Ethics and Legality of Copyright and Online Distribution

Not really. Anonymous is a hacktivist group, and though they discuss copyright infringement a lot, it really isn't related to the topic.

It's still really goddamn frightening, though.

Can someone summarize the video? I'm at work.

In general, though, you gotta remember that Anonymous is not some white knight in shining armor. They're a bunch of kids looking for lulz who happen to have morals that occasionally align with yours, and the lulz that they make are basically large scale vandalism.

(vandalism is bad, btw)

edited 9th Mar '12 12:13:32 PM by ch00beh

@ch00b and math: both incorrect. Anonymous isn't a group, it's a tactic, and the entire point of the tactic is that "they can't arrest/find us all". A few Anons getting arrested is neither a surprise nor a big issue. Activists who used their real names have been getting arrested for years.

Meh, I just see the timing as a bit suspicious. I'm probably reading to far into it.

Lulzsec leader helped the police arrest 25 members of Anon, and Anonymous is now officially recognized as a terrorist organization, meaning those 25 people will be charged the same as a terrorist.

The way I always saw Anon is more as a group of highly organized trolls who occasionally publish sensitive documents that really shouldn't be in anyone's hands because it shows how much corporations and state have become synonymous in the U.S. Hell, the whole "copyright" debate boils down the entertainment industry's profit margins. Why does the state need to go in and ensure that these people make money when it's just because they fail to compete in an open market, especially when experts have already given them the best solution?

edited 9th Mar '12 12:40:27 PM by math792d

My point wasn't whether they are or are not a group. The point was that the members that participate in Anonymous are causing measurable amounts of property damage because they disagree with something, and that is generally not a good thing. It's essentially a scare tactic that goes "step in line with our thinking or we will shut you down."

It's like fighting nukes with molotov cocktails—everyone loses in the end.

Oh look, Valve's finally learned to count to three.

Yet more evidence that, shock horror, consumer friendliness is worth big bucks.

Well, one of the major reasons for Valve getting away with that model is that they already have an established base, too.

Obviously Valve have a huge first mover's advantage here, but they've managed to build up the momentum with that plus their exemplary customer service (which I've had the dubious pleasure of being on the recieving end of, I generally don't like it when things dun goof) and their seemingly genuine respect for their consumers. That's why stuff like Origin won't catch on as fast, people know what EA's like, and even if Origin could possibly become a rival to Steam in terms of, say, game prices, EA's shady reputation is still going to keep some people off of Origin.

edited 9th Mar '12 3:07:54 PM by math792d

Don't get me wrong, I think Steam is pretty much everything right in terms of distribution and a perfect case for how to combat piracy 'properly,' which is to say, by offering the product easily and providing a generally better service. It's just important to keep in mind that the free model is not sustainable until you have your first 10,000 users or so.

Obviously. That's the weakness of the business model, that it requires such large userbases in order to function properly. Though in that case it's up to the upcoming businesses to find a way to make the most of that model. Spotify kinda does that with its "Premium" model.

Speaking of business models and Spotify and piracy, I literally just got an ad on said service that basically went "Spotify provides music that's easy to get to, and it's free, and it gives money to the artists, so piracy is pretty dumb."

Does Spotify provide songs from video games?

I don't think it provides soundtracks, no. At least I haven't seen any.

It does have Miracle of Sound's library on it, which is baller, because I can't afford the album right now.

I've listened to Darren Korb, Jack Wall, Clint Mansell, and Nobuo Uematsu with Spotify. I'm not really a fan of any other game composers, so I can't say what else it has.

Off-topic for half a second: Darren Korb is an absolute genius. One of the few game composers where tracking down his lists of influences is -extremely- hard, even for someone who's had two years of genre training. Sure, there's the obvious slide guitar pseudo-Western and blues influence, but there's lots of other instruments and progressions in there as well that are genuinely intriguing.

I just got my Spotify account, and I've got to say that it works a lot better than I thought it would. It really is another good example of a service that works well.

I think I'll throw a question out in the ether, actually: If a multinational agreement like ACTA could be ratified into doing what ACTA was originally meant to do, homogenizing copyright law across the world, would you support it? A lot of streaming services etc. aren't available in Europe because of the fact that our copyright law works differently than in the U.S. Assuming that an ACTA-like agreement could be made to streamline the laws that prevent, say, Funimation from making their streaming services available in Europe, would you support that?

edited 10th Mar '12 3:38:33 PM by math792d

That's a very vague question, and I'd have to say the devil's in the details.

I'll try to be a bit more specific, then:

Assuming that we're eventually going to have a law that enforces some kind of control over the internet (which we'll have to because no "total freedom" frontier has ever lasted long), would you support it if it brought something consumer-friendly to the table, like a multinational streamlining of copyright law?

Pardon me if the question was unspecific, it's 1:27 AM here. I really ought to sleep.

edited 10th Mar '12 4:29:08 PM by math792d

Nah.

I'd rather support lawlessness of the internet, rather than globally piled efforts that single-out any location just because of being deemed unworthy to receive benefits. Sort of like how Pandora website and Adult Swim website are both USA only (as of some years ago)

edited 11th Mar '12 6:01:57 AM by Cassie

In order to support any sort of reform, here's what I want (as a minimum)

1. 1. Codification of Right of First Sale AND Fair Use. That is, that not only would it be legal to say, crack DVD encryption, any future technologies would have to be either unencrypted or decryption tools or information made publicly available. (So say companies can make ripping software)

2. 2. Consumer Globalization. Basically allow consumers to get digital content from wherever in the globe they are. If globalization is good for manufacturers and creators, then it's good for consumers as well.

3. 3. Restoration of the Public domain. A reduction in the length of copyright, or at the very least, divide copyright into commercial and non-commercial segments. One would have commercial copyright for a period of say 20 years, and non-commercial copyright would be like 10 years. So people could host say ROM sites for older games legally, but nobody could sell them for 20 years.

4. 4. Protection for Orphan works. If it can be proved that a work is no longer supported by the copyright holder, it moves into public domain.

And that's about it. And it would basically break EVERYTHING. There's no way it would ever pass. But this is the minimum that should be demanded from copyright "reform" from a consumer/citizen point of view.

Somewhat of a response to math's post about Valve making bank and going way back to that discussion on what it costs to make and distribute media, here's an interesting breakdown on money flow for a more 'average' successful indie game studio (aka not Mojang or Rovio)

This came to my attention because apparently, the studio is trying to break free from having to go through a publisher by using Kickstarter and just met the goal today while the deadline was Friday. It'll be interesting to see if just good ideas and passion can get enough financial momentum to continue self-publishing quality stuff.

edited 29th Mar '12 2:09:11 AM by ch00beh

time to break out the pitchforks again, everyone

You guys put yours away, I just keep mine next to the bed.

And then there's this...