Homeland Security Seizes Dozens of Piracy Websites

[zombays]

This makes sad panda sad.

 

[iridescence]

No, I understand what you're saying, it's just objectively incorrect. What you've legally defined as theft defies the actual definition of the concept of theft. What I don't understand is why you slavishly defend the state's definition of sharing as theft

You have a small point here. I believe copyright infringement is not the same thing as theft. It is a matter of degree. Copyright infringement does not deprive the victim of actual property but it does deprive them of income they are entitled to for the property they created.

You can't point to any individual in the videogame industry who has lost property as a result of so-called piracy!

Semantics. They haven't lost property but they have lost money. Every time someone who might have bought the game opts to just download it instead. In the case of a videogame, a tiny fraction of the value actually comes from the physical CD/box/manual. Pretty much all of the value comes from the ideas behind the game and the creative work to turn those ideas into a playable game.

I'm not against downloading in order to try things out because there is a lot of crap put out and sometimes the only way to tell is to try a game/album/movie out first.

But, if you really get enjoyment out of something don't the creators of that product deserve some payment for the time they've devoted to creating that product?

I have no problem at all with people not paying for crappy music but good music needs to be supported to survive. The same goes for movies and games. If you're going to use P2P at all, use it to make better and more informed purchases.

It's all fine to make pseudo-intellectual arguments about the definitions of property and ownership but the bottom line is if the artists you respect don't get paid they will have to find other work to support themselves with and they will have no financial incentive to create the art that you enjoy.

 

[(LK)]

There is always one truth that comes out of actions like this; Users can go elsewhere. Be it torrents or community downloads like rapidshares you only shift the threat you never really curb it. Just like the gnutella network and the like gave way to even more decentralised torrents you only ever make the pirates harder to deal with.

Unless they bring down the hammer like China....

Anyway, this law has the power to do much good...but lets be honest here. This is law in the United States we're talking about...I fear for sites like Newgrounds and Youtube now who may have a fight on their hands with the whole "omgosh you have copyrightz material!!"

That one about China gave me a chuckle. China is a totalitarian government and also has piracy rates which make those in the US seem very very small (which, in fact, they actually are. The official rates given for the US are among the lowest in the world).

Previous attempts at blacklists and censoring comprised one of the darkest periods in american history, precisely because such broad-reaching powers were such a gift to those who would abuse them that none even bothered to be discreet in doing so.

So, you're right, this is law in the United States, and it will come with all of the unintended effects, abuse, and bureaucratic incompetence that entails.

 

[underattack86]

Who else has lost property? It's going to be a long list. Who else has had their property devalued? Every major publisher. I get that you don't understand that that is important, but life goes on without you.

"Devalued"? That's not the same thing as having property taken. Who has lost property? Nobody. User A sent User B some 1's and 0's from their hard-drive. OBVIOUSLY the publisher has lost no property. If you could name a single victim to this so-called crime then you would have done so by now, surely.

Your rights are defined by human nature, as the Constitution states. You're focusing on the legal definition because, if we're being rational, calling internet piracy "theft" does NOT meet the actual definition of the term.

By stealing someone else's shit, you TAKE their property. Which is exactly what is not occurring here.

Creating money is the crime of fraud because you're attempting to fool others into believing that the currency you've created is legitimate. Yet again, no such crime occurs in sharing data.

The failure of the state to observe the truth of human rights does not make them untrue.

The one you clicked through and ignored? Yeah, that was a contract which enumerated that you don't own the software, only a license to use it.

So I paid for the software, and it entered into my physical possession, but I don't "own" it... because of a contract that neither me nor the seller actually signed? Sorry, but my property does not get to tell me it's "terms of use".

You either follow the law, or you don't.

I don't. Is that a problem for you?

Don't even pretend for a moment that stealing someone else's work is at all related to slavery.

I'm not. Were people who harboured slaves criminals?

You disgust me.

Well shit, don't cry about it. You don't disgust me, you interest me. If you didn't I wouldn't continue this conversation. You've no rational connection between morality and law, and it manifests as this manic devotion to what is written rather than what is proper. That's why the slavery question is important, not because it's similar. Once again you've attacked a strawman rather than myself.

Without copyrights there would be no art.

Obviously untrue, unless you're going to assert that there was no art before 1709. We could also point to the huge online scenes of artistic creators who actively reject copyright claims to their work.

How about because the willing sender didn't have the legal authority to do so. Again, you don't get to reinvent the law, and whatever your feelings on the law, they're irrelevant.

So I can take this answer as a "no", right? You CAN'T demonstrate how my receiving a file is theft, you can only fall back to the irrationality of state law.

it's still illegal.

Pfft. Lots of actions are illegal. Very few of them are wrong.

No. Because without the constitution you have no expectation to privacy.

And you expect privacy WITH the Constitution? You've not heard of wire-tapping? TSA nude scanners? Lots of people DON'T get due process (see: Guantanamo), or free speech (see: free speech zones). Do you seriously expect me to believe that The Patriot Act is Constitutional? Because if it is then the Constitution preserves nothing, and if it isn't the the Patriot Act protects nothing. Either way it's still just a piece of paper.

If it's the font from which your system of government flows then it is quite frankly a font of immorality.

Okay, I missed that, so you're the artist? If you're the artist on the disk then that's fine, it's yours... oh wait. You swiped these tracks off the internet, and then you burned a copy. Okay.

It's my physical data on my physical CD. Why claim does "the artist" have to either piece of my property? You say it's not my data, but you've failed to logically prove this. You've tried to insult me again though, which is unproductive.

Via a copyright or patent. That is the entire point of intellectual property. And just because you don't want it to exist doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

But the fact that you can't logically defend it except to say "just because" seems to suggest that it DOESN'T exist, right? I mean it's obviously impossible to own non-physical property. If it could exist you'd be able to easily demonstrate it and we'd be done here.

If I sell you "The Da Vinci Code by underattack86", I'm committing fraud by suggesting that the work was written by me. If you're fine with that, then we've no problem. At no point does Dan Brown get a say in the matter.

And yet. The instant I suggested that something you created would be taken from you, you went on the defensive. Your efforts to mask your reaction are admirable, but your initial reflex betrayed you.

It's bizarre to me that you can't separate the physical from the non-physical. I am defending physical property, not of ideas. What you're describing as "your initial reflex" is in fact your own misunderstanding of what is being discussed.

Further, if, as you claim, copyrights are inherently immoral, it does really not matter if the theft is in physical or electronic form.

... that makes no sense. Physical theft is a crime because property is taken. Copyright's got nothing to do with it.

Lets say that morality and law are separate, then we can ignore the legality of "piracy" and ask: what's immoral about it?

What is immoral about taking something from someone else without compensating them? Hmm.[/quote]
It's funny... Pirate Bay's never asked me for compensation when I took their files from them. Unless you're referring to me "taking" from various industries, which as we've established is something you can't logically demonstrate to be true.

When you pirate you are taking the economic value from a given product, which they worked on.

If I go see Inception, and then tell you the ending, you might choose not to go see it. I may have cost the producer a potential sale, but you can't claim I've stolen anything or damaged any physical property. "Potential sales of a product" are not actual, physical sales, they are hypothetical and imaginary, and thus "taking" them violates nobody's property rights.

You equated piracy to the underground railroad twice. You said exactly that.

No, I absolutely did not. I asked, on the topic of legality VS morality, "was protecting escaped slaves a crime?". Where's the equation to piracy?

your assertion that theft is somehow a moral act

Massive, massive, obvious strawman.

By definition, if you're a pirate you are a criminal.

By definition, if you're a pirate then you hijack sea-borne vessels for a living. We can label data sharers criminals all we like; doesn't change the fact that you can't demonstrate the loss of property necessary to render them as much.

your first response in the hypothetical was to go to the police.

The state has a monopoly on law enforcement. My need to enforce my rights, to the tiny degree that the state honours them, is more important to me than my distaste for everything the state does. I only resort to this because all other avenues of justice have been barred by the state. The mechanism of the state is undoubtedly parasitical (unlike copyright violation, taxation is easily demonstrated to be theft), but that doesn't change the fact that I require a thief caught and the police are the only option available to me.

The second also comes out of the hypothetical. You really stepped in it. Either copyright laws are inherently invalid, as you keep claiming, or you really do have a legitimate claim to your work. Your response suggests you believe the latter when it is your work, but the former when it belongs to someone else. That isn't an ideology, it's a variety of greed.

You've misunderstood. I wanted the book back because it was my physical property. I have a claim to my property. That's not copyright, that's property rights. Copyright doesn't refer to actual physical property but rather to non-physical ideas and concepts... a fact which, by the way, explains why you can't logically demonstrate how copyright violation is theft.

I went through my post and removed any part which was overly sarcastic, aggressive or rude. You're invited to do the same, for the sake having a pleasant exchange.

You have a small point here. I believe copyright infringement is not the same thing as theft. It is a matter of degree. Copyright infringement does not deprive the victim of actual property but it does deprive them of income they are entitled to for the property they created.

They didn't create the .avi file that the Pirate Bay sent me. That particular string of 1's and 0's was created by the [1337] clan, or whomever. They created the idea of the movie contained within, but like we've discussed, ideas aren't property.

Semantics. They haven't lost property but they have lost money.

They're lost hypothetical future profits; nothing material has actually been lost.

But, if you really get enjoyment out of something don't the creators of that product deserve some payment for the time they've devoted to creating that product?

Yes, they do. That's why I buy DVD's, to reward the creators who's works I enjoy.

 

[TechNoFear]

That's not the same thing as having property taken. Who has lost property? Nobody. User A sent User B some 1's and 0's from their hard-drive. OBVIOUSLY the publisher has lost no property. If you could name a single victim to this so-called crime then you would have done so by now, surely.

If I change some 1 and 0's in the banks DB (pertaining to your CC balance) what 'property' has changed hands?

The 1 and 0's represent money but are not actually physical 'property'.

Following your broad definition stealing your CC balance is not 'theft'.

Clearly the act of changing that data is a crime, regardless if it is fraud, theft or copyright violation.

calling internet piracy "theft" does NOT meet the actual definition of the term.

I agree.

But 'piracy' (either form) is still a crime.

I agree that business models need to change under the new digital age.

By stealing someone else's shit, you TAKE their property. Which is exactly what is not occurring here.

What about people who sell a 'service' (charge an hourly rate for their labor).

If I do not pay for their work (after thay have done it) is that theft?

Clearly people's time and knowledge have a 'value' that can be subject to 'theft'.

That 'value' is not derived purely from 'physical' goods.

 

[Starke]

calling internet piracy "theft" does NOT meet the actual definition of the term.

I agree.

But 'piracy' (either form) is still a crime.

I agree that business models need to change under the new digital age.

Actually it does. Most states phrased their larceny or theft statutes to account for someone "stealing" someone's service. This means that in most states to be guilty of theft or larceny you need only receive a stolen good or service. Not pilfer it yourself. (Now, I'm guessing that if someone gave you a stolen wristwatch or the like as a gift, you could use your lack of intent as an affirmative defense, but anyway.) The point I'm making is, piracy actually does fit within the technical legal definition of larceny or theft. (It's the same charge, some states choose to call it one thing, others another.)

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

Maybe now this will stop/impact the video game developer's excuse of "This game has screwed up security methods because of piracy" maybe that will return lan play? No? Well then I hope the sites STAY UP because cracks enable lan play.
Amazing, I HAVE to pirate a game to be able to lan it, just amazing, the anti piracy methods have gotten so severe that they force some people to actually get the pirated versions to play the game, for instance; spore with the limited installs, assassin's creed 2 with drm that has crashing servers that make the game unplayable at down times, steam games that require constant patching whether you are in a foreign country with limited cap or not, etc.

I would buy your games if I could play them, douche bags.

 

[TheLaofKazi]

Oh neat, it's always great to see the government side with powerful corporations instead of individual people, and to do it with force.

I understand that some indie developers, filmakers, musicians, ect. have been shat upon by piracy, but it has actually benefited a good number of them as well with free exposure. And there is very little evidence that says piracy harms the bigger players in the industry, in fact, there are statistics and research out there that shows the opposite.

And why the fuck is homeland security dealing with this? Is illegal downloading now a threat to national security?

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

and yet there is still Pirate Bay...

 

[Count Igor]

Daww. Poor TvShack.
I was going to watch a nice film QQ

 

[jaketheripper]

OH THANK GOD TPB IS STILL UP! i only use it before i buy cds tho, cuz ive gotten fucked over one(hundred)too many times from buying cds first. but still, chill the fuck out! homeland security? really? there powerhungry, sure it doesnt seem like it now, but just wait untill the whole interwebz get shut down for "potentially infringing copyright laws."

 

[silversnake4133]

Well, if they want piracy to possibly go down, maybe taxes should as well. Or at least wages should increase a bit. Someone really needs to press the government's "Reset" button before it's too late. It's 404 error status is really starting to affect the hard-drive.

 

[Gindil]

Alright. I'm back...

The domain list [http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-seizes-bittorrent-search-engine-domain-and-more-101126/]

Just for people who want to know which sites got targeted.

It looks like the bulk of the sweep was focused on counterfeit goods sellers, at a glance. The only search engine I'm seeing is Torrentfinder.

True... They got a few websites where the industry didn't like them. Problem was, there were a few innocent sites that didn't infringe. At ALL. At least two were rap/hip hop blogs [http://rapfix.mtv.com/2010/11/26/onsmash-rapgodfathers-websites-seized-by-authorities/]. And people are MAAAD... [http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/211985/groups_vow_to_fight_govt_takedowns_of_websites.html]

Why be mad when the industry has their own police force? [http://music-mix.ew.com/2010/11/30/homeland-security-rap-blog/?hpt=T2]

*WARNING: BIG ASS WALL OF TEXT*
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.

I think we both know it's a shell of the potential it could be if its corporate overlords stopped milching it for exorbitant fees, and allowed it to do what it needed to gain customers. Think about Napster in its heyday with MILLIONS of people. Now, it's at 800,000... And it doesn't even offer half of the music you could discover in one way or another. Corporate community /= Thriving 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.

The industry is known more for impeding progress. It wasn't Pirate Bay's flippant attitude that Limewire was trying to emulate. It's their success. Despite the fact that TPB sells ad space, it was a decent success that the industry could have had if it emulated it itself. They chose the litigation route which has really made them look bad. No new artists... No new music (listen to the radio for 1 hour)... No new anything because of all the rules that impede progress. At least with Limewire, they were innovating. Now, with that underground, you think that'll make them more money?

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.

Data has already been processed [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100611/0203309776.shtml], and if you need, I can bring up even more.

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.

I'd like to think these are the death throes of the industry as it withers up for all the reasons I've stated before. It can try to power up legislatively, but until it tries to fight piracy as competition, not as a boogeyman, it's going to keep losing.

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).

Well, given that It's sending out 10,000 notices a day [http://torrentfreak.com/french-isp-refuses-to-send-out-hadopi-file-sharing-warnings-101007/] I figure everyone has at least one by now. So to avoid this BS, people go further underground. Proxies, rapidshare... The alternative of being disconnected is a major inconvenience that may haunt Sarkozy and his wife [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Bruni] (who truly influenced the law, no doubt)

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.

That came out about the Pirate Edition of Limewire, which Limewire LLC doesn't support. Before the lawsuit bankrupted them, LW tried to negotiate with the industry, but they wouldn't have any of it. It's akin to what they did to Napster. Sue, sue, sue... LW tried to negotiate through this but when the industry thinks they control them, they are like those rabid animals you talked about earlier. Damn hyenas...

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.'

Well here's the thing. The past music industry was built around a centralized network. Everyone HAD to go through the recording industry to be heard. You NEEDED a label for your music and the labels made money for YEARS on other's hard work. Example [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC4BRLYlGjE] And to be honest, this can't go on forever. The rules of economics say so. It's why the entertainment industry is lobbying to KEEP this perpetual copyright in force. BUT, even then, there's rules that must be followed. USCG is learning that the hard way [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/put-up-or-shut-up-time-for-us-copyright-group.ars]

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

Don't be so sure.

Dang whippersnapper... GET OFF MY LAWN!

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.

Yeah... This was what PUSHED and made broadband more available. Think about all of the opportunities Napster literally opened as just one variable. Of course, there was games and other stuff but still... Napster did it all and even made the mp3 a standard.

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.[/quote]
It's not that I think personal piracy is a venue to attack the industry. But it's going to always remain with us. The belief that you can control millions, possibly billions, of files or people, getting what they want for free is damn near impossible. Think about this... With just the music site of Jamendo I showed earlier, isn't that an alternative? What about Radiohead allowing their music to be played and remixed on P2P sites? The new opportunities far outweigh the negativity that is supposed to surround piracy. I like to view it as free sampling of an artist. If I like them, great, set up to give them donations or they can find ways to get to my town for a concert. If I don't, delete or maybe a friend likes them and does the same thing. It's in how you view the technology given to you. It just cuts both ways, which the industry can't stand.

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.[/quote]
This brings up a great parallel. Drug policy. The US arrests more people per capita than practically all the world combined. All of these people in prison talk to each other. When they get out, they become a better criminal. One thing I'm advocating is better drug policy in the US, where the government could actually regulate the industry, similar to before Nixon criminalized all drugs. We haven't had good research in the last 40 years, and the number of people that have died from gangs is outrageous. More info here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsk8R_j5zzg] on that tangent. Get an hour ready.

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.

Ok... A few things happened. The industry didn't adjust at all to Napster and the digital threat. They allowed Virgin Music to go out of business [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/arts/music/15virgin.html]. There were a LOT of mishaps and mistakes. Mainly, the big boys lost contact with the consumers on a MASSIVE scale. That's why you're seeing this disruption now. Nowadays, a lot of musicians are self published or only going to the industry for recordings. The industry itself has yet to truly adapt to that, thinking they're the gatekeepers. But if they piss off their artists, the artist now has options. Options they would never have had in the 40 years prior. All that's happening now, is you're seeing a monopoly turn into a truly competitive field. Online radio (last.fm... Pandora... OCRemix), Pirate Bay, Youtube, Livestream... There's so many options, it's a matter of where you want to start. Just now, you don't have a few people controlling where you hear good music. Same thing goes for movies and games.

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.

*cracks knuckles*

Alright...

50 Cent [http://www.nme.com/news/50-cent/50865], Amanda Palmer [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100524/2348409556.shtml],
Georgia Wonder [http://www.georgiawonder.com/destroy/],
Diablo Swing Orchestra [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsmAF9cVPm4]

Now... Artists are making money, not the labels because they're too busy being anti-consumer. *okay, so the Diablo Swing Orchestra is a personal fave...*

Movies... Avatar was the most pirated movie but it still made $10+ billion.

... 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.

... Ok, I'll bite. I make a copy of a book, how do I deprive the industry? Did you know there are now $300 machines that can make pdfs of books? Again, this seems to be more of the same "ignoring the opportunities in front of you, for the old business model" that the industries in question are suffering from.

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.)

They weren't making money on the albums to begin with. We can actually move over to the UK music industry [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100804/11192610498.shtml] for a look at the most recent numbers if you feel uncomfortable about the US scene. Same thing occurs with digital availability of music. BUT, same problem where the labels get 60% of your recording album, your manager gets 30%, and you have to share the other 10% of the album sales with your band. I'm Jay on Techdirt so Mike found this article that I found on another site:
Link [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml]. Heh, I so love pictures.

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.

Doesn't mean we don't have control over what we can do for our entertainment. And DVDs are only as good as you can maintain them. The ways to oxidize them are awesome!

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.

Bear in mind, the courts don't understand all the technology in front of them. Let's also remember that Peter Sunde, one of the accused, is working on [http://flattr.com/] quite a few projects [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-12/02/peter-sunde-p2p-dns] that can really change the internet landscape.

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.

Can't say much. The joke is on the industry that is trading pennies for dollars... Oh Wait... [http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2010/07/ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-riaa-paid-its-lawyers.html]

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.

... Ewww....

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.

Yeah, this is one of those areas we'll need to see numbers for better accuracy...

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.

??? How is talking to them and convincing them to buy the physical copy a bad thing? Notice the chart he had put up where the "pirates" bought the physical copy even though they could read the entire thing online. Odds are, if you talk to people more about not only how you feel about it but offer them more than just the download, it'll work for you in the long run.
I don't see how I'm skimming that by pointing out he actively engaged a new audience where others might complain about what they see in front of them. I met a writer that was just like that. Now, she hides on her website, thinking that copyright should give her a free ride. But that's not the case!

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.

But this fundamental flaw is coming to take us out with these piracy laws... That is a problem.

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.[/quote]

They have demos? Never noticed... I can't see them from all the crazy sales they do. (Kidding)

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.

As a writer, I should have a divested interest in copyright to "protect" me. But with more and more research, I'm learning it is a useless tool of a forgotten time. While it may not go away, I'm sure there are others that may need it temporarily in a human lifespan. I just think we need to lessen the length of it and once again increase the public domain.

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.

Part of the same animal, but the ICE takedowns actually happened in June also. It's just that they were working on this in secret before COICA, which would make the process even longer.

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.

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.

Well, there's a lot of things that can happen. Right now, it's a waiting period. The old industries will die eventually. Such is the way of those leaning heavily on the government for protectionism. Still, all of this law and litigation is costing tons *TONS* of money. That money can't continue to support the same bad behavior forever. New producers with better senses will come around, then the industry goes through the loopholes of trying to better understand the customer. We'll just continue to watch the fireworks and watch what the industry does. It is kinda funny though...

]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.

Whoa... Corporate accountability happens when there's competition. The music and movie industry hasn't really learned that they are competing with piracy (as I've shown before). If you want corporate accountability, you'll find it when the CEOs of these businesses are focused on how to make money and gain customers, not answering to the government for the latest foul up.

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.

... Damn... That's almost as bad as the law that allowed a cop to take your jewelry in TX...

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

In my trained opinion? Fuck all.

... Ok...

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

Irony: The US used to do the exact same thing in regards to copyright. Then the Berne Convention happened... -_-;

Ingenuity cuts both ways.

True, but it should be interesting to see how a centralized power takes on a decentralized network. I doubt that in the next 5 years, if the DNS thing of Peter Sunde lifts off, it'll make ICE's job that much harder. And it'll be awesome. Sides, we've seen how the US handles terrorism, the war on poverty, the war on secrecy, and privacy laws...

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.

Scott Pilgrim vs Expendables... The problem is still rampant in the industry.

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.

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.

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.

Interoperability?

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.

But it harbors the smaller "infringements", manga, drawings... So it may be costing the industry millions (HAHAHAHA!!!)

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.

Yes, but every time they try? It fails. You can spot a bad file a mile away.

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.

Vuze is a bittorrent platform. Sourceforge is an open source coding area where you can get games and applications. It houses OpenOffice (free Office substitute) among other things. That's in there more because a judge may not know what Sourceforge is about. They may sign a warrant and inconveniently take down a website that harbors their own files, not the industry's.

Alright. Two hours on this post. Night.

 

[Starke]

Alright. I'm back...



Alright. Two hours on this post. Night.

Just in time for me to pass out. I'll get back to you tomorrow evening, assuming I have the time. These posts are getting insanely long to parse and write.

 

[Optimystic]

Anyway, this law has the power to do much good...but lets be honest here. This is law in the United States we're talking about...I fear for sites like Newgrounds and Youtube now who may have a fight on their hands with the whole "omgosh you have copyrightz material!!"

Youtube is winning that slugfest... so far.

 

[TrollOgerElf]

looks like they think they own the internet again. rage hard rage very hard.

 

[AlphonseRomano]

As an interesting aside, and not to defend either part of the argument, the standard contract that a band enters into gives them roughly 20c from every album sale, not per dollar of album sale, per album sale.
From memory, (and I could be wrong) there's now research coming forward saying that pirating music is helping bands since they get a wider listener base, and so people start going to concerts, buying merchandise etc.

In saying that, I still buy a physical copy of all the music I listen to (using torrents only as a 'try-before-you-buy' kind of deal) simply because of the quality.

 

[AngryFrenchCanadian]

Alright. I'm back...



Alright. Two hours on this post. Night.

Wow, that was a very insightful post. I was tempted to TL;DR but it was definitely worth looking at the entire thing. Kudos.