Quote :

"The only argument that could possibly be made here is destroyers: that songs are not "things". I don't agree with it since songs have the definition of non-conceptual things."

Yeah, it is a physical thing, but it can be easily duplicated. You can take a CD, and copy onto a disc that you already own. It happened all the time when I was in middle school and high school. Someone buys a CD. You take the CD, rip the songs, burn your own CD, and give the CD back to your friend.

Intellectual property comes into this because the record company essentially says, "hey, we're going to make these records, and put them onto CDs. However, if you replicate that configuration of digital information, we also own that." So, the idea here is that the record company actually owns the "song" - that is, the notes, chords, voices, and whatever else is on the recording. Copyright and patent laws like this tell you what you can do with your own property, which I don't think is right.

6/23/2010 6:05:46 PM

Quote :

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." --Thomas Jefferson"

6/23/2010 6:42:51 PM

Quote :

"The point is that the consumer determines the value of an item by purchasing it or not purchasing it. Not by deciding to have it without purchasing it."

Why not? The theft is a valuable piece of information telling you that there is some demand for the product in question but not at the current asking price.

The big thing that media companies keep forgetting is people generally don't pay for content or information, they pay for the other value added (delivery, aggregation, convenience etc). The problem is generally paying for the content has less value to the consumer than stealing it. This comic pretty much explains it perfectly:

http://bradcolbow.com/archive/view/the_brads_why_drm_doesnt_work/?p=205

But one only need look at the success of iTunes, Netflix and even Hulu to see that getting people to pay for things (or even do it the legal way in the case of Hulu) is easy as long as you provide them with some value. The content companies should spend less time worrying about how to get people to stop pirating their stuff, and worry more about how they can make buying their products worthwhile to the consumer.

6/23/2010 6:57:43 PM

i wonder how many people have posted in this thread while either:

1) having a bittorrent client open, downloading or seeding media
2) listening to music that was downloaded illegally

6/23/2010 7:00:07 PM

I BOUGHT EVERY SINGLE SEASON OF 21 JUMP STREET!!!

21

JUMP

STREET!!!!

6/23/2010 7:14:14 PM

I'm all for piracy but lets clear one things up. Its not a "thought crime" to google a torrent. You've already began attempting the crime.

If you take out a gun and point it at someone, pull the trigger, but don't hit them, its not a thought crime to charge you with attempted murder.

6/23/2010 7:37:36 PM

so what you're saying is googling certain phrases is illegal

also that googling "shooting a person" is enough to charge you with assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder

6/23/2010 7:38:18 PM

Quote :

"they pay for the other value added (delivery, aggregation, convenience etc)."

Which suggests that it not need even be considered property in the first place. The entire information economy could be 100% service based. In fact, it should be.

Quote :

"I'm all for piracy but lets clear one things up. Its not a "thought crime" to google a torrent. You've already began attempting the crime. If you take out a gun and point it at someone, pull the trigger, but don't hit them, its not a thought crime to charge you with attempted murder."

100% wrong.
I could be googling the torrent for any number of reasons other than intending on downloading it. The simple act of googling is not a crime in any sense. Pointing a gun at someone in the manner described is a crime. Furthermore, the "pull the trigger" analogy should be for when they actually click to download.

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 7:44 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2010 7:40:24 PM

^^analogy. Shooting a person is not something that can be done by googling shooting a person. Googling, however, is the first step to piracy. If someone googled "videos of kids having sex" you should be able to charge them with pornography.

6/23/2010 7:42:13 PM

Quote :

"If someone googled "videos of kids having sex" you should be able to charge them with pornography."

Wow. You clearly don't get it.
But here you go, let's see if anyone IS A CRIMINAL?!?!?
http://www.google.com/search?q=videos+of+kids+having+sex
OMG WHAT IF SOMEONE CLICKS THAT LINK?!?!??

6/23/2010 7:47:42 PM

this link is probably illegal too

http://www.wdtn.com/dpp/video/WDTN_Mom_busted_having_sex_with_kids_in_car

how long til the Springfield, Ohio NBC affiliate has LEOs knocking down their door about child pornography charges

6/23/2010 7:51:05 PM

^

Quote :

""I'm not a bad mother, really," said Wallace. "I do admit I was drinking with my kids in the car.""

AHA

The people who write this stuff must have fun juxtaposing quotes.

6/23/2010 8:58:32 PM

Quote :

"So, they have to hire investigators to find out who is sharing and downloading their content, then they have to hire lawyers to find you and file a lawsuit, and they are only entitled to $20? It doesnt work that way."

They don't have to pay for any of it as it has been shown time and time again that illegal downloading isn't having any negative effect to the bottom lines of the recording industry.

They do it because it pisses them off, not because it makes for good business.

6/23/2010 10:21:49 PM

Last time i checked, the content industry was FAR from hurting.

It makes no sense to criminalize a group over-represented by tweens and teens to satiate Big Content. There are other, better solutions.

6/23/2010 10:32:06 PM

The Big Content providers are also one of the few industries that is willing to go so far to criminalize and persecute their customers. It's pretty surprising to see them continuing to spend their time on lawsuits, instead of finding ways to bring their customers back. You'd think things like iTunes, the Amazon MP3 Store, and the like (read: easy to use, fast transfers, inexpensive pricing, a-la-carte choices) would teach them something.

6/23/2010 10:48:13 PM

Data is old, but digital has been a huge boon for them, in terms of unit sales (revenues were down as of 2006 still)
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/04/despite-revenue-slump-riaa-still-not-getting-the-big-picture.ars

MPAA companies have been having record revenues recently.

6/23/2010 10:56:39 PM

Quote :

"which allows the government to charge people who they think might be about to infringe with a civil offense"

That's some scary stuff there.

6/23/2010 11:07:38 PM

^ +1

6/23/2010 11:08:33 PM

Quote :

"The Big Content providers are also one of the few industries that is willing to go so far to criminalize and persecute their customers. It's pretty surprising to see them continuing to spend their time on lawsuits, instead of finding ways to bring their customers back. You'd think things like iTunes, the Amazon MP3 Store, and the like (read: easy to use, fast transfers, inexpensive pricing, a-la-carte choices) would teach them something."

That they should continue to go after pirates to encourage people to use the legal (and profitable for them) avenues for getting digital content?

Quote :

"Yeah, it is a physical thing, but it can be easily duplicated. You can take a CD, and copy onto a disc that you already own. It happened all the time when I was in middle school and high school. Someone buys a CD. You take the CD, rip the songs, burn your own CD, and give the CD back to your friend. Intellectual property comes into this because the record company essentially says, "hey, we're going to make these records, and put them onto CDs. However, if you replicate that configuration of digital information, we also own that." So, the idea here is that the record company actually owns the "song" - that is, the notes, chords, voices, and whatever else is on the recording. Copyright and patent laws like this tell you what you can do with your own property, which I don't think is right."

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Would you say that you should be able to copy and distribute Windows 7 to whomever you feel like? If it were "easy to duplicate" it would suddenly be ok? If we suddenly replaced mp3s with a container that authenticated with a server every time you tried to play it to make sure you're not putting it on multiple devices, it would cease to become ok to distribute it?

Ease of duplication has absolutely nothing to do with whether unique arrangement of bits in memory that has a particular use are things which can be owned. Without copyright laws, without EULAs that can be enforced, software has no value. Whether said software has built-in DRM or license key authentication is irrelevant.

6/23/2010 11:33:44 PM

Quote :

"That they should continue to go after pirates to encourage people to use the legal (and profitable for them) avenues for getting digital content?"

I'm just suggesting that if you make the legal methods as easy and simple as the piracy methods, you'd win a lot of customers. There are certainly some egregious examples of piracy occurring, and some folks could stand to be turned into examples. But mass lawsuits don't achieve that result.

6/23/2010 11:38:37 PM

Few things undermine my faith in the species like our response to digital abundance. The rational response to plenty is distribute it, not transform it into scarcity through coercion.

6/24/2010 12:58:33 AM

btw, the first 2 new futurama episodes are great!

6/24/2010 1:07:42 AM

The piracy defense used to be "The recording industry wouldn't let us download our music! We're more than willing to pay for songs if we didn't have to jump through so many hoops!"

Well, nowadays digital distribution abounds for music, film and software. Piracy hasn't abated, though.

6/24/2010 1:16:27 AM

Quote :

"Would you say that you should be able to copy and distribute Windows 7 to whomever you feel like? If it were "easy to duplicate" it would suddenly be ok?"

Sounds fine to me. People are already copying and distributing Windows operating systems at will. It's easy to do, and Microsoft isn't exactly "scraping by." Even if someone isn't paying for their product, they're still using it, which is better than them using the competition's product. It's the same for music. You would rather have someone listening to your band in their headphones, even if they didn't pay for it, because it's going to expand your fan base (user base, for an operating system), which is profitable in the long run.

In any case, the same principle (that Thomas Jefferson put forth in indy's post) holds true in the cases of software, music recordings, pharmaceuticals, and anything else that is "information" and not actual property. You lose nothing if someone illegally downloads your song. No property has been taken from you, only potential profit.

The argument against that seems to be that people will not compete if there are not obscene profit to be made. After all, no one would bother to research life saving drugs if they couldn't patent it and charge four thousand dollars for a thirty day supply. And, really, who would even pick up an instrument if there wasn't an expectation of one day owning a mansion? Isn't the devastating failure known as open source software further testament to that fact that allowing people to collaborate, communicate, and exchange ideas freely just doesn't work?

Quote :

"Ease of duplication has absolutely nothing to do with whether unique arrangement of bits in memory that has a particular use are things which can be owned. Without copyright laws, without EULAs that can be enforced, software has no value."

Companies can make their own efforts to keep software secure or ensure profitability. Software companies have had no problem making sure that a game which connects to the internet can't be played without purchasing the game. Sure, there are easy cracks for almost any single player PC game, but there are ways around that. No government intervention necessary.

Quote :

"Few things undermine my faith in the species like our response to digital abundance. The rational response to plenty is distribute it, not transform it into scarcity through coercion."

This.

Quote :

"Well, nowadays digital distribution abounds for music, film and software. Piracy hasn't abated, though."

And look what happened - progress stalled. It's like we've plateaued in all three of those categories. Oh...

[Edited on June 24, 2010 at 2:42 AM. Reason : ]

6/24/2010 2:41:06 AM

Quote :

"Sounds fine to me. People are already copying and distributing Windows operating systems at will. It's easy to do, and Microsoft isn't exactly "scraping by." Even if someone isn't paying for their product, they're still using it, which is better than them using the competition's product. It's the same for music. You would rather have someone listening to your band in their headphones, even if they didn't pay for it, because it's going to expand your fan base (user base, for an operating system), which is profitable in the long run."

Yes MS is making money because most people buy the software. But what if literally everyone downloaded a pirated version?

Pirates count on real customers to support their free rides. If MS didn't make any money on Windows 7 do you think there would be a Windows 8? Same goes for big budget movies and games.

6/24/2010 3:01:56 AM

Quote :

"I use to be on the side of the downloaders, because the industry was doing such a good job of holding up progress (being able to pay for a music file). But there are numerous methods for you to download these things now legally."

Wasn't there a study awhile back that showed that people who downloaded via torrent were more likely to buy music than people who don't? Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Anyway, my real question is, is there a way to legally download music that doesn't have a crapload of restrictions for where you can place said music once it's downloaded? I know when iTunes first came out they had all this ridiculous crap, like you could only play the file on the computer it was originally downloaded onto and your iPod, you were SOL if you bought a new computer.

Where I live currently the law basically says it's okay to download torrents for personal use so I haven't given it much thought, but since I'm returning to the US I should probably look into what services are now available

6/24/2010 4:39:57 AM

Quote :

"If MS didn't make any money on Windows 7 do you think there would be a Windows 8?"

Haha

6/24/2010 7:11:35 AM

Let me stress it again: fuck the knowledge pimps. Nothing more unethical than making your cut on unnecessary inefficiency in the scientific process.

6/24/2010 7:15:53 AM

Quote :

"Anyway, my real question is, is there a way to legally download music that doesn't have a crapload of restrictions for where you can place said music once it's downloaded?"

With Zune, any music that you download and listen to with ZunePass can be played on 3 devices. Any songs you purchase outside of that (and the 10 songs a month you get) you can play wherever. But you're still bound by law not to distribute them to other people.

Quote :

"Haha"

Useful and meaningful, thanks.

Quote :

"Let me stress it again: fuck the knowledge pimps. Nothing more unethical than making your cut on unnecessary inefficiency in the scientific process."

Musicians and commercial computer programmers aren't pioneers in the digital scientific process for humanity, they are craftsmen that want to sell their craft. Do you suggest that we should not let them sell things and even encourage this?

d357r0y3r, you're so anti-regulation it's silly. The argument is that people (and big scary corporations too) should have the right to sell something and not have you arbitrarily decide that that something should be free because you think that it should be.

Did you know that it would incredibly easy for thieves to wait till your family isn't in your house and steal all your shit? Would that be cool with you?

Quote :

"In any case, the same principle (that Thomas Jefferson put forth in indy's post) holds true in the cases of software, music recordings, pharmaceuticals, and anything else that is "information" and not actual property. You lose nothing if someone illegally downloads your song. No property has been taken from you, only potential profit."

I fundamentally disagree with you. Computer programs are things. They are not abstract concepts. Same goes with digital copies of songs. And pharmaceuticals, but I have no idea why you brought that up.

6/24/2010 7:59:56 AM

Further, you only say duplication of digital content is easy because of your years of practice manipulating digital files on computers. Any thief with as much familiarity with his craft would have just as much ease stealing your stuff.

But a more apt question would be this: If I had the means, the machinery and resources to make duplicating Ferraris "easy" for me, should I be able to do so, slap a Ferrari sticker on it and give it to all my friends?

6/24/2010 8:56:51 AM

^I was going to ask the same thing along the lines of "Should I be free to print and sell exact copies of any book I've read?"

What about an identity? Thats just an idea right? I should be able to masquerade as any person I choose because an identity is not a physical object.

[Edited on June 24, 2010 at 9:02 AM. Reason : .]

6/24/2010 9:00:49 AM

Quote :

"give it to all my friends?"

give yes, sell no.

6/24/2010 9:22:06 AM

Quote :

"Well, nowadays digital distribution abounds for music, film and software. Piracy hasn't abated, though."

And the content companies are making money hand over fist. The reality is that people ARE buying digital content. Before the industries embraced the digital world, digital content and piracy were basically synonymous because the pirates were the only people producing the digital content. These days, the majority of the consumer base legally consumes digital content, and piracy is more of a fringe issue.

As someone else stated, once it becomes more convenient to consume the content legally, the incentive for piracy becomes small, as does the number of pirates.

6/24/2010 9:52:17 AM

you can get music without drm legally from 100 different places and now there are like 20 free streaming radio services that tailor the content to the user. Music piracy is gone except for maybe concert bootlegs and spergs ripping vinyl to flac. Neither of which really matter.

Movies and tv are still a big pain in the ass to get legally because all the services are drm encumbered and they dont release as fast as the pirate groups do. You can setup utorrent to point to an rss feed of your favorite shows and when they're posted (usually 1-2 hours after airing) the client automatically downloads them. So its still easier to pirate those things rather than buy them online. Hulu and netflix are both doing a pretty good job of countering this, but hulu is still kind of shit when they dont release full seasons or wait too long to release new eps. Netflix is fucked by the content owners who only allow them access to items in their libraries that have already spent the time making the rounds of premium cable -> network tv -> reg cable.

Eventually they will wise up and we'll end up with a subscription and/or ad based service that lets us watch whatever we want when we want on whatever device we want. At that point piracy disapears.

6/24/2010 10:00:59 AM

Quote :

"The argument is that people (and big scary corporations too) should have the right to sell something and not have you arbitrarily decide that that something should be free because you think that it should be."

By "sell" you must mean "sell at a suitably high price." That's strange right to believe in. Nothing about the technical realities of the digital age prevent people from selling the content in question, they just might not get as much for it as they would like.

Quote :

"Did you know that it would incredibly easy for thieves to wait till your family isn't in your house and steal all your shit?"

It's get this straight. Stealing and copying are two profoundly different things. If I jack your bike, you can't ride it anymore. If I copy your book, we both get to read it. Pirates aren't stealing, they're flooding the market with cheaper stuff.

Quote :

"But a more apt question would be this: If I had the means, the machinery and resources to make duplicating Ferraris "easy" for me, should I be able to do so, slap a Ferrari sticker on it and give it to all my friends?"

I would hope you'd more ambitious than that will such technology at your disposal. Properly distributed abundance is good for everyone. Coerced scarcity benefits the very few.

6/24/2010 10:29:12 AM

Quote :

"As someone else stated, once it becomes more convenient to consume the content legally, the incentive for piracy becomes small, as does the number of pirates."

Totally agree Bobby. I used to pirate the shit outta games and music, when that was the only way I could get them digitally. Now for music I have my XM Inno, which can timeshift/record music and is an MP3 player, my Slacker, which will play whatever I want, and if I want to listen to one song, YouTube. It is so convenient that I rarely ever find the need to torrent/download a song illegally. I still have a gigantic mp3 collection, but most of that was collected during my Napster days at NCSU in 2000.

As for games, I used to torrent the shit out of them. Living in Bumfuck Eastern NC, my game store selection was limited, and nobody did them online. Now with Steam, I download 99% of my games, legally. I will gladly endure the download time if I can purchase my game without ever having to get up from my computer and drive 30 miles to go somewhere, or wait for several days to get it from Amazon/Newegg.

I never really torrent movies because they were usually pretty big. But TV shows I have downloaded before. That pretty much has been replaced with Hulu and Netflix DVDs and Watch Instantly.

To me the digital revolution wasn't nearly as much about money as it was about convenience. So while I rarely ever download illegally these days, I still think a lot of this thought policing shit in this bill are total bull. It won't really affect me, but I don't like the language in the bill and how it could be extended out to other things.

6/24/2010 11:32:01 AM

Content creators have to control their content in order to make money. By it's nature, control of the content must impose some kind of inconvenience on the customer.

Thus, piracy will ALWAYS be easier than legal acqusition. Its about time folks stop trying to justify it that way. It might have held some weight 10 years ago, but digital content is widely avaiable now. If that justification was sound, then piracy should have lessened as content became more widely available.

6/24/2010 11:32:22 AM

Okay, but why don't you mention what comes after that: the government should step in and force anyone that pirates software/music to pay would they would have paid if they bought it legitimately, despite the fact that the original creator was not harmed in any way, nor was anything actually taken from them. And, if they can't pay, they should go to jail.

Yeah, that's not so easy to justify either.

6/24/2010 11:58:11 AM

Quote :

"Content creators have to control their content in order to make money"

False.

6/24/2010 12:04:55 PM

^^If I clean your house and you fail to pay me, I think I am harmed. Content creation is a "Service". If you're talking about the legislation, then no - I don't necessarily agree with it.
^NUH UH, TRUE

6/24/2010 12:27:18 PM

what if you clean my house, and I do pay you, but then I have some technology that allows me to easily copy the cleanliness of my house onto my friend's house?

6/24/2010 12:35:56 PM

Considering "cleanliness" of your house was not what Lumex sold you, it was Lumex's act of cleaning your house.

6/24/2010 12:53:09 PM

Quote :

"Content creation is a "Service". ... NUH UH, TRUE"

Are you an idiot? Or do you not realize you answered your own question here?
One can sell the service of creating content, and release the content public domain.

(I'm not saying it's a lot of money, or could be used for everything, but simply that your above claim is false.)

6/24/2010 1:04:12 PM

Quote :

"Thus, piracy will ALWAYS be easier than legal acqusition."

Provably false. For most use cases of the shows on Hulu for example, piracy is more difficult. If you want to watch the latest episode of House, it is much easier to just go to hulu.com and click on the latest episode and start it streaming immediately than it is to go to a torrent tracker, search for house, wade through the false positives, the entire season collections and the torrents with no seeders, download the torrent and then watch the show. Especially in the case of instant gratification hulu is far and away the better experience and easier. This is especially true for non technical users.

Think about this for a moment, until very recently (the last 2 or 3 years), getting immediate digital content from legal and legitimate sources was more difficult for the non technical computer user (you know, the ones who can't even program their VCR/DVR) than getting it from illegal sources.

Quote :

" Its about time folks stop trying to justify it that way. It might have held some weight 10 years ago, but digital content is widely avaiable now. If that justification was sound, then piracy should have lessened as content became more widely available."

Where the hell are people getting the idea that piracy hasn't lessened as more (and less restricted) digital content has become more available? The only thing the content industries have been able to trot out is that revenues have fallen. That doesn't mean that piracy is hitting them hard, it means that their business model has changed. Media is not the cash cow it once was now that anyone with a few grand can produce products that are as good or better than the big media companies. They aren't losing money to pirates, they're losing money to their own crappy quality, crappy customers service and reduced value added. Compare an old album with art and liner notes to a digital download. No one is going to want to pay more (or even as much) for less.

6/24/2010 1:11:26 PM

^^No, you're just changing who owns the content. If you want to argue semantics, then I should have probably said "Content creators owners have to control their content in order to make money". Content is otherwise worthless, and wouldn't exist in the first place.

[Edited on June 24, 2010 at 1:14 PM. Reason : ^^]

6/24/2010 1:13:53 PM

IP theft is theft. plain and simple. just because its easy to copy o easy to transfer doesn't make it ok. copyright law exists to encourage people to create new ideas because it guarantees them some return on that investment.

for some things the length of time copyright is good fo is a little much, but its a good thing. It prevents stagnation by encouraging new ideas and those who are quick to adapt to changes.

6/24/2010 1:20:59 PM

content creation is only a worthwhile sevice when someone can own the created content. If the content cant be owned then there is no incentive to create the content in the first place.

6/24/2010 1:25:00 PM

Quote :

" Especially in the case of instant gratification hulu is far and away the better experience and easier. This is especially true for non technical users"

Thats your opinion, and clearly people in this thread differ on that point. There are also plenty of people who balk at hulu, and hulu is hardly representative of the whole of digital content delivery.

Quote :

"Where the hell are people getting the idea that piracy hasn't lessened as more (and less restricted) digital content has become more available? The only thing the content industries have been able to trot out is that revenues have fallen. That doesn't mean that piracy is hitting them hard, it means that their business model has changed."

What indicates that it has fallen? Torrents sites are getting more and more hits. Same with rapidshare. iTunes sales are falling even while MP3 devices selling.

6/24/2010 1:29:24 PM

From the consumer's standpoint:

$1+ per song on iTunes isn't exactly fair market value. And to pay $55 for a game on Steam and not even get a stand alone copy, is just bogus. Not many mainstream companies have done a good job in preventing piracy in the digital media industry. They've become reactive as opposed to proactive. The only people that will win those reactive battles are the lawyers and they're loving it.

There is one company that has dealt successfully with piracy. It's Netflix. They are able to provide plans from $5 to $30 per month, which pretty much fits anyone's budget. They provide hard copies and digital copies. At least, for now... we'll see what corporate greed and the shareholder's do to them in the future.

6/24/2010 1:48:09 PM

Quote :

"There are also plenty of people who balk at hulu, and hulu is hardly representative of the whole of digital content delivery."

Which is in part my point. The content industry has in general failed to make acquisition of digital media easier for their customers than the pirates have. But the solution is not wasting money trying to beat the pirates into submission (not going to happen) it's making new ways to access and consume the content that's easier than pirating.

Quote :

"Torrents sites are getting more and more hits. Same with rapidshare. iTunes sales are falling even while MP3 devices selling."

Citation needed. And it's also worth noting that iTunes sales fell immediately following the record companies finally getting their way and being able to have different prices, notably more expensive prices. And as anyone who slept through Econ 101 can tell you, as prices go up, demand goes down.

[Edited on June 24, 2010 at 1:59 PM. Reason : asdg]

6/24/2010 1:54:51 PM