Normie, i'm not involved in US politics, but you are probably right, the wrong people might be making the money here and i hear you on the slippery rope thing.

So, let's agree that whatever happens it needs to be sane and protect "the internet" from everything that SOPA potentially could break down.

2 questions there:
- do you consider digital piracy a problem?
- If yes, do we need to do someting about it? or is it just an artifact of time and age? and a prelude of a more sharing and caring / trade (a.k.a. money as depth)future?

quote:

Originally posted by Normie I hate dragging politics into a music board, but this is one subject that can do us all serious damage. First off, once upon a time, people in America got behind the TSA and thought it was a good idea. Today, the TSA is now used to police high school proms, private events and more. They are currently in talks with congress to FURTHER expand their 'authority". I HATE pirates and personally think they should be thrown in jail as if they had stolen a car or robbed a 7-11. But the LAST thing any of us want is SOPA giving police the authority it would. This is a 'slippery slope' with a pit of spikes at the bottom. Now, look at the people behind it, where their money comes from and the political party where MOST of that money goes to to buy what they want made law. Hint - It ain't Sara Palin or the Tea Party folks that people love claiming are 'anti-freedom'. Chris Dodd, of the MPAA, is not a Right winger. Look it up for yourselves. Perhaps people should have a much harder look as to who is really standing for what. The 'common knowledge' is far from what is happening out there.

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Hi Raphie,

I absolutely 100% feel that all piracy is a problem.

The problem with US law is that versions of it get 'adopted' by other countries. The US State Dept uses our laws as a hammer against others for foreign policy. Sometimes that can be a good thing (in the case of slavery/terrorism/Sudan scenarios) and sometimes it it a total disaster on a global scale. Our last batch wasn't too hot, but the current crop is insane.

First and foremost, Laws exist today that can be brought to bear on piracy that simply sit idle because the 'right people' do not profit from them. Hollywood can leverage SOPA laws to use as that hammer but they cannot profit from a simple 'possession of stolen goods' laws that 100% apply right now. So they spend millions pushing for a law that lets government act as their collection agency and enforcement squad.

Before new laws are 'needed,' current laws need to be enforced and if copyright holders value their IP, it it up to them to file the complaints/prosecute offenders individually or class action. The SOPA way makes criminals of you, me and the rest of us by default. That scares the hell out of me. And again, follow the money to see who REALLY 'profits'.

Companies like you tube already pull totally legit songs the RIAA FALSELY claims copyright over...when those songs are the 100% property of non-RIAA members. Same for Bars and music liscencing. SOPA style laws encourage/reinforce that kind of thing. It's just a nightmare every way you look at it.

quote:

Originally posted by Raphie Normie, i'm not involved in US politics, but you are probably right, the wrong people might be making the money here and i hear you on the slippery rope thing. So, let's agree that whatever happens it needs to be sane and protect "the internet" from everything that SOPA potentially could break down. 2 questions there: - do you consider digital piracy a problem? - If yes, do we need to do someting about it? or is it just an artifact of time and age? and a prelude of a more sharing and caring / trade (a.k.a. money as depth)future?

Edit: Our last batch of POLITICIANS wasn't so hot. The cirrent crop is insane.

quote:

Originally posted by Normie Hi Raphie, I absolutely 100% feel that all piracy is a problem. The problem with US law is that versions of it get 'adopted' by other countries. The US State Dept uses our laws as a hammer against others for foreign policy. Sometimes that can be a good thing (in the case of slavery/terrorism/Sudan scenarios) and sometimes it it a total disaster on a global scale. Our last batch wasn't too hot, but the current crop is insane. First and foremost, Laws exist today that can be brought to bear on piracy that simply sit idle because the 'right people' do not profit from them. Hollywood can leverage SOPA laws to use as that hammer but they cannot profit from a simple 'possession of stolen goods' laws that 100% apply right now. So they spend millions pushing for a law that lets government act as their collection agency and enforcement squad. Before new laws are 'needed,' current laws need to be enforced and if copyright holders value their IP, it it up to them to file the complaints/prosecute offenders individually or class action. The SOPA way makes criminals of you, me and the rest of us by default. That scares the hell out of me. And again, follow the money to see who REALLY 'profits'. Companies like you tube already pull totally legit songs the RIAA FALSELY claims copyright over...when those songs are the 100% property of non-RIAA members. Same for Bars and music liscencing. SOPA style laws encourage/reinforce that kind of thing. It's just a nightmare every way you look at it.

Ok, good point actually, the current laws are not really flawed or failing, it's just to much hassle for them to enforce. And you're right a blanket statement, just because they can't be asked to follow suit is not a good thing.

So more "example scare tactics" like MEGAupload then? get Rapidshare. Speedyshare, block Piratebay and warezloaded newsservers. And leave YouTube and Facebook alone.

I mean fact is, that the end user couldn't care less, they leech what they can, where they can, as long as they can and will not change behaviour
The ISP can't be asked too, and to be honest censoring/content filtering is not their job, they just need to make available whats there

I really think the parties who provide a platform, whether intentionally or as side effect, should be held responsible for ANYTHING that happens on their platform. If you're smart enough, as Facebook, to introduce 57 new social gestures, you should be smart enough to take care of your content, now software piracy is not really a problem on FB, but you get the point.

More responsibility with who facilitates and if you don't comply you get sanctioned where it hurts the most, being taken offline untill things are sorted.

I think saying that these platforms will cease to exist if all warez are gone, is exactly the purpose isn't it, if all traffic is intentionally warez focussed.

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Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

IMOFWIW, A lot of it comes down to the powers that be wanting to just eliminate the whole idea of PTP software that they can't easily monitor/control.

Any of the fileshare sites and others could very easily add a flag link for files thought to be warez. Autogenerate the IP/address of the offender and batch them to the respective authorities to investigate. Likewise, Filing false police reports is illegal and should be proscecuted. Give cops actual police work to do other than troll for jaywalking tickets.

Now since this is a volume issue, once enough complaints are filed, action can be taken. After a few actual pirates get busted and publicized, the problem will, out of fear of getting busted, greatly lessen and become more manageable by traditional police work.

As we discovered here on TA in the 60 page thread a few months back, there will always be people denying/excusing the 'crime' of piracy and making excuses for illegal activity. But in the real world, car thiefs and muggers don't follow the law either. Let them take the chance on arrest, jail, fines and a criminal record just like the Yobs and gang bangers.

They ARE criminals and should be treated as such by the law. But those of us being criminalized for our existence on the net is a completely ass-backwards way for authorities to go about it.

Under the above, NO SOPA style facisim needed and the MPAA/RIAA gets what they 'claim' they wanted all along. Less piracy. They just don't get paid extra for the privilege.

At it's core, we're talking about behavior modification on a grand/global scale. People can either choose to participate in a moral/legal/civil approach to online filesharing or pay the consequences. Because one way or another, a hammer of some sort will fall and I don't want to get hit when I didn't need to.

I think we're on the same page Normie,
and that's where the sanity part comes in.
The Goverment/law plays an eminent role is this. balancing acts and protecting civil rights/limiting collateral damage to harmless users.

I mean if they really want to follow through and it's REALLY considered a problem, they should go to war against China right? if you look at "critical mass"

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Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

Definitely.

If you could add up the value of software pirated outside of China and compare it to the value of it produced in China (just Windows products alone) it's easy to see where the worst of the problem actually lies.

But China won't 'play along' with antipiracy efforts because they reap billions annually, so the powers that be try these grandiose schemes to 'show they mean business" and target their own citizens while letting China slide so as not to 'rock the boat.'

As I say, I'm against piracy in any form, but you make a great point with China. THAT is the elephant in the room no one wants to upset.

Here in the US it's over trade/cheap crap and that applies to most countries as well. Then too, the USA gets rolled on the issue every time Iran threatens oil supply/nukes and China sides with them....we then cave in and 'drop the piracy issue' to get their cooperation.

Then the process repeats every time they tell our government to pound salt.

quote:

Originally posted by Normie Hi Raphie, I absolutely 100% feel that all piracy is a problem. The problem with US law is that versions of it get 'adopted' by other countries. The US State Dept uses our laws as a hammer against others for foreign policy. Sometimes that can be a good thing (in the case of slavery/terrorism/Sudan scenarios) and sometimes it it a total disaster on a global scale. Our last batch wasn't too hot, but the current crop is insane. First and foremost, Laws exist today that can be brought to bear on piracy that simply sit idle because the 'right people' do not profit from them. Hollywood can leverage SOPA laws to use as that hammer but they cannot profit from a simple 'possession of stolen goods' laws that 100% apply right now. So they spend millions pushing for a law that lets government act as their collection agency and enforcement squad. Before new laws are 'needed,' current laws need to be enforced and if copyright holders value their IP, it it up to them to file the complaints/prosecute offenders individually or class action. The SOPA way makes criminals of you, me and the rest of us by default. That scares the hell out of me. And again, follow the money to see who REALLY 'profits'. Companies like you tube already pull totally legit songs the RIAA FALSELY claims copyright over...when those songs are the 100% property of non-RIAA members. Same for Bars and music liscencing. SOPA style laws encourage/reinforce that kind of thing. It's just a nightmare every way you look at it.

Great post, as well as the following posts about china.

The fact is there are laws in place that can easily be used to control piracy facilitated by companies with US and even foreign assets - the Megaupload raid is proof of this.

And while were on that subject, I did a ton of research in the megaupload case and if the allegations are indeed true, then I'm glad it got taken down. I'm not referencing the user responsibility issue, but apparently the DOJ, have clear evidence that megaupload was not just encouraging users to upload illegal content, but even purposely duplicated the links to popular pirated material, and were paying other sites to drive traffic to their links, in an effort to increase megaupload ad revenues and subscription numbers. If that's true, then there's no way they should be allowed to operate.

But let's not get off topic here - the issues are SOPA and PIPA which are engineered for the wrong reasons, with the worst implications.

There's a strong point to say, that facebook, youtube, google, soundlcoud, employ a lot of people and pay a huge amount of taxes in to the US economy, and they would have been severely affected by SOPA and PIPA, to the point that thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue would have been lost and some argue more so than the losses incurred by piracy. These companies aren't interested nor is it their intention to make money off "pirating" material in the form of allowing users to share posts of vids/music, and any law if it ever comes will need to make that distinction and allow that freedom.

I say come up with a law that stops piracy for profit, not freedom of information.

Busta Rhymes Backs Megaupload


http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...criminals.shtml

Artists are using this to circumvent the labels to make money via downloads through megaupload.

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quote:

Originally posted by dj_alfi change your avatar for fucks sake.

quote:

Originally posted by Beatflux Busta Rhymes Backs Megaupload http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...criminals.shtml Artists are using this to circumvent the labels to make money via downloads through megaupload.

Yeah, but that's kind of fucked of them to do that. Sure, the artists make more money which I'm all for, and the labels fucked them on the deals, but don't sign a contract, take the marketing and PR support they provide, then cut them out of the deal on revenue. If you don't like it, don't sign in the first place - most of these people supporting it got massive advances against future record sales.

The biggest thing I'm taking from this whole debacle, is that the record industry model is completely dead in the traditional form and these giant media corporations are desperately trying to find a way to tax the air again.

Piracy will be killed or at least minimized by smart business, not the threat of jail terms - for instance, the whole reason people jumped on napster/mp3's is that they didn't want to pay $16 bucks for a CD with two good tracks on it. The labels also had this coming as they fucked both the artists and retailers on those sales (less than 10% of that $16 would go to each of those other parties and the label kept the rest for a CD that costs less than a dollar to make).

The itunes model is partial proof that if you make it affordable and easy to access, a large proportion people will buy it.

You're never going to completely eradicate piracy - what you can do is make piracy so difficult/buggy/low quality/hard to access/etc so that the cheap official version becomes a no brainer.

A great example of one industry stamping out 90% of piracy is the Cable/Satellite market: You used to be able to buy a box for less than $100 and download a free update file to unscramble the signal. The cable/satellite providers tried and failed to ban the equipment, and send out ECM's to knock out the files etc, but then decided to get smart and used a multi pronged business solution which worked: make an incredibly difficult (though not impossible) to crack encryption upgrade to the signal, then went after the few coders who were creating the files and gave them an ultimatum. They then lowered subscription rates (never been cheaper in the US) and raised the quality (most streams are now full HD & surround) and functions (tivo/HHD's etc) making the 3rd party boxes more expensive to buy even if you could crack it.

The result was that most people gave up and either got a subscription or switched to netflix etc.

The music industry needs to do the same. Spotify (etc) are a terrible solution for the artist and labels (and why I'll never use it) and so is the megaupload model as it works great for established major name artists but will not do much at all to promote new or unknown artists.

They need to come up with an easy and cheap way to distribute and promote music while making piracy difficult to access and low quality.

quote:

Originally posted by Beatflux Busta Rhymes Backs Megaupload http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...criminals.shtml Artists are using this to circumvent the labels to make money via downloads through megaupload.

Very interesting. I knew there had to be more behind it. It's not even about piracy anymore, it's about control, and greed. The record labels know they are in trouble when individuals can distribute their creative works for free, and still get paid. Independent movies could be distributed the same way. I think this is the real reason for Sopa/Pipa, control, piracy is just the excuse. They (the entertainment industry) want to completely corporatize the internet, thereby shutting down independent artist's ability to use alternate methods of distribution that gives them their fair share.

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