It's not the ones making the music that is losing money to piracy, it's the distributors, the record companies.
No. Artists lose money as well, since they're due to earn a certain amount of dollars and cents per unit sold. Naturally, they're due to lose a certain amount of dollars and cents per unit not sold.
You know what that percentage is dude? Try maybe $.90 royalty on top named bands for every $16.98 cd sold, which does not include recoupment costs and other reductions they will get charged..
this is after they have sold enough to retrn the recoupment costs which are basically loans... $250,000 recording time, $100,000 marketng, $150,000 production costs, etc etc etc etc etc, and they have an entire book made on reduction fee's and royalty concepts..
Basically it comes down to pennies............And the pennies are only made if the band sells 1,000,000+ there aint no money in it and very few do this.. Please dont debate of what you have no clue about
Well you wanna know what makes me angry.. is when i buy a game and i see alot of people getting the same experience with a copy from the internet...
Sadly, in a lot of cases, the people playing pirated copies are getting a superior experience because they don't have all the DRM nonsense wrecking their systems. I don't know what the answer is here, too much piracy and there won't be any point in creating new games, but too much damaging DRM of the sort we are seeing these days and people simply won't be able to play them or, like me, will simply choose not to.
I spent ages cursing at EA after installing Spore and finding they'd placed a rootkit on my PC. Took ages to get rid of the damn thing. I'm avoiding Aion for the same reason, I wanted to look into that game but I'm not taking chances with the malware bundled with it.
It's a complex matter, but the sum of it is of course piracy is bad, hurts our economy
Piracy may be bad but claiming that it hurts the economy is ridiculous. What do you think happens to the money saved by not buying a DVD or CD? It doesn't vanish into the ether, it gets spent elsewhere, therefore no difference to the economy at all.
I've heard lots of arguments from the media companies, all of them scaremongering hogwash. If they didn't churn out so much junk and have such stupid restrictions on what we can do with what we've paid for, they wouldn't be in this mess now.
I'd like to see a try before you buy model of some sort but the media companies would never go for that. They know 99.9% of what they churn out would never sell if people could try it first.
Just because pirates save money doesn't mean the economy isn't hurt.
Piracy leads to vendors increasing prices on products and services to help offset losses; which is why software like Windows cost as much as it does. So the good majority of honest people are paying more. Other obvious factors in lost revenues matter as well, like jobs that are loss or aren't created at all. Lost reveneus also bleed over into lost tax revenues; which is why the anti-piracy pitches in Washington work so well.
And again, no one is ever going to buy the "they aren't doing enough" crap. EA pulled DRM from the Sims 3 and it was still pirated. So why should organizations like the ESA ever buy a remark like "such stupid restrictions on what we can do" when obviously its a non-factor in whether you will or won't pirate their works?
And what planet are we on? Do demos not exist for games anymore? Can we not preview songs on last.fm and iTunes? Can we not do the same on NetFlix? Has individual book vendors stopped offering up sample chapters and big sites like Amazon their "Peek Inside" deal?
Even before all this internet craziness; whatever stopped you from flipping through the pages of a book or putting on headphones in a record shop?
When have we ever been without "try before you buy"?
It's not the ones making the music that is losing money to piracy, it's the distributors, the record companies.
No. Artists lose money as well, since they're due to earn a certain amount of dollars and cents per unit sold. Naturally, they're due to lose a certain amount of dollars and cents per unit not sold.
You know what that percentage is dude? Try maybe $.90 royalty on top named bands for every $16.98 cd sold, which does not include recoupment costs and other reductions they will get charged..
this is after they have sold enough to retrn the recoupment costs which are basically loans... $250,000 recording time, $100,000 marketng, $150,000 production costs, etc etc etc etc etc, and they have an entire book made on reduction fee's and royalty concepts..
Basically it comes down to pennies............And the pennies are only made if the band sells 1,000,000+ there aint no money in it and very few do this.. Please dont debate of what you have no clue about
On what point exactly did I have no clue about? All you did was agree with me that artists do lose money due to piracy.
You even emphasized my point that artists are hurt as well; since the labels get paid from the start and only then do artists make money if they sell pass a certain threshold. So what happens when pirates to prevent that? The labels can stand to recoup what they spent by the artists receive nill.
Any underlying sentiment towards poor artists underneath mean labels I don't really care about, it can't be used as justification to steal money from the both of them because they're both against piracy. It's like going to your friend's job and stealing off of the shelves just because you don't like his boss. You sure did your friend a favor.
Sorry but you are borderline psychotic and have no clue what freedom of information is or what they want control of.. LOL
Slinging baseless insults does not support your position.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
As we read we see some for what they really are. They KNOW things, about musicians, or what ever and how they work and what they really make and need HAHA yet never been there.
We see some lie to the, self's so much that what they are doing is not wrong.. its not a crime. like "Acting illegally does not make you a criminal. Committing a crime does."Piracy is not a crime. Not in any country in the world." The advert at the start of the movie says "Piracy is Theft". It isn't." haha
Or we have the ones that say piracy is awful and wrong, its a crime and it really bothers them. We all do something. Lie about taxes or don't pay that ticket or run the stop sign blah blah blah. They come back with"oh that's different its not the same" like its a little crime not a big one. Oh is just theft not a crime so I'm that like them..
So for those that SAY its not wrong lol.. sit in a room where NO ONE can see them and say it all day. You can TRY to twist words all you want its still wrong. And again as we read there are those that no matter what you say they KNOW what their doing is not wrong.
So who are some of you that KNOW musicians, gaming company's should be giving there music, games away for free? Yet anything you have MADE or done you give away for free too huh. Your time is free huh.
Like I said those that have no problem with this sit in a room where they KNOW no one will see them or hear them.. yeah your the smart one.
So don't do to others what you don't want done to you. We as we can read, there will aways be those that don't have and know those that do have should give it to them. These are like the people that see accident on the road and drive by very slow and just watch or hear that girl, wife, kid getting beat next door and turn a deaf ear lol... someone else will help.. or someone else will BUY IT! yeah yeah I know thats not the same lol this is just a theft its not bad..
We emal, call up and ask that gaming company or record company or that musician friend we all have if they mind or think or can shows us if we download their game or song is worng or ok.. go do it and report back.
Go back and hide and watch.
--
"We should not judge life by the number of breaths we take, but on the moments that take our breath away"
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
People will always take a freebie first if it's available. You can't turn back time. You can't uninvent the wheel. No, actually some people used to understand that stealing was wrong. They respected the people that made the music that they loved. For all of their evils, one GREAT thing record labels did was to screen out all of the crap bands who's careers should rightfully end in a garage or the local pub.
Ugh, you are so so wrong, there was a publisher ASCAP or some crap that charged fee's to radio stations and whatnot for quality entertainment, they had no competition, and one day doubled their prices, and everytime people opposed their direction, they threatened to raise their prices again.. Then BMI said heh, enough, go ahead and raise your prices, we DARE YOU and started streaming free amateur / semi proffessional quality music and took over 75% of the industry. Go read history, this actually is the same piracy crap we've debated for centuries... Quality has ZERO to do with anything. It's about technology stealing user creativity which is what these copyright lamers are trying to do so they get all the money tahts available.
The record industry has always had its share of problems.
No amount of armwaving on your part is going to change the fact that piracy is dishonest and hurts both artists and fans.
You can rationalize all you want.
You wanted stuff. You didn't want to pay for it. You took it. Everyone pays the price.
End of story.
Also I'm not fond of the way you made your words look like mine above. That's a sleazy move, and exactly what I'd expect from someone with your "point of view."
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
Piracy and file sharing are two very different things.
If I make bootleg DVDs and sell them its piracy because I make a profit of someone else's work. If I let me friend borrow a book to read its sharing, and should not be illegal.
If I'm listening to a song on my ipod and hand an earbud to a friend to listen to the song, am I violoating copyright laws? No, I'm not selling anything, just sharing a product I paid for.
Piracy and file sharing are two very different things. If I make bootleg DVDs and sell them its piracy because I make a profit of someone else's work. If I let me friend borrow a book to read its sharing, and should not be illegal. If I'm listening to a song on my ipod and hand an earbud to a friend to listen to the song, am I violoating copyright laws? No, I'm not selling anything, just sharing a product I paid for.
The examples you made aren't examples of copying the content you own.
When you do distribute copies of protected content however, such as with peer-to-peer file sharing, you are engaging in piracy. Additionally, whether or not there's a profit doesn't matter.
So at least when it comes to that kind of file sharing, piracy and file sharing are synonymous.
Fine. You've all convinced me. I now realize that DRM is more important than human life. So I won't download this song. BTW, if I have a photographic memory and I thumb through a novel at the bookstore, does that mean that I illegally copied the book to my brain?
Interesting proposition, but the author still won't get any money from the pleasure that you had reading his work.
"Don't read if you're not going to buy"?
Put yourself in the place of the creator - it's the most basic thing in all this "DRM and piracy" discussion. You create something, then you're entitled to receive something in exchange when people get some advantage from your work (unless you don't want).
I think most reasonable people would agree that piracy is bad for all of us in the long run, the people out there who create the entertainment that we all crave need to be paid for their work.
The problem that I have is the way the media companies are trying to go about combating it. Their approach so far has been the corporate sledgehammer. Cutting people off the internet on their say so, as per the French proposals (now defeated by the higher French authorities) is a big no no in my book. That sort of thing MUST be taken to court so the companies involved are forced to show some real evidence of piracy. The other approach we've seen of riddling peoples PC's with poorly implemented rootkit technology (i.e. Gameguard, Securom, etc.) should be outlawed.
I don't know what the answer is but their attempts so far have probably done more to alienate legitimate customers than cause any real hindrance to pirates.
Fine. You've all convinced me. I now realize that DRM is more important than human life. So I won't download this song. BTW, if I have a photographic memory and I thumb through a novel at the bookstore, does that mean that I illegally copied the book to my brain?
Interesting proposition, but the author still won't get any money from the pleasure that you had reading his work.
"Don't read if you're not going to buy"?
Put yourself in the place of the creator - it's the most basic thing in all this "DRM and piracy" discussion. You create something, then you're entitled to receive something in exchange when people get some advantage from your work (unless you don't want).
Wait, wait, full stop....
So if I check out a book from the library it's immoral?
How do you feel about used book stores? Or used record stores for that matter?
This is how out of hand DRM and "intellectual property" debates have gotten. This issue is the battleground for whether we stay a free society or quickly devolve into a rental society where only corporations truly own anything.
Fine. You've all convinced me. I now realize that DRM is more important than human life. So I won't download this song. BTW, if I have a photographic memory and I thumb through a novel at the bookstore, does that mean that I illegally copied the book to my brain?
Interesting proposition, but the author still won't get any money from the pleasure that you had reading his work.
"Don't read if you're not going to buy"?
Put yourself in the place of the creator - it's the most basic thing in all this "DRM and piracy" discussion. You create something, then you're entitled to receive something in exchange when people get some advantage from your work (unless you don't want).
Wait, wait, full stop....
So if I check out a book from the library it's immoral?
How do you feel about used book stores? Or used record stores for that matter?
This is how out of hand DRM and "intellectual property" debates have gotten. This issue is the battleground for whether we stay a free society or quickly devolve into a rental society where only corporations truly own anything.
Checking out books or buying used records, cars or whatever else isn't piracy. It's reselling or giving away a copy of something that you bought which you have the right to do.
What you can't do though is make copies of what you bought through any means unless there's a license that says you can (like multiple license versions of Windows).
Essentially piracy exists because technology passed by the companies. But technology is also the solution to it really.
Music - Kill the bland labels. They've played out their role. Before they were needed to spread music and produce CDs and such, now however spreading your music can easily be done thanks to the Internet and CDs aren't necessary, you just need the digital file. By removing record labels entirely you allow the artists to make much more money themselves and then they can do as Radiohead, I think it was, did: upload their albums (in the example album) and allow people to donate money. It works, Radiohead earned as much as they would've done from selling the album in the usual way, and it was basically free. Another solution is to use something similar to Spotify - streaming free music but with some short ads in between.
Games - There was some news about that thing that would allow you to play console games on PCs, and allow you to play on any form of PC. That's the future. By using that and streaming games only, then having it all on one server, piracy becomes impossible pretty much and since you don't need to update your computer every second year to keep up to date you can waste more money on games. Another thing that should be done is to release shorter games for a smaller cost and making chapters. That way you can waste less money and faster and easier fix that which has received complaints.
That may've been slightly off-topic but yeah. I buy games and I download games, I buy the ones I feel are worthy of my money but I want to try the games before I buy them. I buy games because I know that if companies get less moneys they will tend to play it safe, and playing it safe pretty much means less quality and less innovation, i.e. worse games. I never buy music and that's because I don't want to support record labels, and neither do I want to support that artists stay behind the "evolution". Apart from that I'm a poor student so I can hardly afford anything either.
I think most reasonable people would agree that piracy is bad for all of us in the long run, the people out there who create the entertainment that we all crave need to be paid for their work. The problem that I have is the way the media companies are trying to go about combating it. Their approach so far has been the corporate sledgehammer. Cutting people off the internet on their say so, as per the French proposals (now defeated by the higher French authorities) is a big no no in my book. That sort of thing MUST be taken to court so the companies involved are forced to show some real evidence of piracy. The other approach we've seen of riddling peoples PC's with poorly implemented rootkit technology (i.e. Gameguard, Securom, etc.) should be outlawed. I don't know what the answer is but their attempts so far have probably done more to alienate legitimate customers than cause any real hindrance to pirates.
That "corporate sledgehammer" is pure myth though. In every single avenue consumers have gone to pirate, the MPAA/RIAA/ESA have turned into legitimate avenues of buying their products, like Napster and BitTorrent.com. Stores like Blockbuster have upgraded in-store plans to include their online download service and so on.
They've tried, but its plain obvious that people who pirate do so because they can. They don't do it because the technology they use to pirate is more convenient.
There's some successful anti-piracy movements that don't come off ass corporate sledgehammers as well; such as the game's industry focus on consoles and Amazon's pushing of Kindle. Netflix's queue and instant stream online model, iTune's agreement with content providers that allow music to be streamed on so many PCs and agreed upon devices.
Piracy is fought in a lot of ways. Some good for consumers as a whole, some not. There's more grace involved than a sledgehammer though.
Essentially piracy exists because technology passed by the companies. But technology is also the solution to it really.
That's just not true. I see pirates deal with all kinds of lost fidelity in order to have something for free' OCR'd ebooks with broken text, leaked albums with incomplete track lists, the recent Sims 3 deal which wasn't a finished product, the Wolverine movie work print, etc.
So first and foremost, often piracy doesn't even revolving around products of the same fidelity being offered.
When it comes through the technical ways those products are often; still piracy isn't ahead. Peer-to-peer was something the industries caught up to like my mentionings of Napster.com and BitTorrent.com going legit; but ultimately those two past icons have been outpaced by technology from the industry.
Peer-to-peer can't contend with instant queue and play HD movies from NetFlix. And I'm quite sure receiving a CD key by email from direct2drive and downloading with the IGN Download Manager is a bit more reliable and easier than peer-to-peer file transfers, wrestling with cracks and keygens.
Piracy has always been lacking of fidelity. I agree there's been spurts where the delivery technology has been ahead; but the industry quickly caught up and now seem to have outpaced means of piracy entirely. I mean, people still push binaries over news groups in a day where 360 is launching Games On Demand. So technology can't become reason.
On your Music thing; well that Radiohead deal might've began in earnest but ended as a marketing ploy. That album made it into stores and did well for the band and the label. It's not an alternative business model so much as it was a marketing ploy that probably wouldn't even be attempted by Radiohead again. They usually work once.
I don't get all of the hate against record labels; its the artists that sign contracts, artists that we might've never known or been able to buy from without the labels. But that doesn't much matter. We have iTunes, CDBaby, SNOCAP on our favorite artists MySpace pages, whatever. All the legit avenues to support who we want, how we want, are there.
As for Games, I think you're talking about OnLive. If it becomes a successful platform on PC and an accepted one, it'll help piracy there. Games for Windows - Live if it ever gains traction again will accomplish the same albiet differently. What either stands to achieve though is what already exists in the realm of consoles, nill piracy rates (but completely eliminated with OnLive if it works).
And on consoles like 360 you have smaller games and episodic content. Live Arcade and DLC for bigger releases. If there's hate for big publishers akin to how record labels are made villains, there's even XNA Community Games.
Anyway, not to nitpick what you wrote, mostly to tackle the idea that technology at all plays a relevant role when it comes to the motivation of pirates. You're right in saying that technology has been and will continue to be the cure, but there's no catching up to be done, the industries are strides ahead.
If people keep advocating anti piracy and other sorts... And the majority wants it, you WILL have restrictions placed on the internet by ISP's. Net neutrallity will die in the near future. And NO BODY wants that to happen. Do you really want your ISP to tell you what websites your allowed to visit?
I swear, I think our current internet with all the free stuff through piracy is only a phase, it will die out due to us living in a democratic (really socialist) country.
I swear to God this will happen If people keep advocating anti piracy and other sorts... And the majority wants it, you WILL have restrictions placed on the internet by ISP's. Net neutrallity will die in the near future. And NO BODY wants that to happen. Do you really want your ISP to tell you what websites your allowed to visit? I swear, I think our current internet with all the free stuff through piracy is only a phase, it will die out due to us living in a democratic (really socialist) country.
You are correct. This probably WILL happen.
And the responsibility will rest DIRECTLY on the shoulders of those TOO STUPID or TOO SELFISH to keep themselves from crossing the rather clear line between right and wrong.
Honestly, if people are too stupid or too corrupt to understand that it is wrong to take something that doesn't belong to you, then they deserve whatever they get.
This thread is truly frightening because it clearly illustrates the high percentage of people that either don't understand or don't care about the difference between right and wrong. It is an unfortunate situation, and we are all going to have to pay the price for these deficiencies.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
I swear to God this will happen If people keep advocating anti piracy and other sorts... And the majority wants it, you WILL have restrictions placed on the internet by ISP's. Net neutrallity will die in the near future. And NO BODY wants that to happen. Do you really want your ISP to tell you what websites your allowed to visit? I swear, I think our current internet with all the free stuff through piracy is only a phase, it will die out due to us living in a democratic (really socialist) country.
As long as piracy exists in big ways, there needs to be anti-piracy.
No one wants a less open and more regulated internet, but if pirates continue to exploit that nature of the internet, then obviously the open nature itself will eventually be targeted.
Who wants that? No one. I support anti-piracy, but I do because the quicker and more efficient the big forms of piracy are taken down, the less collateral damage occur like any bleeding over in the matter of net neutrality.
Right now, the government is actually firmly in favor of things like net neutrality. Be it Bush's era FCC or appointments to Obama's new technology office that consist of selections from Microsoft and Google (big backers of net neutrality).
But again, we now have a bill signed into law that creates "coordinators" with the power to stepover individual departments of government in matters concerning intellectual property. So for a case like the Comcast deal where users complain about BitTorrent being throttled; where will oversight come from in the future?
I'm optimistic though because I believe it's going to be easy to take the wind out of anti-piracy movement sails. The most rampant form of piracy on the internet is obviously peer-to-peer bittorrent technology; but there's only 3-4 sites that make up the vast majority of traffic. The biggest of which (The Pirate Bay) the WIPO just won a case against. If the whole infastructure falls like dominos akin to the Napster effect, then there'll be nothing to complain about and go to the government for.
Unfortunately, newer and more dangerous to the internet forms of piracy are inevitable. If public trackers are taken down, then obviously peer-to-peer will become based around decentralization. And how will that be solved? Quite possibly by court rulings in favor of companies like Comcast that want to throttle packet transmissions sensed of that type; and it'd spell defeat for an otherwise useful technology and net neutrality all together.
It's all very crappy, but it's the pirates that are at fault. So no sense in a pirate ever getting mad. It's the honest consumers that suffer for what they do.
Well you do realize that companies want to do this either way? Let's say, theoretically, that tomorrow all Pirating stopped. ComCast, Verizon.. etc., would all still pursue their campaign with the MPAA/RIAA for ownership of the internet, controlling "sectors", throttling traffic. They want the control, power and cash flow. The internet as it is today makes for a free medium for commerce, mostly void of "subscriptions" for mulitiple services, not as much taxes.. the companies don't want this. They find it too difficult to put their hands on everything.
The government would also like to step in. They've wanted to do this for a very long time now, "Piracy" being their scapegoat. It doesn't matter how severe or modest piracy is, they will still move in this direction regardless. If it wasn't piracy, it would be something else, like China's free-reign on internet restriction, due to "safety measures" and other such bullshit.
Right or wrong, it doesn't matter. They want this.
The "selfish acts" of pirates can be debated forever.. it really doesn't matter. The entire world does it, it's like second-nature to anyone that owns a computer, the new generations growing up use it freely and easily. They are not "too selfish" or "too stupid", it's just second nature to them. This can be debated between the purists and the pirates forever, fact of the matter being this whole movement was started by and is still being run by the same people.
The government, the companies and so on... If the "Anti-Piracy" movement failed to stir up a fuss with the people, they would have pursued other venues. Except, piracy is nearly bullet-proof in that regard, because it can always be claimed a "crime" of some sort. Whereas "restricting" the internet via "net neutrality" for no other reason than "safety" or "terrorism" and other such nonsense similar to the "Fairness Doctrine" for radio and television, are all too flimsy. These other measures would have been too transparent and would have made it difficult for them to accomplish their end goals.
Well you do realize that companies want to do this either way? Let's say, theoretically, that tomorrow all Pirating stopped. ComCast, Verizon.. etc., would all still pursue their campaign with the MPAA/RIAA for ownership of the internet, controlling "sectors", throttling traffic. They want the control, power and cash flow. The internet as it is today makes for a free medium for commerce, mostly void of "subscriptions" for mulitiple services, not as much taxes.. the companies don't want this. They find it too difficult to put their hands on everything.
The government would also like to step in. They've wanted to do this for a very long time now, "Piracy" being their scapegoat. It doesn't matter how severe or modest piracy is, they will still move in this direction regardless. If it wasn't piracy, it would be something else, like China's free-reign on internet restriction, due to "safety measures" and other such bullshit.
Right or wrong, it doesn't matter. They want this.
The "selfish acts" of pirates can be debated forever.. it really doesn't matter. The entire world does it, it's like second-nature to anyone that owns a computer, the new generations growing up use it freely and easily. They are not "too selfish" or "too stupid", it's just second nature to them. This can be debated between the purists and the pirates forever, fact of the matter being this whole movement was started by and is still being run by the same people. The government, the companies and so on... If the "Anti-Piracy" movement failed to stir up a fuss with the people, they would have pursued other venues. Except, piracy is nearly bullet-proof in that regard, because it can always be claimed a "crime" of some sort. Whereas "restricting" the internet via "net neutrality" for no other reason than "safety" or "terrorism" and other such non-sense similar to the "Fairness Doctrine" for radio and television. These other measures would have been too transparent and would have made it difficult for them to accomplish their end goals.
Half-wrong, half-right in my opinion.
The government and those organizations are tied together by anti-piracy, because they both lose revenue, sales and tax.
Once anti-piracy is out of the sails of the RIAA/ESA/MPAA though, they'll be without any credible reasons to seek government intervention.
Separated without an adjoining issue like anti-piracy, the government has done well to protect the open nature of the internet. The FCC for example made AT&T's last merger come with a clause that they'll never create a service around prioritizing packets for the highest bidders of content providers.
And like I said before, Obama has stocked his new technology office with ardent supporters of net neutrality from places like Microsoft, Google and MIT.
So the government is backing the internet as grounds for innovation best left alone, but the anti-piracy movement has a trojan horse as well with the Intellectual Property Enforcement deal that has a voice on all matters concerning Intellectual Property.
With ISPs doubling as content providers nowadays, and ironically I just got an e-mail from Cox today about some "My Connection" content service they're starting, the lines blur in the battle of net neutrality since the companies that want to do away with it, also have agendas in anti-piracy and thus can use new legislation as avenues to get what they want.
So there's no such thing as "the government would also like to step in", the Department of Justice actually believes that copyright holders should be responsible for their own enforcement. But the piracy has created a scenario where they can't do it alone, and thus the federal government is needed.
So like I've been saying; take the wind out of the anti-piracy movement's sails and there won't be a voice in Washington competing against proponents of net neutrality.
It's nothing to be too grim about. With brick and mortar retail declining and protected legal avenues becoming increasingly popular and used; combine with the big targets of piracy being taken down, that wind can be gone soon until what's next arises. All we can hope for is that "what's next" isn't so ingrained with the net that net neutrality becomes an object of possible collateral damage again.
It will all end with us drowning in an ocean of mediocre garbage. Wages of selfishness. The bottom line here is that piracy is dishonest, and dishonesty has consequences. The difference between right and wrong seems to be lost on a lot of folks these days.
While I can go with the dishonesty of piracy, although I am also inclined not to think of it as a very serious sin, file sharing certainly doesn't equate to theft as nothing is stolen.
I am unable to go with your whole drowning in an ocean of mediocre garbage motif. I don't find low budget projects any more or less mediocre than high budget projects. It just strikes me that you perhaps have very poor taste or perhaps have had more a limited repertoire of material to base your opinions on. Perhaps you equate high budget only with good entertainment. I don't.
You want other people to feel morally obliged to sponsor the music you love. And if they don't, you wish to guilt them into it so that you can keep getting more of your favourite music without paying the whole cost you value it at yourself. Who is selfish now?
You think the music you love is worth more than the rest of us think it is. You think it's quality is dependant on how much money the people who make and publish it receive. The rest of us don't.
While I don't think the difference between right and wrong is lost on everyone, I think a tempered and porportional approach is clearly lost on you.
Piracy is not a crime. Like it or not.
Murder is a crime. Piracy isn't. It is at most a civil offence. But certainly not a criminal one and frankly it is laughable that anyone should wish to make it one.
Equally it is wrong not give up your seats to old people on the bus. And while you can be fined for not doing so, it is also not a crime. It's important to keep things in perspective.
Ultimately I feel it boils down to a sort of Dr Spock type moral dilemma where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
It is far more moral for many poorer people to get access to cheaper entertainment than it is for a few rich people to make more millions selling the same entertainment. The anti-piracy movement is motivated on greed just as the piracy movement is. The question is, who's side are you on, the masses or the few? If you work in a publishing industry or wish to, I can see you choosing the side of self-intrest, if not, I can see you down with the masses of others who don't.
Either way selfishness is most peoples motivation on both sides of the argument.
Piracy is a crime. It's against the law. What part of those statements do you not understand? Your trying to make yourself feel better for breaking the law by putting it up against murder.
There is a line. Right and wrong. Piracy is on the wrong no matter how close you think it might be to right.
If you can be fined for not giving up a seat because there is a law for that, its a crime.
It's hard to get more simple than that. If you can't understand that you need to go back to school.
Heh, here we go. If I went to Washington with a whole bunch of money and a truck load of lawyers and lobbiest's then I could make "Laws" too. Say that if I were to pass that Masturbating with your left hand is illegal but it is ok with your right. Hurrah, I can quote that it is "law" because people agreed in some room somewhere in the country and could give two shits about anybody but their own motivations and thus everybody has to repect their laws because they said so.
Maybe you remember that this country was formed because it had denied English "Laws" and thus were commiting treason by their laws. Corporations want protection to their money making machines because that's what keeps them in business and have control over people with power. They want it, and more and more people these days don't like and don't care what they wrote in some book or what they can quote on. Piracy is here to stay and the only people who are going to suffer through this cyber war is the normal everyday customer. There will be more and more restrictions and sniffing and monitoring going on and the only people who are going to subjected to this is the everyday user. Then for those of you who remain willfully ignorant will eventually wise up and come over to piracy and then its more and more pirates every day. Todays world is a money driven economy and that fuels a lot of greed. Companies are not satisfied with their paychecks and would like to milk every single cent out of something that is essentially free to reproduce. Try as they might, they will never win.
The "selfish acts" of pirates can be debated forever.. it really doesn't matter. The entire world does it, it's like second-nature to anyone that owns a computer, the new generations growing up use it freely and easily. They are not "too selfish" or "too stupid", it's just second nature to them.
All this demonstrates is that selfishness and/ or stupidity have become second nature to many people.
The line between right and wrong is not affected by the argument "everyone is doing it."
If the new human standard is to behave with selfishness without regard to what is right and wrong, we can all expect to be "managed" with draconian laws and policies.
FREEDOM requires personal responsibility. When you give up this responsibility you open the door for someone else to come in and be responsible for you.
I'd really like to see a plot of I.Q. vs. year of birth for the general population. Based on a lot of what I see I suspect that line would have a pronounced downward trend.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
Comments
No. Artists lose money as well, since they're due to earn a certain amount of dollars and cents per unit sold. Naturally, they're due to lose a certain amount of dollars and cents per unit not sold.
You know what that percentage is dude? Try maybe $.90 royalty on top named bands for every $16.98 cd sold, which does not include recoupment costs and other reductions they will get charged..
this is after they have sold enough to retrn the recoupment costs which are basically loans... $250,000 recording time, $100,000 marketng, $150,000 production costs, etc etc etc etc etc, and they have an entire book made on reduction fee's and royalty concepts..
Basically it comes down to pennies............And the pennies are only made if the band sells 1,000,000+ there aint no money in it and very few do this.. Please dont debate of what you have no clue about
All kidding aside,
Peter Porker
Sadly, in a lot of cases, the people playing pirated copies are getting a superior experience because they don't have all the DRM nonsense wrecking their systems. I don't know what the answer is here, too much piracy and there won't be any point in creating new games, but too much damaging DRM of the sort we are seeing these days and people simply won't be able to play them or, like me, will simply choose not to.
I spent ages cursing at EA after installing Spore and finding they'd placed a rootkit on my PC. Took ages to get rid of the damn thing. I'm avoiding Aion for the same reason, I wanted to look into that game but I'm not taking chances with the malware bundled with it.
Piracy may be bad but claiming that it hurts the economy is ridiculous. What do you think happens to the money saved by not buying a DVD or CD? It doesn't vanish into the ether, it gets spent elsewhere, therefore no difference to the economy at all.
I've heard lots of arguments from the media companies, all of them scaremongering hogwash. If they didn't churn out so much junk and have such stupid restrictions on what we can do with what we've paid for, they wouldn't be in this mess now.
I'd like to see a try before you buy model of some sort but the media companies would never go for that. They know 99.9% of what they churn out would never sell if people could try it first.
Just because pirates save money doesn't mean the economy isn't hurt.
Piracy leads to vendors increasing prices on products and services to help offset losses; which is why software like Windows cost as much as it does. So the good majority of honest people are paying more. Other obvious factors in lost revenues matter as well, like jobs that are loss or aren't created at all. Lost reveneus also bleed over into lost tax revenues; which is why the anti-piracy pitches in Washington work so well.
And again, no one is ever going to buy the "they aren't doing enough" crap. EA pulled DRM from the Sims 3 and it was still pirated. So why should organizations like the ESA ever buy a remark like "such stupid restrictions on what we can do" when obviously its a non-factor in whether you will or won't pirate their works?
And what planet are we on? Do demos not exist for games anymore? Can we not preview songs on last.fm and iTunes? Can we not do the same on NetFlix? Has individual book vendors stopped offering up sample chapters and big sites like Amazon their "Peek Inside" deal?
Even before all this internet craziness; whatever stopped you from flipping through the pages of a book or putting on headphones in a record shop?
When have we ever been without "try before you buy"?
No. Artists lose money as well, since they're due to earn a certain amount of dollars and cents per unit sold. Naturally, they're due to lose a certain amount of dollars and cents per unit not sold.
You know what that percentage is dude? Try maybe $.90 royalty on top named bands for every $16.98 cd sold, which does not include recoupment costs and other reductions they will get charged..
this is after they have sold enough to retrn the recoupment costs which are basically loans... $250,000 recording time, $100,000 marketng, $150,000 production costs, etc etc etc etc etc, and they have an entire book made on reduction fee's and royalty concepts..
Basically it comes down to pennies............And the pennies are only made if the band sells 1,000,000+ there aint no money in it and very few do this.. Please dont debate of what you have no clue about
On what point exactly did I have no clue about? All you did was agree with me that artists do lose money due to piracy.
You even emphasized my point that artists are hurt as well; since the labels get paid from the start and only then do artists make money if they sell pass a certain threshold. So what happens when pirates to prevent that? The labels can stand to recoup what they spent by the artists receive nill.
Any underlying sentiment towards poor artists underneath mean labels I don't really care about, it can't be used as justification to steal money from the both of them because they're both against piracy. It's like going to your friend's job and stealing off of the shelves just because you don't like his boss. You sure did your friend a favor.
Slinging baseless insults does not support your position.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
As we read we see some for what they really are. They KNOW things, about musicians, or what ever and how they work and what they really make and need HAHA yet never been there.
We see some lie to the, self's so much that what they are doing is not wrong.. its not a crime. like "Acting illegally does not make you a criminal. Committing a crime does."Piracy is not a crime. Not in any country in the world." The advert at the start of the movie says "Piracy is Theft". It isn't." haha
Or we have the ones that say piracy is awful and wrong, its a crime and it really bothers them. We all do something. Lie about taxes or don't pay that ticket or run the stop sign blah blah blah. They come back with"oh that's different its not the same" like its a little crime not a big one. Oh is just theft not a crime so I'm that like them..
So for those that SAY its not wrong lol.. sit in a room where NO ONE can see them and say it all day. You can TRY to twist words all you want its still wrong. And again as we read there are those that no matter what you say they KNOW what their doing is not wrong.
So who are some of you that KNOW musicians, gaming company's should be giving there music, games away for free? Yet anything you have MADE or done you give away for free too huh. Your time is free huh.
Like I said those that have no problem with this sit in a room where they KNOW no one will see them or hear them.. yeah your the smart one.
So don't do to others what you don't want done to you. We as we can read, there will aways be those that don't have and know those that do have should give it to them. These are like the people that see accident on the road and drive by very slow and just watch or hear that girl, wife, kid getting beat next door and turn a deaf ear lol... someone else will help.. or someone else will BUY IT! yeah yeah I know thats not the same lol this is just a theft its not bad..
We emal, call up and ask that gaming company or record company or that musician friend we all have if they mind or think or can shows us if we download their game or song is worng or ok.. go do it and report back.
Go back and hide and watch.
--
"We should not judge life by the number of breaths we take, but on the moments that take our breath away"
I agree.
At least I'm pretty sure I agree.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
Ugh, you are so so wrong, there was a publisher ASCAP or some crap that charged fee's to radio stations and whatnot for quality entertainment, they had no competition, and one day doubled their prices, and everytime people opposed their direction, they threatened to raise their prices again.. Then BMI said heh, enough, go ahead and raise your prices, we DARE YOU and started streaming free amateur / semi proffessional quality music and took over 75% of the industry. Go read history, this actually is the same piracy crap we've debated for centuries... Quality has ZERO to do with anything. It's about technology stealing user creativity which is what these copyright lamers are trying to do so they get all the money tahts available.
All kidding aside,
Peter Porker
The record industry has always had its share of problems.
No amount of armwaving on your part is going to change the fact that piracy is dishonest and hurts both artists and fans.
You can rationalize all you want.
You wanted stuff. You didn't want to pay for it. You took it. Everyone pays the price.
End of story.
Also I'm not fond of the way you made your words look like mine above. That's a sleazy move, and exactly what I'd expect from someone with your "point of view."
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
Piracy and file sharing are two very different things.
If I make bootleg DVDs and sell them its piracy because I make a profit of someone else's work. If I let me friend borrow a book to read its sharing, and should not be illegal.
If I'm listening to a song on my ipod and hand an earbud to a friend to listen to the song, am I violoating copyright laws? No, I'm not selling anything, just sharing a product I paid for.
-------------------------
The examples you made aren't examples of copying the content you own.
When you do distribute copies of protected content however, such as with peer-to-peer file sharing, you are engaging in piracy. Additionally, whether or not there's a profit doesn't matter.
So at least when it comes to that kind of file sharing, piracy and file sharing are synonymous.
Interesting proposition, but the author still won't get any money from the pleasure that you had reading his work.
"Don't read if you're not going to buy"?
Put yourself in the place of the creator - it's the most basic thing in all this "DRM and piracy" discussion. You create something, then you're entitled to receive something in exchange when people get some advantage from your work (unless you don't want).
I think most reasonable people would agree that piracy is bad for all of us in the long run, the people out there who create the entertainment that we all crave need to be paid for their work.
The problem that I have is the way the media companies are trying to go about combating it. Their approach so far has been the corporate sledgehammer. Cutting people off the internet on their say so, as per the French proposals (now defeated by the higher French authorities) is a big no no in my book. That sort of thing MUST be taken to court so the companies involved are forced to show some real evidence of piracy. The other approach we've seen of riddling peoples PC's with poorly implemented rootkit technology (i.e. Gameguard, Securom, etc.) should be outlawed.
I don't know what the answer is but their attempts so far have probably done more to alienate legitimate customers than cause any real hindrance to pirates.
Interesting proposition, but the author still won't get any money from the pleasure that you had reading his work.
"Don't read if you're not going to buy"?
Put yourself in the place of the creator - it's the most basic thing in all this "DRM and piracy" discussion. You create something, then you're entitled to receive something in exchange when people get some advantage from your work (unless you don't want).
Wait, wait, full stop....
So if I check out a book from the library it's immoral?
How do you feel about used book stores? Or used record stores for that matter?
This is how out of hand DRM and "intellectual property" debates have gotten. This issue is the battleground for whether we stay a free society or quickly devolve into a rental society where only corporations truly own anything.
Interesting proposition, but the author still won't get any money from the pleasure that you had reading his work.
"Don't read if you're not going to buy"?
Put yourself in the place of the creator - it's the most basic thing in all this "DRM and piracy" discussion. You create something, then you're entitled to receive something in exchange when people get some advantage from your work (unless you don't want).
Wait, wait, full stop....
So if I check out a book from the library it's immoral?
How do you feel about used book stores? Or used record stores for that matter?
This is how out of hand DRM and "intellectual property" debates have gotten. This issue is the battleground for whether we stay a free society or quickly devolve into a rental society where only corporations truly own anything.
Checking out books or buying used records, cars or whatever else isn't piracy. It's reselling or giving away a copy of something that you bought which you have the right to do.
What you can't do though is make copies of what you bought through any means unless there's a license that says you can (like multiple license versions of Windows).
Essentially piracy exists because technology passed by the companies. But technology is also the solution to it really.
Music - Kill the bland labels. They've played out their role. Before they were needed to spread music and produce CDs and such, now however spreading your music can easily be done thanks to the Internet and CDs aren't necessary, you just need the digital file. By removing record labels entirely you allow the artists to make much more money themselves and then they can do as Radiohead, I think it was, did: upload their albums (in the example album) and allow people to donate money. It works, Radiohead earned as much as they would've done from selling the album in the usual way, and it was basically free. Another solution is to use something similar to Spotify - streaming free music but with some short ads in between.
Games - There was some news about that thing that would allow you to play console games on PCs, and allow you to play on any form of PC. That's the future. By using that and streaming games only, then having it all on one server, piracy becomes impossible pretty much and since you don't need to update your computer every second year to keep up to date you can waste more money on games. Another thing that should be done is to release shorter games for a smaller cost and making chapters. That way you can waste less money and faster and easier fix that which has received complaints.
That may've been slightly off-topic but yeah. I buy games and I download games, I buy the ones I feel are worthy of my money but I want to try the games before I buy them. I buy games because I know that if companies get less moneys they will tend to play it safe, and playing it safe pretty much means less quality and less innovation, i.e. worse games. I never buy music and that's because I don't want to support record labels, and neither do I want to support that artists stay behind the "evolution". Apart from that I'm a poor student so I can hardly afford anything either.
That "corporate sledgehammer" is pure myth though. In every single avenue consumers have gone to pirate, the MPAA/RIAA/ESA have turned into legitimate avenues of buying their products, like Napster and BitTorrent.com. Stores like Blockbuster have upgraded in-store plans to include their online download service and so on.
They've tried, but its plain obvious that people who pirate do so because they can. They don't do it because the technology they use to pirate is more convenient.
There's some successful anti-piracy movements that don't come off ass corporate sledgehammers as well; such as the game's industry focus on consoles and Amazon's pushing of Kindle. Netflix's queue and instant stream online model, iTune's agreement with content providers that allow music to be streamed on so many PCs and agreed upon devices.
Piracy is fought in a lot of ways. Some good for consumers as a whole, some not. There's more grace involved than a sledgehammer though.
That's just not true. I see pirates deal with all kinds of lost fidelity in order to have something for free' OCR'd ebooks with broken text, leaked albums with incomplete track lists, the recent Sims 3 deal which wasn't a finished product, the Wolverine movie work print, etc.
So first and foremost, often piracy doesn't even revolving around products of the same fidelity being offered.
When it comes through the technical ways those products are often; still piracy isn't ahead. Peer-to-peer was something the industries caught up to like my mentionings of Napster.com and BitTorrent.com going legit; but ultimately those two past icons have been outpaced by technology from the industry.
Peer-to-peer can't contend with instant queue and play HD movies from NetFlix. And I'm quite sure receiving a CD key by email from direct2drive and downloading with the IGN Download Manager is a bit more reliable and easier than peer-to-peer file transfers, wrestling with cracks and keygens.
Piracy has always been lacking of fidelity. I agree there's been spurts where the delivery technology has been ahead; but the industry quickly caught up and now seem to have outpaced means of piracy entirely. I mean, people still push binaries over news groups in a day where 360 is launching Games On Demand. So technology can't become reason.
On your Music thing; well that Radiohead deal might've began in earnest but ended as a marketing ploy. That album made it into stores and did well for the band and the label. It's not an alternative business model so much as it was a marketing ploy that probably wouldn't even be attempted by Radiohead again. They usually work once.
I don't get all of the hate against record labels; its the artists that sign contracts, artists that we might've never known or been able to buy from without the labels. But that doesn't much matter. We have iTunes, CDBaby, SNOCAP on our favorite artists MySpace pages, whatever. All the legit avenues to support who we want, how we want, are there.
As for Games, I think you're talking about OnLive. If it becomes a successful platform on PC and an accepted one, it'll help piracy there. Games for Windows - Live if it ever gains traction again will accomplish the same albiet differently. What either stands to achieve though is what already exists in the realm of consoles, nill piracy rates (but completely eliminated with OnLive if it works).
And on consoles like 360 you have smaller games and episodic content. Live Arcade and DLC for bigger releases. If there's hate for big publishers akin to how record labels are made villains, there's even XNA Community Games.
Anyway, not to nitpick what you wrote, mostly to tackle the idea that technology at all plays a relevant role when it comes to the motivation of pirates. You're right in saying that technology has been and will continue to be the cure, but there's no catching up to be done, the industries are strides ahead.
I swear to God this will happen
If people keep advocating anti piracy and other sorts... And the majority wants it, you WILL have restrictions placed on the internet by ISP's. Net neutrallity will die in the near future. And NO BODY wants that to happen. Do you really want your ISP to tell you what websites your allowed to visit?
I swear, I think our current internet with all the free stuff through piracy is only a phase, it will die out due to us living in a democratic (really socialist) country.
You are correct. This probably WILL happen.
And the responsibility will rest DIRECTLY on the shoulders of those TOO STUPID or TOO SELFISH to keep themselves from crossing the rather clear line between right and wrong.
Honestly, if people are too stupid or too corrupt to understand that it is wrong to take something that doesn't belong to you, then they deserve whatever they get.
This thread is truly frightening because it clearly illustrates the high percentage of people that either don't understand or don't care about the difference between right and wrong. It is an unfortunate situation, and we are all going to have to pay the price for these deficiencies.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
As long as piracy exists in big ways, there needs to be anti-piracy.
No one wants a less open and more regulated internet, but if pirates continue to exploit that nature of the internet, then obviously the open nature itself will eventually be targeted.
Who wants that? No one. I support anti-piracy, but I do because the quicker and more efficient the big forms of piracy are taken down, the less collateral damage occur like any bleeding over in the matter of net neutrality.
Right now, the government is actually firmly in favor of things like net neutrality. Be it Bush's era FCC or appointments to Obama's new technology office that consist of selections from Microsoft and Google (big backers of net neutrality).
But again, we now have a bill signed into law that creates "coordinators" with the power to stepover individual departments of government in matters concerning intellectual property. So for a case like the Comcast deal where users complain about BitTorrent being throttled; where will oversight come from in the future?
I'm optimistic though because I believe it's going to be easy to take the wind out of anti-piracy movement sails. The most rampant form of piracy on the internet is obviously peer-to-peer bittorrent technology; but there's only 3-4 sites that make up the vast majority of traffic. The biggest of which (The Pirate Bay) the WIPO just won a case against. If the whole infastructure falls like dominos akin to the Napster effect, then there'll be nothing to complain about and go to the government for.
Unfortunately, newer and more dangerous to the internet forms of piracy are inevitable. If public trackers are taken down, then obviously peer-to-peer will become based around decentralization. And how will that be solved? Quite possibly by court rulings in favor of companies like Comcast that want to throttle packet transmissions sensed of that type; and it'd spell defeat for an otherwise useful technology and net neutrality all together.
It's all very crappy, but it's the pirates that are at fault. So no sense in a pirate ever getting mad. It's the honest consumers that suffer for what they do.
Well you do realize that companies want to do this either way? Let's say, theoretically, that tomorrow all Pirating stopped. ComCast, Verizon.. etc., would all still pursue their campaign with the MPAA/RIAA for ownership of the internet, controlling "sectors", throttling traffic. They want the control, power and cash flow. The internet as it is today makes for a free medium for commerce, mostly void of "subscriptions" for mulitiple services, not as much taxes.. the companies don't want this. They find it too difficult to put their hands on everything.
The government would also like to step in. They've wanted to do this for a very long time now, "Piracy" being their scapegoat. It doesn't matter how severe or modest piracy is, they will still move in this direction regardless. If it wasn't piracy, it would be something else, like China's free-reign on internet restriction, due to "safety measures" and other such bullshit.
Right or wrong, it doesn't matter. They want this.
The "selfish acts" of pirates can be debated forever.. it really doesn't matter. The entire world does it, it's like second-nature to anyone that owns a computer, the new generations growing up use it freely and easily. They are not "too selfish" or "too stupid", it's just second nature to them. This can be debated between the purists and the pirates forever, fact of the matter being this whole movement was started by and is still being run by the same people.
The government, the companies and so on... If the "Anti-Piracy" movement failed to stir up a fuss with the people, they would have pursued other venues. Except, piracy is nearly bullet-proof in that regard, because it can always be claimed a "crime" of some sort. Whereas "restricting" the internet via "net neutrality" for no other reason than "safety" or "terrorism" and other such nonsense similar to the "Fairness Doctrine" for radio and television, are all too flimsy. These other measures would have been too transparent and would have made it difficult for them to accomplish their end goals.
Half-wrong, half-right in my opinion.
The government and those organizations are tied together by anti-piracy, because they both lose revenue, sales and tax.
Once anti-piracy is out of the sails of the RIAA/ESA/MPAA though, they'll be without any credible reasons to seek government intervention.
Separated without an adjoining issue like anti-piracy, the government has done well to protect the open nature of the internet. The FCC for example made AT&T's last merger come with a clause that they'll never create a service around prioritizing packets for the highest bidders of content providers.
And like I said before, Obama has stocked his new technology office with ardent supporters of net neutrality from places like Microsoft, Google and MIT.
So the government is backing the internet as grounds for innovation best left alone, but the anti-piracy movement has a trojan horse as well with the Intellectual Property Enforcement deal that has a voice on all matters concerning Intellectual Property.
With ISPs doubling as content providers nowadays, and ironically I just got an e-mail from Cox today about some "My Connection" content service they're starting, the lines blur in the battle of net neutrality since the companies that want to do away with it, also have agendas in anti-piracy and thus can use new legislation as avenues to get what they want.
So there's no such thing as "the government would also like to step in", the Department of Justice actually believes that copyright holders should be responsible for their own enforcement. But the piracy has created a scenario where they can't do it alone, and thus the federal government is needed.
So like I've been saying; take the wind out of the anti-piracy movement's sails and there won't be a voice in Washington competing against proponents of net neutrality.
It's nothing to be too grim about. With brick and mortar retail declining and protected legal avenues becoming increasingly popular and used; combine with the big targets of piracy being taken down, that wind can be gone soon until what's next arises. All we can hope for is that "what's next" isn't so ingrained with the net that net neutrality becomes an object of possible collateral damage again.
While I can go with the dishonesty of piracy, although I am also inclined not to think of it as a very serious sin, file sharing certainly doesn't equate to theft as nothing is stolen.
I am unable to go with your whole drowning in an ocean of mediocre garbage motif. I don't find low budget projects any more or less mediocre than high budget projects. It just strikes me that you perhaps have very poor taste or perhaps have had more a limited repertoire of material to base your opinions on. Perhaps you equate high budget only with good entertainment. I don't.
You want other people to feel morally obliged to sponsor the music you love. And if they don't, you wish to guilt them into it so that you can keep getting more of your favourite music without paying the whole cost you value it at yourself. Who is selfish now?
You think the music you love is worth more than the rest of us think it is. You think it's quality is dependant on how much money the people who make and publish it receive. The rest of us don't.
While I don't think the difference between right and wrong is lost on everyone, I think a tempered and porportional approach is clearly lost on you.
Piracy is not a crime. Like it or not.
Murder is a crime. Piracy isn't. It is at most a civil offence. But certainly not a criminal one and frankly it is laughable that anyone should wish to make it one.
Equally it is wrong not give up your seats to old people on the bus. And while you can be fined for not doing so, it is also not a crime. It's important to keep things in perspective.
Ultimately I feel it boils down to a sort of Dr Spock type moral dilemma where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
It is far more moral for many poorer people to get access to cheaper entertainment than it is for a few rich people to make more millions selling the same entertainment. The anti-piracy movement is motivated on greed just as the piracy movement is. The question is, who's side are you on, the masses or the few? If you work in a publishing industry or wish to, I can see you choosing the side of self-intrest, if not, I can see you down with the masses of others who don't.
Either way selfishness is most peoples motivation on both sides of the argument.
Piracy is a crime. It's against the law. What part of those statements do you not understand? Your trying to make yourself feel better for breaking the law by putting it up against murder.
There is a line. Right and wrong. Piracy is on the wrong no matter how close you think it might be to right.
If you can be fined for not giving up a seat because there is a law for that, its a crime.
It's hard to get more simple than that. If you can't understand that you need to go back to school.
Heh, here we go. If I went to Washington with a whole bunch of money and a truck load of lawyers and lobbiest's then I could make "Laws" too. Say that if I were to pass that Masturbating with your left hand is illegal but it is ok with your right. Hurrah, I can quote that it is "law" because people agreed in some room somewhere in the country and could give two shits about anybody but their own motivations and thus everybody has to repect their laws because they said so.
Maybe you remember that this country was formed because it had denied English "Laws" and thus were commiting treason by their laws. Corporations want protection to their money making machines because that's what keeps them in business and have control over people with power. They want it, and more and more people these days don't like and don't care what they wrote in some book or what they can quote on. Piracy is here to stay and the only people who are going to suffer through this cyber war is the normal everyday customer. There will be more and more restrictions and sniffing and monitoring going on and the only people who are going to subjected to this is the everyday user. Then for those of you who remain willfully ignorant will eventually wise up and come over to piracy and then its more and more pirates every day. Todays world is a money driven economy and that fuels a lot of greed. Companies are not satisfied with their paychecks and would like to milk every single cent out of something that is essentially free to reproduce. Try as they might, they will never win.
All this demonstrates is that selfishness and/ or stupidity have become second nature to many people.
The line between right and wrong is not affected by the argument "everyone is doing it."
If the new human standard is to behave with selfishness without regard to what is right and wrong, we can all expect to be "managed" with draconian laws and policies.
FREEDOM requires personal responsibility. When you give up this responsibility you open the door for someone else to come in and be responsible for you.
I'd really like to see a plot of I.Q. vs. year of birth for the general population. Based on a lot of what I see I suspect that line would have a pronounced downward trend.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)