Poll: Copyright law and TPB

[Zombie_Fish]

The Pirate Bay is one of the world's largest Bittorrent servers on the internet, containing about half of the world's torrents on it. It contains over a million albums, all the latest films, games and even programs. It even has films which are still in the cinema, various soundtracks for films and video games (Including over 300 tracks from the SSBB soundtrack) amd complete discographies.

However, over the past few months, the founders of The Pirate Bay have been taken to court over breech of copyright. Last week, the four swedish fellowes were sentenced to one year in jail, and a million pound fine. However, the website will still be running, as the servers are hidden all over the world and the content is mainly uploaded by anonymous users, so the sight can run all by itself.

Before you just go staright ahead and vote yes, I would advise you to watch "Steal This Film". It is a film all about copyright and TPB specifically. also, to show I'm not biased, here are some pros for Copyright Law and also for Piracy.

For Copyright Law:
-Helps musicians, directors and producers earn the money they deserve.
-Piracy funds terrorism, human trafficking and drug dealing.
-Piracy costs jobs.
-There is no determined quality with pirate films, CDs etc., so it can be ripping you off.
-Even buying Pirate DVDs is against the law.

For Piracy:
-Although it does cost them money, it still helps small and unknown musicians get noticed.
-Whilst some aspects of piracy can fund terrorism etc., Bittorrents like TPB and Demonoid etc. are non-profit organisations.
-Copyright is getting stricter, now to the point that they have shut down certain online video sites (Video Glaeth for example) and have removed either the sound or the full video from videos on Youtube for being a breech of Copyright.
-Major record and film companies could sell their CDs and stuff for £1 instead of £10-£20 and still earn a profit.
-Bittorrent sites have been shut down before (OiNK for example). If Copyright continues as it is, all the Bittorrent servers could be shut down and banned, thus making Bittorrent useless, and possibly arresting the designers of Bittorrent for (Although unintentional)assisstance in crime (In this case Piracy).

So, what do you think?

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

It is justified as basically, you're nicking the products which it's taken people a lot of time and effort to create. Making you a parasite upon society.

Some aspects of Copyright Law are incredibly stupid though, such as some not allowing music to be copied onto an MP3 player.

 

[oliveira8]

Of course copyright law is necessary you commie bastard. I pirate a lot of shit too, but at least I have decency to call myself a thief, because I'd rather be a thief than a commie.

Those Red Bastards!! Urr must kill them all!

 

[Xvito]

Of course copyright law is necessary you commie bastard. I pirate a lot of shit too, but at least I have decency to call myself a thief, because I'd rather be a thief than a commie.

Woah... Ease up on the political flame there.

On topic: Of course it's necessary! Although if I made something amazingly awesome, I'd probably share... But just because I would doesn't mean everyone would.

It's like with taxes; The reason everyone pays their taxes isn't to help the poor or because they want to pay for other peoples sickness... No, it's because they want other people to pay for them if they get into trouble... I don't really know what this had anything to do with this discussion but...

 

[Nmil-ek]

Its needed yes, its theft I have used torrents but I dont kid myself its theft, I just really see it as minor so therefore dont care.

 

[razer17]

piracy doesn't fund terrorism.
lets do some maths =
a kilogram of coke, sold to dealers, will net terrorists around $20,000+. a kilogram of pirated discs with case, placing them at around 30grams a disc. selling at $5 this would net them $170. to make a similar amount to what they would make from coke they would have to sell 117Kg of discs. when you factor in transport etc that would rise even more. erego piracy isnt really profitable on a large scale.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

Okay, you people seem to have misunderstood me here:

piracy doesn't fund terrorism.
lets do some maths =
a kilogram of coke, sold to dealers, will net terrorists around $20,000+. a kilogram of pirated discs with case, placing them at around 30grams a disc. selling at $5 this would net them $170. to make a similar amount to what they would make from coke they would have to sell 117Kg of discs. when you factor in transport etc that would rise even more. erego piracy isnt really profitable on a large scale.

You try telling that to the Federation Against Copyright Theft. In their adverts at the start and ends of DVDs, they do mention profits funding terrorism, and it has been mentioned in lots of advertisements for Copyright.

Of course copyright law is necessary you commie bastard. I pirate a lot of shit too, but at least I have decency to call myself a thief, because I'd rather be a thief than a commie.

Those Red Bastards!! Urr must kill them all!

With fire.

Okay, if you're going to insult communism, don't do it on this page, and don't call me a Commie bastard. This topic was created to discuss piracy and the contraversy behind it, not political theories. Oh, and one for the record, no country up to this point has been communist, as they have all favoured one class or another, including the Soviet Union (Who favoured politicians).

Its needed yes, its theft I have used torrents but I dont kid myself its theft, I just really see it as minor so therefore dont care.

True, but if it's minor then why are four people being fined $1000000 for it? I also don't kid that it's not theft, I accept it as theft, and I am not in denial of claiming that it does ruin the music and film industry, but for some artists it's the only way of getting their music heard:

-Dance artist Sabrepulse actually says on his Myspace page that if you can't buy his albums to download the Bittorrants for them.

-Experimental rock group Radiohead allowed people to download the album "In Rainbows" for as much or as little as you like.

-Comedy artist Jonathon Coulton has a Creative Commons liscense saying that people can copy, distribute and transmit the work as they like for a non-commercial use.

I'm not saying that piracy is a good thing, I'm not saying that Copyright is always correct, I'm just saying that once it gets to the point that certain videos have had their sound disabled or entire channels of videos deleted on Youtube just over one song being used that got complained about, is that really worth complaining about? Call me what you will, cause I'm guessing that the posts will be coming, but please note that I just started this thread to give people something to think about. And since I can't be bothered to listen to your hatred for me anymore, I doubt I will leave any other posts here any more.

Also, I wonder if anyone actually listened to me when I advised Steal This Movie, cause it does contain some interesting facts.

 

[razer17]

Okay, you people seem to have misunderstood me here:

piracy doesn't fund terrorism.
lets do some maths =
a kilogram of coke, sold to dealers, will net terrorists around $20,000+. a kilogram of pirated discs with case, placing them at around 30grams a disc. selling at $5 this would net them $170. to make a similar amount to what they would make from coke they would have to sell 117Kg of discs. when you factor in transport etc that would rise even more. erego piracy isnt really profitable on a large scale.

You try telling that to the Federation Against Copyright Theft. In their adverts at the start and ends of DVDs, they do mention profits funding terrorism, and it has been mentioned in lots of advertisements for Copyright.

FACT is a lobby group set up to stop copyright "theft". therefore you cant take anything they take to be literal. they would have you believe copyright thiefs would murder your family if you would believe it.
they are set up purely to stop copyright, so they make any unsubstantiated claims they can to back up their points.
the media lobbies have a long history of lying, and stretching the truth.

 

[Doug]

Oh, and one for the record, no country up to this point has been communist, as they have all favoured one class or another, including the Soviet Union (Who favoured politicians).

Doesn't ever country?

But back on topic. I'm unsure about copyright law really. I hate it, but know that, as our society currently stands, its a necessity. However, the lengths these companies and artists (although some of them are mere 'artists' if you know what I mean) is getting far too high. This YouTube thing with the UK unable to view music videos is a prime example.

The problem is the old pre-digital and pre-internet system is trying to operate in the modern world. Piracy is encouraged by these shady, customer unfriendly practises, and then when piracy occurs, it only makes them act worse as they try and protect their out-moded ways. The problem is one of stagnantion, of ways.

 

[Cesasse]

First, my opinion on TBP:
They were offering a service. A service abused by its members.
http://thepiratebay.org/policy
They had an acceptable use policy on the site. And I quote:

"The responsibility lies upon the user to not spread malicious, false or illegal material using the tracker.
We do not censor but we do block people that use our service wrongfully (i.e. commercial organisations that have not cleared the usage with us first)."

This in and of itself says that the service is not to be used to commit copyright violations. If they had made a rudimentary effort to stick to their guns on this statement and not simply have it sit there, they probably would have been hit far less hard. Like a guy with a shield charging into battle naked.

Unfortunately, no, they openly have search functions on their menu bars, on their frontpage, everywhere for the copyrighted materials that is torrented through their tracker. This is likely the point that got them beat. Because they assisted in others FINDING those torrents, they assisted in the distribution.

They cannot be fined for providing an architecture and looking the other way. They can be fined for actively assisting in utilising the architecture for illegal acts, which they did. And they got fucked over for it.

As for copyright laws, I believe they have their place in society. Most people don't understand this, but the artist gets jack shit from each CD sold. The average cut the artist recieves in your standard 4-year record deal (roughly the life span of a band) is <25%. Even worse for the major labels.

I don't feel that the artist is the one defending their interests. I feel its the record companies. They've reported massive losses over time because of internet piracy, and that money continues to hemorrhage out.

Off-point a moment. Here's the fuck of it.
As they continue to lose money from piracy, these people choose to take fewer risks for where they might lose profit. More safe bets are being funded rather than anything that the public at large might not appreciate. You want to find the primary cause of the growing commercialism or superficiality or whatever bullshit you wanna call it in popular music?
The finger points to piracy.

Back on point, what does one do in the face of a serious complication? Either you adapt to the complication and perhaps suffer for it, or you destroy it.
In the case of large-scale industries, destroying the complication is usually the far more cost-effective solution. Hence this massive war on piracy.

A lot of artists have managed to do well on their own utilising internet distribution. However, at the moment its still equivilent to selling mix-tapes on the street. With the rise in the iTunes Music Store this will begin to change. Music Stores are still imperfect, and their improvements will give more rise to this - perhaps to replace offline distribution completely. Eventually the industry will move with iTunes and build their own online music stores, but at this point its irrelevant.

Even if they stopped this hemorrhage of cashflow out of their pockets, they have to fight because they're fighting. You can't just back down once you realise its not unprofitable anymore. You'll look weak. The entire industry will look like it's giving in, and to some people it can be viewed as their death knell.