Digital Piracy

What they can do is use its reliability and ease of use to make another bid towards convincing Washington that piracy is out of hand and the internet needs strict regulations.

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Yes, they can really fuck over our rights. They'd rather do that than compete. Witness Comcast-Time Warner, how they treat Netflix and You Tube on their systems, etc.

Piracy is not a right. The Constitution does not promise you a right to steal whatever you want. Theft is, in fact, a crime.

edited 12th Mar '14 9:42:45 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

But copy isn't unless you're trying to pass it as the original.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Actually, it is. Even as far back as the days of VHS tapes, videos began with an FBI warning that unauthorized copy and/or distribution of the contents is a federal crime. It's a warning we frequently ignored, but it was always there.

This is typically the first thing you see when you watch a movie that's been obtained legally. That's why they call it copyright. Among other things, it is the legal right to copy held only by the holder of the copyright.

edited 12th Mar '14 10:02:53 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I find it depressing that this thread has gone on for twentysome pages and yet, the conversation doesn't seem to have progressed one bit. Philosophical arguing about what digital piracy is or isn't, and what crimes it can or should most closely be compared to. I have never seen that type of discourse go anywhere productive.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

By fuck over our rights, I meant passing restrictive laws that limit the internet in general.

Anyway, I'd rather the discussion turn towards things like what effect Popcorn Time will have.

The internet is not a right either.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

But both freedom of association and freedom of the press are, and restrictions to internet service directly impact those rights. However, I'm rather pessimistic when it comes to trusting the courts to tell corporations to stop trampling our rights.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

There's also the fact that the internet isn't purely American. Putting restrictions on the internet from the US will impact people all over the world.

Not Three Laws compliant.

Um, I thought we couldn't have threads on piracy anymore? Last I checked...

Hmm, yep, the rules still say that.

Not really, no.

That's the First Amendment, which promises the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble. The right of association has been ruled to be a part of this Amendment as well, but the right of association pertains to people's right to enter into and be involved in personal relationships with others, in small or large quantities. Websites like The Pirate Bay or Popcorn Time exist for the specific purpose of committing a felony, and the First Amendment does not protect them any more than it would a gang's right to commit larceny.

Determining how to crack down on the increasing rate of felonies committed online without compromising the First Amendment in the process is what makes determining how to regulate the internet - and, in fact, whether or not it's even worth doing - such a difficult discussion. Copping an attitude like the government can't touch us, flaunting our felonies where everyone can see, and screaming, "My rights! My rights!" as if internet piracy were actually a Constitutionally-protected right is not helping our case, and only serves to lift us higher and higher on the priorities list. When Washington does finally get fed up and start taking the internet debate seriously, it's going to be because of shit like this.

Rest assured, it's not holy reverence for the sacred torrent that has kept Washington from cracking down yet. We're just not worth the effort yet. That will change if we keep finding more and more brazen ways to mock the laws the internet continuously insists on breaking.

Not moreso than putting restrictions on the internet from China. They've been doing that for a long time now. I strongly doubt, "Americans can't access Popcorn Time!" will cause much of an international furor.

edited 12th Mar '14 12:38:13 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I didn't know of the "justifications for piracy" rule, but this thread already existed and I bumped it. Also, I didn't intend to justify piracy, but instead bring up how it influences the industry... though the discussion could easily drift in that direction.

But "OMG Piracy!" is and has been used as a justification to pull down Fair Use things such as AMV Hell and OC Remix. And because it's corporations rather than the government doing so, nothing appears to be happening to stop it. (There's also the question of whether or not it should be a felony at all, which TBH in comparison to literally any violent crime, embezzlement, espionage, and similar felonies, I'm having a very hard time accepting that copying a song should have a harsher fine than jaywalking or speeding.)

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Crime or not, piracy is most absolutely not theft.

For what it's worth, the courts still seem to be more sane than the legislature.

Join my forum game!

Specifically, corporations threatening lawsuits based on a perceived infringement of copyright has resulted in the pulling down of Fair Use things like AMV Hell and OC Remix, due to their creators' quite understandable pessimism about their ability to defeat highly-paid corporate lawyers in a courtroom. Here is the official United States policy on Fair Use.

Other groups, such as Team Four Star, have also faced corporate pressure over copyright. This is a separate issue from the matter of digital piracy, as Fair Use groups are, by definition, Fair Use. Piracy is not protected by Fair Use in any conceivable way, as it is the act of creating new copies and distributing them without the consent or reimbursement of the copyright holder, which is an explicit violation of copyright law.

That the record industry is lawsuit-happy over Fair Use groups, and that piracy persists in large quantity, are separate issues. One does not excuse the other.

As far as the severity of the penalty, every copy unlawfully created deprives the artist of compensation for all of the work that went into the act of creation in the first place. You will never see the victim of the crime, but there is a victim still. It is a crime that is harmful to another human being.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Well, I don't condone piracy. But obviously, we didn't create IP laws because of absolute moral principles, and that's not why we have them. It's because of their utility to society, not obeisance to some pseudo-divine commandment.

Specifically, we have them to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

BTW, of course piracy is illegal, but that's pretty meaningless to mention when we're talking about whether the laws are any good to begin with.

But anyway, my concern with piracy is less that people aren't getting as much profit as they could, and more that many creators' livelihoods are hurt by it. I'm not really too concerned about JK Rowling, for instance.

But as is, I don't think piracy is going to go away. So I'm not really sure what could be done to solve that issue. My tentative idea would be Socialist Party USA's, "guaranteed incomes and grants for artists and performers". But I'm not really sure how that could be implemented.

The big thing about piracy, is that much of it is a service issue. There'll be pirates who don't pay for anything ever, sure, but the vast majority of people do it because they consider existing legal means to be too inconvenient for their tastes. Valve recognized this when looking at piracy in certain regions of Europe, especially Russia, and made the effort to make their games accessible to those markets, and now Russia is their biggest European market.

Another example: Game of Thrones. The Oatmeal pretty much summarizes it, but this is especially true for my fellow Aussies, who have even less options, no wonder my countrymen pirated that show so much. And, speaking of which, we don't have Netflix down here, and we're using VPNs to get around geoblocking, which has caused local broadcasters and Netflix competitors to flip out and claim that it's 'piracy' despite the fact that people are still paying for the content. Quite frankly, that's not Netflix's problem to solve, if people in Australia want to pay for Netflix and are getting around the geoblocking to do so, that says more about how inferior its competitor's service and offerings are compared to it than anything else.

Besides, the "damage" of piracy is, more often than not, severely exaggerated.

Some of the services aren't very good in Canada either. Netflix is severely cut down, and Hulu doesn't work at all. (Ostensibly it's because different companies have the distribution rights in Canada, but that's no excuse for stuff like anime streaming, because the localization companies have the rights for all North America.) If something is put on hulu, everyone in Canada is stuck not being able to watch it without grey area methods at best.

I suppose there's Crackle, and the Cineplex corporation has their own thing, but Crackle kind of sucks and Cineplex's thing has regional restrictions, within Canada.

edited 13th Mar '14 8:11:28 AM by Zendervai

Not Three Laws compliant.

This is why distribution rights based on region are an outdated concept in the digital age. Hell, the very idea of multiple rightsholders over a single IP is inherently problematic, just look at the clusterfuck over Macross, just Harmony Gold being a great big bag of dicks is ridiculous by itself, but holy crap.

edited 13th Mar '14 6:40:27 PM by Cronosonic

Remember when SOPA died in Congress? Apparently, people are trying to bring it back, but by dodging Congress entirely.

EDIT:Had to shorten the URL, or else the link would think it has a space in it.

edited 16th Mar '14 4:29:08 PM by DragonGeyser

Lampshade Hanging: It's a lifestyle.

Article gone. :/ It's now at http://www.geek.com/news/sopa-may-be-returning-in-a-much-sneakier-worse-fashion-1588066/

In-depth here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140313/17470826574/rebranding-sopa-now-called-notice-staydown.shtml

This is scary, and pisses me off. Companies really will just try and try and try again. If at first you don't succeed, create something even worse. Scum.

edited 16th Mar '14 4:07:33 PM by BonsaiForest

People, SOPA is NOT coming back. This is fake. I had a feeling it was given how absurdbly poorly made the "petition" to "stop" it was.

Found this on another thread about "SOPA 2014"

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Damn. dA blocked at work. What's it say?