Ok, enough derail indulging.

I don't know that this really is a derail, honestly. The concept of a social contract is imperative to this topic, I think.

Yup. Let's get back to the why and how piracy has won and will keep winning.

It's imperative to many topics, and it's only tangentially related. Worth splitting, IMO. I'm just objecting to assuming the social contract as legitimate: There's not a consensus.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:12:17 PM by SavageHeathen

It's impossible to discuss what the law should be if the law itself is considered to be invalid.

If Savage doesn't agree with law, then he really has no place in the conversation.

And I say that with him being on my side!

Well, piracy isn't really winning because of anything on the part of the pirates. Once again, we opened the Pandora's Box. The pirates are just opportunists feeding off larger sociotechnological change...

Wrong.

This. I'd need to show that law has meaning to say that Piracy is wrong.

In that spirit, Savage, I assume you're familiar with Burning Man?

Edit: Actually, Savage is right. I'm starting a split topic.

Carry on with the piracy discussion.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:13:57 PM by TheEarthSheep

How so? In a world without the internet, there would be no particularly easy way of sharing things with others, and piracy, to the extent that it would exist, would be negligible at best.

It's the new technology that's caused the change, not any real action on the part of the pirates.

@Tomu:

• Not everyone thinks that law has an inherent moral value. Illegal=Unethical is a controversial statement.
• Not everyone thinks that all (or even most) laws should be actively enforced, (or enforced at all, when charges are unwisely pressed).
• Many people who believe certain laws are oppressive think obstructing their enforcement to be fair game.

People who don't give the law any inherent value may have valid input on what's the least harmful/most productive law to have and to what extent it should be enforced.

Let's get back to piracy, though.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:16:14 PM by SavageHeathen

You presented "just opportunists-"

Look, digital piracy exists because distribution is no longer a significantly relevant part of production, but it's still charged as if it is. But this isn't just pirates being "dirty opportunists." It's people realizing that being charged 50 bucks for 20 cents of plastic makes no sense. They simultaneously realize that someone somewhere down the line has to pay the fixed costs, and that's why people sometime suppress that revulsion over spending 50 bucks for 20 cents of plastic and buy games anyway. And how often they do that correlates directly with their levels of expendable income.

Congratulations, you've just won the thread.

How often some people buy games also directly correlates with how often developers they like (and want to keep pirating off) are in dire straits: They suddenly become very likely to buy a collector's edition of some earlier (and cheaper) game of theirs to throw'em some bucks.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:19:25 PM by SavageHeathen

Law has moral value, but as morality is basically relative, it's very difficult to argue that things that are lawful are also objectively good, and that those things that are unlawful are objectively evil (or at least immoral).

Anyhow, piracy is wrong under the current model, but the current model is faulty as it is, so the simple answer, for me, is to principally oppose piracy without really advocating doing much about it other than simply shifting models to obsolete piracy entirely...

Edit: @Tomu,

But that wasn't a relevant factor before, as there was no way of circumventing such a thing.

Now that there is the technology to do so—and mind you, the internet wasn't created for any kind of social benefit at all, so we can't even say pirates invented the idea—they are opportunistically exploiting it to get free stuff. No more, no less.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:20:16 PM by USAF713

Long story short, if Hollywood wants to get their movies sold, instead of pursuing shit like SOPA, they should pester congress to pass stimulus.

A thriving economy doesn't stop digital piracy-but it does actually increase sales of digital media, because it increases sales of all non-inferior goods.

What I hear is "Piracy is wrong not because it's wrong but because the model suggests that I need to think that piracy is wrong." Which is, actually, what I think is the best model-that people think it's wrong, even if it's not.

Personally, I just hope that Google and Microsoft opposing SOPA is enough big-money to stop that godforsaken piece of bile.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:21:41 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Meta discussion on law in the abstract is to be moved to the social contract thread that Earth Sheep just created. Let's leave it as is: Peope's meta beliefs on law are worthy of stating when disclosing the basis of our reasoning, but in-depth discussion of them is more productive elsewhere.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:21:48 PM by SavageHeathen

Spin-off made, if anyone is still interested.

Not really.

I already downloaded the thread on my Zune and am watching it now. Saved five bucks.

@Tomu: Just popping in to say: last time I checked, the main sponsor was a Republican (unless I'm very wrong on this).

Nah, I just checked too. That shocked me. I usually expect Democrats-LIKE OUR GOOD FRIEND JOESEPH MOTHER FUCKING BIDEN-to be in the pocket of Big Hollywood, but it seems this time, it's my old foes the Republicans once again.

That makes sense for it to be Republicans, though: Republicans love Big Business, Hollywood is part of Big Business, so it makes sense that Republicans listen a lot to Hollywood's demands.

It's actually the middle. It's one of the few bi-partisan issues there are. I think it's one of the few issues where corruption comes into play...on both sides...to be honest. Hal of the politicians are acting on behalf of big media, and the other half acting on behalf of big tech.

But as I've said before, the entitlement runs pretty strong. And I don't mean entitlement as a slur. It's that we actually do value culture in our society, and that it's something that should be shared to as many people as possible. Cultural products are not gadgets or doodads that are interchangeable, it's not, well, Lord of the Rings is too expensive, so I'll just buy Battlefield Earth instead. That's simply not the way we look at cultural goods. And that actually means that more people pay money to buy the product or see it in the theater, but it also means that people will go through alternative channels if they can't afford it. They'll get it out of the library, or buy it used or get a lend of it off a friend, or whatever. Or now, they'll just take the path of least resistance and download it. But the essential ethical concept remains the same. It's a big double edged sword.

And in most places, recreational money...where this comes from..is being squeezed by stagnant wages and rising essential costs. As well, different forms of culture occupy the same economic space, so more money spent on video games is less money spent on music, movies, whatever.

Hollywood is notorious for being on the Dems side though-though maybe I'm decades out of date-and Republicans are notorious for trying to take any Democratic backers down a peg. Though that may mostly be about unions...

Movies themselves are often more liberal, but I think the producers/owners are usually pretty conservative, because, as we all know, there are no such things as rich liberals.

Barring, y'know, prominent actors and the like.

Yeah, I don't know where that "prevailing wisdom" I'm spouting comes from, so I'd be happy for it to be false.

Oh, this thread is a thing.

I'll post this here. Just found out about this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-18614670

The guy who used to run surfthechannel.com was sentenced to ten years in jail by a British court.

Surfthechannel.com was a website that linked to others' uploads of TV shows through sites like Megavideo.

My apologies if this news has been mentioned already.

edited 10th Jul '12 8:23:45 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

This is one bullshit case. I never heard of the news before, but now that I do, I just find it incredibly jarring how FOR SOME REASON things that can never be sold as DVD-s and rerun in others' convenience, can be utterly 'protected' when it shouldn't. If the shows have tied-in ads saying Season 1 for sale, then I have no complaints

Problem is, live action serials never do. It's profit through ONLY advertisement, which has no relation to whether or not people DL them to watch them at their leisure / convenience