Pirate Bay co-founders lost

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Originally posted by visible_villain

How can you put a price tag on anything, actually ?

The whole idea is absurd ...

My point was not such that putting a price on something is the issue, but more that the artist earning a living through his art allows him/her to continue. Without that income, they have to give up and get a job. And we all know how much that sucks

Originally posted by Nickmare

The problem is...that is just a story. How do they know that it was the torrents that caused the company to fail? How do they know what their sales would have been without the illegal distribution?

Games with an online component are easily tracked, and developers know through retail how many units are actually sold. If you sell 1000 copies but have a million people playing online, you know something is up

Originally posted by v3_exceed

Your whole post

Thanks for reading.
..Ex

Nice reply, thanks for reading mine! I think the important thing to remember (I ran out of space to make this point) is that venues like Google at least have things like terms of use policies and do take action to remove material that is in violation of copyright. They may not get it all, but they try, and make a point of discouraging it. And for Google the links to sites that provide illegal material are an unfortunate side effect of the point of Google (i.e. listing websites). Although Pirate Bay may not themselves have hosted the material, unlike someone like Google, 100% of the purpose of their service was to provide or facilitate access to such material, knowingly, and to indirectly make a profit off that. That makes them an accomplice. To use another legal precedent as an illustration - if drugs are being sold at a nightclub, and the owners do nothing to stop it, they can still be shut down or prosecuted for not preventing illegal activity on their premises.

Originally posted by prestonberryworth

How about the game sucked and no one wanted to buy it? Maybe since the game was avaliable in torrent for free people decided to try it? Thus it was downloaded. With out knowing what game this was, it is hard to say. Honestly though, if piracy caused your "friends" game to fail then why aren't all PC games failing?

Why?

Because even with piracy good PC games still make a profit. PC games from steam and subscription models do even better.

Oh, the game was liked enough. Like I said, the stats from the online component confirmed that...and that's what demos are for - try before you buy

For big developers, like, say, EA, a certain loss to piracy is manageable and can be planned for. They may still suffer but the company continues on. But for small or independent developers, the same loss is more of a crippling blow, because they depend more wholly on the revenue to pay their staff and keep the company running (as was the case for my friend).

I firmly believe as in some of the other posts that there is a certain onus on the providers of any copyrighted material to embrace the age of digital distribution and come up with ways to give customers what they want whilst protecting their ownership without crippling the experience (i.e. as DRM and things like SecuROM do, which is why everyone hates them). But, there is also a case for the user to act more responsibly and not expect free stuff knowing that the material should not actually be free - an honor system used by the people who download a pirate copy and then buy the real thing after is good, but you'll never get the majority to be so honest.

But, as stated above, when you buy art of some sort you are buying the licence to use it, not the thing itself, and the licence is for your own personal use. The rights of ownership for the actual art involved are still with the copyright holder.

As bob dylan once wrote

"the times they are a changing"

and the Fat cat/rip the public off and screw the artists Music/film indistry needs to change with it!

I love the pirate bay! I use it every week, and I still buy CD's if there worth buying, Artists that have somthing to offer and not just an ugly crystal case with a slip in it,

you want ppl to pay for it, gimmie some artwork, somthing to hold in my hands and go WOW!
give me options, Free download or pay for delux physical editions,
with different price ranges, people will buy,

Trent Reznor has proved that.

I bought his top Package for $300 when he offerd the music for free download.
I got Art prints,vynal, multitracks of each track to edit/remix or do what I want with,
it was signd by him, and more.

give ppl reason to buy

I only listen/Buy Cd's to decent bands that have somthing to offer and arn't governd soly by there lables.

I dont buy crappy Manufactured rubbish that was soley created to sell "units"
and make loads of money for the industies and a little bit for the artist.

they say there loseing million? rubbish! there just not able to rip ppl off like there used to thats all!!!!!!!!!!


no no no!

I want to try to sanitise this thread, as technology is evolving our interaction with each other, namely twitter's, torrents and social media in general.

First and foremost the four big labels: Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony Music (Sony bought BMG) & Universal Music Group are the ones instigating all this 'theft' intonation', as they are threatened by empowered users being able to cut them out the loop.

This is good for consumers; it's not rocket science to understand that if i offered you an orange for either 10pence or for free, you'd choose the free version to see if you even like oranges.

You would then have a potential customer who may then wish to purchase a banana or apple which you could sell, or even better attach a sticky label to your fruits (of labour), advertising Joe Bloggs Ltd selling Smoothie makers.

Google have a dead cert biz model, namely offer everything for free and charge the business' who wish to advertise to the massive amount of eyeballs they have using their product(s). This will be more prevalent as their 'cloud' apps like gMail, gMaps, Android etc become more prevalent.

So going back to the artist feeling that they are due their slice of the pie, i completely agree. But, and this is where things need to change, DO NOT USE greedy labels to distribute your works.

Times are changing and Spotify, Last.fm and We7.com are definitely heading in the right direction. You offer music for free and get revenue from 3rd parties advertising...this is the future of free content.

A previous post mentioned a gaming company that went bust; well that's because they probably tried to charge in a competitive market. The online gaming community is huge and the future is with games like SoldierFront, AmericanArmy (developed by the government to get kids assimilated to war) and WarRock. They are all high spec games but are FREE. They get their money by allowing people to sign up as members and buy better weapons and exchange stuff with other members. For £30 per month, they are raking it in, but the customer importantly has that choice to try for free with no limitation, or upgrade by becoming a member.

So for torrents, if i was a musician, i would give away half my stuff to get the eyeballs (or ears) and link back from the torrent site for my other half of high quality mp3's, concert tickets, merchandise, etc. PirtaeBay gets 22million users per month; it's just a matter of statistics that if only 1-10% then visited your site to purchase extra stuff, then EVERYONE benefits.

In closing, here is BeepBeep's (a Dutch recording label) torrent link. They have had the balls to harness torrent technology!!! I just hope others understand that customers want things for free; it is up to you to decide how to monetise your business model.

reply to post by Daniem


This violates their freedom of speech. The website merely told people where they could download files. It did not host any files at all.

s

[edit on 17-4-2009 by finallianstallion]

Its theft no matter how much anyone says it isn't. When you have it effect you then you would understand. Just my .02.

I have followed the live streams that the Swedish Radio/TV-stations broadcasted during the negotiations in court. It was a true circus, and the only ones that seemed to show some kind of intelligence, were the prosecuted, their witnesses, lawyers etc. I had a couple of smiles during those 2 weeks.

The verdict that came today is just the beginning. This was the district court's verdict, where a number of members of the court are actually from the Swedish Government.

Swedish government went in and took the TPB's servers after receiving pressure from the U.S. government and the copyright industry. 3 Days after the raid, the piratebay was up and running with new servers in a few different countries so that no Swedish bought politician can put the servers down again.

Now, there is this verdict of guilty. The sentence - One year in prison and 30 million Swedish kronor (about 3,5 million $) in fines. But it's far from over. In the next trial, the court of appeal will have their thing to say on this matter. What ever happens there will still say nothing of the outcome. The third step is the supreme court.. that's where they make magic things, i hope.

It will probably take about 4-5 years before we know if they will be put in jail or not. Until all court proceedings are over, they will not sit in prison, and not pay any fines that I know of. This is how the Swedish judicial system works.

It's a big scandal. Tomorrow there will be a lot of protests against this circus. I hope much people will show up.


Sorry if my english ain't top notch.. I understand better than i write

[edit on 17-4-2009 by rihred0]

reply to post by rihred0


Do you know how long they will serve, as i understand it's a first offence and so will probably end up only doing 3 months with good behaviour?

Also, how many people on ATS have written confirmation for copyright to use images in their avatars?

Originally posted by PrisonerOfSociety

Times are changing and Spotify, Last.fm and We7.com are definitely heading in the right direction. You offer music for free and get revenue from 3rd parties advertising...this is the future of free content.

Definitely a good model, the users get free stuff and the copyright holders get paid through the advertising revenue. BUT...when you download the piece of music, you still only have the right to "personal use". It's just a shift in the source of revenue. Definitely a good model though.

A previous post mentioned a gaming company that went bust; well that's because they probably tried to charge in a competitive market. The online gaming community is huge and the future is with games like SoldierFront, AmericanArmy (developed by the government to get kids assimilated to war) and WarRock. They are all high spec games but are FREE. They get their money by allowing people to sign up as members and buy better weapons and exchange stuff with other members. For £30 per month, they are raking it in, but the customer importantly has that choice to try for free with no limitation, or upgrade by becoming a member.

The game was actually a normal, single-player boxed retail game with an online (free ) multiplayer component, like countless other games (i.e. not a subscription-based game like WoW). Their revenue came from sales of the game alone. And it was popular, because lots of people still play it, even today. Just not many actually paid for it.

Strangely, it is odd how the subscription model survives. Think about it: I could go to a store and pay, say, £45 for Halo 2 PC at launch, and still be playing it online today, total outlay £45. But if I join an online subscription game such as you mention (let's say at £30 a month) then I would have paid nothing for the game itself but in total £360 to play that game for only 12 months. Personally, I wouldn't pay £60 for a single video game, let alne £360. The only reason such models succeed is the lack of long-term fiscal vision of those playing, and the developers know it. To quote the phrase, "there's a sucker born every minute"

Of course, the whole issue of piracy in the videogame industry would dissappear 100% if streaming game services like OnLive ever become the mainstream

reply to post by dogsounds


Well, if the company went under and people are still playing the game, then the multiplayer component must not be server based or those people are playing it without multiplayer currently. I then wonder how they tracked these people.

It simply must have not been a game up to par with other games of the same genre.




[edit on 17-4-2009 by Nickmare]

If you sell 1000 copies but have a million people playing online, you know something is up.

Pretty much every game with an online component developed in this day and age has counter-measures built in to combat unauthorized play online from pirated copies.

Even only single player games are starting to follow suit with online checks built right in for checking authenticity, though these are much easier for pirates to circumvent. Game networks like steam and windows live, albeit unnecessary and cumbersome - also serve this purpose.

With game networks like steam - companies can distribute their games without the typical cost of publishing physical media. The reason piracy is so prevalent is because these reductions in production costs are not passed onto the consumer.

When these savings are passed onto the consumer - people are more likely to pay reasonable prices for games. For instance - steam had a 1/2 off sale on left 4 dead - everyone I know went and bought a legit copy of that game during the time it was on sale.

Did they make more money by the influx of customers they received from the sale - or lose money due to the fact they were only charging half price? Well, considering there's no cost for physical distribution, I'd bet they raked in quite a nice profit.

Artists who take advantage and embrace new distribution methods - instead of relying on middlemen who offer no constructive input and only serve to line their pockets with a portion of the artists money, will proceed with a strong business model for the future of their livelihood.

If you want to succeed in this day and age on "intellectual property" alone, you must be willing to change with technology and to excise inefficient distribution methods that only serve to profit off your hard work.

Strangely, it is odd how the subscription model survives. The only reason such models succeed is the lack of long-term fiscal vision of those playing, and the developers know it. To quote the phrase, "there's a sucker born every minute"

This is complete fallacy. The reason the subscription model survives is because the subscription model provides an endless game world with constant free updates, along with interaction with 1000's of people.

There are roughly 12 million subscribers to World of Warcraft. This is not some game where you play through the campaign for 40 hours and then you're left with little replay value. This is an expansive game world, where you never run out of things to do.

Your bias towards the genre shows your ignorance as to not only why subscription model games work and are so popular, but towards the ever changing distribution networks of media as well.

To get people to pay for something, you have to offer them something worth paying for.

The easiest way to get gamers to pay retail prices for games is to offer online gameplay that's continuously changing and new, and put measures in place to deny pirated copies access to that content, because that is something they can control.

Even world of warcraft, having 12 million subscribers and an endless game world still has a small population of private hacked servers - but the difference between them and official servers is consistent content updates and community, and that is enough to keep 12 million people paying their subscription, despite the availability of a free alternative.

People want to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves - and direct competition and interaction with thousands of people online accomplishes just that.

[edit on 17-4-2009 by djzombie]

Originally posted by djzombie

Your bias towards the genre shows your ignorance as to not only why subscription model games work and are so popular, but towards the ever changing distribution networks of media as well.

No bias here - I have spent many hours wandering through such subscription services myself and fully enjoyed it - it just got to the point where I felt the outlay was too significant and I couldn't justify it when I could get the same sense of community and excitement for a lot less elsewhere.

To get people to pay for something, you have to offer them something worth paying for.

Of course, that's common sense

The easiest way to get gamers to pay retail prices for games is to offer online gameplay that's continuously changing and new, and put measures in place to deny pirated copies access to that content, because that is something they can control.

Absolutely, and that's something that is a given in the MMORPG world, and is starting to become the norm for other genres.

Your point about the 40 hours of gameplay is slightly flawed in that you are comparing an online only game to a game that would have a single -player campaign only. In the basic sense you are correct, but you perhaps display your ignorance of gameplay types other than MMORPG - I was referring to online multiplayer gameplay, not campaign. A game that carried both a single-player campaign as well as a solid multiplayer experience, supported by occasional (charged) releases of map packs and gametypes, supported by the developer constantly taking an interest in the game community and carefully managing playlists and hopppers, and combined with perhaps the ability for user-created content could offer just as much enjoyment and variation for the user, and cost a lot less. Although the experience can be vastly different, the sense of community and enjoyment for a certain game can prove just as satisfying for the gamer without the great expense. But, to concede your point, very few developers currently provide that experience outside the MMORPG world, which is a shame - but they are starting to, and that's the main thing.

Sorry I didn't mean to attack you. I play quite a wide variety of games. FPS, RTS, MMO's.

What keeps me interested is that new and exciting content and interaction with people I've know and played online with for nearly 10 years now.

With FPS games, even their online components - rarely do you have any component of team work, and rarely do you play with same people unless you go out of your way to organize it. The only exception I've ever seen is battlefield 2 - the squad element and variation of classes and abilities really encouraged teamwork - something lacking most modern chaotic FPS games.

MMO's it's very easy to play with people you know and interact with them.

I pretty much said all I have to say above. Just didn't mean to seem hostile.

The most recent call of duty games had some of the most in depth multi player in recent years. As a testament to that - I bought call of duty 4.

I got in on the beta for world at war - and it was really just more of the same as far as multiplayer went. I felt its only redeeming quality was its campaign. I ended up downloading a pirated copy of world at war for its campaign, played through it and then deleted it. As the multi player felt like COD4 with different weapons and I already have COD4.

Once you get past the point where you can progress your multiplayer character any farther - it just becomes a stale how long can I avoid being enraged while maintaining a positive kill ratio.

If I get frustrated with something in an MMO - I have an immediate alternative inside the same game.

[edit on 17-4-2009 by djzombie]

Disagree that this is like Kazaa considering that the file transfer isn't quite as easy or even free...There are torrents that charge you and sites that provide files that charge but that is not the issue. The issue is technically the piratebay isn't 100% to blame here considering you need an outside party software installed on your computer to download the files properly...I.E. if you were to go to piratebay right now and download something without having a torrent downloader you would just get a bunch of files you couldnt open...

Technically the software is to blame as well for allowing the conversion of files. But at this point there is just too many different kids of torrent programs to bring to trial.

[edit on 4/17/2009 by AceOfAces]

"Property is theft." "... If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required . . . Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?..." —Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property?[I]

If 5% of the world's population enjoys 85% of it's wealth,
then how come they are surprised that we share files?
At least some of us know how to share!

Good luck TPB, you got 25 million users behind you.

reply to post by dogsounds


I can agree with most of what you are saying
but debate with me on this
those illegal downloads came from the same company putting the pirate bay owners in jail

they purposely allowed everything to leak on purpose

Pir ate Bay prosecution could spawn flurry of lawsuits

The verdict represents a step change in the law’s attitude to copyright infringement as the men were found guilty of providing a conduit for others to break the law, rather than breaching copyright themselves. Until yesterday prosecutors had only acted against sites, such as Napster, which hosted copyrighted material.

So I guess we can start locking up the politicans because they allowed the conduit for people to break laws every time they create a loophole in a bill they write. So put the cuffs on Senator Dodd for providing the conduit for all that money stolen from tax payers and given away as bonuses to the banks.

What a suprise that Blizzard Entertainment and Activison Blizzard are part of the prosecutors, they love to sue everyone.

Its all about greed, they broke no laws, nothing was hosted there, the companys have lost nothing from it, its just greed, greed and greed.

Full List:
* IFPI representing:
o Sony BMG Music Entertainment Sweden AB
o Universal Music AB
o Playground Music Scandinavia AB
o Bonnier Amigo Music Group AB
o EMI Music Sweden AB
o Warner Bros. Music Sweden AB
* Antipiratbyrån representing:
o Yellow Bird Films AB
o Nordisk Film
o Henrik Danstrup
* MAQS Law Firm Advokatbyrå KB representing:
o Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc
o MGM Pictures Inc
o Columbia Pictures Industries Inc
o 20th Century Fox Films Co
o Mars Media Beteiligungs GmbH & Co Filmproduktions
o Blizzard Entertainment Inc
o Sierra Entertainment Inc
o Activision Publishing Inc

What they are claiming damages for:
Feature films included in the case

* Kurt Wallander:
o Wallander - Den svaga punkten
o Wallander - Afrikanen
o Wallander – Mastermind
* Pusher III
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
* The Pink Panther
* Walk the Line

Television dramas included in the case

* Prison Break (first season) episodes 1 to 13.

Personal computer games included in the case

* Call of Duty 2
* Diablo II
* F.E.A.R.
* World of Warcraft

Source:
en.wikipedia.org...

I'm really annoyed with most peoples reactions to this news.

They were called the "PIRATE" bay and openly and arrogantly facilitated copyright theft.

If you want to download free stuff then download stuff that is free. There is plenty of it.

Art (be it film, music, sculpture etc.) costs money to create. Simple fact.

It used to be that if you were good at it you could call yourself an Artist and people would pay you to go on and create more art because what you do enriches their lives.

Whereas in this naive, short-sighted "information/data/art should be free" world, only "volunteers" would create art.

I don't want to live the remainder of my days being subjected to "public access" television and your brothers mates band on myspace.

If you like it , PAY for it. Please.



[edit on 17-4-2009 by Marek]