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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

It's not Piracy they're against, it's distribution for Independents they fear!

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"We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright."
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This is why we can never let these stupid idiots control our internet.
 
If this went through ...which i cant believe will by the way....what does it mean for the world ....... would the USA become a bubble......can Google move to another country and start a new net.....this is crazy i know but the hole thing is nuts sorry
 
This is very much tied in with the global economical system and its flaws. If SOPA and PIPA don't pass, there will be more of the same on its way. They're merely symptoms.

The real problem underneath is, that we're short of reaching a point (or probably are beyond it already) where profitability comes above everything else. Meaning law, moral, reason, even scientific fact.

There's no question that actual online piracy of copyright protected material is stealing. No one in their right mind doubts that. But corporations can not be put in charge of handling this! Corporations can, by their very nature, only act in favor of profit. Which is ok within the confinements of the market. But as soon as they're allowed to reach out into actual control of information and jurisdiction, we as human beings are super fucked.

That TED talk puts it very well.
 
Stephen Gentle said:
I think this is a massive oversimplification...

First of all, I'm not trying to say it's not wrong to download movies and things without being licensed to do so - because it is wrong. But calling it stealing is just in no way correct - there is no legal system in the world that classifies copyright infringement as theft, because they are very different things - theft is a very concrete concept where a person is deprived of a physical object of some value, which has an easily quantifiable loss. But with copyright infringement, the loss is extremely abstract and essentially impossible to quantify. Say somebody downloads a copy of a movie and watches it once, then disposes of the copy. The company who made the movie hasn't had a physical loss - their bank balance isn't any lower, nothing is missing from their office etc., but they may have lost a $12 movie ticket sale, or a $29 DVD purchase, or a $5 purchase when it was in the bargain bin, or a $2.99 iTunes rental, or perhaps the person just would have watched it at the house of a friend who already owns a copy. Or not watched it at all.

As I said, I'm not saying that makes downloading movies OK, but calling it theft is simply incorrect and to equate it morally with theft is questionable - because apart from the fact that somebody doesn't incur a physical loss, it isn't possible to say whether it is the same as taking a $29 DVD or watching their friend's DVD...

Best solution - find a way to give them what they want and to make them pay for it.
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Steve, Your post illustrates the mindset that is the problem: that somehow this illegal downloading is not theft. IT IS THEFT! And I humbly submit that your above argument is riddled with fallacies.

The movie company suffers a very tangible and quantifiable loss from an illegal download: the $X it should receive from a ticket sale or DVD rental. It is as morally reprehensible as any other type of theft, if one is to download a movie and then watch it for entertainment.
 
Stephen Gentle said:
The company who made the movie hasn't had a physical loss - their bank balance isn't any lower, nothing is missing from their office etc., but they may have lost a $12 movie ticket sale, or a $29 DVD purchase, or a $5 purchase when it was in the bargain bin, or a $2.99 iTunes rental, or perhaps the person just would have watched it at the house of a friend who already owns a copy. Or not watched it at all.
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You are contradicting yourself, Stephen. Lost sales are lost revenues and revenues are very real, physical losses. You do touch upon part of the problem though.

There is nothing at all wrong with sharing among friends, ie loaning a DVD or CD, or sharing a viewing together. When you make a new "friend" online however, one you have never met that lives halfway around the world, who copies his media and transfers that copy to you, then something very wrong is happening. Too many folks fail to make this distinction. Many people now use the word "friend" in a very loose way and some do so as a means of justification for their unlawful sharing. The sharing isn't so much the problem, it is the copying that is.
 
The movie company suffers a very tangible and quantifiable loss when you visit a friend and watch a movie they've bought: the $X it should receive from a ticket sale or DVD rental / purchase. It is as morally reprehensible as any other type of theft, if one is to download a movie and then watch it for entertainment.

Albert
 
Albert Armes said:
The movie company suffers a very tangible and quantifiable loss when you visit a friend and watch a movie they've bought: the $X it should receive from a ticket sale or DVD rental / purchase. It is as morally reprehensible as any other type of theft, if one is to download a movie and then watch it for entertainment.

Albert
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Are you serious? Do you really mean to say that it is reprehensible to go to a friend's house and watch a DVD together? I mean no offense but that is perposterous. Furthermore, I would stake a significant wager that if a study could be done to ascertain the net outcome of such sharing, that the result would be +sales. I can't tell you how many recordings I have bought as a result of a friend first playing theirs for me. Besides the radio and theater, that was the primary way that I experienced new media before the Internet existed.
 
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OptiTek said:
I think he's being sarcastic Scott:wink5:
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Haha... You must be right... I hope you're right... Even though that means I may have just made an ass of myself. :wink5:

Albert, is he right?

Michael Schrengohst said:
#SOPA Author Lamar Smith (R-TX) Breaks Copyright Law on His Own Website

http://www.burntorangereport.com/di...h-rtx-breaks-copyright-law-on-his-own-website
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That is classic.

"I do not see anywhere on the screen capture that you have provided that the image was attributed to the source (me)," DJ Schulte said. "So my conclusion would be that Lamar Smith's organization did improperly use my image. So according to the SOPA bill, should it pass, maybe I could petition the court to take action against www.texansforlamarsmith.com."

He could petition a court to intervene with the support of current legislation. We don't need SOPA to provide protection, as such protection already exists.
 
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Yes, a sarcastic response addressing Jim McKinney's comment. In the situation of borrowing a movie from a friend, or even going around their house to watch it, you have the exact same net result as if you'd downloaded a movie and watched it without paying. That net result is that you've watched a movie without paying. You have deprived the movie companies of a sale. The difference being that in the 1st case no copyright infringement has occurred, and in the 2nd case there was copyright infringement.

Albert
 
I think what I'm going to say will probably sound too radical, but its my 2 cents, and I would like to share. I think the key here is not piracy, but the value the content providers give to the costumer that would make them feel that an Original copy is worth more than the bootleg. For example, I buy my original blu-rays of the films I really liked. I buy it also because they come with extras, with making offs, behind the scenes. They usually are double disk editions. Pirated copies normally come Vanilla. This is a step in the right direction. I think the piracy situation in blu-rays, for example, is much smaller than on DVDs because of this. The value th product gives to the costumer. The same goes to Music CD's. The good bands, the successful ones still sell very well. First, because they are good and the audience likes it- second, because they normally come with a nice art book, fan club codes, etc. These are a step in the right direction. If you are giving exactly the same experience in the original non bootleg vs the bootleg, you do not provide added value to the consumer. And he gets the bootleg. I think also that for those that do not have the financial possibility to purchase films, they should be able to access them. Its culture, and I think everyone should have access to art and culture. How, this, I do not know. In China, for example, there are lots of bootlegs, but this actually helps to spread the Hollywood star system in China, the culture, and has definitely helped American businesses over there, as well as American films having a successful box office there. In third World countries, I see piracy as a way to allow the people access to different culture, to learn.

Back on topic: blocking sharing on the internet may actually have a counter effect to what content creators pretend: right now, the sharing of jokes of tv shows, of quotes, of film's key scenes, of music as well as the usage of copyrighted images an music in "personal" films are actually excellent promotions to the artists and the shows. By killing this free sharing people will simply stop accessing information for those scenes or music. This would mean less visibility for the artists, less visibility for the network or for the production companies show. It would probably close the current global scale of communication. And with that, also marketing and a global consumer market.

Lots to think about!
 
Jim McKinney said:
Steve, Your post illustrates the mindset that is the problem: that somehow this illegal downloading is not theft. IT IS THEFT! And I humbly submit that your above argument is riddled with fallacies.

The movie company suffers a very tangible and quantifiable loss from an illegal download: the $X it should receive from a ticket sale or DVD rental. It is as morally reprehensible as any other type of theft, if one is to download a movie and then watch it for entertainment.
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And now we're back to the overreaching Jack Valenti argument.
Why don't we just ban DVRs, VCRs, DVD recorders and any other means of recording? Why not just ban blank DVDs. Why not just ban hard drives? Why not just ban personal computers and the internet and be done with it? That's basically where SOPA and PIPA would take us- internet content would be subject to the whims of the government, with something as minimal as an anonymous accusation being enough to take down a site - forcing the owner/operator to hire lawyers at godknowswhat per hour to prove his innocence while his income has been effectively shut down because the site is no longer online - even if the site did nothing illegal. There used to be something in this country called due process and a person used to be considered innocent until proven guilty - something which both those bills completely ignore and treat as an inconvenience to entitled corporate profits.

The only way to equate downloading with tangible theft is if it's 100% guaranteed each time that the copyright owner incurred a loss - which can't be guaranteed because you can't assume the person who downloaded would have paid for it otherwise. The vast majority of downloaders are college students who have to choose carefully which movie they want to see on a weekend now that tickets are $15 each - so they pick the "must see in theaters" movies. The rest they download or borrow. I used to borrow movies on Betamax when I was younger. I never once thought of it as stealing. We used to have movie night, where the family came together to watch a rented movie - or even a borrowed movie. Sometimes my friends would rent a movie, then let me watch it the next day before returning it. Where do we draw the line? Currently, the line seems arbitrary. I'm not making the argument that downloading is legal or doesn't affect the industry, not at all, it isn't and it does - but it's really hard to blame downloading for losses when studios are raking in more money than ever (and before anyone mentions the boxoffice slump of 2011, keep in mind it had the trifecta of dramatically higher ticket prices, a downed economy and a bazillion remakes and sequels few people wanted to see.)

Copyright was created to encourage creativity - to ensure that the artist could earn a living in order to create more art. That was its original purpose. The intent of copyright law was never to fund corporations in perpetuity like Disney. Mickey Mouse would be in the public domain by now if it wasn't for Disney lobbying congress to extend copyright over and over. So copyright law has changed - and is now set up to protect corporate profits above creativity. Disney hasn't exactly been putting out a lot of new classic characters in recent years - excluding the company they bought a share in, Pixar. So one has to wonder if it was worth it and whether or not it shouldn't be taken back to what it used to be - a way to encourage creativity.
 
For anyone who wants a thoughtful and somewhat extensive discussion on the weaknesses and overreach in modern copyright law, I recommend Lawrence Lessig. Loosely speaking, "stealing" by downloading without paying may be "stealing" but it is very different than the traditional definition, and the differences are important.
 
Jim McKinney said:
...
The movie company suffers a very tangible and quantifiable loss from an illegal download: the $X it should receive from a ticket sale or DVD rental.

...
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Well, the movie company may suffer a loss but it is never obvious, nor easily quantifiable. In fact, there are cases where "illegal" downloading have proven to be a net benefit to the copyright owner. I think the sarcastic example of borrowing a friend's DVD and watching it with others is as good an example as any as to how the "stealing" argument is both overreaching and difficult to define or quantify. In other words... it's complicated. :smiley:
 
Jim McKinney said:
Steve, Your post illustrates the mindset that is the problem: that somehow this illegal downloading is not theft. IT IS THEFT! And I humbly submit that your above argument is riddled with fallacies.

The movie company suffers a very tangible and quantifiable loss from an illegal download: the $X it should receive from a ticket sale or DVD rental. It is as morally reprehensible as any other type of theft, if one is to download a movie and then watch it for entertainment.
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It might be morally reprehensible, but it's not theft.

"theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft
^ "Theft". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved October 12, 2011.
^ "Theft". legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com. Retrieved October 12, 2011.


From the Canadian Criminal Code
"322. (1) Every one commits theft who fraudulently and without colour of right takes, or fraudulently and without colour of right converts to his use or to the use of another person, anything, whether animate or inanimate, with intent

(a) to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it;

(b) to pledge it or deposit it as security;

(c) to part with it under a condition with respect to its return that the person who parts with it may be unable to perform; or

(d) to deal with it in such a manner that it cannot be restored in the condition in which it was at the time it was taken or converted."
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Albert Armes said:
Yes, a sarcastic response addressing Jim McKinney's comment. In the situation of borrowing a movie from a friend, or even going around their house to watch it, you have the exact same net result as if you'd downloaded a movie and watched it without paying. That net result is that you've watched a movie without paying. You have deprived the movie companies of a sale. The difference being that in the 1st case no copyright infringement has occurred, and in the 2nd case there was copyright infringement.

Albert
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I feel you might be putting words into my mouth. I never addressed the issue of what happens to a DVD once it is bought. My point was in response to the false assertion that downloading (without paying anything), does not deprive the copywrite holder of a ticket sale or rental. It indeed does deprive the artist/producer in a very real and quantifiable way. It seems like there is an awful lot of hair-splitting and rationalization to justify this theft. I don't want to sound self-righteous, but when such a bizarre assertion is made, I feel compelled to call it what it is.

(And yes, if you look up the definition of over-reaching, there's an illustration of an IP attorney right next to it!)
 
Colin Sheldon said:
It might be morally reprehensible, but it's not theft.
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Colin, I feel this is splitting hairs - whether in Canada or anywhere else. I'm also curious as to when Wikipedia became the final word on the law. But just going by that definition, isn't the internet downloader depriving the producer of the fee that is owed to him or her? In that case it is still theft.

Or to put it another way, a producer who hires me to work for a day, and then never pays me - are you saying he is not a thief? I would say he is a Thief.
 
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