Homeland Security Seizes Dozens of Piracy Websites

[AngryFrenchCanadian]

Argh! Double Post all the way. Sorry.

 

[Ledan]

.......
So... the U.S government is going to force a block on foreign websites...
China much? What's next, are they going to ban proxies?

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Why is this a homeland security issue? I could see FBI, maybe, but HLS? And this new law does seem to be counter to the DMCA, and parts of the WIPO legislations. I have a sickened feeling that this will come to a head with some kind of anti-torrent legislation, which would be a terrible waste of a really good sharing technology. Of course, copyright is coming to a head soon anyway, and I predict a radical change is coming our way in terms of our digital media, how we own it, and how we may use it when we do not have the owning rights to it. We do still have the retroactive rights to the digital medium of pre-digital pieces, provided we own the media in a form alternate to its digital one. Couple this thought with the fact that a percentage of what is being pirated is either abandonware, pre-digital space savers, or recovery of what is already owned, and you're looking at the closing of perfectly legal actions through a very important medium.

You know, for a group that took their name from a colonial group that opposed the governments of Europe getting in their way and demanding a fair percentage of their income, it seems almost ironic that the exact same thing is happening to the modern variant what happened in the end to their colonial counterparts--government and industrial crackdown to remove them from the face of the world.

Anyone else think that Pirates of the Caribbean might start to become allegory for anti-regulation groups?

EDIT: Having seen the list, I can't help but notice that this isn't so much about piracy via torrents as it is about brand piracy being perpetuated over the internet, through retailers who are perfectly fine with distributing someone else's named product without proper compensation. Which is, without a doubt, much worse.

 

[Gindil]

Anyone else think that Pirates of the Caribbean might start to become allegory for anti-regulation groups?

EDIT: Having seen the list, I can't help but notice that this isn't so much about piracy via torrents as it is about brand piracy being perpetuated over the internet, through retailers who are perfectly fine with distributing someone else's named product without proper compensation. Which is, without a doubt, much worse.

I would be very careful with this...

It leads to people thinking that Performance Rights Organizations can negotiate for artists, pull a number out of their hat, and provide "just compensation" for digital works.

It also leads to PROs not liking something that gets into their cash flow, namely free musicians (Trent Reznor) or those that use Creative Commons licensing.

If you want to destroy piracy, give out something other than digital files. Make people care about you as a brand. Make and keep your fans happy. But crying about piracy is a zero sum game.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Wait, homeland security? That's a little fucking overkill.

Don't they have important things to be doing? Terrorists, that kind of thing?

 

[theultimateend]

Well this was a good waste of money.

Fighting piracy is a waste of time and money. It's no more reasonable than trying to convert people's sexuality. A shaky understanding of the subject seems to give some folks the feeling that they should police it.

.......
So... the U.S government is going to force a block on foreign websites...
China much? What's next, are they going to ban proxies?

Actually. As a guy who deals with trolls trying to harass people on his games I would like this a lot.

Finally IP bans would have a little more sting to them.

 

[Zing]

Hmmm isohunt and piratebay seem to be working...nothing of value was lost I guess.

edit: sidereel too

 

[(LK)]

Who hosts their websites in the bloody US anyway? The US is a horrible place to host websites these days, mostly because of all the rediculously strict laws that are far to out of date with how the internet is used.

The bill moving through the senate specifically targets websites hosted OUTSIDE the US.

It's about blocking US citizens from accessing sites deemed infringing. It will likely be used with about as much accuracy and contempt for due process as the DMCA (remember when Viacom claimed to own everyone's home videos on Youtube and had them removed?)

 

[The Rockerfly]

Oh I just love the amount of stupid shit people are saying in this thread. Along with barely relevant comparisons, misunderstanding and terrible understanding of freedom of speech

I won't go in to it but some of the crap people are coming out with is laughable

 

[Gindil]

Oh I just love the amount of stupid shit people are saying in this thread. Along with barely relevant comparisons, misunderstanding and terrible understanding of freedom of speech

I won't go in to it but some of the crap people are coming out with is laughable

...

I would love to hear your opinion on the topic.

 

[(LK)]

Oh I just love the amount of stupid shit people are saying in this thread. Along with barely relevant comparisons, misunderstanding and terrible understanding of freedom of speech

I won't go in to it but some of the crap people are coming out with is laughable

...

I would love to hear your opinion on the topic.

That would make the trolling more likely to fail, though.

 

[The Rockerfly]

...

I would love to hear your opinion on the topic.

Look I've been over this piracy thing a million times, I can't be bothered to argue with thieves or people who for some reason fight massive corporations profits. The fact is, file sharing is illegal but so are a lot of good things

Morally speaking it's not bad because it's not a loss of a money to the company, these pirates were never going to pay for these films, the market is too over saturated for everyone to buy everything they want so they will priorities and buy the films they want most and torrent the ones the least want. Speaking from an ex pirate, that is what went through my mind and many others

I won't even go into the freedom of speech but this is, file sharing is covered in most countries freedom of speech rights

That would make the trolling more likely to fail, though.

If you want to call me a troll, quote the right person

 

[(LK)]

...

I would love to hear your opinion on the topic.

Look I've been over this piracy thing a million times, I can't be bothered to argue with thieves or people who for some reason fight massive corporations profits. The fact is, file sharing is illegal but so are a lot of good things

Morally speaking it's not bad because it's not a loss of a money to the company, these pirates were never going to pay for these films, the market is too over saturated for everyone to buy everything they want so they will priorities and buy the films they want most and torrent the ones the least want. Speaking from an ex pirate, that is what went through my mind and many others

I won't even go into the freedom of speech but this is, file sharing is covered in most countries freedom of speech rights

That would make the trolling more likely to fail, though.

If you want to call me a troll, quote the right person

Okay then. Walking into a thread to say "you guys are idiots lol" and acting too important to explain why your understanding of the issue is inherently superior to others' is trolling... or ego-stroking, but also trolling.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Okay then. Walking into a thread to say "you guys are idiots lol" and acting too important to explain why your understanding of the issue is inherently superior to others' is trolling... or ego-stroking, but also trolling.

Or lazy, I never said anyone is an idiot just some of the arguments are really stupid. Quick to presume you are

 

[coldshadow]

they seem to have an idea of doing this in a way to gives them absolute control. I'm sure though that many people wont take this laying down.

 

[Starke]

Alright. I'm back...

As am I. I am terribly sorry about the delay. I have just finished writing way way way fucking more than I ever wanted to about Schwarzenegger v. EMA.

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]

All of this leaves us with one critical question, however. How were the sites selected to be taken down? If this was at the urging of the industry, then we have a problem. If it was not, then we still have a problem, how did these sites get targeted by the government?

*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.

Honestly, on the corporate end of the scheme, I'm not certain Napster was never simply a dead start, at least as a legitimate business. Even if the industry wasn't "milching" it, there's a fundamental problem of a different sort.

Basically, at the end of the day you need permission of whomever's property it is. Now, on one hand, you can get that authorization, and post their stuff and pay them by charging, like with iTunes or Amazon's download service. Or you can get their permission, charge a flat rate, and then pay them royalties based on how many people use their music. (I know there was an example of this, and Pandora isn't what I'm thinking of, but I can't remember what it is.)

Or they say no, and then you can't. The only thing Napster could have done was take the burden of stocking the store. Now, because it was free, we do get into this whole fucked up issue that we're in now. We gave people shit for free, so now why would they want to pay.

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, the problem was the kind of innovation they were doing is a little less defensible. At the end of the day, everything belongs to someone (except the sun ). Now, if you make a file network that's deliberately designed to prevent anyone from controlling what goes up on it? Functionally you're taking someone else's property from them. Now you can mollify this somewhat by saying, "here's some money for you, mister", but at of the day, you're still taking control of someone else's property away from them.

As for the flippant attitude, Limewire did at least demonstrate that kind of behavior during the case. It may not have been their original motivations, but at the end of the day it does them no favors.

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.

Unfortunately that doesn't really address deterrence at all. If you've got more data, I can probably provide you with a more coherent analysis, but there are too many factors to look at a graph like that and say it is or is not one thing. I'd suggest that it has a lot to do with the fact that recent pop music fucking sucks.

To be fair, I'm partially guilty of this myself. Also, in retrospect the "half the size" statistic probably excluded digital sales, which makes sense given the source. It doesn't mitigate the issue of piracy in general.

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.

Again, at the end of the day, there is a critical question mark there though. How do you compete with free. The opportunity cost for piracy is stupidly small (barring an infringement suit), how can you compete with that?

In economic theory, you're right, competition will take it out, but, how do we achieve that?

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)

One of the classic responses to bureaucracy at play: ignore it. I'll wager that judge either will slap them down for this or already has.

As for Sarkozy's wife? No idea. I know more about French politics than I care, and less than enough to know how much of a direct influence their executive has on the legislature. Sorry if that sounds provincial of me.

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...

Do we actually know who backed the illicit copy of Limewire yet? See, here's the thing. It's not the LLC, obviously, but that doesn't exonerate people who work for the LLC, and it would not surprise me in the least if it turned out to be people from their staff.

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]

Unless I'm mistaken, I think I made the argument that this was already beginning to happen, before the piracy thing dragged it all off course.

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

Don't be so sure.

Dang whippersnapper... GET OFF MY LAWN!

You kids! *Shakes Zimmer frame.*

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.

The mp3 thing I knew. To be fair some standard would have emerged regardless.

As for file sharing being the motivating force behind the spread of broadband? I can't dismiss it wholesale. I do remember broadband being available back then, I just had no options on that front. If you're correct, then the whole situation becomes a very complex cost/benefit analysis that I really don't want to get into unless someone's paying me to sort it out, no offense.

The other question mark, is did this spur the creation of digital distribution services like Steam, or Impulse? And, if so, it again becomes a very convoluted cost benefit analysis.

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.

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.

It also gets into a human nature debate. I mean, you're a good person. Someone else in this thread may be a complete shit hat. You can behave responsibly, but that other guy? Not so much. So, at the end of the day are there more people like you or more people like him, in the world?

And again, at the property rights thing, I have absolutely no problem with an artist saying, "hey, here, take this and see what you think." If it wasn't for that I probably never would have found out about Chasim, for instance. But, if you're volunteering an artist's work for them, then we have a problem, especially if it's a system like limewire, where it is specifically designed so that no one can take it back down off the network. (Yes, I'm ignoring the corporate ownership theme here, but the concept holds, even with them. The problem there is that the corporation does have a conflict of interest.)

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.

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.

Yeah, US Drug policy is a fuckin' mess. There's no way around that. If there's relevance to the topic at hand, I'm missing it, beyond a general indictment of domestic policy.

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.

Well, going in reverse: Movies split off from unified control during the 60s and 70s. I think I wrote a mini-history of films in this thread, maybe in this post tree someplace. But the Hayes code killed Hollywood, it just took 40 years to do it. Everything from The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and Chinatown to Iron Man 2 has been the product of the post studio system, and reflects a much broader range of artistic vision than existed under the studio system.

Ironically, games seem to be headed in that direction now. No one wants to buy the Samey McSame shooter again, and yet Cod:Blops: Quest for the Cuban Mackerel is the best selling thing on the market.

Some of this is for the same reason that the film studio system came into existence in the first place: games are freakin' expensive to make.

Now, did the music industry pattern off of the movie industry's studio system intentionally? I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did. Regardless, you're right, a studio system isn't viable in the long term. However, film got away from it long before the internet existed, so saying that this is the way to do that rings a little hollow. And we are seeing the trending for this to end for the recording industry today.

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.

I should have operationalized this better. A pre-internet act that wasn't harmed would have been more accurate.

... 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.

At the end of the day you're still taking control of someone else's property away from them. Now, no one cares if you make a couple dozen PDFs of your books for personal use. It's when you slap them up online that there's a problem.

To be clear, you have a physical copy of a book, you can photocopy it, scan pages, whatever, so long as you don't distribute copies of the book on your own. Up to that point it's fair use, after that it's infringement. (IIRC: you can distribute pieces, up to about a chapter (not at a time, total), but I've only ever seen this exemption for educators.)

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.

Fair point, and an "I knew that", followed by a brain fart.

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.

To be fair, I've seen those numbers before, though not in this decade, so all I can say there is oops.

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!

It doesn't control us, but it does control some of the elements that we held dear. Including the idea that copying commercial VHS tapes wasn't, you know, wrong.

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.

This is kinda a separate issue though, isn't it. A person can do both legal and illegal things. Now, does that redeem them as an individual? It depends. But, can it redeem their illegal acts? That's a very personal philosophical question. The best I can say is "no, but it can mitigate some of those acts."

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]

Yeah, it turns out going after most people for direct infringement reveals them to be judgment proof. That is to say they have no assets to be seized, or the few assets they have aren't sufficient to overcome the court costs. (And no, I didn't actually read the article, just the headline, so if I'm reiterating stuff you already knew... sorry.)

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?

It's not, I'm talking about the ones who you can't convince. Not because they're unable to pay, but because they're like Underattack, too entitled to pay money for something they can steal.

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!

I'm going to kinda cop out here and say books are weird.

Unlike films, music, and video games, pulling books down in .pdf form isn't the same product precisely, you lose the tactile element that is critical and part of the product for many readers. Now if e-readers become the norm, then this won't persist, but I seriously doubt the book is going anywhere in the near future.

Games, Music and Movies however are basically redistributable through any medium you could choose. Hell, I actually use an HD TV as my monitor, so any film I run through the PC's DVD player will end up basically identical to any HD file I pull down online. Music's the same way, you can burn to CDs if you want. And games, are in their native environment regardless.

Now, I'm not saying that no one pirates and then buys the games they like. I've known people who do that, and I am less harsh towards them then I would be towards others who simply steal shit.

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.

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

Going back a minute, I wish you were right. At least with game piracy. Unfortunately it's not quite true. A game selling for $20 without a DRM can expect a 90% [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars] to 95% [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/08/machinarium-suffers-95-piracy-rate-offers-5-amnesty-sale.ars] piracy rate. These aren't cases where the game was some crap being shuffled out of a corporate sweatshop. These are the kinds of games that video game pirates frequently say they'll support. And yet, 90%-95%. I'm sorry, I'm going back to the view that the world is filled with shitbags. And in spite of the best efforts by individuals like yourself, with principles and conviction, you're seriously outnumbered by people who want your arguments simply so they can get something for nothing, and ideology has no real value for them.

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'm getting a sense of deja vu here. Didn't we discuss this earlier, talk about how Disney's been pushing to extend it to keep their characters under copyright, and I misremembered expiration in the Berne convention by, like five years?

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.

A critical piece of information I did not have until after I'd made that post.

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...

The problem is, a lot of that expense isn't coming from the companies. The ICE raids won't cost the industry a dime (directly), that'll all come out of our taxes. They're still paying for lobbying, and you're right, that isn't cheap, but they aren't the only ones lobbying in this direction.

]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.

Tell that to the oil or banking industries. Competition doesn't mean everyone will be honest, and it certainly doesn't mean everyone will be accountable. At its worst, competition increases the need for accountability.

That said, that was a long held belief, but, as recent events have shown us, it's not quite true.

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...

It used to be worse. Before they got slapped down for constitutional reasons. It used to be that if a cop arrested you they could simply take whatever cash you were carrying and log it as... fuck, I forget the term, I think it was a "processing fee". Now, it turns out that these kinds of laws are illegal as they do violate due process. (If you want a fictional example, Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas has a mention of one such law in passing.)

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... -_-;

Yup. Again, the deja vu, didn't we already talk about the US's unwillingness to enforce foreign copyrights back before we had a solid publishing industry of our own?

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...

Well, yeah, we responded to poverty by declaring war on it. How does that make sense?

On one hand, I do like the possibilities of Sunde's DNS concept, On the other it still doesn't make me like him.

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

So it's wrong that I actually enjoyed The Expendables?

Still, both of those reflect a kind of thinking that wouldn't occur to studio execs if they controlled the entire process the way they once did, combined with people trying to figure out how to "sell" a movie for money. Though, I suppose the counter example would be Sunset Boulevard.

*I don't think I took anything you responded to out here. If I did, let me know.*

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?

The DMCA has an exemption for interoperability. Basically this is an exception to the DRM bypass restrictions. You can bypass or remove a DRM if you're doing it to improve program interoperability. So, if you have a piece of software from 1999 like say, System Shock 2, running a DRM that will shit itself and die on any OS more modern than Windows ME, you can bypass the DRM in order to get the game working (which, ironically, it still won't) without violating the DMCA.

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!!!)

Heh. Yeah, that is what we usually call fair use, until you start charging for it.

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.

Yeah, see, that's the one part of this that doesn't make sense. I know enough about the code to understand how you can do this effectively undetectably, where the goal isn't to seed corrupted files, but to corrupt existing torrents with garbage data.

Anyway. Sorry about the three week delay. The worst part about going back to school is having to do the work at the end of the semester.

 

[Gindil]

Anyway. Sorry about the three week delay. The worst part about going back to school is having to do the work at the end of the semester.

Yeah, that's getting too long to follow so I'll put try to shorten it up with highlights instead of the copypasta.

ICE takedowns

Here's what's come out recently on the ICE takedowns.

First, the affidavit [http://www.docstoc.com/docs/67610787/45705510-Operation-in-Our-Sites-2-0]. If you want to read all 88 pages, feel free. But there are a LOT of errors on it. One Link [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101222/02112912376/more-bigger-mistakes-discovered-homeland-securitys-domain-seizures.shtml], two links [http://torrentfreak.com/us-government-made-painful-mistakes-in-torrent-finder-seizure-101217/].

Fall out

Now, there's some crazy stuff in how they were picked. Some of them make sense as counterfeiting sites. But then you have the hip hop blogs and search engine that were used for promotional tools and similar to Google for torrents.

And so people have moved because of the takedowns to other domain registrars [http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-domain-exodus-continues-as-torrentz-dumps-com-101218/]

Background

I believe I talked about how the industry has been paying for this police force. This is the judge responsible [http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Margaret_Nagle]. The takedowns were rubber stamped without any consideration for the sites involved. According to this, [http://torrentfreak.com/mpaariaa-lobbied-extensively-in-favor-of-domain-seizures-101219/] the industry spent 1.8 million to get the law favored towards them. Even if piracy were all that serious, having to pay for the government's assistance (with a rookie cop and really bad orders with the blogs) makes for bad decision making. People already don't respect copyright laws as is... Why bungle the enforcement so much?

Napster

Napster never got a chance to truly become a disruptive service. Yes, there are other services [http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?company=spotify&edition=techdirt] but again, the labels in the US don't want anything they can't monetize. I could go on about disruptive services but as I've said before, these are what make the industry money in new ways. What the industry has done is basically stab themselves in the foot, similar to the horse and buggy vs the automobiles or James Watt with patent law with the steam engine. Disruptive services happen all the time, with all sorts of technology. while the law can try to ban it, it can't stop it entirely.

Game piracy

Yes, the World of Goo was pirated at a 95% rate. But the question is, how much of that is info on the same computer redownloading the game, someone later making a purchase or a myriad of ways to make money out of the sale?

I never complained about getting this game twice personally, once with the "pick your price" WoG sale or the second time in the first Humble Indie Bundle. While anecdotal, think about this... I bought the same game along with over ~1 million different people, making the game more relevant with other sales.

And again, Steam saves jobs [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.227945-Steam-Promotion-Saves-Introversion-From-Death].

Peter Sunde

Peter Sunde [http://flattr.com/] does have other projects. Honestly, flattr has actually helped out wikileaks (since Visa and Mastercard have decided to cut off both, hurting themselves in the process and their customers) but I can't make anyone like anyone else. I can only respect what he does.

Game industry

I can't agree that the industry is going to be a place where the most expensive games are always going to be the best sellers. Yes, the FPS genre dominates (>_<) but Steam has some great time fillers along with GoG. The console market doesn't represent the entire game industry. Right now, the smaller people are making money with XBox Live and PSN.

The thing is, if you ever look at intangible goods (digital works) they all have a high piracy rate. Microsoft has even admitted that "if people are going to pirate, they should pirate from us." Of course, Microsoft has since changed but at the very least, Bill Gates understands that concept. Don't focus on the people not buying, focus on the people that are.

Movie industry

Main thing is that Pilgrim was an innovative movie that came out the wrong time. But there's also the fact that the movie industry takes off movies after six weeks. If it were a different time, the movies would actually play until they were no longer commercially viable. Now? They run for ~ 6 months. So if a movie is a slow starter, it's almost instantly forgotten. I'm to think that more money is made if the theaters controlled that more than the studios but oh well...

Anyway, there's other parts to piracy that you have to look at.
This explains it better at the bottom: [http://www.atomic-robo.com/2010/12/22/internet-piracy-of-the-19th-century/]

These aren?t evil people. They aren?t stealing things to ruin the lives of artists and writers. Pirates know a given work needs financial support if it (or the author) is to continue. If they enjoy a thing they happen to steal, then they will be inclined to pay for it so there will be more. The easier you make this for them, the more it will happen.

This is basic human nature.

Clevinger makes a great point here. With all the info that I'm giving you, I'm hoping to show that the law can't (effectively) change our base nature. So what if you have a 95% piracy rate? So what if you can't micromonetize every transaction? Do things to make money the way you can and constantly adjust and find new ways to make money.

What the RIAA and MPAA are doing is anti consumer (as I explained earlier). To be perfectly honest, it seems now that they've painted themselves into a corner. Imagine if when these cases go to a different court than the one of Margaret Nagle. There will be a LOT of dirty laundry being aired out from these affidavits.

And yeah, no worries on the delay. We all need a break sometime.

 

[Starke]

Anyway. Sorry about the three week delay. The worst part about going back to school is having to do the work at the end of the semester.

Yeah, that's getting too long to follow so I'll put try to shorten it up with highlights instead of the copypasta.

But the pasta is delicious...

But, yeah, I was having a hell of a time reading and parsing out the last couple posts.

ICE takedowns

Here's what's come out recently on the ICE takedowns.

First, the affidavit [http://www.docstoc.com/docs/67610787/45705510-Operation-in-Our-Sites-2-0]. If you want to read all 88 pages, feel free. But there are a LOT of errors on it. One Link [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101222/02112912376/more-bigger-mistakes-discovered-homeland-securitys-domain-seizures.shtml], two links [http://torrentfreak.com/us-government-made-painful-mistakes-in-torrent-finder-seizure-101217/].

I only got about five pages in before the host flaked out and ate the rest of the document. From what little I did see, the biggest red flag was he was filing based on probable cause, which would be fine if it was a search warrant, and then arguing that probable cause was enough for a seizure, which, I'm pretty sure, it isn't.

Fall out

Now, there's some crazy stuff in how they were picked. Some of them make sense as counterfeiting sites. But then you have the hip hop blogs and search engine that were used for promotional tools and similar to Google for torrents.

And so people have moved because of the takedowns to other domain registrars [http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-domain-exodus-continues-as-torrentz-dumps-com-101218/]

Background

I believe I talked about how the industry has been paying for this police force. This is the judge responsible [http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Margaret_Nagle]. The takedowns were rubber stamped without any consideration for the sites involved. According to this, [http://torrentfreak.com/mpaariaa-lobbied-extensively-in-favor-of-domain-seizures-101219/] the industry spent 1.8 million to get the law favored towards them. Even if piracy were all that serious, having to pay for the government's assistance (with a rookie cop and really bad orders with the blogs) makes for bad decision making. People already don't respect copyright laws as is... Why bungle the enforcement so much?

My guess? Because it isn't a conspiracy. Someone in the legislature gets pressured by their lobbyist to crack down on this. (I think we can agree on this stage.) It gets passed on through channels to someone in direct authority over or in DHS/ICE. (I'd guess it might have gone through the relevant cabinet member via logrolling.) Once it ends up in the ICE, the job is delegated down, ultimately to a younger agent, and I really kind of suspect this was simply due to a "he's young, he understands that crowd" kind of logic. The agent fucks it up.

Again, this is a guess. But it makes sense within the bureaucratic systems at work. It's a far cry from the industry buying its enforcement. Now was the agent pointed in specific directions? I kinda doubt it, I think this was just one rookie agent fucking things up enormously and one judge who didn't care.

I'm not sure what's supposed to be in that judge's personal history. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with California law firms to know if that was relevant... the only other thing I've got is the confusion over the judge's gender in the post...

Napster

Napster never got a chance to truly become a disruptive service. Yes, there are other services [http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?company=spotify&edition=techdirt] but again, the labels in the US don't want anything they can't monetize. I could go on about disruptive services but as I've said before, these are what make the industry money in new ways. What the industry has done is basically stab themselves in the foot, similar to the horse and buggy vs the automobiles or James Watt with patent law with the steam engine. Disruptive services happen all the time, with all sorts of technology. while the law can try to ban it, it can't stop it entirely.

Again, I don't want to sound like I'm saying the death of the label system wasn't inevitable. I also don't want it to sound like I'm disagreeing with your general assessment. It is simply in this case, what has happened is a kind of codding arms race, that isn't beneficial to anyone.

Game piracy

Yes, the World of Goo was pirated at a 95% rate. But the question is, how much of that is info on the same computer redownloading the game, someone later making a purchase or a myriad of ways to make money out of the sale?

I never complained about getting this game twice personally, once with the "pick your price" WoG sale or the second time in the first Humble Indie Bundle. While anecdotal, think about this... I bought the same game along with over ~1 million different people, making the game more relevant with other sales.

And again, Steam saves jobs [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.227945-Steam-Promotion-Saves-Introversion-From-Death].

I've heard this argument before, and I really don't find it compelling, because of the percentage. It kind of works, if you say everyone had to download the file three times for whatever reason and they all bought it. If your scale is 90% piracy, then, sure that syncs up. But at 5%, Then you'd be saying... best case, everyone who bought it pirated it first, and everyone who pirated it downloaded it three times. That moves legitimate sales to 20%, and illegitimate at 80%. Now, if 5% of your sales account for 20% of the downloads (for convenience, I'm counting the sales as downloads.) that 80% still means that (at best) roughly 4 out of every 5 people using your product didn't pay you for it. Also, remember, games like Demigod weren't measuring total downloads, they were looking at traffic on their servers from illegal copies. In practice the 90% number seems to be accurate by straw poll. About one in ten gamers actually support the industry on any given title they play (with some variance).

What that statistic really teaches us is this. Price doesn't matter. Quality doesn't matter. DRMs don't matter. Most people will take what they want and not pay for it, if they think they can get away with it.

I've also heard the try before you buy argument. I'll admit, it is better than nothing. But, I had a friend at one point, emphasis: had. He was playing just about everything major that came out, he was also pirating everything he could get his hands on. With that justification. We get to the end of the year and I'd spent... I don't know about 400 on games? All the while he's this champion of paying for what he believes is good... how much had he spent? He claimed 150. He didn't buy Bioshock, even though he raved about it (and bitched me out for comparing it unfavorably to System Shock 2). He didn't buy Crysis because he couldn't get it to run smoothly, but, IIRC he did claim he'd finished it. He didn't buy Oblivion in spite of racking up 100+ hours in a save file. It wasn't about the industry, it was about him wanting shit for free, and occasionally wanting something he could stick on his shelf.

Now, that's personal experience, and it may not be completely diagnostic, but in my experience beyond him, it isn't much better.

As for Steam, I don't think I've argued that it was evil... except for their ability to eat my checking account...

Peter Sunde

Peter Sunde [http://flattr.com/] does have other projects. Honestly, flattr has actually helped out wikileaks (since Visa and Mastercard have decided to cut off both, hurting themselves in the process and their customers) but I can't make anyone like anyone else. I can only respect what he does.

Yeah, I can understand and respect your opinion.

Game industry

I can't agree that the industry is going to be a place where the most expensive games are always going to be the best sellers. Yes, the FPS genre dominates (>_<) but Steam has some great time fillers along with GoG. The console market doesn't represent the entire game industry. Right now, the smaller people are making money with XBox Live and PSN.

The thing is, if you ever look at intangible goods (digital works) they all have a high piracy rate. Microsoft has even admitted that "if people are going to pirate, they should pirate from us." Of course, Microsoft has since changed but at the very least, Bill Gates understands that concept. Don't focus on the people not buying, focus on the people that are.

You've got two things here, let's take them in reverse. Bill Gates never cared about money. No, seriously. If you go way back, his primary interest has always been market saturation. Now, normally this always means money, but in his case, apparently not.

As for intangibles, I'm going to butcher a quote from Mr. Gates that I can't properly cite, what he said was "the hardest thing [staring up Microsoft] was selling boxes with nothing in them to people and making them pay for it."

That said, the consoles have a much lower rate of piracy, due to the hardware lockouts, and as a result much larger sales. So, in comparison to where we were 20 years ago, everything is backwards, at least in the market.

Movie industry

Main thing is that Pilgrim was an innovative movie that came out the wrong time. But there's also the fact that the movie industry takes off movies after six weeks. If it were a different time, the movies would actually play until they were no longer commercially viable. Now? They run for ~ 6 months. So if a movie is a slow starter, it's almost instantly forgotten. I'm to think that more money is made if the theaters controlled that more than the studios but oh well...

Of course it also used to be that any income a film made at the theater was all it would ever make. The reason being that once it left circulation it was basically inaccessible to the general public outside of revival theaters.

Now there's the home retail market, so if something doesn't do well in the theater, why not simply toss it to DVD and forget about it?

Anyway, there's other parts to piracy that you have to look at.
This explains it better at the bottom: [http://www.atomic-robo.com/2010/12/22/internet-piracy-of-the-19th-century/]

Yeah, Hearst was a bastard, that's not news. There is, and always will be, some benefit to the artist from exposure. Doing this to an artist, against their wishes, however, does not make it right. Philosophically, you are deciding, I know what is better for this individual than they do, so I will take this action for them, and there is a long tradition of this kind of behavior and thought. Legally we have powers of attorney for precisely this reason. We can see this philosophy everywhere from the fundamental tenets of fascism to the intent behind California Civil Code Sec. 1746. It isn't "evil", it can be well meaning, (as in the case of Sec 1746.) But it also isn't something that an individual is allowed to decide on their own.

It's also important to note that Hearst didn't give a flying fuck about Wells. He was out for money, he found a way to get it, and he went to fuckin' town with it. He did what he did because he knew that the US would not enforce Wells' copyright at that time, and he exploited Wells for his own benefit. It did ultimately end up benefiting Wells, but if we're going to use this metric: piracy benefits the author by promoting their work, then we also need to look very closely at the intent driving the infringer.

These aren?t evil people. They aren?t stealing things to ruin the lives of artists and writers. Pirates know a given work needs financial support if it (or the author) is to continue. If they enjoy a thing they happen to steal, then they will be inclined to pay for it so there will be more. The easier you make this for them, the more it will happen.

This is basic human nature.

Clevinger makes a great point here. With all the info that I'm giving you, I'm hoping to show that the law can't (effectively) change our base nature. So what if you have a 95% piracy rate? So what if you can't micromonetize every transaction? Do things to make money the way you can and constantly adjust and find new ways to make money.

What the RIAA and MPAA are doing is anti consumer (as I explained earlier). To be perfectly honest, it seems now that they've painted themselves into a corner. Imagine if when these cases go to a different court than the one of Margaret Nagle. There will be a LOT of dirty laundry being aired out from these affidavits.

Is it Nagle or Nagel? The wiki listed both...

Anyway, you say that the law can't change our nature... except, in legal philosophy, that's one of the general theories. Law can and does shape society and societal values. There is way too much literature on the subject, complete with relatively coherent studies that explain how the law shapes general behaviors. None of this, at least of what little I have read, addresses the Hobbes/Locke debate, but life goes on.

EDIT: wow, I spaced the whole anti-consumer comment you made. I'll catch it when you come back again. Sorry about that.

And yeah, no worries on the delay. We all need a break sometime.

Seeya round.

 

[(LK)]

Again, this is a guess. But it makes sense within the bureaucratic systems at work. It's a far cry from the industry buying its enforcement. Now was the agent pointed in specific directions? I kinda doubt it, I think this was just one rookie agent fucking things up enormously and one judge who didn't care.

The only thing I can contribute to this exchange of otherwise really solid points is that from what Techdirt was able to dig up on this, the agent responsible for the seizures was basically led around by the nose by the RIAA and MPAA and much of his justification for them came verbatim from them, without consulting any other sources of information. This suggests that the agent was effectively taking orders from these lobbying groups by deferring to their guidance unquestioningly.

Here's a link to the Techdirt article that explains this better than I can at the moment:
http://tinyurl.com/285q8nv

 

[Starke]

Again, this is a guess. But it makes sense within the bureaucratic systems at work. It's a far cry from the industry buying its enforcement. Now was the agent pointed in specific directions? I kinda doubt it, I think this was just one rookie agent fucking things up enormously and one judge who didn't care.

The only thing I can contribute to this exchange of otherwise really solid points is that from what Techdirt was able to dig up on this, the agent responsible for the seizures was basically led around by the nose by the RIAA and MPAA and much of his justification for them came verbatim from them, without consulting any other sources of information. This suggests that the agent was effectively taking orders from these lobbying groups by deferring to their guidance unquestioningly.

Here's a link to the Techdirt article that explains this better than I can at the moment:
http://tinyurl.com/285q8nv

In my defense I did say "I guess". And, yes, that was information I didn't have access to. Though, I'd still say it says more about the incompetence of the agent selected than anything else.