of rights and overextension of government control... No. You have no right to take what isn't yours, and the government is completely in the right to pursue you for it. This is not overextension of government control, it's enforcement of policy. It's the same reason mob safe houses are seized. It's a fool's bet to think that the government wouldn't shut down the Salvation Army if they started a Robin Hood-style robbery scheme as a supplement.

I would say the government has no right to look into my home and eavesdrop on me.

Except it does. From numerous methods. There's a threshold they can't pass without a warrant, and a threshold they can't pass with a warrant, but there is no right so fundamental that it cannot be set aside. Police can watch what goes into your home, what comes out, they can do that right now, and you can't say a goddamn thing. This is basically like that. Right to privacy doesn't mean right to commit crimes in my own home without fear of criminal repercussions.

And my counter to that is the repeal of the Patriot Act, especially when the government doesn't follow their own rules in following the procedures. And no, they can't. Link [http://volokh.com/2010/08/06/d-c-circuit-introduces-mosaic-theory-of-fourth-amendment-holds-gps-monitoring-a-fourth-amendment-search/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+volokh/mainfeed+(The+Volokh+Conspiracy)] The 4th amendment continues to help protect us. This is one example.

There are others. But the important thing to remember is that the fourth amendment isn't absolute. Think about it this way, if the police didn't have a reasonable expectation that their methods would be admissible, would they use them? That is to say, do you honestly believe that the police exist only to fuck up their investigations?

The belief that the government is the only authority, especially in the marketplace is greatly flawed. Fair warning that the government colludes in order to take away freedoms.

I hate to burst your bubble, but, this has never been a country founded on absolute freedom, at any level. Ever. For any reason. It has been about greater freedom than being subjects of the British Monarchy, but as for absolute freedom? Yes, you get a hell of a lot more freedom here than you would in most of the world, but it certainly isn't unrestricted.

Here are a few to play with. You have no right to drive a car. You have no right to the internet. You have no right to run from the police. You have no right to photocopy, well, anything. You have no right to tell the government "no," when you're told that they're claiming eminent domain. And finally, unlike military officers disobeying orders, you have no right to disobey a law you believe to be immoral.

The fourth amendment only protects you if the police do not have, a warrant, probable cause, or have made an error in good faith.

In this case, some of the websites taken down were nothing more than search engines similar to Google. They had NO content on them other than a toolbar and were taken down without any type of governmental oversite. How that isn't abuse of "power" given is beyond me.

You're right, it is beyond you. The word is: warrant.

By the way, that case you're trumpeting as a triumph of the fourth amendment? Here's what it really means. If you want to slap a GPS tracker on a vehicle, you need to first get a warrant (easily done), and then you're off to the races. Literally the only thing that case addresses is the need for investigators to get a warrant first. Also, note that in that case the investigators actually had obtained a warrant, but it expired during the course of the investigation. So you're trumpeting a case where the bad guy literally got off because of a technicality. So, you think it's a good thing for criminals to get off because of procedural technicalities? You sure you're not secretly a cartel lawyer from Miami Vice? I kid.

Link [http://www.zeropaid.com/news/90967/nsa-yelled-at-france-over-three-strikes-legislation/] Funny how all this stuff about IPs means they can basically come into our home just to seize our computers for "copyright infringement". Does that really protect us? Or does it make the music/movie industry look stupid?

Why? Are you afraid they'll find something?

Read further down. Regardless, I don't support their music or movies. *wink* [http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-hominem.html]

Being obtuse is not a virtue.

Overall, people are just whining because they can't get free things now. Somebody said earlier that the word "terrorist" is being flung around far too much now. The same applies to "oppressive government" and "greedy corporations". If an argument can be formulated that uses either of those phrases, people have a knee-jerk reaction to resist it, even though both entities have sustained their lives so far and will continue to do so as long as their ability to protect assets and enforce policy is not strung up by manipulative thieves like internet pirates.

Actually, I look hard enough I can find substitutes. Great movies [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO0yXC0oyIA], Good music [http://www.jamendo.com/en/], legal torrents [http://vo.do/foureyedmonsters], and News discussing the ineffectiveness of legislation in a digital era [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101128/15302012021/who-needs-coica-when-homeland-security-gets-to-seize-domain-names.shtml].

Something I'd like to iterate from your post. Problems aren't solved by protecting industries. They're solved by finding solutions to the problems at hand.

Actually that does seem to be what's going on here. If government was really looking to simply protect the industries our systems would be fucked over with god knows what. Just look at some of the DRMs that have been released by games, or recall the Sony Rootkit debacle. THIS is a middle ground. It is looking for a method to solve this problem. And if that means seizing a few sites? That's a hell of a lot easier to stomach than issuing tens of thousands of search warrants, seizing systems and forensically dissecting them at a later date.

A middle ground? A government with a special task force for the movie and music industry going on to take people's freedoms all for a few files on the internet is a middle ground? Really?

You seem to be confusing private actions with governmental ones. So, law enforcement can use your IP records to figure out if you've been downloading things illegally. Great. And that's news, how? This isn't entrapment, you (or whomever) chose to break the law (and their feelings on the law are irrelevant here), and they did. "Because I didn't think I could get caught" is not a legitimate affirmative defense.

Shutting down the sites on a warrant is also perfectly legitimate. That's the point of a warrant.

Now, if we're talking about the behavior of the USCG? Yeah, that's pretty fuckin' reprehensible, and is far worse than anything the government has done. They subpoena ISP records, and then charge people as John Does based on their IP addresses, and file activity, then they send out threats of legal action, saying they've already been named in a suit, and unless they cough up a chunk of dough, they're going to have their ass sued off. Now, here's the brain bender. All of this is completely legal, and is completely irrelevant to this discussion. You know why? Because it is not governmental action. Just like you do not enjoy any first amendment protections from the moderator staff here.

Let's not forget that more than likely, these people have to answer a summons OR they have to fight in an expensive court case to prove that the government took their things illegally.

Yeah, but this, honestly, isn't that different from the criminal justice system as a whole. Forget Law and Order, the courts exist to fuck you over when you break the law. This is no different for these guys, than it is for someone who got picked up on a DUI.

What do you think is going to happen as a result?

In my trained opinion? Fuck all.

I have quite a few guesses. First, setting up your service outside of the US, taking away revenue and taxes.

Already happened. Why do you think Pirate Bay took so long to take down?

Second, more implementation of DNS services to ping their log ins, making these people more difficult to track. So ever more, the game of whack a mole continues.

This is less likely, because ISPs are walking a tightrope right now. They make money off this hand over fist, but they also need to maintain their safe harbor protections. And as Limewire taught us, not being able to regulate your own network is not sufficient for safe harbor.

Even now, some of those sites are back online [http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91400/ice-domain-seizures-a-pointless-exercise/], So what the hell is the point? Did you know that they did this crap this summer? Link [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100630/14391410029.shtml]. Of particular note:

But what's most interesting is where the announcements about these raids happened: at Disney. And who else was there on stage? Execs from other studios.

Whack a mole indeed...

Like it or hate it, corporate interests do get disproportionate attention in the legislative processes. This isn't even an American phenomena, it's global now.

Now, if you want to change this? I'll tell you flat out, this is not the venue to pursue that in.

Just because the government spends millions on this fruitless endeavor won't solve the problem of the big media missing the point. They don't know how to compete anymore.

Okay, seriously? They don't know how to compete with theft? Is that you're argument? And let's not mince words here, piracy is theft. These aren't the (theoretically) romantic pirates of the open oceans, these are thieves. So, because people have figured out how to rip off artists and publishers, it's all okay, because that's just "fair market competition"? I'm sorry, that one doesn't even pass the scratch and sniff test. This is theft, plain and simple. And if you're honestly sitting there trying to argue that this is some kind of competition?

You don't seem to understand how this works.

Judging by your post, I actually know more about the subject than you do. Both media histor and economics.

Quick history on movies and music. They were the old gatekeepers. In the music industry, you had the Big Four (soon to be the Big Three since EMI is having financial trouble) that controlled the market.

And out of the gate you've screwed things up. You're right when you're talking about the Music industry. But, on the films side, which you did include, there was the studio system, which structurally looks nothing like the modern industry, or the music industry.

Monopolistic competition [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition]. In all honesty, the artists were screwed over by the labels by the Sonny Bono Act. They got screwed over by deals that heavily favored the label to make money. Picture here [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml]. The DMCA screwed them over yet again by making the terms lifetime + 70 years after an artist dies. Let's think about that... A corporation can hold onto a copyright and control movies LOOOOONG after you die.

Technically that extends to your heirs and estate, not simply record deals and the like. And yes, I am fully aware of this. Historically it was 30 years, and every twenty years or so, Disney has pressured to extend the deadline, coincidentally in the face of their major icons passing into public domain. I've actually seen articles on the subject that suggest that the era of public domain is effectively over, and that any new creations will (ultimately) be under copyright permanently.

Yet another example [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/nyregion/thecity/29hist.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all]. So in the end, who's screwing whom? Artists are actually making money from concerts. Hell, google "50 cent" and "piracy" and you'll be amazed at the CBS report he says about that.

Nowadays? Those markets are freed up. Yet, Hollywood (movies) and the RIAA(music) continue to try to put things back to the 80s in various forms. It ain't working [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100518/1031049467.shtml]

The final panel of the day, on "Music & Money," included both Michael Robertson and Tim Quirk -- both of whom have long been critics of the record labels and their business practices. It gave them a chance to (accurately) gripe about the record labels and how they've spent the last decade (or longer) shooting themselves in the foot time and time again by basically killing off every innovative new startup that popped up by demanding ridiculous fees just to operate.

Don't you love progress?

Kinda. Okay, so you missed the film industry earlier, and that might be relevant now...

Here's the history you missed. Back in the 30s and 40s, the Film industry consisted of a handful of studios, mostly the big three, MGM, WB, and 20th Century Fox, (there was a fourth one, that's escaping me at the moment, but they folded ages ago) and some smaller specialty studios like Disney. Studios contracted people, and then stuck them wherever they wanted. The studio mechanism controlled who would be cast for what film, who would direct, who would write, and so on. What this resulted in were, by and large, very safe films. Not very adventurous or risky (usually), but corporately comfortable films, that presented (more or less) a unified vision. (There were exceptions, films like Sunset Boulevard certainly didn't fit that mold.) Under this system, actors, directors, writers, and even background staff like grips got the short end of the stick relative to a handful of carefully managed stars and the execs.

This changed in the 60s and 70s for numerous reasons, the biggest was simply people were bored with getting the same dross over and over again, and television was displacing cinema. The result was a breakdown of the studio system into something more recognizable for a modern viewer. Directors or producers had control over a project, casting didn't come out of a casting mill from the studio. There was a greater degree of independence, and on the whole, the films of today are usually better than the films from the 1940s and 50s (though that is subject to taste).

Go back 15 years, and look at the music industry. It was well on its way to being where the film industry was in the mid-60s. People were bored with the same dross. Alternative music represented the same kind of slot as the independent films of the 70s, and the label system seemed to be on the way out.

In marches internet piracy, something films didn't have to deal with, and it kills and eats everyone indiscriminately. Now, if piracy hadn't occurred what would the music scene look like today? A lot of smaller labels which were more artist friendly, and the big names trying to find a new place for themselves? I'm guessing, but it isn't an unreasonable analysis given the data we had 15 years ago. What we have is an incredibly caustic environment in which the only thing that is really profitable are the stunningly massive acts. That's not healthy, and it's prolonged the label system. So instead of seeing a transition between the label system and a more distributed artist friendly system, we've seen an environment where only the labels can survive by turning their exploitative system up to 11.

They don't know how to do anything but take subsistence from the government and pay extra bucks to make legislation that is truly anti consumer thief.

Sorry, you had a little typo there, but I got it for ya. Happens to the best of us.

Oops, Sorry about that. I actually meant to put this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use] up also.

Aw. Yeah, I understand that. It happens to the best of us. Of course, I'd still like to know where in fair use you get the idea you can simply copy and distribute an item as much as you want. Because it isn't in any version of Fair Use I've ever read.

Watch what happens when a bunch of artists decide to embrace the internet, finance their own films and do it without Hollywood or the Big Four companies in media. The quiet revolution has actually already begun. Good luck stopping it.

See, here's the really funny thing. This is going out of it's way to avoid taking this shit down. If your theory was right, then the big bad corporations who own the goddamn world would have no qualms simply crushing the torrent network. And before you go off on that whole "can't stop the signal" bullshit, let me explain. There are technical limitations within the existing software that are fundamental to the design architecture. If the government's intent was to end torrents now, it would happen. It is because they ARE protecting these people you cite.

Notice how this happened right before COICA is to be debated and possibly rectified. Funny how no one can connect the dots until it's too late.

People do. But freaking out over this reflects either a myopic view of the law and economy, personal bias, or unreasoned paranoia.

EDIT: Due to the proximity of UnderAttack's posts, I may be being unduly harsh on you. For that I apologize.

 

[Starke]

Neither requires a victim, only the appropriation of unlawful goods.

How can anything be an act of theft without a victim? Theft is the taking of property, and property can only belong to individual people, therefore an act of theft without a victim cannot be theft.

Except, as we've seen, the legal definition doesn't require that the property actually be taken, only received. Now, I'm sorry if this is too complicated for you to understand, but it is quite legally theft.

We can talk abstractly about how big or small certain industries are, ignoring the various other factors involved, but without demonstrating how specific individuals have been deprived of property you cannot define these individuals as victims of theft, and to suggest an entire industry as victim is just absurd.

The industry is victimized as a whole, that isn't to say it's a single victim. You understand the difference?

If there's a leach its the thieves themselves. They don't produce, they don't contribute, and they don't pay for what they take. They sit there "feeding off the productive members of society like leeches", and then crying every time they're faced with the prospect of actually paying for what they steal.

Again, "steal" implies loss of property: no such event occurs in the sharing of data, where a sharer consensually gifts data to a recipient.

Except, again, that flat out isn't the case. Now if you want to jam your fingers in your ears and claim you can't hear me, that's great, but doesn't help you at all. Now, you can't give something you don't own, so we're back at that.

If the sharer does not charge a cost, then rightly the recipient should not "pay for what they take"... that's why it's called sharing.

No, it's called sharing because that's what it was dubbed. Just like it's called piracy, because that's more romantic than theft. Just like calling something "ethnic cleansing" doesn't mean it isn't "genocide." You can't change what something is by giving it a flowery name, all you can do is hope to dupe the imbeciles who cannot understand the difference.

Government agencies can be proven to be parasites: they exist only because the money used to pay for their "services" is stolen from the citizen, in the form of actual theft that we call "taxation".

Ah, so we'd be better off without government? I'm sorry, I've heard this argument before, no one credible who understands economics or politics believes that Ayn Rand was anything more than a lunatic.

By the way, Article 1, Section 7 says they can. So you can either deal with it, or leave. It's better than the deal you would have gotten from the British Monarchy.

When taxes are levied, property is wrongfully taken from a victim: this is a crime. It's nature is in stark contrast to data sharing, where two people can exchange 1's and 0's without anybody ever being deprived of property.

By that logic counterfeiting currency wouldn't be a crime. I'd say we all understand that that simply isn't the case, but with you, I'm not so certain.

You can't steal shit and say it's free speech.

Not stealing; sharing of data. Big difference. And freedom of speech is absolutely absolute! Making certain types of free speech illegal does not stop each individual from having an absolute right to say whatever they like.

Then fucking try it. Go into a crowded space and yell "fire", and then find out how limited your freedom of speech really is. Freedom of speech is, in fact, a limited right. The government gives it to you, and in some cases withholds it. Certain kinds of speech are protected, but, at the end of the day, not all. And, again, theft is not speech, and as such is not protected. Crying about it won't change that simple fact.

Which is well and good when the sharer in fact owns the copyright. But, when the sharer is a 13 year old in New Jersy, you cannot convince me he owns the rights to The Godfather.

He doesn't need to own "the rights" to anything except his hard drive and the data he intends to share. The data is his;

No, the hard drive, and the physical medium is his, not the data. What's more, I can tell you know you don't actually believe any of the shit you're spewing, but we'll get back to that.

the fact that the order it occurs in will, once translated into video, recreate a movie produced by somebody else does not change the fact that the data belongs to him. Copyright is meaningless: nobody can own an order of data, since the concept of order is abstract and therefore cannot be scarce, a necessary condition for defining property.

In short, when you buy something that is copyrighted, it does not become your work.

It becomes your property, and that is enough.

Tell that to all the people facing criminal charges for direct and secondary infringement. I'm sure they'd love to know your interpretation. Except, well, you know, it's flat out wrong. Again, crying about it doesn't change what is. What is, is this, you are flat out wrong. You can pretend whatever the fuck you want, but it will never make you right.

And even if the buyer were bound by some unsigned contract not to copy the material (unsigned contracts obviously being an invalid concept), once they shared it with a second agent that agent would have every right to distribute the data however they desired without being attacked as some sort of criminal.

And this is where direct and secondary infringement comes in, but I'm not going to bother explaining it to you, you'd just cry and ignore it.

Merely writing that one has a right to copyright does not make it so, even if it's written in the Constitution. Frankly, the Constitution is wrong on this matter.

Ah, so you're picking and choosing what parts of the constitution apply? What then protects you from the police torturing you without trial? I'm sorry, accept the document or renounce it, you don't get to decide you follow this law because you like it but not that law because you don't. Though, as with all other things, I invite you to try, in as public a way as possible.

By the logic that, if one cannot sell their intellectual work, then why do so? As a society. Some individuals will always be driven to create, but for the rest, we would be a far poorer and more boorish society for it.

That doesn't demonstrate a right to demand copyright, only a desirability as a matter of opinion. It doesn't give a creator the right to use violence to attack their imitators.

So giving the CD to another is an act of theft? But as I already made clear, the CD is mine. I bought it as a blank CD from a store. So when is the creator deprived of any property which is rightfully theirs?

The CD itself, the physical object is yours. The data that has been recorded on it is not yours. Again, if you have a problem with that, tough shit.

No, you're talking property need not be scarce. Economics dictate the allocation of scarce resources. But these two things are not automatically interconnected.

Explain to me how non-scarce, immaterial, non-physical "property" can exist, then.

In data format, as ones and zeros, on the page, on a CD. You do understand the concept of data right? Because there seems to be some confusion on your part.

Actually there are many. But let's start with the first. Let's say you work for years slaving away on a book. By your logic, the moral thing for me to do is beat you over the head, take it down the street and have it published in my name.

That's a strawman, I said no such thing. That would a be physical act of theft, and also an act of fraud against those you sold it to since you would be misrepresenting my work as your own.

AH! But if copyright law is inherently immoral, and unjust then you have no stake in this. But the moment you would have been benefited from the system you leap to its defense. How very telling.

However if you were to wait until my book was published, then duplicated it and gave it to your friends, how would this be a criminal act against me? I've lost no property! No act of theft can possibly be said to have occurred!

Not even the part of you being deprived of your property? Wait, what property? You yourself said there is no legitimacy in copyright law, but, here, when presented with your own benefit, you suddenly change your tune.

Now, go look up your state's statute for theft or larceny. Go on, do it, now, I'll wait.

I like to base my understanding of morality on what's rational, rather than what's written by the criminals in positions of power. The state can write whatever it likes.

Weird lil' insult with the "within your capacity to do so" jab, by the way. Do I strike you as dumb? Or are you just conditioned to insult those who contradict you on the internet?

Let us say, you strike me as the possessor of a singularly focused intellect. Interested only in what is best for him, with no regard for the common good. To disregard the law in a legal debate as "what's written by the criminals in power" and then bemoan the loss of your (fictional) work speaks to that.

Actually it does. With the recipe? It's only a crime if you don't own it and someone else has a copyright for it.

But I own the information which exists in my own mind, or on paper I own, or on a computer I own. How can anybody else possibly claim to own my data, physical or mental?

You seem to be relying a lot on the idea that anything which the state declares illegal becomes immoral, without having a rational justification for this judgement.

No. I subscribe to the idea that morality and law are by and large separate. You are the one who is attempting to make a moralistic argument out of this, and losing, badly.

Should we also agree that aiding escaping slaves was immoral, since it was against the law?

Even there, it only was in certain jurisdictions. But are you trying to tell me that you are liberating enslaved music from its corporate masters? I'm sorry, that Robin Hood bullshit argument has no place here.

I don't care if the state tells me I can't share a movie, or nuclear launch codes.

Then by all means, try to share nuclear launch codes, and find out what happens to you.

It's my data, and my right to share it.

Except when it isn't your data, which is most of the time. Claiming ownership is like planting a flag in the front yard and claiming to be a sovereign state. Good luck, but its not going to help you.

That's called freedom of speech, and since it originates exclusively from within me and since my body is exclusively the property of my self, then yes, it IS absolute.

No, and I'm only going to put it this way because it is litterally not worth my time to explain. Freedom of speech refers to your ability to say and write, more or less, what you want. It does not extend to what you wear, the color you decide to paint your house, where you live, who your friends are (that's freedom of association, and it's enumerated right next to it separately in the first amendment), nor your actions. Pointing a gun at a cop isn't free speech, burning a flag isn't free speech (though it does often receive free speech protections, because it is an inherently political act), file sharing isn't free speech.

Further, free speech is not absolute. Passing classified intelligence verbally would be a speech, but it is not protected. For most of American history pornography was not protected as free speech.

Hell, what you and I are posting right now is very specifically not protected by the first amendment from the Escapist Staff.

Now you can cry or complain, but at the end of the day, freedom of speech is a very narrowly defined range of actions which are either verbal or reflect some kind of artistic work. And, in case you missed it copyright infringement is not free speech.

Care to demonstrate how "freedom of speech" is not synonymous with "freedom to share"?

I believe I just did.

Can you enunciate the difference?

Only when I'm sober.

Okay, to be fair, you do deserve an answer to this. They are different in that they have nothing in common. Freedom of Speech is an enunciated right in the first amendment. "Freedom to Share" is not a legally recognized concept.

Or are you just asserting that the two are different without rationally understanding why you believe this?

No, I believe that you hold the monopoly on that logical failure.

Let me know how that works out for you, if you would be so kind?

Perhaps I should also go negotiate with the Mafia, or Al-Qaeda? I've intelligence enough not to aggravate the criminal class, thank you. I'd rather just sit here and commit my perfectly moral acts of sharing.

And that's the moment I knew you didn't actually believe any of this. See, here's the thing, like the hypothetical above, and your interpretation that the constitution is wrong in Article 1, Section 8, but the first amendment is unassailable, with no exemptions, you've picked the side that benefits you without regard to the actual philosophy behind it.

 

[TechNoFear]

The point was that your statement that the damage done by piracy is impossible to prove is clearly false.

Now, about the multiplayer issues, how can they possibly be caused by pirates? Could pirates connect to the multiplayer servers or something (and I don't mean LAN)? From what I've heard after the game was released, the only problems there were in the game's faulty coding, not in that people pirated it much and the servers just died in disgust.

This is eactly the 'damage' I was talking about. You think the issues were a result of 'faulty coding' (when in fact it was a 900% increase in server load caused by pirate copies).

As I said, there was no DRM.

Therefore there was no restriction / authentication required to connect to the internet servers.

The servers were purchased based on the sales numbers but crashed under the extra (10 times) load created by pirated copies.

So the company had to purchase extra servers and bandwidth just to allow their ligit customers to connect and play.

Clearly that is an actual cost (and server farms are not cheap to purchase, maintain or run).

Edit: That's assuming the servers were even all run by Stardock, which I doubt.

These were the offical servers, not peer to peer.

And if you think it was pirated that much because of the lack of DRM, well, you obviously have no clue about how pirates think and how easy it is to pirate something with DRM.

I think you need to understand that DRM is not just to stop you running a local copy of the game.

DRM includes server authentication systems (to allow/deny connection to the online servers).

This form of DRM is not easy to bypass (one of the reasons most games are moving to an online model).

 

[TechNoFear]

Copyright is meaningless: nobody can own an order of data, since the concept of order is abstract and therefore cannot be scarce, a necessary condition for defining property.

Your credit card information is just an 'order of data' in a bank's database, simply 0's and 1's (and so by your definition 'not scarce').

If I had that data (which would enable people to access your credit card) and I shared it with everyone, would you be concerned?

And even if the buyer were bound by some unsigned contract not to copy the material (unsigned contracts obviously being an invalid concept), once they shared it with a second agent that agent would have every right to distribute the data however they desired without being attacked as some sort of criminal.

When you use your credit card at an online vendor you 'share data' with the online vendor. 'Data' which will enable them to extract payment from your CC.

You are the 'first' agent and shared that 'data' with a 'second agent' (the online vendor) to purchase some goods/services.

By your example the online vendor has every right to distribute your CC number.

Your credit card details are just 1's and 0's after all.

 

[herpaderphurr]

Serves you right for trying to download Harry Potter or Jonas Brothers. Seriously. Who does that?

So why is infringing copyright a federal crime with a maximum first-time penalty of 5 years in jail and $250,000 but going to your local retailer and stealing a physical copy carries... well, carries a presumably smaller penalty?

 

[Littlee300]

Speaking of checking yo-self before you wreck yo-self:

Damn, we need a escapist video

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Speaking of checking yo-self before you wreck yo-self:

Damn, we need a escapist video

I know right? Maybe I should ask the hamster alliance guy if he'd do one.

 

[impeachOBAMA]

yeah they shut down limewire and websites like them, but wikileaks no problem let them release whatever they want go figure. This countries priorities are upside down. You know like pay your bills creditors can harrass you all they want,don't pay your bills you can't upset the debtor or he'll sue you. You want to work drug test. You don't want to work and want to be on government programs, welfare,food stamps,subsidized housing etc. no drug testing allowed thats unfair and considered an invasion of the deadbeats privacy. I am confused

 

[Gindil]

-_- Double post. Look down one. You've been warned.

 

[Gindil]

*WARNING: BIG ASS WALL OF TEXT*

I can't even shorten this one down. But after this, I'm taking a break from the thread...

Yes, I must confess, I am an adult. My halcyon days of moochin' off my parents are long gone. A kid, a job, and back to school for a bachelor's and I have become, horrifyingly, a responsible adult. But, it's okay, I'm sure you'll get there someday yourself.

Actually, I am. Got the logic to back up my arguments along with an understanding of the bigger picture that piracy isn't as bad as others seem to believe. But don't worry, I haven't written you off as a lost cause yet.

A few economics courses should help greatly. (Note, not being snarky. The guy I link to, Mike Masnick, has a BA in Economics and has researched it quite extensively. It's why his blog is such a great experience to learn from.)

Let's look at this for a second. In the ten years of the DMCA, has it stopped the sharing of data at all?

At all? Yes. Completely? No. Console piracy rates aren't much lower than their PC counterparts because people don't like gaming from their couch.

Has the DMCA stopped people from sharing songs on Youtube, Grooveshark, or LiveStream?

Again? Yes. Not completly, but it has impeded them.

Has the suing of individuals by the RIAA or the Copyright Group stopped people from using Bittorrent or LimeWire?

No, but suing Limewire did stop people from using it further. And it did provide (in theory) a disincentive for others.

Now, did the primary infringement suits stop people from pirating content? That's a tough question, and one I know for a fact you cannot answer in the definite. What is the precise effect of deterrence? Has it stopped some people? Almost certainly. Has it stopped everyone? No. How many has it stopped? I don't know, and neither do you.

This entire line of reasoning missed the point entirely. Namely, as soon as Limewire went down, there were alternatives elsewhere. It's not a disincentive at all. All it did was drive filesharing underground where the RIAA can't profit from it. Napster offered a subscription service and the chance to pay them. Let's emphasize that: PAY THE MUSIC INDUSTRY FOR WHAT THEIR CUSTOMERS DO. Limewire has tried to negotiate with the industry and they sued them into oblivion. And now with other filesharing services coming up, do you think they'll take their profits to the music industry? The "sue em all" technique can't work forever. And people look to use these services for their own needs. What you're also not seeing is how the music industry sues people through lawsuits. Link [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090618/0011185272.shtml] So yeah...

Regarding the deterrence factor? Have you heard of HADOPI? Look into France. You'll see that piracy has actually increased. But... How you ask? Well, See for yourself [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/piracy-up-in-france-after-tough-three-strikes-law-passed.ars]

Oh and just another thing. Link [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373091,00.asp]. Even when they bow to the "greedy corporation" overlords, there's still crazy demands made of them.

Oh, one of those people. Don't worry, there is free psychiatric help out there.

Nice way to ignore the point the link made for a personal attack.

Now, the RIAA can't stop the newest interation of Limewire who obviously won't work with them to make money.

Then again, it's not like Limewire was ever working with anyone to reimburse artists. In fact, Limewire was specifically designed so that they couldn't police their own content. They then tried to use that as their defense they failed. It seems that, in order to be eligable for safe harbor protections, you need to actually have control over your own network. If you don't have control, then it's just being irresponsible. And being irresponsible isn't a credible legal defense in a secondary infringement case.

I'm assuming you weren't aware of Limewire Pirate Edition? It's out of even Limewire's hands. That's why I continue to talk about "whack a mole". You pop down one site, 3 pop up in its place. It's the type of thing the internet is built around: getting away from obstructions. Basically, the music industry is fighting an ocean tide. Good luck in pushing it back.

Napster tried to work with the RIAA and look what happened. Sued to oblivion.

Really? Then what is this site I see here? http://www.napster.com/index.html

Okay, so here's the thing, Napster did negotiate a settlement. Not only are they still around, but you can actually buy their points cards in Best Buy and the like. I haven't heard how well they're doing, but they've become a legitimate distribution service, like the iTunes Store. And if you listened to the chatter back when the case first started up, this was always planned to be Napster's long term business model. (Maybe not the prepaid cards at retail, but the whole paid digital distribution service.)

... I know I'm older than you now. Thing is, the pay service took the heart, soul and guts away from Napster. I remember using it before Clinton signed the DMCA into law. Let's also realize the DMCA was lobbied and paid for by Mitch Bainwol [http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/8/riaa-ceo-mitch-bainwol-paid-1-5m-a-year-to-sue-crap-out-of-music-] and the RIAA. The music was only part of the Big Five (Arista went bankrupt a while back) and you didn't have the plethora of remixes, international music and other music that made Napster such a great service. Let's also realize it didn't come back for ~2-3 years? The market had moved on without them. Kazaa... Limewire... Bearshare... And yet, the RIAA went after them, PLUS the consumers themselves. At one time, you had millions of people around the world in what I like to believe is the largest library out there. And yet... It increased music sales [http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-243463.html] because people found newer music that wasn't being shoved down their throats by payola radio or payola MTV.

The game of whack a mole continues. Logic overcomes emotion once you look at the facts.

Logic is great, if you understand the data and can divorce it from your own personal biases. To claim that no one is harmed by this crime indicates a serious deficiency the data you've examined.

Name four major artists that have been harmed by piracy. Matter of fact, name one movie that went bankrupt because someone copied it on the internet. Go ahead, I'll wait. And I have plenty of links that say otherwise.

Except it isn't one corporation or government. Nor has it been for some time.

Put it this way, people said sixty years ago that we could never eradicate small pox, no single government or corporation could eliminate it. Now, smallpox is effectively extinct, what makes you think that a couple greedy little kids in their parent's basements are better at survival than a virulent disease that was with us for centuries?

Uhm... We can still get chicken pox? Though I'm puzzled how a disease can be equivalent to filesharing...

So you died from your case of chicken pox? I didn't know. Small pox was a lethal disease. It killed people. From a pathological standpoint the only corollary today would be Malaria.

Anyway, it's relevant because nothing is impossible if people work together. Including shutting internet theft down.

... Yeah... I doubt that people can seriously shut the internet down. But thinking that "theft" of digital files is the same as actually taking a physical copy of a CD? Tsk.

Increased sales because of easier digital downloads [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091213/1648377324.shtml] Again, the sources say that "piracy" = increased sales. Look it up yourself if you don't believe me. I'll suggest Oberholzer Gee and Stumpf if you have time.

You'll have to forgive me for looking at what pirate bay is claiming with a grain of salt. The numbers that were claimed are consistent with advertisement revenue for a site which was consistently in the top 10 sites globally.

Two things to address. People basing their livelihoods off of piracy:

There's certain things we share. Language, history, music, art, and cultural experiences. Think about how Star Trek has become a phenomenon in and of itself. Do you think it mattered if people shared a video tape amongst themselves showing Deanna Troi with amazing cleavage? How about how popular Twilight is? And yet, sharing that love of something with others is supposed to be a crime. I think that's wrong. Think about how people dress up in costumes for their favorite anime character. And anime is VERY closely related to piracy. Had it not been for people sharing Dragonball, Atom Boy, Sailor Moon among other titles with each other, it wouldn't be the $2 billion dollar industry it is today.

In regards to the second, my hands are tied. I've shown you the research. It seems these guys are living comfortably, but not exorbitantly, focusing on the technology and not necessarily on their own bank accounts.

And, in point of fact, you can. Look at the site you're posting on. You think this is a volunteer organization? Get fucking real. This is a business. It makes money. If you want to know exactly how much you'll need to ask the staff. Pirate Bay was a business. It was in business to make money. Not to provide a service out of altruistic motives. If you have any doubt of that, I'd suggest you review your comment on emotion and logic.

Actually, Pirate Bay was a joke [http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-really-sucks-says-co-founder-100815/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20Torrentfreak%20(Torrentfreak)]. This is from Peter Sunde himself.

What you've yet to factor into this equation are things that are needed to keep a website up and running. Namely, server upkeep, customer service, programming hours, man hours, etc. Seeing just the final results without any of the work is like talking about how you make $100K a year before you're taxed to ~$60-$70K.

Funny thing about that. A lot of non-profits maintain their status by paying out all their income to their employees.

Now, that said, yes, it does take money to run and maintain a website. I'm aware. I'm also aware that even with massive bandwidth it isn't that expensive. You're looking at anywhere from under a hundred a couple of grand a month in maintenance as opposed to serious money.

But you seem to be under an impression that they're making gobs and gobs of money. That isn't the case. They had to have their initial start from a well known "Republican" (using a US term for a Swedish politician) who gave them a lot of new technology that helped them start with Bittorrents. Even then, they have to get a lot of ads for the site to make enough to cover costs and everything else. So really, with the Mitch Bainwol link versus the Pirate Bay, who do you think makes more money? Saying "oh, it's just a business. An ILLEGAL business" still misses the point. Just because a business makes money, that's anathema? Why can't it be a way to show other industries a new way to make money? That's kinda how we got away from the horse and buggy to automobiles.

Let's also not forget they had to upgrade the servers (forcing the site down at times) among other little expenses that come with running a site of this scale.

Finally, other, smaller authors are embracing the internet and not worrying about piracy. Just like Steve Lieber here [http://www.undergroundthecomic.com/2010/10/pictures-help-us-learn/]. Don't take my word for it.
No. Look, something you should understand is, I have no problem with someone putting something out there for public consumption. And if that's their choice, that's fine. AVG provides a good free anti-virus option, for instance. They choose to do that, and legally that's their choice. That isn't theft. It is theft when someone else chooses for you, that they will share your work. How you choose to respond to that is again, your choice, not theirs. So Steve doesn't care, great, that's him exercising his right to choose. But, that doesn't make people taking his work without his permission legal. That also doesn't mean, by extension that Steve Lieber speaks for anyone else. He has no authority to speak for me or for you to decide if you or I are offended if our work is pirated.

Actually, he didn't. Steve Lieber's work was put on the site without his say so. But rather than gripe and bemoan how piracy is causing him to lose sleep and manpower, he just talked to them.

Internet Man 10/18/10(Mon)20:30 No.20635234
>>20635149
Steve, like I said before, I posted the story in the hopes of getting it some exposure. I post stories that I enjoy in the hopes that it will generate some interest and discussion in books that some people would have otherwise ignored. I've had numerous people thank me for posting things, assuring me that they were planning on buying the stuff that I'd posted. I own all the singles, I'm a fan of both you and Jeff Parker. If you want me to delete this thread, I'd be fine with it. Just say the word

Steve Lieber 10/18/10(Mon)20:53 No.20635789
>>20635234

Internet man: I genuinely appreciate your taking the time to show people my work. Let's leave 'em up.

I got into most of my favorite bands after hearing them on 3rd generation cassette mix-tapes or my crappy alarm clock radio and getting curious enough about them to go pick up a CD or see them live. It feels like a safe bet that things will eventually work the same way with the stuff that I do. Like I said on twitter yesterday, I'm willing to trust that Jeff's and my readers will compensate us for the work.

Here's my personal view. For music, movies, and even games, the internet is a great tool. Giving people things won't stop piracy all the way, but it greatly reduces the price and costs of entry for a myriad of things. For music, a download isn't hurting the artist. In all of these links that I've shown, the artist hasn't even come up. Rather, we have the middlemen using copyright and complaints of piracy cannibalizing their sales. But the middlemen are creating anything, merely acting like the broker between consumer and creator. Granted, the game market can run a little differently from the other two, but you can still make money in a plethora of ways.

Music: Downloads are free or .02 cents. Allow remixes and mashups which promote an artist, DJ, etc. It can work in Brazil [http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=tecnobrega&edition=techdirt], it can work here. What this does is promote other forms of entertainment. Dancing, choreography, clubs, discussions... Something we're sorely missing in the US.

Movies: Netflix has it right. We need more streaming sites. But getting to that point was hell for Nf. They had to use a loophole in law to get the chance to stream. Blockbuster went out of business because of the exorbitant fees the movie industry charged them. I doubt they'll recover with streaming proliferating. And by the Gods... Hulu sucks. We need more streaming sites than that commercial POS.

Games: Steam, Steam, Steam. Gog.com is great. If there were more of this and less DRM, we wouldn't have to worry about piracy.

Of course, with all of this, you won't get everyone to shift over to the digital thinking. But if you're making money, why care about a few people that get a longer demo for free?

]There are others. But the important thing to remember is that the fourth amendment isn't absolute. Think about it this way, if the police didn't have a reasonable expectation that their methods would be admissible, would they use them? That is to say, do you honestly believe that the police exist only to fuck up their investigations?

I don't adhere to the authoritarian point of view, that the government is always right. The government has been greatly influenced to "protect" [http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2010/02/justice-creates-ip-task-force.php] the industry. Really, this is a collusion of government and private forces to protect an antiquated business model. Darwinism works a lot better and I believe I proved that. But the fact that lobbyists have a special ear with government should worry you. Personally, I believe that this collusion only works to harm us. Just like these 70+ sites, it's amazing that the government hasn't done more until now.

The belief that the government is the only authority, especially in the marketplace is greatly flawed. Fair warning that the government colludes in order to take away freedoms.

I hate to burst your bubble, but, this has never been a country founded on absolute freedom, at any level. Ever. For any reason. It has been about greater freedom than being subjects of the British Monarchy, but as for absolute freedom? Yes, you get a hell of a lot more freedom here than you would in most of the world, but it certainly isn't unrestricted.

Here are a few to play with. You have no right to drive a car. You have no right to the internet. You have no right to run from the police. You have no right to photocopy, well, anything. You have no right to tell the government "no," when you're told that they're claiming eminent domain. And finally, unlike military officers disobeying orders, you have no right to disobey a law you believe to be immoral.

The fourth amendment only protects you if the police do not have, a warrant, probable cause, or have made an error in good faith.

The taking down of a search engine isn't an error? That's more of a slippery slope argument than I'm going to get into...

In this case, some of the websites taken down were nothing more than search engines similar to Google. They had NO content on them other than a toolbar and were taken down without any type of governmental oversite. How that isn't abuse of "power" given is beyond me.

You're right, it is beyond you. The word is: warrant.

By the way, that case you're trumpeting as a triumph of the fourth amendment? Here's what it really means. If you want to slap a GPS tracker on a vehicle, you need to first get a warrant (easily done), and then you're off to the races. Literally the only thing that case addresses is the need for investigators to get a warrant first. Also, note that in that case the investigators actually had obtained a warrant, but it expired during the course of the investigation. So you're trumpeting a case where the bad guy literally got off because of a technicality. So, you think it's a good thing for criminals to get off because of procedural technicalities? You sure you're not secretly a cartel lawyer from Miami Vice? I kid.

Nah, I hate those damn shades. Anyway, in the follow up to this (appeals still going on) they're still debating it. For a few days is great, but when you get into an entire month of tracking someone like you're a stalker? That's when a problem arises. I thought it had said that first. And while I can get into the US's drug policies, that may be a thread for another time.

Why? Are you afraid they'll find something?

Read further down. Regardless, I don't support their music or movies. *wink* [http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-hominem.html]

Being obtuse is not a virtue.

Problem was, you didn't want to answer the question, merely somehow mock me when I've already had a number of posts showing artists that I do support that aren't affiliated with the RIAA. While I still value the 4th Amendment, I wasn't a fan of my ISP shutting off my internet without even a notice to me. I'm not a fan of some media conglomerate able to decide through the ACTA, COICA, or other pretty law that continues to be anti-consumer, that somehow, I'm costing them money. That isn't me being obtuse, it's me noting the law on copyright and how it hinders quite a number of technological progressions in the name of a select few.

A middle ground? A government with a special task force for the movie and music industry going on to take people's freedoms all for a few files on the internet is a middle ground? Really?

You seem to be confusing private actions with governmental ones. So, law enforcement can use your IP records to figure out if you've been downloading things illegally. Great. And that's news, how? This isn't entrapment, you (or whomever) chose to break the law (and their feelings on the law are irrelevant here), and they did. "Because I didn't think I could get caught" is not a legitimate affirmative defense.

Yes, but it's like the government coming in to play favorites. We need a free market, not enforcement, which is the new thing for the US government.

Shutting down the sites on a warrant is also perfectly legitimate. That's the point of a warrant.

Now, if we're talking about the behavior of the USCG? Yeah, that's pretty fuckin' reprehensible, and is far worse than anything the government has done. They subpoena ISP records, and then charge people as John Does based on their IP addresses, and file activity, then they send out threats of legal action, saying they've already been named in a suit, and unless they cough up a chunk of dough, they're going to have their ass sued off. Now, here's the brain bender. All of this is completely legal, and is completely irrelevant to this discussion. You know why? Because it is not governmental action. Just like you do not enjoy any first amendment protections from the moderator staff here.

I only brought it up to show the same behavior. They're running it like debt collectors...

That may not end well [http://blog.internetcases.com/2010/11/25/class-action-lawsuit-challenges-bittorent-lawsuit-factorys-business-model/]

Still, the fact is, the DMCA has actually caused this situation that we're currently in. From Jammie Thomas [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20021735-93.html], to Whitney Harper [http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/supreme_court_rejects_appeal_in_sa_music_case_111004889.html], this wouldn't have come up as a ridiculous situation without the DMCA and Patriot Act in conjunction.

Let's not forget that more than likely, these people have to answer a summons OR they have to fight in an expensive court case to prove that the government took their things illegally.

Yeah, but this, honestly, isn't that different from the criminal justice system as a whole. Forget Law and Order, the courts exist to fuck you over when you break the law. This is no different for these guys, than it is for someone who got picked up on a DUI.

... What? The correlation between drunk driving and sharing songs on the internet... I'm speechless...

What do you think is going to happen as a result?

In my trained opinion? Fuck all.

... Ok...

I have quite a few guesses. First, setting up your service outside of the US, taking away revenue and taxes.

Already happened. Why do you think Pirate Bay took so long to take down?

... Please explain.

Second, more implementation of DNS services to ping their log ins, making these people more difficult to track. So ever more, the game of whack a mole continues.

This is less likely, because ISPs are walking a tightrope right now. They make money off this hand over fist, but they also need to maintain their safe harbor protections. And as Limewire taught us, not being able to regulate your own network is not sufficient for safe harbor.

I think you're underestimating people's ingenuity. Not only will proxy service plus DNS increase, but I wouldn't be surprised if this threat here would cause more people to go to cyber lockers for internet files. I'm just going to say WAM from now on...

Just because the government spends millions on this fruitless endeavor won't solve the problem of the big media missing the point. They don't know how to compete anymore.

Okay, seriously? They don't know how to compete with theft? Is that you're argument? And let's not mince words here, piracy is theft. These aren't the (theoretically) romantic pirates of the open oceans, these are thieves. So, because people have figured out how to rip off artists and publishers, it's all okay, because that's just "fair market competition"? I'm sorry, that one doesn't even pass the scratch and sniff test. This is theft, plain and simple. And if you're honestly sitting there trying to argue that this is some kind of competition?

You don't seem to understand how this works.

Judging by your post, I actually know more about the subject than you do. Both media histor[sic] and economics.

Intriguing... Proceed.

Quick history on movies and music. They were the old gatekeepers. In the music industry, you had the Big Four (soon to be the Big Three since EMI is having financial trouble) that controlled the market.

And out of the gate you've screwed things up. You're right when you're talking about the Music industry. But, on the films side, which you did include, there was the studio system, which structurally looks nothing like the modern industry, or the music industry.

I shortened it down for convenience sake. I know all about Thomas Edison being fairly legislative in his endeavors and stifling competition, causing his competition to move west away from his patents on film.

I'm also not getting into the theater market, which the major studios had control of. Let's not forget that the movie industry is still controlled by limited release windows of movies (unless it's abnormally popular) that continues to limit the spread of indie movies or movies that are more niche. It's the reason for the summer blockbuster. It's also why a lot of major movie theaters really can't charge less on, or get better, food. I know of only a few theaters that actually make the movie theater experience something to remember.

As it is now, it's all about selling a scarcity (a seat) for maximum profit for the release.

And contrary to popular belief, I still think 3D is a fad.

Monopolistic competition [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition]. In all honesty, the artists were screwed over by the labels by the Sonny Bono Act. They got screwed over by deals that heavily favored the label to make money. Picture here [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml]. The DMCA screwed them over yet again by making the terms lifetime + 70 years after an artist dies. Let's think about that... A corporation can hold onto a copyright and control movies LOOOOONG after you die.

Technically that extends to your heirs and estate, not simply record deals and the like. And yes, I am fully aware of this. Historically it was 30 years, and every twenty years or so, Disney has pressured to extend the deadline, coincidentally in the face of their major icons passing into public domain. I've actually seen articles on the subject that suggest that the era of public domain is effectively over, and that any new creations will (ultimately) be under copyright permanently.

Uhm... It was 14 years before or during the Berne Convention...

Don't you love progress?

Kinda. Okay, so you missed the film industry earlier, and that might be relevant now...

Here's the history you missed. Back in the 30s and 40s, the Film industry consisted of a handful of studios, mostly the big three, MGM, WB, and 20th Century Fox, (there was a fourth one, that's escaping me at the moment, but they folded ages ago) and some smaller specialty studios like Disney. Studios contracted people, and then stuck them wherever they wanted. The studio mechanism controlled who would be cast for what film, who would direct, who would write, and so on. What this resulted in were, by and large, very safe films. Not very adventurous or risky (usually), but corporately comfortable films, that presented (more or less) a unified vision. (There were exceptions, films like Sunset Boulevard certainly didn't fit that mold.) Under this system, actors, directors, writers, and even background staff like grips got the short end of the stick relative to a handful of carefully managed stars and the execs.

This changed in the 60s and 70s for numerous reasons, the biggest was simply people were bored with getting the same dross over and over again, and television was displacing cinema. The result was a breakdown of the studio system into something more recognizable for a modern viewer. Directors or producers had control over a project, casting didn't come out of a casting mill from the studio. There was a greater degree of independence, and on the whole, the films of today are usually better than the films from the 1940s and 50s (though that is subject to taste).

Go back 15 years, and look at the music industry. It was well on its way to being where the film industry was in the mid-60s. People were bored with the same dross. Alternative music represented the same kind of slot as the independent films of the 70s, and the label system seemed to be on the way out.

In marches internet piracy, something films didn't have to deal with, and it kills and eats everyone indiscriminately. Now, if piracy hadn't occurred what would the music scene look like today? A lot of smaller labels which were more artist friendly, and the big names trying to find a new place for themselves? I'm guessing, but it isn't an unreasonable analysis given the data we had 15 years ago. What we have is an incredibly caustic environment in which the only thing that is really profitable are the stunningly massive acts. That's not healthy, and it's prolonged the label system. So instead of seeing a transition between the label system and a more distributed artist friendly system, we've seen an environment where only the labels can survive by turning their exploitative system up to 11.

Right now, I think is a good time to say a LOT of artists have made money away from the labels. They don't have as much control over the market, which is the best thing to happen. But I believe you're misguided. For music here's a few that have made it out on top:

Radiohead [http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/]
Trent Reznor [http://www.nin.com/]
Jonathan Coulton [http://www.jonathancoulton.com/]
Amanda Palmer [http://www.amandapalmer.net/]
Matthew Ebel [http://matthewebel.com/main/music/]

The reason you're misguided is that you aren't seeing the people that have had all of the success like in the old system of music or movies. It's not just the big boys that are making more money. Remember Lady Gaga (*shudder*) started out small and unknown. Yes, the internet has been quite disruptive in both good and "bad" ways. It's allowed more artists to be discovered than before. They are making money, but the labels are distorting the news. You are witnessing a revolution before your eyes, but it's subtle. The labels are clamoring to either keep existing artists or change the landscape so that they ARE needed. But with Livestream, Grooveshark, and a helluva lot of gusto, do they really need them?

They don't know how to do anything but take subsistence from the government and pay extra bucks to make legislation that is truly anti consumer thief.

Sorry, you had a little typo there, but I got it for ya. Happens to the best of us.

Oops, Sorry about that. I actually meant to put this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use] up also.

Aw. Yeah, I understand that. It happens to the best of us. Of course, I'd still like to know where in fair use you get the idea you can simply copy and distribute an item as much as you want. Because it isn't in any version of Fair Use I've ever read.

DMCA exceptions are coming up next year. Gonna be interesting to look into. Fair use says you can have a backup of a CD. Mainly, it's still kept vague which I personally believe needs to be cleaned up. But eh... Make due with what you have.

Also, look at that "typo" again.

See, here's the really funny thing. This is going out of it's way to avoid taking this shit down. If your theory was right, then the big bad corporations who own the goddamn world would have no qualms simply crushing the torrent network. And before you go off on that whole "can't stop the signal" bullshit, let me explain. There are technical limitations within the existing software that are fundamental to the design architecture. If the government's intent was to end torrents now, it would happen. It is because they ARE protecting these people you cite.

Notice how this happened right before COICA is to be debated and possibly rectified. Funny how no one can connect the dots until it's too late.

People do. But freaking out over this reflects either a myopic view of the law and economy, personal bias, or unreasoned paranoia.

Let's take on some of this. If the corporations could take out the Gnutella network, they would, bar none. It invades on their monopoly. Since they have the ear of government, it's highly doubtful they'd mess that up. So how do you take down a network? That's the question ahead. But, just as I opened, how are you going to take on so many other forms of legal communication that harbor files?

iRC..
Bittorrent...
Azureaus (Vuze)
Sourceforge...

Seriously... If you look at all the things that are made and shared in various forms, it's a lesson in futility. Although... The more the government resists, the more likely a newer form of filesharing would come up. Should be a fun thing to watch.

Due to the proximity of UnderAttack's posts, I may be being unduly harsh on you. For that I apologize.

Apology accepted. Not trying to be harsh, just show you how this really is ineffective policy.

 

[Starke]

-_- Double post. Look down one. You've been warned.

Noo! Not the dreaded double post of wall text.

*WARNING: BIG ASS WALL OF TEXT*

I can't even shorten this one down. But after this, I'm taking a break from the thread...

Yes, I must confess, I am an adult. My halcyon days of moochin' off my parents are long gone. A kid, a job, and back to school for a bachelor's and I have become, horrifyingly, a responsible adult. But, it's okay, I'm sure you'll get there someday yourself.

Actually, I am. Got the logic to back up my arguments along with an understanding of the bigger picture that piracy isn't as bad as others seem to believe. But don't worry, I haven't written you off as a lost cause yet.

Yeah, you may have gotten some of the bile I had directed at Underattack on you by accident. This, yes, this was an example of that.

A few economics courses should help greatly. (Note, not being snarky. The guy I link to, Mike Masnick, has a BA in Economics and has researched it quite extensively. It's why his blog is such a great experience to learn from.)

I actually already have had a bevvy of economics classes. Granted it was back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, but economics as a science hasn't changed that much, just the interpretations.

Let's look at this for a second. In the ten years of the DMCA, has it stopped the sharing of data at all?

At all? Yes. Completely? No. Console piracy rates aren't much lower than their PC counterparts because people don't like gaming from their couch.

Has the DMCA stopped people from sharing songs on Youtube, Grooveshark, or LiveStream?

Again? Yes. Not completly, but it has impeded them.

Has the suing of individuals by the RIAA or the Copyright Group stopped people from using Bittorrent or LimeWire?

No, but suing Limewire did stop people from using it further. And it did provide (in theory) a disincentive for others.

Now, did the primary infringement suits stop people from pirating content? That's a tough question, and one I know for a fact you cannot answer in the definite. What is the precise effect of deterrence? Has it stopped some people? Almost certainly. Has it stopped everyone? No. How many has it stopped? I don't know, and neither do you.

This entire line of reasoning missed the point entirely. Namely, as soon as Limewire went down, there were alternatives elsewhere. It's not a disincentive at all. All it did was drive filesharing underground where the RIAA can't profit from it. Napster offered a subscription service and the chance to pay them. Let's emphasize that: PAY THE MUSIC INDUSTRY FOR WHAT THEIR CUSTOMERS DO.

A fact I'm fully aware of. And today, in spite of their rocky legal history, Napster is (more or less) an upstanding member of the corporate community.

Limewire has tried to negotiate with the industry and they sued them into oblivion.

See, that I haven't heard before. What I had heard was that Limewire attempted to emulate Pirate Bay's obstructionist "fuck you" policies, with less success. Even their inability to control the content of their network speaks (to some degree) on this subject.

And now with other filesharing services coming up, do you think they'll take their profits to the music industry? The "sue em all" technique can't work forever.

Yeah, as their sole tactic, it is a losing fight. That said it isn't their only tactic. Pressure for legislative reform, which they're getting, and direct infringement suits (as a warning/deterrent) have also been part of their bag of tricks. Are any of these particularly effective? Again, that's the tough question from before, regarding deterrence. Some people have avoided piracy because of the fear of getting hit with a massive lawsuit. But, how many, and how would you accuratly measure that? I don't know.

And people look to use these services for their own needs. What you're also not seeing is how the music industry sues people through lawsuits. Link [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090618/0011185272.shtml] So yeah...

This just in: corporations use underhanded negotiating tactics. No offense, but in the range of corporate "ethics" that's actually pretty low on the hierarchy of hideous things corporations have done to try to make money. Did I know about this specifically? No, but it certainly doesn't surprise me. Especially given that corporations tend to epitomize that old cliche about insanity, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

So, on one hand the corporations are under siege, and have been for the last decade, and on the other they're behaving overly aggressively at anything they perceive as a potential threat. I'm sorry, but corporations are like any animal: scare them and they'll either roll over and die or tear your face off.

Regarding the deterrence factor? Have you heard of HADOPI? Look into France. You'll see that piracy has actually increased. But... How you ask? Well, See for yourself [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/piracy-up-in-france-after-tough-three-strikes-law-passed.ars]

Yeah, that's actually interesting, but, there are a hell of a lot of additional factors I'd want to see before I passed that one on. The first snapshot issue that occurs to me though is kinda a cop out, but, what is the margin for error on those statistics, because I guarantee you it's more than .8%. The second big issue is validity, on two counts, first phone surveys are shit for reliability, and just about anyone with a research background will tell you that, and second you're asking respondents to answer on the subject of illegal behavior, which also results in a serious validity issue for any survey. Finally, unfortunatly I don't read or speak French, so I can't find out how the research paper actually adressed this.

What it does show us is that when you outlaw something, the next best alternative will receive a bump in numbers. For example: when they outlawed my brand of cigarettes (at least that's what seems to have happened) a couple years ago, most people simply switched to another brand. Now, during the same time, if there was a general trend up, one could interpret data (which would look a lot like what's presented in English) of this kind to indicate that banning English Ovals actually increased smoking. Now, I'm not certain this is a spurious relationship, but I am left with that suspicion.

But, seriously, the independent variables that need to be bounced off that statistic include: global estimates of piracy (in trending), raw subscription numbers (again, in trending), GPD per cap (which is easy to get).

Oh and just another thing. Link [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373091,00.asp]. Even when they bow to the "greedy corporation" overlords, there's still crazy demands made of them.

Oh, one of those people. Don't worry, there is free psychiatric help out there.

Nice way to ignore the point the link made for a personal attack.

Nah, the "greed corporations overlords" thing distracted me from the logic behind the argument... and actually still does. It's way too tinfoil hat sounding.

That said, it actually undermines the suggestion that Limewire offered to pay the music industry anything, particularly when you dig into the related articles.

Now, the RIAA can't stop the newest interation of Limewire who obviously won't work with them to make money.

Then again, it's not like Limewire was ever working with anyone to reimburse artists. In fact, Limewire was specifically designed so that they couldn't police their own content. They then tried to use that as their defense they failed. It seems that, in order to be eligable for safe harbor protections, you need to actually have control over your own network. If you don't have control, then it's just being irresponsible. And being irresponsible isn't a credible legal defense in a secondary infringement case.

I'm assuming you weren't aware of Limewire Pirate Edition? It's out of even Limewire's hands. That's why I continue to talk about "whack a mole". You pop down one site, 3 pop up in its place. It's the type of thing the internet is built around: getting away from obstructions. Basically, the music industry is fighting an ocean tide. Good luck in pushing it back.

At the time that I wrote that, no, I wasn't. I did look at the PC mag link you tossed up later and a couple connected links.

Now, and I'm sorta going on a musing tangent here. Given the subject of the article, I have serious questions on how long this will persist, now that the game has changed. Up until this point it has been civil suits, and as you've pointed out, in cases like this that hasn't been effective. But, now it's been turned over to criminal investigators and people like Metapirate are actually being targeted in criminal probes and facing actual prosecution, I really start to doubt how long it will be able to persist. I understand that some individuals, like yourself, have the conviction to continue to oppose these investigations, but, when prison time is a very real risk, rather than a nebulous threat that you might get named in a suit by your IP address along with 20k other defendants... What effect will that have on the movement as a whole?

Especially given the number of shitty little 15 year olds that are only in it for free shit and swag, and have no real ideological ties to the concept beyond flipping off 'da man.'

Napster tried to work with the RIAA and look what happened. Sued to oblivion.

Really? Then what is this site I see here? http://www.napster.com/index.html

Okay, so here's the thing, Napster did negotiate a settlement. Not only are they still around, but you can actually buy their points cards in Best Buy and the like. I haven't heard how well they're doing, but they've become a legitimate distribution service, like the iTunes Store. And if you listened to the chatter back when the case first started up, this was always planned to be Napster's long term business model. (Maybe not the prepaid cards at retail, but the whole paid digital distribution service.)

... I know I'm older than you now.

Don't be so sure.

Thing is, the pay service took the heart, soul and guts away from Napster. I remember using it before Clinton signed the DMCA into law.

Yeah, I was on a shitty dial up connection back in the late 90s, if I'd wanted to download a five meg song it would have taken me, no shit, 3 to 4 hours. So for me, the opportunity cost just wasn't there.

Let's also realize the DMCA was lobbied and paid for by Mitch Bainwol [http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/8/riaa-ceo-mitch-bainwol-paid-1-5m-a-year-to-sue-crap-out-of-music-] and the RIAA.

They're not the only ones. The Music industry aren't the ones who were pushing to ensure that DRM bypasses were outlawed. Now, here's a sad fact of politics, corporations have way, way too much say in legislation. And as I said to UnderAttack earlier, if you want to go after that, piracy is not the venue to do so.

The music was only part of the Big Five (Arista went bankrupt a while back) and you didn't have the plethora of remixes, international music and other music that made Napster such a great service. Let's also realize it didn't come back for ~2-3 years?

Probably four, honestly. I think it went down in 1999 or 2000 and it wasn't back up until late 2003 or so.

The market had moved on without them.

It's actually kinda funny, shutting down Napster showed the p2p networks what not to do, to an extent. And, everything that was predicted that p2p networks would do back in 2000, we've seen happen. Limewire, from a technical standpoint is the same as Napster, without a central server. Pirate Bay is based in Sweden where you're not just lucky but goddamn blessed if the judge even notices your copyright requests.

Kazaa... Limewire... Bearshare... And yet, the RIAA went after them, PLUS the consumers themselves. At one time, you had millions of people around the world in what I like to believe is the largest library out there. And yet... It increased music sales [http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-243463.html] because people found newer music that wasn't being shoved down their throats by payola radio or payola MTV.

Yeah, there's some legitimacy in the exposure argument. Exposure to new artists has expanded.

Now, I want to believe what that CNet article was saying, and maybe a decade ago it was really true. Hell, I may have read that article a decade ago and thought, maybe it won't be so bad. It is still true in isolated cases. But, immediately before the depression, the music industry was half the size it was in 2000. Now, if Napster users were in fact buying more music, then the trend did not persist. I can't tell you with certainty what changed. Was it the rise of people who genuinely believe that copyrights are inherently evil and intellectual property is a communal good? Did the median age for users trend down, towards a demographic with less disposable income? Did the industry screw itself over by producing a string of low quality pop artists? No, they've been doing that since the 60s.

The game of whack a mole continues. Logic overcomes emotion once you look at the facts.

Logic is great, if you understand the data and can divorce it from your own personal biases. To claim that no one is harmed by this crime indicates a serious deficiency the data you've examined.

Name four major artists that have been harmed by piracy. Matter of fact, name one movie that went bankrupt because someone copied it on the internet. Go ahead, I'll wait. And I have plenty of links that say otherwise.

Name any four artists. Any four. Remember, the industry is massively deflated, so unless the labels ate those losses themselves, it will come back and haunt us.

As for films, here's another fun statistic, cinema attendance has trended down almost every year since the 1950s. Obviously this can't be attributed to the internet, the proliferation of television is a major chunk of that. But, in the last few years, how much as internet piracy actually affected that? Again, I'm pretty sure you can't cough up legitimate hard numbers any more than I can.

That said, off the top of my head, I can hand you a game company that went under because of piracy: Iron Lore.

Except it isn't one corporation or government. Nor has it been for some time.

Put it this way, people said sixty years ago that we could never eradicate small pox, no single government or corporation could eliminate it. Now, smallpox is effectively extinct, what makes you think that a couple greedy little kids in their parent's basements are better at survival than a virulent disease that was with us for centuries?

Uhm... We can still get chicken pox? Though I'm puzzled how a disease can be equivalent to filesharing...

So you died from your case of chicken pox? I didn't know. Small pox was a lethal disease. It killed people. From a pathological standpoint the only corollary today would be Malaria.

Anyway, it's relevant because nothing is impossible if people work together. Including shutting internet theft down.

... Yeah... I doubt that people can seriously shut the internet down. But thinking that "theft" of digital files is the same as actually taking a physical copy of a CD? Tsk.

Yeah, it is. From an economic standpoint anyway. Now, the ratio of lost sales is not 1:1, but it is statistically significant, and given that (barring being named in a lawsuit, or being charged criminally), the opportunity cost for pirated data is negligible, to say that its not the same implies that the pirated content isn't identical to the original in every way. Which thanks to the magic of digital technology it is.

Increased sales because of easier digital downloads [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091213/1648377324.shtml] Again, the sources say that "piracy" = increased sales. Look it up yourself if you don't believe me. I'll suggest Oberholzer Gee and Stumpf if you have time.

Honestly here's the weird benefit that all of this has had, if those numbers are to be trusted, and I'll accept them for the moment. When faced with declining sales, artists have been forced into preforming live. Now, for people who like live performances this is great news, and it's certainly not bad news for the artists (in theory). In practice, my understanding is that live performances are much more strenuous on the artist. So, they are having to work for it, and while their gross has gone up, what has happened to the net? They're having to work harder, well, so what on that count, and having to spend more on live performances, and they're actually losing money on album sales. From an economic perspective that might be breaking even, but I'm not certain. (Though someone on your blog link did gleefully suggest that the ticket income simply reflected ticket prices being jacked up, so, there is always that possibility, which hardly sounds healthy, but, hey, money's money.)

You'll have to forgive me for looking at what pirate bay is claiming with a grain of salt. The numbers that were claimed are consistent with advertisement revenue for a site which was consistently in the top 10 sites globally.

Two things to address. People basing their livelihoods off of piracy:

There's certain things we share. Language, history, music, art, and cultural experiences. Think about how Star Trek has become a phenomenon in and of itself. Do you think it mattered if people shared a video tape amongst themselves showing Deanna Troi with amazing cleavage? How about how popular Twilight is? And yet, sharing that love of something with others is supposed to be a crime. I think that's wrong. Think about how people dress up in costumes for their favorite anime character. And anime is VERY closely related to piracy. Had it not been for people sharing Dragonball, Atom Boy, Sailor Moon among other titles with each other, it wouldn't be the $2 billion dollar industry it is today.

Yeah, interesting you used the phrase "video tape". Now I'm probably not telling you anything you don't know, but when dinosaurs roamed the earth VHS cassettes (and for that matter audio cassettes) could be (legally) copied. (Not commercial ones, but if you taped it off the air, you could copy it as many times as you wanted.) The reasoning came out of a case between someone and xerox. Xerox had made a photocopier, which was purchased by a library, and someone (I really forget whom), sued Xerox (and the library) for secondary infringement. The ruling came down that photocopies and other analog copying methods were protected under fair use because, being analog devices, they were subject to replication fading. When, I think it was Sony, introduced the home VCR, this precedent was the one they used to justify their existence. To an extent, this also applies to the anime community, or did in the 90s, a lot of bootleg tapes that were technically illegal, but no one really cared about, floating around. What changed in 1997 was the emergence of DVDs. No one in their right mind bought laserdisks, but DVDs caught on, and unlike a VHS, a DVD can be copied perfectly, as many times as you want.

So if you want to know where I'm going with this, its simple. The world we grew up with is gone. The provisions that let us get away with what we did were predicated on technology that no longer exists in the wild.

In regards to the second, my hands are tied. I've shown you the research. It seems these guys are living comfortably, but not exorbitantly, focusing on the technology and not necessarily on their own bank accounts.

To an extent, they hauled their credibility out behind the woodshed a long time ago. These are guys who spent the better part of six(?) years saying "fuck you" to the world. And now, with a gun to their heads, they're singing a different tune. Maybe it's just that I don't like them because of their attitude, maybe its because this sudden "honesty" is just a little too convenient, but I'm really skeptical of anything they say now, that could be seen as trying to defend themselves.

They claim that their income numbers were faked by the prosecution? I guess that's possible, but it seems highly unlikely to me. All they'd need to do in court is bring their own accounting data in to prove that the prosecution was offering perjured evidence, and that kind of behavior would tank a prosecution almost anywhere. So yeah, it's possible, but I find it very hard to believe, in large part because it would be so easy to verify in court, and because it is to their own benefit.

And, in point of fact, you can. Look at the site you're posting on. You think this is a volunteer organization? Get fucking real. This is a business. It makes money. If you want to know exactly how much you'll need to ask the staff. Pirate Bay was a business. It was in business to make money. Not to provide a service out of altruistic motives. If you have any doubt of that, I'd suggest you review your comment on emotion and logic.

Actually, Pirate Bay was a joke [http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-really-sucks-says-co-founder-100815/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20Torrentfreak%20(Torrentfreak)]. This is from Peter Sunde himself.

I get that Sunde isn't at gunpoint here, but, again, most of my concerns regarding his veracity persist. Maybe it was a joke, but unfortunately it was a joke emulated and parroted by too many people who believed it was true, for the punchline to work anymore. For me at least.

What you've yet to factor into this equation are things that are needed to keep a website up and running. Namely, server upkeep, customer service, programming hours, man hours, etc. Seeing just the final results without any of the work is like talking about how you make $100K a year before you're taxed to ~$60-$70K.

Funny thing about that. A lot of non-profits maintain their status by paying out all their income to their employees.

Now, that said, yes, it does take money to run and maintain a website. I'm aware. I'm also aware that even with massive bandwidth it isn't that expensive. You're looking at anywhere from under a hundred a couple of grand a month in maintenance as opposed to serious money.

But you seem to be under an impression that they're making gobs and gobs of money. That isn't the case. They had to have their initial start from a well known "Republican" (using a US term for a Swedish politician) who gave them a lot of new technology that helped them start with Bittorrents. Even then, they have to get a lot of ads for the site to make enough to cover costs and everything else. So really, with the Mitch Bainwol link versus the Pirate Bay, who do you think makes more money? Saying "oh, it's just a business. An ILLEGAL business" still misses the point. Just because a business makes money, that's anathema? Why can't it be a way to show other industries a new way to make money? That's kinda how we got away from the horse and buggy to automobiles.

Sort of. I can't help but think we're talking at cross purposes here. Especially given that the start up costs were absorbed externally. Torrent files are tiny, ~30kb-1mb IIRC. That also isn't much bandwidth, they'd burn more simply loading the graphics for each page than they would in payload. The real heavy lifting for the torrent would be absorbed by the end users. That cuts your actual expenses down to your bandwidth, which is proportional to your traffic, but nothing compared to someone who was actually hosting these files, your equipment amortization, which is basically a constant as well, but not a huge outflow, and then the basic utilities, and staff expenses (where the money really goes). Now, again, from a web development angle, this is insanely low cost. Combine that with a high ad saturation rate, and you cannot credibly say that they were not making money hand over fist, and maintain you know what you're talking about when it comes to web development. Conceptually this is a goddamn web developer's wet dream for printing money... though that is a mental image that will haunt me for minutes.

Let's also not forget they had to upgrade the servers (forcing the site down at times) among other little expenses that come with running a site of this scale.

I'm not, but at the same time, you yourself used the term "little expenses", and relative to what a site like that would be pulling in, these expenses would be marginal, no matter how much they beefed up their tech.

Finally, other, smaller authors are embracing the internet and not worrying about piracy. Just like Steve Lieber here [http://www.undergroundthecomic.com/2010/10/pictures-help-us-learn/]. Don't take my word for it.
No. Look, something you should understand is, I have no problem with someone putting something out there for public consumption. And if that's their choice, that's fine. AVG provides a good free anti-virus option, for instance. They choose to do that, and legally that's their choice. That isn't theft. It is theft when someone else chooses for you, that they will share your work. How you choose to respond to that is again, your choice, not theirs. So Steve doesn't care, great, that's him exercising his right to choose. But, that doesn't make people taking his work without his permission legal. That also doesn't mean, by extension that Steve Lieber speaks for anyone else. He has no authority to speak for me or for you to decide if you or I are offended if our work is pirated.

Actually, he didn't. Steve Lieber's work was put on the site without his say so. But rather than gripe and bemoan how piracy is causing him to lose sleep and manpower, he just talked to them.

Internet Man 10/18/10(Mon)20:30 No.20635234
>>20635149
Steve, like I said before, I posted the story in the hopes of getting it some exposure. I post stories that I enjoy in the hopes that it will generate some interest and discussion in books that some people would have otherwise ignored. I've had numerous people thank me for posting things, assuring me that they were planning on buying the stuff that I'd posted. I own all the singles, I'm a fan of both you and Jeff Parker. If you want me to delete this thread, I'd be fine with it. Just say the word

Steve Lieber 10/18/10(Mon)20:53 No.20635789
>>20635234

Internet man: I genuinely appreciate your taking the time to show people my work. Let's leave 'em up.

I got into most of my favorite bands after hearing them on 3rd generation cassette mix-tapes or my crappy alarm clock radio and getting curious enough about them to go pick up a CD or see them live. It feels like a safe bet that things will eventually work the same way with the stuff that I do. Like I said on twitter yesterday, I'm willing to trust that Jeff's and my readers will compensate us for the work.

Here's my personal view. For music, movies, and even games, the internet is a great tool. Giving people things won't stop piracy all the way, but it greatly reduces the price and costs of entry for a myriad of things. For music, a download isn't hurting the artist. In all of these links that I've shown, the artist hasn't even come up.

You're also missing the component (well, not so much missing as skimming over the fact) that pirates are, usually individuals as well. Now, some of them are going to be decent human beings, spin the wheel and sometimes you win, sometimes you end up with Pirate Bay flipping you off.

Rather, we have the middlemen using copyright and complaints of piracy cannibalizing their sales. But the middlemen are creating anything, merely acting like the broker between consumer and creator. Granted, the game market can run a little differently from the other two, but you can still make money in a plethora of ways.

Again, you're addressing a fundamental flaw with corporations in the world, not with piracy specifically. And, it's a problem we saw with the film industry long before this crisis.

Music: Downloads are free or .02 cents. Allow remixes and mashups which promote an artist, DJ, etc. It can work in Brazil [http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=tecnobrega&edition=techdirt], it can work here. What this does is promote other forms of entertainment. Dancing, choreography, clubs, discussions... Something we're sorely missing in the US.

Movies: Netflix has it right. We need more streaming sites. But getting to that point was hell for Nf. They had to use a loophole in law to get the chance to stream. Blockbuster went out of business because of the exorbitant fees the movie industry charged them. I doubt they'll recover with streaming proliferating. And by the Gods... Hulu sucks. We need more streaming sites than that commercial POS.

Games: Steam, Steam, Steam. Gog.com is great. If there were more of this and less DRM, we wouldn't have to worry about piracy.

I'm going to come back to all of this in a more general way, but you missed one of Steam's greatest choices, the return of the Demo. Remember that? Games with demos? More and more, Steam's got those coming back.

Of course, with all of this, you won't get everyone to shift over to the digital thinking. But if you're making money, why care about a few people that get a longer demo for free?

You know what, I have no problem with this list. It's a good idea, or rather a collection of good ideas. And yes, affirmative policies are a better option.

There are others. But the important thing to remember is that the fourth amendment isn't absolute. Think about it this way, if the police didn't have a reasonable expectation that their methods would be admissible, would they use them? That is to say, do you honestly believe that the police exist only to fuck up their investigations?

I don't adhere to the authoritarian point of view, that the government is always right.

Neither am I. But, the importance nuance to understand is that no right is absolute.

The government has been greatly influenced to "protect" [http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2010/02/justice-creates-ip-task-force.php] the industry. Really, this is a collusion of government and private forces to protect an antiquated business model. Darwinism works a lot better and I believe I proved that. But the fact that lobbyists have a special ear with government should worry you.

It does. More than just that, media polarization scares the shit out of me. But, at the end of the day, you have to decide, is copyright law as a concept something that should be supported or opposed. There's a lot of nuance within those positions, but, that is the dividing line, and ultimately it will dictate your stance on these actions.

Personally, I believe that this collusion only works to harm us. Just like these 70+ sites, it's amazing that the government hasn't done more until now.

I really wonder if this wasn't provoked by the attack on the copyright office by Anonymous. In which case, expect this to steamroll.

To repeat myself, the government is like any big dumb animal, scare it, and it will either roll over dead or rip your face off. It looks like in this case it's ripping the community's throat out. And honestly, right now, I can sit back and cheer that on.

The belief that the government is the only authority, especially in the marketplace is greatly flawed. Fair warning that the government colludes in order to take away freedoms.

I hate to burst your bubble, but, this has never been a country founded on absolute freedom, at any level. Ever. For any reason. It has been about greater freedom than being subjects of the British Monarchy, but as for absolute freedom? Yes, you get a hell of a lot more freedom here than you would in most of the world, but it certainly isn't unrestricted.

Here are a few to play with. You have no right to drive a car. You have no right to the internet. You have no right to run from the police. You have no right to photocopy, well, anything. You have no right to tell the government "no," when you're told that they're claiming eminent domain. And finally, unlike military officers disobeying orders, you have no right to disobey a law you believe to be immoral.

The fourth amendment only protects you if the police do not have, a warrant, probable cause, or have made an error in good faith.

The taking down of a search engine isn't an error? That's more of a slippery slope argument than I'm going to get into...

Ignoring how cliche the whole slippery slope concept is rapidly becoming, I still haven't seen a list of what sites were taken down. If these were sites that did not, or could not maintain their safe harbor protections for one reason or another, that's where this was always headed. Like you, I'm surprised this didn't start a long time ago, but I'm guessing the government needed a good boot to the face to get moving, and it may just be that Anonymous gave them the boot they needed.

In this case, some of the websites taken down were nothing more than search engines similar to Google. They had NO content on them other than a toolbar and were taken down without any type of governmental oversite. How that isn't abuse of "power" given is beyond me.

You're right, it is beyond you. The word is: warrant.

By the way, that case you're trumpeting as a triumph of the fourth amendment? Here's what it really means. If you want to slap a GPS tracker on a vehicle, you need to first get a warrant (easily done), and then you're off to the races. Literally the only thing that case addresses is the need for investigators to get a warrant first. Also, note that in that case the investigators actually had obtained a warrant, but it expired during the course of the investigation. So you're trumpeting a case where the bad guy literally got off because of a technicality. So, you think it's a good thing for criminals to get off because of procedural technicalities? You sure you're not secretly a cartel lawyer from Miami Vice? I kid.

Nah, I hate those damn shades. Anyway, in the follow up to this (appeals still going on) they're still debating it. For a few days is great, but when you get into an entire month of tracking someone like you're a stalker? That's when a problem arises. I thought it had said that first. And while I can get into the US's drug policies, that may be a thread for another time.

In the context of surveillance for an ongoing investigation, it kinda makes sense. TV has spoiled us, we expect a quick resolution, but major crimes cases can easily drag on for years, even when they're being actively investigated. Month long surveillance isn't really unreasonable in a drug case. It's just about knowing your context.

In the content of our legal system? It's slow. That may be the biggest strike against it in a general sense, but it is a slow system, and that speed works against people at the bottom of the (proverbial) food chain. (I'm not talking about copyright infringes here, I mean in general.)

Why? Are you afraid they'll find something?

Read further down. Regardless, I don't support their music or movies. *wink* [http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-hominem.html]

Being obtuse is not a virtue.

Problem was, you didn't want to answer the question, merely somehow mock me when I've already had a number of posts showing artists that I do support that aren't affiliated with the RIAA. While I still value the 4th Amendment, I wasn't a fan of my ISP shutting off my internet without even a notice to me. I'm not a fan of some media conglomerate able to decide through the ACTA, COICA, or other pretty law that continues to be anti-consumer, that somehow, I'm costing them money. That isn't me being obtuse, it's me noting the law on copyright and how it hinders quite a number of technological progressions in the name of a select few.

No, you were being obtuse, at least now you're making the point you wanted to here.

But this is kinda a sticky situation isn't it? Piracy has become so widespread that everyone is a suspect. You have people like UnderAttack up there who literally will not stop stealing material until you put them in prison, and even then they'll whine about how government is a parasitic organism.

On the other side we have a general population which is so disengaged politically you could literally pass a law to decimate (in the Roman sense) the general population by lottery and they wouldn't notice until after they'd already drawn lots.

We have corporate interests who are staring down the barrel of (what they perceive as) their own annihilation. Who then, reasonably, panic, and lash out at the perceived source, via their legislative access.

So what route is left to us? The ideal approach, the positive incentives you suggested earlier is there, but good luck convincing the corporate entities that that is truly their panacea. Some are catching on, but it's nowhere near enough. You have the government, finally stirred into action against the pirates. They'll probably overreach, and people will suffer in the process, but it might give us a shot at re-balancing this, and it will end with a lot of snotty little shits in prison or with felony convictions/pleas. We have the prospects for continued civil action, with increasing levels of egregiousness.

For me, the best of bad options is governmental intervention, and I don't say that lightly.

A middle ground? A government with a special task force for the movie and music industry going on to take people's freedoms all for a few files on the internet is a middle ground? Really?

You seem to be confusing private actions with governmental ones. So, law enforcement can use your IP records to figure out if you've been downloading things illegally. Great. And that's news, how? This isn't entrapment, you (or whomever) chose to break the law (and their feelings on the law are irrelevant here), and they did. "Because I didn't think I could get caught" is not a legitimate affirmative defense.

Yes, but it's like the government coming in to play favorites. We need a free market, not enforcement, which is the new thing for the US government.

Enforcement and free markets are both old hats, going back at least 90 years. We need more corporate accountability, but I doubt that's going to happen any time soon.

Shutting down the sites on a warrant is also perfectly legitimate. That's the point of a warrant.

Now, if we're talking about the behavior of the USCG? Yeah, that's pretty fuckin' reprehensible, and is far worse than anything the government has done. They subpoena ISP records, and then charge people as John Does based on their IP addresses, and file activity, then they send out threats of legal action, saying they've already been named in a suit, and unless they cough up a chunk of dough, they're going to have their ass sued off. Now, here's the brain bender. All of this is completely legal, and is completely irrelevant to this discussion. You know why? Because it is not governmental action. Just like you do not enjoy any first amendment protections from the moderator staff here.

I only brought it up to show the same behavior. They're running it like debt collectors...

I'll raise you one. The actual courts are no better. If you're arrested for a crime, you will be pressured to plead out. This will result in probation, during probation you'll be charged through the nose by your probation officer, this is money that kicks back to the court. What has happened are cases where people are picked up on bullshit evidence: a case in Texas I was looking at earlier today involved a single unreliable witness being responsible for 27 arrests from a housing project. Then they pressured these people to plead out by their public defender. Pleading out meant the court got to collect hundreds of dollars a month from each. They got about 10 to a dozen to plead out, at which point it did not matter that they had literally done nothing, and when the case went to trial, the witness was exposed, the charges tossed on the remaining defendants.

This is an illustration of a larger phenomena, towns rely on their courts as a revenue source. It isn't just the corporations that act as debt collectors.

That may not end well [http://blog.internetcases.com/2010/11/25/class-action-lawsuit-challenges-bittorent-lawsuit-factorys-business-model/]

Still, the fact is, the DMCA has actually caused this situation that we're currently in. From Jammie Thomas [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20021735-93.html], to Whitney Harper [http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/supreme_court_rejects_appeal_in_sa_music_case_111004889.html], this wouldn't have come up as a ridiculous situation without the DMCA and Patriot Act in conjunction.

Let's not forget that more than likely, these people have to answer a summons OR they have to fight in an expensive court case to prove that the government took their things illegally.

Yeah, but this, honestly, isn't that different from the criminal justice system as a whole. Forget Law and Order, the courts exist to fuck you over when you break the law. This is no different for these guys, than it is for someone who got picked up on a DUI.

... What? The correlation between drunk driving and sharing songs on the internet... I'm speechless...

It's the thing from above about towns using the courts as a revenue source. Sorry, I had it in my head, but didn't articulate it at the time, and didn't realize I'd made that connection without fleshing it out.

What do you think is going to happen as a result?

In my trained opinion? Fuck all.

... Ok...

I have quite a few guesses. First, setting up your service outside of the US, taking away revenue and taxes.

Already happened. Why do you think Pirate Bay took so long to take down?

... Please explain.

Sweden's copyright laws aren't exactly friendly to foreign copyrights. Something which made getting the site taken down especially difficult.

Second, more implementation of DNS services to ping their log ins, making these people more difficult to track. So ever more, the game of whack a mole continues.

This is less likely, because ISPs are walking a tightrope right now. They make money off this hand over fist, but they also need to maintain their safe harbor protections. And as Limewire taught us, not being able to regulate your own network is not sufficient for safe harbor.

I think you're underestimating people's ingenuity. Not only will proxy service plus DNS increase, but I wouldn't be surprised if this threat here would cause more people to go to cyber lockers for internet files. I'm just going to say WAM from now on...

Ingenuity cuts both ways.

Just because the government spends millions on this fruitless endeavor won't solve the problem of the big media missing the point. They don't know how to compete anymore.

Okay, seriously? They don't know how to compete with theft? Is that you're argument? And let's not mince words here, piracy is theft. These aren't the (theoretically) romantic pirates of the open oceans, these are thieves. So, because people have figured out how to rip off artists and publishers, it's all okay, because that's just "fair market competition"? I'm sorry, that one doesn't even pass the scratch and sniff test. This is theft, plain and simple. And if you're honestly sitting there trying to argue that this is some kind of competition?

You don't seem to understand how this works.

Judging by your post, I actually know more about the subject than you do. Both media histor[sic] and economics.

Intriguing... Proceed.

Quick history on movies and music. They were the old gatekeepers. In the music industry, you had the Big Four (soon to be the Big Three since EMI is having financial trouble) that controlled the market.

And out of the gate you've screwed things up. You're right when you're talking about the Music industry. But, on the films side, which you did include, there was the studio system, which structurally looks nothing like the modern industry, or the music industry.

I shortened it down for convenience sake. I know all about Thomas Edison being fairly legislative in his endeavors and stifling competition, causing his competition to move west away from his patents on film.

I'm also not getting into the theater market, which the major studios had control of. Let's not forget that the movie industry is still controlled by limited release windows of movies (unless it's abnormally popular) that continues to limit the spread of indie movies or movies that are more niche.

That's actually nowhere near as true as it once was. Films used to be there and then gone. Now we have VHS and DVDs.

It's the reason for the summer blockbuster. It's also why a lot of major movie theaters really can't charge less on, or get better, food. I know of only a few theaters that actually make the movie theater experience something to remember.

As it is now, it's all about selling a scarcity (a seat) for maximum profit for the release.

And contrary to popular belief, I still think 3D is a fad.

It's been a fad every time it's popped up, which is to say about every 20 years.

Monopolistic competition [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition]. In all honesty, the artists were screwed over by the labels by the Sonny Bono Act. They got screwed over by deals that heavily favored the label to make money. Picture here [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml]. The DMCA screwed them over yet again by making the terms lifetime + 70 years after an artist dies. Let's think about that... A corporation can hold onto a copyright and control movies LOOOOONG after you die.

Technically that extends to your heirs and estate, not simply record deals and the like. And yes, I am fully aware of this. Historically it was 30 years, and every twenty years or so, Disney has pressured to extend the deadline, coincidentally in the face of their major icons passing into public domain. I've actually seen articles on the subject that suggest that the era of public domain is effectively over, and that any new creations will (ultimately) be under copyright permanently.

Uhm... It was 14 years before or during the Berne Convention...

Probably after. If you want I can actually look it up, I've got a copy on my shelf.

Don't you love progress?

Kinda. Okay, so you missed the film industry earlier, and that might be relevant now...

Here's the history you missed. Back in the 30s and 40s, the Film industry consisted of a handful of studios, mostly the big three, MGM, WB, and 20th Century Fox, (there was a fourth one, that's escaping me at the moment, but they folded ages ago) and some smaller specialty studios like Disney. Studios contracted people, and then stuck them wherever they wanted. The studio mechanism controlled who would be cast for what film, who would direct, who would write, and so on. What this resulted in were, by and large, very safe films. Not very adventurous or risky (usually), but corporately comfortable films, that presented (more or less) a unified vision. (There were exceptions, films like Sunset Boulevard certainly didn't fit that mold.) Under this system, actors, directors, writers, and even background staff like grips got the short end of the stick relative to a handful of carefully managed stars and the execs.

This changed in the 60s and 70s for numerous reasons, the biggest was simply people were bored with getting the same dross over and over again, and television was displacing cinema. The result was a breakdown of the studio system into something more recognizable for a modern viewer. Directors or producers had control over a project, casting didn't come out of a casting mill from the studio. There was a greater degree of independence, and on the whole, the films of today are usually better than the films from the 1940s and 50s (though that is subject to taste).

Go back 15 years, and look at the music industry. It was well on its way to being where the film industry was in the mid-60s. People were bored with the same dross. Alternative music represented the same kind of slot as the independent films of the 70s, and the label system seemed to be on the way out.

In marches internet piracy, something films didn't have to deal with, and it kills and eats everyone indiscriminately. Now, if piracy hadn't occurred what would the music scene look like today? A lot of smaller labels which were more artist friendly, and the big names trying to find a new place for themselves? I'm guessing, but it isn't an unreasonable analysis given the data we had 15 years ago. What we have is an incredibly caustic environment in which the only thing that is really profitable are the stunningly massive acts. That's not healthy, and it's prolonged the label system. So instead of seeing a transition between the label system and a more distributed artist friendly system, we've seen an environment where only the labels can survive by turning their exploitative system up to 11.

Right now, I think is a good time to say a LOT of artists have made money away from the labels. They don't have as much control over the market, which is the best thing to happen. But I believe you're misguided. For music here's a few that have made it out on top:

Radiohead [http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/]
Trent Reznor [http://www.nin.com/]
Jonathan Coulton [http://www.jonathancoulton.com/]
Amanda Palmer [http://www.amandapalmer.net/]
Matthew Ebel [http://matthewebel.com/main/music/]

The reason you're misguided is that you aren't seeing the people that have had all of the success like in the old system of music or movies. It's not just the big boys that are making more money. Remember Lady Gaga (*shudder*) started out small and unknown. Yes, the internet has been quite disruptive in both good and "bad" ways. It's allowed more artists to be discovered than before. They are making money, but the labels are distorting the news. You are witnessing a revolution before your eyes, but it's subtle. The labels are clamoring to either keep existing artists or change the landscape so that they ARE needed. But with Livestream, Grooveshark, and a helluva lot of gusto, do they really need them?

Even Amazon and iTunes have participated in this to an extent. Now, are the labels phasing out? I don't know. That isn't my perception, but focusing on the legal side of things and not on the economics is bound to skew that.

They don't know how to do anything but take subsistence from the government and pay extra bucks to make legislation that is truly anti consumer thief.

Sorry, you had a little typo there, but I got it for ya. Happens to the best of us.

Oops, Sorry about that. I actually meant to put this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use] up also.

Aw. Yeah, I understand that. It happens to the best of us. Of course, I'd still like to know where in fair use you get the idea you can simply copy and distribute an item as much as you want. Because it isn't in any version of Fair Use I've ever read.

DMCA exceptions are coming up next year. Gonna be interesting to look into. Fair use says you can have a backup of a CD. Mainly, it's still kept vague which I personally believe needs to be cleaned up. But eh... Make due with what you have.

Also, look at that "typo" again.

The biggest thing to worry about is actually loosing the interoperability clause. On one hand it's a little surprising that no one's really brought that up in any of the recent cases, on the other I'd hate to see that go. The second one I'd worry about losing is Safe Harbor, but I kinda doubt that's going anywhere.

See, here's the really funny thing. This is going out of it's way to avoid taking this shit down. If your theory was right, then the big bad corporations who own the goddamn world would have no qualms simply crushing the torrent network. And before you go off on that whole "can't stop the signal" bullshit, let me explain. There are technical limitations within the existing software that are fundamental to the design architecture. If the government's intent was to end torrents now, it would happen. It is because they ARE protecting these people you cite.

Notice how this happened right before COICA is to be debated and possibly rectified. Funny how no one can connect the dots until it's too late.

People do. But freaking out over this reflects either a myopic view of the law and economy, personal bias, or unreasoned paranoia.

Let's take on some of this. If the corporations could take out the Gnutella network, they would, bar none. It invades on their monopoly. Since they have the ear of government, it's highly doubtful they'd mess that up. So how do you take down a network? That's the question ahead. But, just as I opened, how are you going to take on so many other forms of legal communication that harbor files?

iRC..

IRC is an old hat here. And honestly, to scale, not usually worth worrying about. It requires direct connections unless it's incorporating more advanced systems under the surface. That said, if someone does figure how to make this one go widespread, it will be a serious problem.

Bittorrent...

A torrent is only as good as the data on it. That leaves you with two easy possibilities to sabotage it. The first is honeypots, the second is splicing garbage data into existing torrent streams. I'm not aware of anyone doing the later (and it should be pathetically easy to execute with corporate resources at your disposal), but the former does pop up from time to time, and did on the second gen networks.

Azureaus (Vuze)
Sourceforge...

I'm not familiar with the specifics of how these two operate, I haven't had any hands on experience with their use, but nothing on the net is bulletproof.

Seriously... If you look at all the things that are made and shared in various forms, it's a lesson in futility. Although... The more the government resists, the more likely a newer form of filesharing would come up. Should be a fun thing to watch.

Due to the proximity of UnderAttack's posts, I may be being unduly harsh on you. For that I apologize.

Apology accepted. Not trying to be harsh, just show you how this really is ineffective policy.

I know it's ineffective, unfortunately, it's what we're left with, we have a panacea approach which would be a ***** to implement, and we have the civil liability approach which doesn't work, mostly for reasons we didn't actually bring up, like judgment proofing.

Anyway, this post is 23 pages long in word, I'm calling it a night.