I put this entirely at the fault of the movie industry. I'm happy to pay a subscription fee for a reliable service that lets me stream movies/shows. The issue is, none exist. For example, Netflix used to have an amazing selection before (I imagine) various licensing issues effectively crippled them.
With torrents, I'm able to find a vast selection of movies and shows that really aren't available anywhere else. Obscure cult classics, pre-Code movies, and so on. This really seems to be a power play by Hollywood executives that is more based in making profit for them than supporting creative artists.
Edit: it's interesting to see this get downvoted. I'm curious what peoples reasonings for downvoting it is.
This sentiment is amplified if you live outside of the United States. It is amazing how often you will try to watch a video online and see, "This content is not available outside the United States". It is amazing how difficult distributors and copyright holders make it to actually pay for and consume their content.
So people turn to alternative methods. Not because they can't afford it, but because it's often the only way that they can even access it.
As someone who recently bought the Firefly series on Blu-Ray a few weeks ago and attempted to play it on my Arch Linux setup it's very obvious why it gets pirated.
On the disc it said I'm not allowed to copy it or RIP it however they put a lot of effort into revoking any decryption key in the wild a free and open source player may use to play the content.
After about 6+ hours of trying to get the BD+ virtual machine to work on VLC i gave up and just torrent-ed the damn thing.
I own the discs and I could probably RIP them but it's so much easier to just torrent it.
DRM is a complete waste of time and the only reason they still insist on having it is so the can control where the content gets played and prevent free solutions from being able to play it.
They get to charge you for the content and the company making the players for the right to play Blu-Ray discs the cost ultimately being passed on to you again.
This while every damn social site out there is hammering you with ads and whatsnot about the show/movie/etc. If you make something in English these days, and perhaps put it online, you are going to hit a global audience. Long gone are the days of NTSC, PAL and SECAM segmenting the world.
Here's an example from a few years ago I still use. When the Harry Potter movie #6 came out, I wanted to watch movies 1-5 a few days prior. I already owned 1-4 on DVD, but needed #5. I could not find it. iTunes, Netflix, and other streaming services didn't have it. Stores were sold out. I did spend more time than I thought it deserved trying to find a way to pay for this content. Then I gave up and torrented it. The kicker? iTunes removed the movie about a week before this.
My other random perspective on torrenting/piracy is this: the industry will often use the price of the digital good * number of downloads as the figure for the loss of profits. However, this gives them way too much credit. They don't have the magic oracle or the distribution system to price each sale individually so as to extract the maximum amount of money from every buyer (Alice thinks the movie is worth $6.82 while Bob thinks it's worth $9.13). I argue that if there is a million downloads of a movie off a torrent site, that does not mean a million lost sales. I imagine it's closer to 0 than 1m. Basically, if most of the people downloading the movie couldn't get it for free, they simply wouldn't pick that particular movie.
Your two paragraphs contradict each other. Which is it - people torrenting would be happy to pay but can't get hold of it at any price, or just going for what's free?
Both are a problem. I believe people would be happy to pay a fair price for good service. Currently, the legitimate channels provide terrible service at a price point that's too high. Given the alternative (free via torrents), why would most people pay too high a price for terrible service?
1) Nobody cares about you, the customer. You are a number. You are one in millions. Nobody cares whether you can get the entertainment you want. The entertainment you want is going to be held hostage, and people as a whole will demonstrably pay the ransom. If you're in charge, there's no problem in sight.
2) Your job and bonuses are tied to keeping numbers high. The industry isn't in a catastrophic tailspin (yet), so the safe thing to do if you want to keep your job is to keep doing what worked before, which is hold tight to content and punish those who "steal" it. Business as usual, and it seems to be working.
3) The law around this is extremely complicated. You need a team of lawyers to navigate the minefield of licensing, and nobody wants to do anything too risky (see point #2). The wrong licensing deal can quickly ruin your multibillion dollar enterprise. Even if you wanted to create an awesome product like the one you propose, it would be a herculean effort to get everyone together for it. Not worth the risk, not worth the effort.
The solution seems simple until you look behind the curtains.
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
I'd also pay to be able to watch these offline and using FOSS software only. I really enjoyed netflix when I had it but I had to do some wonky work around to get it to work on Linux. Then eventually I got another Linux machine and didn't want to do the work around thus I stopped using it and eventually cancelled my subscription (thanks microsoft for helping me be more productive!).
The reason Netflix is tricky[0] to run on Linux is due to DRM in Silverlight, which is maintained by Microsoft.
Linux can run Silverlight applications in general using Moonlight. (Broadly speaking, Moonlight:Silverlight :: Mono:.NET). However, the DRM is not available on Linux, and was non-trivial to get working under Wine until November 2012, when someone finally published a straightforward way to patch Wine to run Netflix.
Nowadays, Netflix has also switched to using HTML5 DRM when possible, so it is possible to watch Netflix on Linux using Chrome (not Chromium). However, it's worth noting that many distributions ship Chromium instead of Chrome by default, as it is proprietary software. It is still not possible to watch Netflix on Firefox, as they have not yet implemented EME (HTML5's DRM). Because of the way HTML5's DRM works, there is no way to produce a fully FOSS browser that can watch Netflix; the DRM extensions have to be purchased uner a proprietary license.
OP's wish was to be able to access Netflix or a similar service while using only FOSS software. That is still not possible, and I don't see a way for it to become possible anytime in the near future, at least until the MPAA finally gives up DRM (the way the RIAA did).
I was just saying this to a friend yesterday. I would pay twice the price of Netflix to have all DVD-available movies streamable. Hell, I used to pay around 60 Euros a month to rent around one DVD a day, having all these movies available at a click is even more valuable to me.
However, the MPAA doesn't want my money. I'm not going to go buy a DVD player and go down to the store to rent a DVD with unskippable piracy warnings and only be able to watch it on the TV every time I half-fancy a movie. It's not even the price, it's just that the hassle isn't worth it. Therefore, the MPAA can suck it.
I feel completely morally justified in downloading a movie when the creator/distributor won't make it available to me, in the same way I think it's fine if someone from a country that doesn't support a payment system I use pirates my software.
This is something I find frustrating about the Netflix model. Charging me $8.00 a month is nothing. Add a premium plan for "power" users or people who just want to support a model that isn't their cable company. Charge us $19.99 a month or $24.99 a month or $29.99 a month. I will pay for it if it means better licensing deals, better service and more groundbreaking original content!
I don't think Neflix doesn't want this, I think it's the MPAA that would just not give them the movies to stream at all costs, or would just up and take the extra money for the same shitty service.
I don't believe the Netflix execs haven't thought of this.
Making profit does support creative artists as some of that money goes to them. As a business they want to maximize profits. Why shouldn't they go after sites that cause them to lose profit?
Why shouldn't they go after sites that cause them to lose profit?
You'll need to provide evidence that downloading actually leads to lower profits before anyone can tackle that question.
The hypothesis that "People who download content buy less because they're getting TV shows for free. If they couldn't download they'd buy instead." might sound fine, there are some problems with it.
* People might be spending 100% of their entertainment budget on TV shows already, so they couldn't buy any more if they stopped downloading. Stopping those downloads would lead to zero additional profit.
* People might be downloading everything regardless of what it is, including a hell of a lot of things they'd never buy (hoarding mentality). Stopping those downloads would lead to zero additional profit.
* People who download might be fanatical about the TV show, downloading shows to watch as early as possible. Stopping those downloads would lead have a negative impact on profit because those are the people who do the grass-roots evangelism that drives hype.
* People download because they believe the content has zero value. Without downloads they'd just watch something else. Stopping those downloads would lead to zero additional profit.
The question of whether downloading actually harms industry or not had not been answered.
> The question of whether downloading actually harms industry or not had not been answered.
This is kind of ridiculous. I think we all know that it hurts the industry. Only in your third scenario does downloading actually help the content producers. And you're leaving off two groups that hurt your case:
* people who would watch the show on TV but instead download
* people who would buy DVDs but instead download
Based on people I know who torrent, the second group is actually fairly large.
Your argument is like "people who go into a store and steal a DVD shouldn't get in trouble because they probably wouldn't have bought that DVD anyway." Which is clearly a ridiculous argument.
The "copyright infringement is theft" argument has been thoroughly debunked. It's not even remotely similar. Theft is depriving someone of property. No one is deprived of anything when you copy something, and downloads aren't property.
It's absolutely similar. It's getting something without paying for it. The "deprived of property" thing is kind of a red herring anyway, since the cost to make an additional DVD is close to nothing, and stores routinely dispose of unsold merchandise, often ordering more than they think they'll sell so there's no risk of selling out.
> Your argument is like "people who go into a store and steal a DVD shouldn't get in trouble because they probably wouldn't have bought that DVD anyway."
It's not quite the same as saying that. It's more like, "people who go into a store and steal a DVD shouldn't get in trouble because they probably wouldn't have bought that DVD anyway and the way they're stealing it means the store has exactly the same number of DVDs as it did before the theft."
The cost of producing the DVD is close to nothing. It's not like stealing a physically hard-to-produce object. You're paying for the IP.
DVDs don't operate in a scarcity model. Stealing a DVD really is almost equivalent to pirating a movie. The fact that the store is deprived of a physical item is pretty much irrelevant to the argument; they probably would have disposed of many unsold copies of the DVD anyway.
Let's say it doesn't have any affect on their profits... hell, lets say piracy makes everyone MORE money. Does it matter? Shouldn't content creators still have a right to say who gets their content for free?
Shouldn't content creators still have a right to say who gets their content for free?
Of course. But if they want to have that say then they should do whatever they can to protect their work. If they fail to protect their content and let someone upload it then that's their fault. It's not my place as a consumer to help them to protect their work by not downloading it. Morally speaking I have no duty to help the content creator.
* People are willing to pay for content, but there's no easy/practical way for them to do so. Without downloads, they just wouldn't watch the thing at all.
I suspect this is the most frequent camp, and it's the one I'm in. If you want to take my money, downloads are irrelevant, just allow Netflix to have better stuff.
I don't see that comment as saying they shouldn't go after these sites. I see it as saying that going after them is essentially futile as long as they ignore the demand that these sites satisfy. It's not shocking that an illegal service is the cheapest option, but it's absurd that it's the most convenient option in many cases.
They ask for piracy with they way they treat their paying customers.
If I buy an audiobook I don't want to have to register a device to play it on.
I don't want to have to look up account details and go online to register a new device before I can copy my stuff across.
These industries have tried to cripple the hardware that I purchase so it would refuse to copy one of their disks.
I want to be able to make back ups.
I want to be able to lend my property.
I want to be able to sell my property.
In the unlikely event that they manage to get rid of filesharing I can only imagine how hard they'll squeeze us for ever increasing amounts of loot.
The wonderful thing about being a consumer is that you have the right to purchase or refuse to purchase anything you want. If an audio book disallows you from reselling, don't buy the audio book. I disagree with invasive DRM but in no way does it justify piracy.
Preventing you from selling your property in this way is illegal in the eu I believe.
Does the risk of piracy justify drm if it infringes on my rights?
I'm happy to pay a subscription fee for a reliable service
This, a million times.
I have Amazon Prime, a NetFlix subscription and an AppleTV.
I'd have happily paid $5-$10 to watch 'Interstellar'. But none of these services offers it in my country. On BitTorrent it was just one click away, so I watched the BitTorrent version.
It goes like this for almost all new movies. I really don't understand why they don't want my money.
Most probably, this reasoning would have morally justifiable if the commodity is essential, say, medicinal or may be to lesser extent educational.
May be me, you and some others have the benefit of doubt that we will be good Samaritans, we won't resort to piracy unless the payable content is not available.
That really doesn't absolve tons of other people who abuse free content through piracy while having alternatives.
This. I pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime. In the UK, I can't watch Amazon Prime on my Roku because (apparently) Sky has a share large enough to stop Roku adding Amazon in favour of Sky's own movie service. I'm happy to pay, just make it easy and stick it all on one platform! This kind of thing really makes you appreciate how great Spotify is.
> I'm happy to pay a subscription fee for a reliable service that lets me stream movies/shows. The issue is, none exist. For example, Netflix used to have an amazing selection before (I imagine) various licensing issues effectively crippled them.
There's effectively two models:
* The Netflix model, where a large group of people effectively pool a small amount of money each month and buy a big batch of content. You end up paying for some things you don't care about, but you also probably get some stuff you do want for cheaper than you could get it by yourself.
* The iTunes model, where each person decides what content they want and pays for it directly. There are no bulk-discounts, so individual content pieces are more expensive.
Your argument seems to be that you want the unlimited content selection of the iTunes model, but you want to pay for it like the Netflix model.
Which is fine in the "I want a pony" sense, but seems to ignore economic reality.
Sounds like his argument is that he's willing to pay a larger amount of money for a subscription based service that has excellent selection. How does that ignore economic reality?
As someone who 1) works in the web/software industry and 2) actually paid for Photoshop, how do you (the collective you) see this playing out? Will we have this cat and mouse game ad infinium?
I see thing the opposite way from qeorge; I think that people are literally growing into piracy - for the younger generations, it's natural to have content available for downloading, so when they become old and get bigger say in the government (not just via democracy, but also via leadership positions), the copyright monopoly will loose its position and will be forced to withdraw.
For example, I'm 26 years old (so one of the younger generations), and I think it's absolutely immoral that copyright terms prevent me from using art that was produced more than 50 years ago. I strongly oppose any copyright term longer than 28 years; and I'm only open to one longer than 14 years if a strong economic (statistical) case for it can be made.
I think for some segment of the population it will continue forever. But I think most people grow out of piracy eventually.
In my experience, adults generally don't steal things, even if no one is going to catch them and even if they really want it. And consequently most people grow out of piracy. Not everyone of course, but enough for me to believe there's still a future in selling IP.
I think stealing is only part of it. A lot of it is actually availability: the mainstream industry simply can't or won't compete on availability and convenience, which explains why piracy is rampant.
If you could pay a fee and get whatever show/movie you wanted, whenever you wanted, without region restrictions, and in the original language, I think we would see a drastic reduction of piracy. Some people will download pirated movies just because, of course, but I think we would see a drastic reduction of piracy if paid content was just more convenient.
In other word, distributors need to shape up. Of course, it's easier to blame consumers and try to enforce stricter DRM instead of improving the quality of service...
Unfortunately, this argument doesn't get the attention it deserves. A clickhoster account can cost more than a Netflix account, yet people are willing to pay for it, even though they might not end up using it to its extent. In Europe many people would gladly pay to watch GoT when it's released. Customers don't care for marketing rights, they just want to watch the show when it's released.
I don't disagree that a lot of people would stop pirating if there was a legal alternative. However, in my experience, most adults will simply chose an alternative rather than resort to piracy (which is probably watching a different show, but it could also be simply not watching TV).
I'm in that camp, now. I'll just pick another show which is available on Hulu/Netflix/Amazon, or I'll play my Xbox, or I'll take a walk. Not a big deal.
My company has a pretty impressive black "market" for US/UK TV Shows, Movies and selected software. We also have a party-disc where everybody can upload their mp3 collections. Especially TV Shows are a run pretty much everywhere. My girlfriend shares Shows with her yoga group. They just switch USB sticks.
We grew out of Game sharing and porn. But who downloads porn illegally these days anyway...
This game is hardly cat and mouse. Pirate Bay went down and all the traffic went to Kickass, now Pirate Bay is back up and chugging before "they" can get Kickass down.
I bet Kickass is back up before the next one goes down, seems a bit more like Road Runner and Wile E Coyote.
If only I could look forward to a noip future. I guess in the same way "drugs r bad" and "piracy r bad" can lead to strong ethics and morals (freedom of property for the former, freedom of information for the later) they both have huge cultural slanders across them, architected or not.
What does it look like in a world where "piracy" won? I'm generally curious, do you think all software will just be "free" or people will charge drastically less for their software?
You're looking at it. It's this world. Piracy of everything is rampant and getting more and more widely accepted. When I pay for software, I don't do it because it's illegal to pirate or out of some moral obligation, I do it because money have to change hands for the economy to function. If it costs too much for me, I try to get it on a sale, or just pirate. I sleep very well at night.
I would support a world where IP is free for non-commercial use (so cinemas and corporations must still pay for movies/software they use, but home viewers/users don't need to), as well as 14 year default copyright term (as most economic value seems to be generated by then).
People are already charging drastically less for their software. Upgrading to the next version of Windows will actually be free! How likely would that be ten years ago?
That's why everyone is busy writing SaaS apps instead; they're harder to pirate.
I pay for photoshop now, but back when I was starting I couldn't afford it.
I wouldn't be able to have a job now, if I hadn't had used photoshop in its trial edition. Not even their education pricing was affordable for a student.
As long as there are large populations unable to afford there will be piracy.
Also pirated products are genuinely better - games can be modded, no activation. Tv shows are simultaneously released and so on ...
Of course we have some attempts at cloudwashing software, but I doubt they will be successful. The benefits of cloud are tiny compared to the freedom of having code run on hardware you control.
A download is rarely a lost sale - for us to count it as one (talking about games) you need to download it, install it and play trough it.
I know people with 5-6 TB of music on their drives. Or books - that is more that a person could consume, ever. So counting them as lost sales is absurd.
I have pirated a lot, but with steam available I both rebuilt my pirated catalog - their sales helped a lot, and rarely bother with piracy lately - my backlog is so big, that I can literally wait a couple of years for the game to come to 90% off.
It will play out like that until the internet is effectively balkanized and under full control and censorship. Otherwise the back and forth aspect is both politically beneficial for copyright holders and economically beneficial for those doing the shutdowns.
You lucky pal. You were actually able to legaly get the tools you need. I on the other hand have no legal way to pay for some of the TV shows I'm watching. Even if I wanted. And I want. I have a netflix subscription. But even netflix doens't have all the shows / movies.
So how will this play out? The companies will figure out, sooner or later, that if they provide a reasonable service then people will pay for it. Until then, TPB / bittorrent will remain the only source for a rather large group of people.
> I on the other hand have no legal way to pay for some of the TV shows I'm watching. Even if I wanted. And I want.
Devil's advocate: so? Why should anyone have to provide you with the entertainment that you want? Why shouldn't they be able to exercise their right to sell their product to whoever they want - and leave out whoever they don't want? What possible justification could there be for that level of entitlement? What moral justification could there be for saying: sell me your product, or I will take it? How far does this go with IP? If a web designer refuses to sell me their design, am I free to take it? At least with tools like Photoshop, you can claim you "need" it to do work and make a living. Nobody needs a TV show.
I pirate TV. Some of the shows I could (and do; I also have Netflix) get legally and some I couldn't, but the fact of the matter is nobody "owes" me their TV show and I could just not watch it. And I would just stop watching, if the cost of all the TV shows I wanted to watch ever exceeded $10/month and piracy was too difficult/risky. I'm not kidding myself, the reason I pirate is because it's both cheap and convenient.
Honestly I'd probably be better off not watching TV anyway. :)
That argument works only in defense, not in offense. Look:
A: Pirating is wrong!
B: But I have no alternatives
A: So what?
You are right, of course: so what? But if "so what?" is an option, then the entire discussion becomes:
A: Pirating is wrong!
B: So what?
B doesn't care about this discussion in the first place. A wants to make a point. That means you can't use "so what?".
This is what lultimouomo meant when he said "the excuse is weak, but the fault itself is also considered weak." [para]
Again, not saying I disagree. Of course; so what? But, in that case: people pirate. So what? You're the one making a point. If your point is just "it's illegal": everyone knows that already. So what?
If a web designer refuses to sell you their design, would it be wrong to take it anyway, if all you're going to do is look at it in private? I would have a tough time condemning that.
You're right that nobody owes us their TV show. But on the other hand, I don't see why we owe them assistance to enforce their wishes.
Don't you know, you're only allowed to engage in culture in your region that has been approved by those in power to carve up the regions into cultural zones. If you're trying to watch TV shows that haven't been released in your zone illegally, you're engaging in cultural warfare. Wait until the shows have been approved for your market by those who own the rights to the cultural artifacts being considered for distribution ..
>> "You were actually able to legaly get the tools you need. I on the other hand have no legal way to pay for some of the TV shows I'm watching."
I'm probably going to get down voted for this but when your excuse for piracy is you can't watch some TV shows your excuse is weak. Not being able to see those shows is going to have very little impact on your life. Certainly not enough of an impact to justify theft or copying without permission. TV shows are not a 'tool you need'.
I'm fortunately in a country where most stuff is available. There is still a lot that is not though and occasionally I may turn to piracy (until it is available at which stage I buy it). I don't try to justify this though as it is a poor justification for piracy.
But if I have two options: 1) Not watch a Movie/TV Show or 2) Pirate it (there's no option to buy it, which is true for most of the world besides the US), isn't piracy a "victimless" crime as in the producers of the content don't lose sales, because there was no way to do a sale in the first place?
Without meaning to single you out: message board nerds like us have a bad habit of writing as if this observation was a keen bit of insight about piracy, but it's in fact a classic economic problem: the problem of free-riders.
If you want to see it in action in a setting where we don't get derailed so easily by its implications, consider vaccination.
Third option: Wait until it's released in your region.
As long as TV-shows are broadcasted on television you can't expect all shows to be isntantly available in your region. Some will, somw won't, depending on distribution/broadcast agreements.
>> "isn't piracy a "victimless" crime as in the producers of the content don't lose sales"
I don't know. Maybe the creator didn't want people in a certain country to view the material. Maybe it hurts their feelings that it's being pirated. Maybe they have a release planned 6 months from now in a certain country and their sales will be down for that. There's no way to know for certain you won't be causing harm.
> There's no way to know for certain you won't be causing harm.
Harm must be proven to receive civil redress. Potential, unrealized harm is not actionable.
If your neighbor digs a bottomless pit in his backyard, and posts trespass warnings, you cannot sue to have him fill it because your kids might fall in. They would, after all, need to trespass in order to do that.
But you could tell your insurance adjuster, they could apply a risk premium to a policy, based on the presence of the hole, and you could sue your neighbor for that.
The argument against piracy is essentially a neighbor saying that 40 of their kids accidentally fell into the hole, except they also somehow lost all the birth certificates and forgot the kids' names. There's just no way that anyone can prove that sort of harm.
But if the content industry ever tried to take out an insurance policy for sales lost to piracy, that would be a reasoned, independent, and measurable assessment of their harm, and they couldn't make up those BS numbers about how many dozens of their non-existent children fell into the pit, lost forever, even to the public records and the memory of their parents.
As a copyright holder of my HN posts, it hurts my feelings seeing you criticize pirates. Please refrain from doing so as a condition of downloading my posts.
I've yet to hear a good argument against piracy that boils down to anything but "what if everyone did it" and "the creator won't like it".
I'm bracing for the downvotes here, but I really don't see copying for personal use as a negative. To me, it's illegal in the same way that violating traffic laws to keep up with the flow of traffic is illegal (technically, but (sufficiently small values of) nobody actually cares or is actually harmed by it).
Would love to see some arguments to the contrary that aren't straight out of the media cartel fallacies playbook :)
So is not coming to a full stop at red lights, driving 1 mile per hour over the speed limit, bringing lobsters under a certain length into the country, exposing government corruption, and many more questionable things.
Your point? Slavish adherence to the law makes you obedient, not noble.
Well, suppose that you do pay for something and the seller gets your money but never delivers you the goods. Consider your feelings, thoughs, or whatever as an argument for "why it's wrong"
In that case I'd certainly use the law to obtain redress, but to use the law as the basis of why something is wrong is completely backwards. We codify right and wrong into law, not the other way around.
True, but where did I use the law in my response to you? You wanted an argument for why it is wrong. I gave it to you. Anyway, I agree with you, but if this doesnt go two ways, it means there are laws that don't codify right or wrong. And even worse, laws that codify the opposite of our belief. Should we ignore those laws?
>Where did I say I wanted an argument for why it is wrong?
In your first response.
>Should we ignore those laws that codify the opposite of our beliefs? Many people would say yes. Many of our heroes are lionized for doing this.
First, this defeats the purpose of law. Everyone has their own beliefs. Imagine what would happen if everyone started selectively obeying the laws that are compatible with their beliefs. Believe me there is quite a diversity of belief systems out there.
Secondly, those many people that would say yes, should try to change the law instead of ignoring it. I can also accept a code of ethics that accepts ignoring the law, as long as it waives the rights given by law.
Imagine what would happen if everyone started selectively obeying the laws that are compatible with their beliefs.
Normal people and police do this every single day with usually little ill effect. Police are not obligated to pursue every instance of a violation they see, a person is in theory obligated to follow every applicable law, but in practice, they do not (and the sheer volume of law ensures that it's impossible anyways), and the world hasn't come crashing down.
The idea that ignoring wrong or inconvenient laws leads to social collapse rings quite hollow, in light of that.
If we treat all laws as equal because they are the law, then a person who drives over the speed limit has logically done just as bad as someone who kills another.
Can we agree that this suggestion is absurd on its face?
If we instead acknowledge that some laws are more important than others, the more difficult question has to be asked "what defines that importance?", which logically means that there are some laws that are not that important at all, who's violation has little to no negative societal impact. Like going a mile over the speed limit.
Or more to the point of this discussion, like downloading a movie from your favorite torrent site.
If morals drive laws and not the other way around, the moral consensus seems to be shifting towards the fact that copyright infringement is morally neutral, or at least not that bad, on the same level as going a mile over the speed limit. It's technically illegal, you could be made an example out of if someone really wants to, but the chances of that happening are all but nonexistent.
I agree. My point is that there is a separation between the morality value of the isolated action and the morality value of the action in the context of a law. If we disconnect those two, we have a potential problem caused by "metamorality": We give sound reasoning for anyone to disconnect them too. Who's to say that our moral laws are better or worse than others? Consensus? Then how do we establish the consensus? I think by creating laws. And if we see a great deviation from what we see as "right" or "wrong" and the law, we should then try to change the law. Law is the metalanguage of that consensus you are talking about. Without law, there still is a consensus, but you dont have any means of presenting it, thus rendering it invisible to those who don't see it. In other words, when someone with opposite moral values acts in direct conflict with yours, law is the only thing that gives you a way to prevent those actions. What else could you say to them? After all, they have their own consensus in their minds. And of course, they could choose to ignore the law. You see?
No. I mean it is written on a piece of paper and enforced by sometimes armed men to whom you implicitly grant authority to do, whenever you use the law to protect your own rights. That is the trade off in democracy: We have to obey laws we dont like or agree with, in order to be able to enjoy the benefits of those we do agree with
We have to obey laws we dont like or agree with, in order to be able to enjoy the benefits of those we do agree with
There is no such tradeoff - there is only the existence of the law and its enforcement. An unenforced or almost never enforced law need not exist and is treated as same.
I don't have to pretend to respect the copyright lobby to gain the benefits of not being murdered in my sleep.
I am sure the people who would murder you in your sleep can easily come up with a similar argument. For them, murdering someone is not as morally heavy as it is for you.
That's just it though - murder isn't wrong because it's illegal, it's illegal because it's wrong. As far as moral conundrums go, that one's pretty cut and dry.
Copyright infringement is a much more complicated calculus.
True, but the problem is that while we can agree on what is illegal, we cant agree on what is wrong. So we "sign" a contract called law, in order to establish some common ground. So when I see that the contract no longer suits me( and I do believe that this is the case indeed nowadays with many laws), I consider it unethical to just breach the terms of the contract instead of negotiating a change. I still want others to respect the contract even if it doesnt suit them, don't I?
The weak excuse suffices for many people because the fault is perceived as proportionally weak. You don't pay for watching things you are not allowed to pay for anyway.
Where's the harm?
We can argue if that perception is right, but I think this is the reasoning that justifies piracy in the eyes of many pirates.
>> "The excuse is often weak, but this does nothing to change human nature in the slightest."
True, I'm not sure why it annoys me so much. I would be much happier if people just said, "Sure, I pirate some stuff I don't need. There is no excuse for it but I do it anyway." The end result is the same.
He/she tries to excuse their piracy (it's not available in my country/can't access tools). This is an excuse lots of people use and seem to think it makes piracy ok. My point it that it doesn't. If you're pirating something just admit that there is no excuse - you can live without that episode of Game Of Thrones.
Historically, it seemed easier to set up a torrent website than seizing one. But if the authorities allow for faster take-downs I don't think mice will be able to reproduce.
When getting new software is as easy as finding a friend to hit "copy" > "paste", it will always be like this. Further, even when they make it difficult with keys and what not, there is almost always a way to break it. If that fails, there is always an alternative.
If we look at morals...
I always enjoyed the story in the bible where Jesus broke several loaves bread and a few fish and shared it with a massive crowd. No one cared about the poor fishermen or farmers. Why then is it morally objectionable to share software in the same manner?
In other words, unless people fine it morally reprehensible we will always have something like this going on.
To be fair, in the parable of the loaves and fishes, Jesus was providing the largest value added, not the farmers/bakers or fishermen, since only he was able to multiply those things; as the marginal producer of the wealth, it's not unreasonable to assign that property right to him.
Jesus didn't steal anything, he copied something that he originally had created, something that he had donated to the fishermen in the first place. He created (well, his father) the fish on the 5th (or 6th I dont remember) day of the creation, remember?
You mean something like little Johnny Gamedesigner who decides to break free and go independent after 10 years of AAA studio life? His first game is featured all over, but released to a 95% piracy rate. Pulling in barely $20k after 6 months of work his dev team quits. He tries to stick with it, developing things on his own, but large software projects take multiple disciplines and his projects suffer. Not able to stick by him in his defeats, his girlfriend leaves, takes his corgi. Less than two years later, when no developers are willing to bring Johnny on staff because he's now 36 and has been nuked, he goes homeless.
There will never be a parable that makes people care about piracy.
I'm not really sympathetic to this argument. I agree that people deserve to get paid for their work, but it's foolish to put one's head in the sand and pretend that we aren't surrounded by devices that make it effortless to push around sequences of bits. If your entire business model collapses under the weight of copy and paste, it's just not a very good business idea. Networked computers are ubiquitous and they're here to stay; authors, artists, and developers should take heed.
Of course, in actuality, piracy is demonstrably benign. Isn't it strange that in the age of digital piracy, indi-game developers are more successful than at any other time? Movie studios are making more money than ever before, HBO continues to completely destroy the likes of Netflix in profitability despite producing the most pirated TV-show of all time. The fact is: pirates are mostly people who've already paid or would never have paid anyway. I think we can all agree that piracy is ethically wrong, but I think it's also pretty clear that it's not very harmful.
We launched in 2009, and were feature by Apple over 9 times. While we wanted to monetize on episodic content IAP wasn't yet a possibility. The programers, who already had jobs, were dissuaded to continue and for sweat equity my options were 'nil. Kickstarter had literally just launched as a website, I'm not sure it would have mattered much for us back then.
All things aside, I blame no one, but I am finding it incredibly hard to get back into the industry proper, even with my incredibly established group of contacts.
No one deserves to be paid for their work in a creative field. In life we evolve or die. It just smarts when you're dying with over seventeen years experience.
If you can't profit off a business model then you picked the wrong business model.
Today there really is no excuse. If you are a game dev looking to break into the industry, you do need a lead - something good to show off what you can do - but really all you need is a demo of your capabilities, and with something like Unity you can get something out the door really quick. You just need to demonstrate competency. And you should probably give that one away.
Then if you actually intend to make a legitimate project, of scale, with huge developer costs et al, go kickstart it. If you don't have the finances to gamble on if or if not enough people will voluntarily give you an arbitrary amount of money effectively as a donation for making the game after the fact, find out if they are willing to give you a fraction of it beforehand. If not, your game would not have sold anyway.
And if you say something along the lines of "they have no audience, how can they kickstart?" then I ask you how they can sell their game in the first place, if they have no audience. For better or worse most digital media sales are not about quality or effort but are about publicity and consistency. Fundamentally piracy does not mean you would have or not had a succesful launch - the pirates are just users who mostly would not have paid at all, and you won't get an order of magnitude more sales from somehow making it so you cannot transmit data online freely anymore.
I agree with all you've said, but my independent charade started in 2009 - IAP was not yet a function of Apple libraries. Once better tools became available for us to monetize as originally planned, my team was already well dispersed.
The entire story of my independent career would take much longer to describe than is profitable for either of us.
Evolve or die, as it were, and since I'm not yet gone I am in yet another stage. One where I've whittled own the number of people, and disciplines, I need complete my endeavor.
That's not to say it's easy. Talent of a measurable worth is not always ready to go when you are.
Today, there are ways to get around this. You can kickstart a project - decide on how much money you want, ask for it, and if you don't get it, go do something else that people will pay you for.
Not that piracy is OK in my eyes, but failing to protect oneself from it is outright ridiculous.
There may be a parable that makes people care about piracy, but it won't be one that's based on the standard but absurd assumption that every pirated copy is a lost sale.
The U.S. Government has to walk a tightrope of taking down enough sites via DNS seizures to appease their RIAA and MPAA masters while not taking down so many sites that people wise up and switch to an alternate DNS scheme like OpenNIC.
Sure, you can even put the IPs on your hosts file. But 300bps was talking about the "people" in general switching to OpenNIC - and I think that it's unlikely enough that they'll do that, much less that they'll start tunneling their requests.
I used kickass torrents to download Microsoft Windows 8 ISO (after legally buying it from Microsoft, MS did not have the ISO anywhere for me to download, and I needed it for a VM)
Then yesterday I used kickass torrents to download Mac OS Mavericks, because Yosemite is a piece of shit but Apple doesn't make Mavericks available any more, and torrenting was the only way to downgrade my OS.
Just in case it comes up again, or the info helps anybody else: you can download old Mac OS X releases if you previously purchased from the App Store. They'll appear in the Purchased tab of the App Store, and you can download the installer from there. You can then dig into the installer and get at the .dmg.
It's excessively dumb that Apple makes it this hard, but it can be done.
Why don't we just pass around the IP address for cases like these? All it would take is a pastebin link with simple instructions to copy and paste the IP in. While yeah, most people will be scared by a big string of numbers at first, it shouldn't be too hard to explain that domain names are just shortcuts. Alternatively, the pastebin could include instructions for adding a rule in your hosts file for whatever domain you want to resolve to kickass.
Maybe, eventually, someday, the copyright police will get it through their heads that these actions are ultimately fruitless, if not entirely self-defeating.
As a leecher, whether TPB is a honeypot is irrelevant to you. Any adversary can get the same magnets somewhere else and monitor the swarm for all of your IPs anyway.
If TPB being a honeypot scares you about using it to find content, you shouldn't be using public torrents period.
What a terribly worded and inaccurate title. The size was not seized, only the domain "kickass.so". The site has multiple (tens) of domains (that are still accessible) such as kat.ph.
With torrents, I'm able to find a vast selection of movies and shows that really aren't available anywhere else. Obscure cult classics, pre-Code movies, and so on. This really seems to be a power play by Hollywood executives that is more based in making profit for them than supporting creative artists.
Edit: it's interesting to see this get downvoted. I'm curious what peoples reasonings for downvoting it is.