PIRACY - Should not be a crime... here is why:

reply to post by byteshertz


You know in my case...I love music....so someone will send me a song of something...and I will like it so much that I will buy a couple songs from that band and sometimes eventually every single album the band made....otherwise I would have remained never knowing who the band was. I have a feeling that is not the case all around but there is some good to it.

Maybe the laws could be tweaked a bit.

Piracy laws are being used to censor the internet. Please look into the Protect IP Act 2011 and the Stop Online Piracy Act

This web page has a short video that helps explain the dangers and concerns regarding these two bills.

This is important - You should know about it



There are also two online petitions you can sign if you disagree with these bills

americancensorship.org...

act.demandprogress.org...

Don't Censor Censorship Opponents: Let Us Testify!

Irony Alert: The House is holding hearings on sweeping Internet censorship legislation this week -- and it's censoring the opposition! The bill is backed by Hollywood, Big Pharma, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of them are going to get to testify at the hearing.

But the bill's opponents -- tech companies, free speech and human rights activists, and hundreds of thousands of Internet users -- won't have a voice.

As if you need a reminder: This is the most offensive Internet legislation we've seen in years. It will give the government and corporations new powers to block Americans' access to sites that are accused of copyright infringement, force sites like YouTube to go to new lengths to police users' contributions, and put people in prison for streaming certain content online.

This sham of a hearing represents everything that's broken about our political system. Will you sign the petition at right, demanding that opponents of the Blacklist Bill be allowed to testify this week? (It'll generate an email to them too.)

PETITION TO JUDICIARY CHAIRMAN LAMAR SMITH AND RANKING MEMBER JOHN CONYERS: The so-called "Stop Online Piracy Act" will kill innovation and undermine free speech rights. You need to give the hundreds of thousands of Americans who've spoken out against it a chance to make our case at this week's hearings.

Piracy should be banned. I mean, I'm a music producer. I want to make money too. Its my job.

Originally posted by Spotless
The first time i started freelancing i just couldn't afford Photoshop. I couldn't even understand how anyone in their right mind would pay that much for a piece of software. When i started making enough money i bought it.
I think its only fair to pay for what you use in your business.

Nowadays I'm doing some music production with Ableton live and im having much fun doing it. But since im not making any money from music i won't buy the software (which is pretty expensive). Same thing with VST's (virtual instruments). Some of them cost a fortune.

I'm a professional DJ as well. Most of my friends leech all kinds of music from the net for free. All of the DJ's i know buy music. Because we're making money because of that music. And of course because you usualy can't get the latest music for free.

I hope you get my point.

Well then you as a DJ would be delighted to know that technically even if you buy a CD and use it as a DJ without paying royalties on top of buying the CD since you are being paid to play the music for an audience you are breaking the law aren't laws great?

also i can get all the latest music/mixes/music vids for free usually before you can buy them

I also know allot of DJ's and work in the club scene and most of the ones I know don't buy their music that they use.

Also whether you are making money from something or just "trying it out" "having fun playing with it" ect you are breaking the law and according to those lawmakers you should be paying hefty fines and doing some good old american jail time

I will give you a little knowledge that you might not think about or understand for most of you at least... Do you ever wonder why for instance free to air satellite receivers that can freely descrable the paid satellite TV services are able to be made and the Sat TV companies seem to not be able to do anything about it...Do you ever wonder why you are always having to buy new boxes all the time because they "change the system" do you ever wonder why they are so quickly able to hack such a new and high quality system?

Do you think that a big company that makes allot of money would no think to themselves hey...maybe we should make a new company in china and sell these FTA boxes to people who don't want to pay for our services that we offer at $X.XX amount but instead are willing to pay $X.XX to buy a pirating box...yah we would lose some money becasue they are not paying for the service but really since they are getting the programming and are not a customer that means that we wont have to pay the providers for another customer becasue they techincally are not our customers so we actually make more money this way... Hmm yah bob that is a great plan and you know what is even better we should make it so you have to buy different boxes ever 6month to 1 year to keep up with "encryption changes" that way we keep making money from these guys... WOW BOB GENIUS!!! Okay so yah lets do this... set it up in china under a shell corp and lets start making money!

It is really interesting that when the days of being able to make your own Card to access direct tv for free was around and you could do everything yourself then finally decided to cut the cards and go to box only but then pretty shortly after that they came out with these boxes for the people who didnt want to pay the monthly fees...interesting

No idea's original
there's nothing new under the sun
it's never what you do but how it's done

- Nas, rapper.
It's ludicrous to try to prevent stuff like music spreading but if you do like it then you should support the artist in my view.

Originally posted by Fretz
Piracy should be banned. I mean, I'm a music producer. I want to make money too. Its my job.

That's one thing i think most pirates forget, the steal things, companies make less money and in the end people suffer. The pirates should ask themself, what they would think, if they had to work without getting money or getting fired from their job, because their company makes less money.

You just have to look at the entertainment industry, to see how they all suffer.
Yes, pirating has been around forever, people recorded from the radio in the 70's, taped movies from the TV. Difference to todays downloading is that you usually bought your tapes, audio cassettes, vhs tapes in a store and a percentage of the money you pay for the recording media goes to the record/movie companies and in the end also to the creators of the music/movies. While downloading doesn't give anyone anything and they don't have that percentage system on DVD-/+R or CD-R for whatever reason (they tried it, but nobody bought the CD-R that were advertised for Audio only because they were more expensive than the normal CD-Rs)

So there's a big difference about 'pirating' from the 70's and 80's to the Internet Piracy of today. People suffer, it's not only the big 'evil' companies that go down, but also a lot of people.
You just have to take a look at the music industry. How many record companies are left? There are 3 big ones and several smaller indy companies. Compare that to the recording industry from 20-30 years ago, when companies like Geffen, Interscope, Sanctuary, Epic, Columbia, EMI and others were standing on their own. Now most of them belong to Universal or Sony. Which in the end led us to a really bad mainstream music scene..i mean what do you hear on the radio? The only things left are bad pop music, bad rap music and Nickelback because Sony & Co. only push things that sell and the small companies don't have the financial power to compete with them. Compare that to the 70's and 80's when there were a lot of big companies and a lot of different musical styles were played on the radio/mtv.
Now i know, that a lot of companies went under may no be strictly limited to pirating, but to say it doesn't play big role would be pretty naive.

Did i pirate media? Of course, 10 years ago i downloaded music like crazy, trying to discover new bands and older bands i never heard. 10 years later i own over 1100 CDs and nearly 400 Vinyls. I would feel really bad if i didn't bought the music, but just use the pirated stuff.

And i think the money aspect doesn't count either. You can't afford the video games or music? Blu Rays are too expensive for you? Well...then you just can't afford it. Point. Music and Movies are a luxury, you don't need them to survive, so you just have to relinquish.

reply to post by Fretz

Piracy should be banned. I mean, I'm a music producer. I want to make money too. Its my job.

Are you willing to censor the internet and have web sites shut down. People fined and sent to prison?

All so Big Corporations can sell more movies online?

WATCH THIS VIDEO

Does anyone really think that little rule on the back of your DVD or game that says "private use only, no lending, sharing, blah blah" is law?

What do the makers and sellers of billions of blank discs and tapes think they're being used for?

I think MC lars put it best:



Basically music was always over priced. an album (a digital one at that) is still at 10 bucks. Record companies still get most of the profits. And yet, SONY and other are stating they have record profits DESPITE piracy.

I do not feel the majority of people are unwilling to pay, just unwilling to be overcharged for crap. If companies listened and at least tried to compromise with their customers, well customers would not be so pissed.

And lets not even get into how SONY put a trojan on your system. How torrents are tracked. How people are grossly over sued for "sharing" a few songs. If the companies moved the money from prosecuting non customers to trying to put out quality music and enticing them to buy it it may work.

Another example of a step in the right direction is how games are doing the online pass. I will not buy any of these games as I feel you should be able to include the whole console or some other solution for families with multiple consoles etc (add all sub accounts and link spouses or other family or by IP etc).

These are some solutions that should work based upon what I see is the problem. No everyone will be happy.

Lets also add that now when you buy a movie its harder to get that digital copy (which also expires, is worse quality, and takes up more space) onto your device than it is to d/l it.

Point is make it easier to obtain lawfully and fewer people will do it. Point #2 put out better stuff.

#############################################

Software... yes yes, no one should steal it, but again price point should not be stupid either. Look at the game brink, was out for what 6 months and now i can find it for 8 bucks. So again, price point. Photoshop... uhm yeah.. gimp is free and almost as powerful. Linux and android are free and look how sucessful they are. Even the update procedure is simpler that the other guys and that is all thanks to community support. Ubuntu is still privately funded mind you and has paid support but all community support is free.

This is my opinion people, and jail time should not be mandatory nor should grossly over inflated fines.


**EDIT**
p.s. and what about site like grooves***k and s***ify? Netflix also purchases limited copies and so in essence does support the artist as if everyone bout it. Blockbuster... HELLO!!!!

Originally posted by wigit

Does anyone really think that little rule on the back of your DVD or game that says "private use only, no lending, sharing, blah blah" is law?

What do the makers and sellers of billions of blank discs and tapes think they're being used for?

Like i said above about the sat tv boxes... its the same thing...

Sony owns music... if you dont buy sony music thats okay because they make the dvd/cd burners and blank cd/dvd so you can buy that instead its a win win for them and what they really want is for you to buy both

their biggest issues with online piracy is how do they make money from if you you arent buy the cd/dvd burner, their blank media, or the music because you can get it for free and you keep it on digital devices.. answer: they start selling you digital devices lol they try to censor the internet so you are forced into buying their products or you have nothing.

Just imagine if everyone in the US that wanted music/movies/whatever paid $20 a month and had access to anything and everything legally and al of that money was devided to the owners of the music/movies/ect bet there wouldnt be piracy then...

maybe if the actors in movies didnt get paid so much and the people who actually make the movie and do all the work get paid so little they wouldnt have to make as much money from a movie.... when you stop paying actors out the ass for movies it opens yo uup to new younger talented actors and actresses that just want to be movie stars and care more about that then money...

there are many people who would make music/movies/game/software and not have to get paid obscene amounts of money to do so and if they dont want to do it then would losing a britney spears or a lady gaga really make much of a difference in this world...

some of the most amazing music ever written the poeple who wrote it didnt make a penny from it

some of the best software i nthe world is free and was made by people for free

people really need to re-evaluate their values when you think its okay for someone to go to jail for downloading music/whatever when killers with good lawyers walk free.... but hey they make money when people go to jail so why not throw some people in there...

the best part is when you get in trouble for piracy you are charged the value of the song or software IE it cost retail $3000 for your piracy well you wont be charged for that you will be charged MUCH more and if not jailtime you will get probation of some type.

reply to post by MathiasAndrew


Yes I do agree for people to be fined or being taken to jail for stealing. Not the internet sensor tho.

Originally posted by TinkerHaus
There are a lot of people like me too. We will support what we like, but how can we know for sure without a test drive?

When I was in 3D game design school a few years ago one of my teachers told us the companies are the ones who release the cracks for their own software(specifically 3D and other editing programs) for that exact purpose, it increases sales.

Are mixed tapes considered piracy?

Originally posted by WielderOfTheSwordOfTruth
When I was in 3D game design school a few years ago one of my teachers told us the companies are the ones who release the cracks for their own software(specifically 3D and other editing programs) for that exact purpose, it increases sales.

Not true. The cracks are produced by Cracker groups, like Fairlight, Razor 1911 and others. The same groups that were already active in the 1980's and played a big role in the demise of the Commodore Amiga (The system was popular but the games were copied so much, that a lot of companies went under and others barely made any money. Once read a interview with Factor 5 who ported Turrican to the Amiga. They said that Turrican 2 only sold 20.000 copies but basically everyone with an Amiga 500 (millions of users) owned the game)
The Amiga is the perfect example of why pirating is a very bad thing.

And how does releasing pirates increase the sales? I doubt that even 1/50 of the people who download a pirate version of..say Photoshop, ever buys a licensed original. Same can be said for games and movies. Music maybe, thanks to iTunes lots of people at least then buy 1-2 songs

reply to post by byteshertz


You forgot:

Have you ever sung happy birthday to a group of people?

Anyways. Parts of your arguments are valid but you are leaving some things out. Yes, you can not consider internet piracy (downloading for the rest of this post) to be "theft" as by it's very definition theft requires you to take something that isn't yours, without paying, depriving the owner of said "thing".

At best, downloading is unauthorized copying, which itself is illegal.

The problem lies in letting the private industry dictate the laws and regulations to ensure their monopoly while stifling innovation. The list of products we wouldn't have because of copyright is astounding, and the list of products we lost, or failed, due to copyright lawsuits is quite large too.

Instead of evolving to fit the market as it has evolved, they wish to maintain a stranglehold on the market and force it to stay where it is. That in and of itself isn't bad, that's basic business. But they are not only ignoring a market desperate for content, they are going about changing laws and restricting peoples rights to protect their "property"

The MPAA/RIAA and international equivalents spend millions suing potential customers. They also rake in millions by convincing people to settle instead of going to court. And where does that money go? Does it go to the starving artists? The starving actors and movie producers? nope, it goes to the lawyers to sue more people, and to the hackers to illegally track people.

The movie industry is claiming downloading is killing it. How can they say that with a straight face as each year movies break box office records, every summer the number gets higher.

Radio didn't kill music.
TV didn't kill theater
VHS didn't kill movies
CDs didn't kill music
DVDs didn't kill movies

What is killing these industries is their unwillingness to adapt to a new market.

We don't want to go to a store in the mall and purchase physical mediums that start to decay as soon as they are opened. We don't want optical disks prone to scratching, unable to play on all devices, and in some cases containing rootkits silently installed onto your computer.

We want high quality digital content that is OURS. That we can take wherever we want, watch on whatever device we want, and make as many backups as we see fit.

That said......

there is a growing generation of kids with entitlement complexes who have never known a world without downloading, and figure they are entitled to whatever they want without paying.

I'm a pirate. I have been since the BBS days before the "internet" and the "web" truly existed.

I also happen to have a large collection of cds, dvds, blurays, and games. Most of which wouldn't be purchased if not for me illegally downloading copies before hand to verify they deserve my money. Some things I buy regardless, to support the artist, like Phish or Kevin Smith movies. But most I buy because I think they are worth it.

I haven't had cable in over a decade, all of my "tv" content is downloaded (until I buy the box set of the show which is an addiction)

But why, when I can clearly afford to buy whatever content I want, do I still download? Besides the reason above, here's an example. This list was much larger but I've actually forgotten some items over the years.

The x-files collectors edition box set. All seasons and the first movie. This box set cost over 300$ when I bought it.

Season 3 is the ONLY season that doesn't have at least 1 bad disk. Every other season has at least 1 episode that can not be played. It's the disk themselves as any media device reports errors including trying a manual raw disk backup.

The simpsons season 10. Every episode on disk 2 has the sound cutting in and cutting out for no reason.

The simpsons season 7. 3 episodes on 1 disk have no audio, the only audio channel that produces sound is the commentary track.

That 70s show season 2, disc 1 has several points in several episodes that it freaks the player out, produces artifacts, then skips to the next chapter.

Futurama. Not sure which season but the first episode with Robot Santa claus plays for about 10 minutes before crapping out and skipping through the rest of the episode, with no sound, in around 15 seconds.

Futurama last season, last episode, doa after the opening title sequence, player freezes, if it's a pc, you have to hard reset.

there is plenty more, and a few audio cds as well, but that's the ones off the top of my head still angering me today.

So as you see, I've spent a ton of money of those dvds, and STILL had to download them to be able to watch when and where I wanted.

The artists deserve to be paid, the MPAA and RIAA do not. Our laws should not be engineered by corporations to protect their profits, that's fascism.

reply to post by ShadowAngel85

Not true. The cracks are produced by Cracker groups, like Fairlight, Razor 1911 and others.

actually he's correct. The first few versions of Lightwav, a VERY popular 3d software program, required a physical dongle security device. It plugged into your printer port.

Someone involved with the software itself released the algorithm to bypass the dongle.

Some game companies also release their stuff into the wild, but it's quite rare now, usually small or indie companies.

reply to post by fasteronfire

Are mixed tapes considered piracy?

Yes as it's unauthorized reproduction. You only need to worry once you lend it or give it to someone else, but under the current laws in the US at least, it's in the grey zone. Fair use and personal use were once protected, those days are over.

In fact, some of the legislation trying to be passed in Canada would actually make it illegal to convert your legally purchased CD to mp3 for your ipod if a digital copy is available for sale. some are even pushing for an "ipod tax" where they'd assign a dollar value, per meg of storage space, for any device capable of playing music.

Which is insane as in Canada we already pay a tariff on blank media (tapes, cds, dvds) that goes right to the music industry to pay for losses induced by piracy.

So, in Canada, when you buy that blank media, you have basically paid for the right to illegally copy music, as a portion of the price goes right to them.

reply to post by ShadowAngel85


Hey you could be completely right, I just happened to remember right now that he told us that and thought it was interesting and relevant enough to share. But yeah I was not talking about video games, I was talking about software.

Obviously there are other people/groups who make cracks but you can't really say a company has never created and released a crack for their own software cause you just simply don't know, and wouldn't have any way of knowing it's not like they're advertising that they're doing it. My teacher has over 25 years industry experience and only knew that because of people he knows. I see what your saying about photoshop and such that most people don't buy it your right about that. I mean I don't know the guy could have made the whole thing up I guess although 2 years knowing him he never came off as a lier. The thing about increased profits I think is due to, anything made that will be sold for profit must be created with legal licensed software, therefor anyone intending on doing so must buy the real version, which they're more likely to do if they can try it out first.

reply to post by byteshertz


Well, here's the rule i live by.

If it contains DRM, then i refuse to buy it. Any product that contains DRM, be it music, video, or computer software... is not worth buying.

Half the time, i come across CD's in music stores (not the stuff i would ever buy) and they have fat labels across them saying "copy protection enabled". I mean, if i were to buy this CD...in this day and age where computers are used for virtually all media playback and NOT be able to transfer the tracks to my hard-drive... what would be the point in buying it? Technically with restrictions like this in place, you would be renting the music... even though you bought the album, its still not your property.

As with movies on the internet... almost every time the "top" downloaded film is something that people would be cautious in buying... be it dodgy reviews or rumour that it sucks. People are not willing to waste hard earnt cash on something which was throw together for the purpose of making money... people want to buy things that they can enjoy. I can guarantee you that when someone ends up downloading a film out of curiosity (not willing to waste cash in the chance it is a load of bull****), if they found the movie gobsmacking and one of a kind... something they REALLY enjoy. They WILL buy it afterwards... for the sake of watching it as it was intended to be viewed... for the full experience.

Good examples of films like this, which never got "harmed" by piracy... are the Matrix movies.
They were so amazing that even people who downloaded or purchased pirated VHS/DVD copies... ended up buying the actual copy later on.

EDIT: Forgot to say.. this is why i think piracy is a joke. It is not illegal, nobody loses. BEcause if you are selling dodgy, crap products... no-one will buy it anyway, in fact... if its uploaded online... MORE people end up viewing it, free advertising, controversy "omg that film was so whack", so people go to the store and buy it just to check out the rumours they heard.... in effect piracy is a win-win situation.

I've always wondered how content thieves would feel if their source of income was cut in half or taken away all together.

Somehow I think working for free wouldn't be to their liking...of course I might be wrong.